milk & honey

Diagon Alley was busy. Oliver figured it was around the time that the proactive parents would be taking their kids to the shops for the upcoming term, to pick out their wands, source their books. Green eyes scanned their faces, round and rosy-cheeked from the heat of the Summer. He couldn't remember ever looking so young.

While he wasn't old— twenty-two was hardly the age he considered to be a real adult— he felt strangely out of place. Pushing back waves of unruly hair that had dried quickly in the outside air after his shower that late Saturday morning, Ollie weaved through crowds. Naively, and as he had been doing more often the week following the release of the album, he wondered if anyone might recognize him.

The label filled most of his days since then with interviews and rehearsals for the upcoming shows across small venues scatted around the UK. The response, as far as Ollie knew, was overwhelmingly positive. An early critic even said (and he remembered it word for word) 'Golden might just be the start of a new era in the music industry and frontman Oliver Rigby has a presence well beyond his years.'

Glancing up at the familiar storefront of Graffiti is Art Two, Ollie pushed his way inside and tucked his sunglasses into the open neck of his flowy button-down shirt. Letting out an appreciative sigh for airconditioning, he wondered where Gregoire was, no one was immediately visible from the front sitting area. Greg had recommended that Dean Thomas was the man he needed to see for his tattoo needs and that he worked on Saturdays.

Like a moth to a flame, the wizard made his way over to the shelves, studying the pieces of art, and the records, touching his fingertips lightly over them in admiration. At the sound of someone approaching, he spun around. "Sorry—" He wasn't sure if he could be touching those. "Are these for sale?" He asked the man he recognized from Hogwarts, though a bit more mature looking now.

@Dean Thomas

The shop drew the attention of kids shopping for school—of course it did. While everything in Diagon Alley was colorful to muggle-born eyes like his, to most Hogwarts students, apothecaries and magical bookshops didn’t catch a second glance. Anyone of a certain artistic persuasion couldn’t have just walked by Greg’s shop, though. Dean remembered looking in himself when he was younger. Now occasionally he would give a wave through the front window at some kid eyeing up the display. He’d had mixed success with this, though. Some of them seemed appreciative or even waved back, but a not insignificant number got spooked and left in a hurry.

His own sisters were all the brave sort, Dean figured. That was all the experience he had with kids.

Very few young kids ever actually entered the shop, though. In truth they were never less busy than late summer; maybe adults wanted to avoid the crowds. Dean had never been the sort of person bothered by it, in fact, he often went up to Hogsmeade on student weekends just for the bustle of it all. But from his experience, not that many art people were extroverts.

He had only one appointment today, Oliver Rigby. He’d heard the name before—here, actually. Not five days ago he’d done a little hummingbird in gold ink fluttering around a young woman’s ankle, apparently inspired by this bloke’s music. Dean hadn’t listened to it—he’d never been a good taker of recommendations—but now he sort of wished he had.

He’d been expecting less politeness from a pop star, but the man seemed a little nervous. “The pictures, yeah,” Dean replied, giving him his most non-threatening smile. “The records are for playin’, though.” He sat down and laid out his pad of paper on the coffee table before summoning a jar of drawing tools from the front counter. It was nice to work by the windows in the summer. He extended a hand. “I’m Dean,” he said, with a little nod. “Mr. Rigby, yeah? You want to tell me what you’re thinking?”

"That means I get to choose?" Oliver's rounded out Scottish accent drawled from his mouth that had pulled up into a dimpled grin, returning Dean's own without thought. He ran a hand over the cardboard exteriors of the albums and saw mostly bands he hadn't yet heard of. The question had been rhetorical, anyway, he thought, he turned to the front area where the other wizard was taking a seat.

It was a comfortable space despite all of its chaos. If he knew Gregoire as well as he thought he had, he expected nothing different. Tough exterior, soft on the inside. Not unlike this parlor of his.

"Oliver—" He took Dean's hand. Somehow both Mr. Rigby and Oliver felt entirely too formal. "—Ollie," He corrected as he rounded the coffee table and draped over the chair next to him. Instead of sitting properly, he propped up against the arm of the chair, chin dropping to his palm in thought. As his forest colored eyes studied the blank paper, he was only vaguely aware of the drawing tools when they flew overhead.

"Well Mr. Thomas, a few things," Ollie pushed unruly waves of hair from his forehead with one hand and fished out a piece of crumpled parchment from his front pocket with the other. He didn't bother hiding the fact that he knew his last name, too. Hastily he unraveled the paper and pressed it onto the coffee table, a mess of scribbles from him and his housemates, hardly legible or coherent.

There was half a sunflower, messy script in French, a hummingbird— a compilation of his life this last year. Letting out a breath, he looked sideways at Dean, unsure how this kind of thing went when the customer didn't have a clear picture in mind. "I guess I'm not all that prepared..." He chewed the inside of his lip as his gaze flicked back over the paper.

“’Course you get to choose,” said Dean. “Portion of the fee is for ambiance.” He gave Oliver a good-natured grin in case he’d been too deadpan with it—sometimes he had that problem, and Oliver seemed a little timid to Dean’s surprise. But the shop had a way of making a lot of people timid with its exuberance at first. He’d learned that over the years. (God, had it been years?)

The record started spinning and the other man seemed to settle in. Watching him sink into the chair, Dean couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve to think him shy.

Oliver mister-ed him in kind. Dean cringed apologetically as they shook hands. He’d probably been a little nervous. The only famous people he knew he’d met before they were famous—or at least before he’d learned what for. He was highly curious what sort of music Ollie made now. Maybe one of his sisters would like a magic record? But no, that was a bad idea. Couldn’t risk a wizard thing catching on among muggle girls. He knew enough about them to know there was a risk, not to mention how dashing this bloke seemed to be.

Ollie produced a piece of parchment and spread it out between them. “Oh, wow,” said Dean, “you sure you need me at all?” But Ollie seemed to disagree. He awkwardly tried to explain how unprepared he was, and Dean felt a little silly for having considered it one big art piece. “You want just some of this?” he asked. “You have an idea where? We could figure out how big and go from there?”

He examined the drawings. Bold strokes of ink—Greg had known him well. “I like this,” he said, drawing a finger along the text. “I always think that’s sort of elegant, you know, real quick writing like that.” He squinted. It was hard to read, but also Dean’s French had never been good. “Do…something with the sun?”

The record Ollie selected he hadn't seen before. The cover was bright orange, the exterior tattered. He figured that had to be a good sign. The sound of strings swelled through the otherwise quiet room once it began spinning and Oliver, in return, sucked in a breath of air to steady his heart.

It was easy to feel comfortable there despite the chaos. Dean had the kind of calming presence that his favorite people— artists— had. Nothing to prove. He leaned back against the wall and studied the other man's fingers as they ran over his words that had been scrabbled in a drug-induced haze the night before. Suddenly they seemed a lot more beautiful.

"Se faire une place au soleil," Oliver rest his chin in his hand and his green eyes canvassed the parchment before flicking sideways to him, alit. "Find yourself in the sun," He happily confirmed in English. It was something his mother had told him, he though. And apparently it stuck with him.

"Hmm," Oliver hummed, finger tapping the side of his face. "I was thinking here—" He touched the corner of his chest where it met the inside of his armpit before running down. "—or here," His fingers danced over his upper leg atop his light linen shorts. "I think something small," He thought aloud, leaning forward to study the parchment. "A bit of both?" He ran a thumb over his words and the sunflower Sylvie had sketched.

Find yourself in the sun. Dean wasn’t sure if it meant getting into the sun and working on your psyche or looking up to realize you’d wandered there. Maybe later he’d ask, but right now it didn’t matter. All he had to do was make it look nice. (Or ugly, depending on Oliver’s aesthetic.)

He was undecided, fingers wandering around his body to highlight different spots. Dean considered. “I sort of like there on the chest, personally,” he said, assuming his opinion was being solicited here. “Are there any other tattoos around there?”

Tracing his wand around the flower on Oliver’s paper, Dean lifted it, bringing a copy into the air that he smoothed onto his own sheet. A starting point. It looked different, on its own.  “Do you want the art exactly as you’ve drawn it?” he asked. “Or do you want me to draw up my own, y’know, interpretation?” Sometimes people came to them with something to ink on their skin, sometimes just a sketch of an idea for him to make professional. Usually it was pretty easy to tell which was which, but Oliver seemed carefree and arty enough to go either way.

“If you’re not attached it could look nice curved under here…” He wrote in the words in a loose script around the rounded edge of the petals. “Whichever style you wanted, of course. S’pose I could even…” Dean captured the phrase from Oliver’s paper like he had the sunflower and with a bit of concentration and a mumbled spell, curved the letters to fit.

Oliver was distracted watching the wizard work; he pulled a replica of the very ink from the parchment right into the air in front of them where it floated for a moment and wavered just long enough to admire. That was art.

Green eyes followed down to the paper and he couldn't help but grin, foot-tapping along to the music and nearly forgetting they were in the middle of a conversation. He was going to have to decide where to put that art, after all, but it was almost more entertaining just observing. He ran his hand absently over the area on his chest indicated right where his arm met his body. It was a unique placement, but he liked that.

"Nothing too close," Oliver only had the one tattoo so he wasn't sure why he'd said it like that. "Just this—" He faltered over the closed buttons at his chest that were tucked under his sunglasses before deciding that there was a much easier option. He pulled the flowy fabric of the bottom of his shirt up to show Dean the large butterfly on his upper stomach, covering the area just below his chest. "—don't really mind if they are, anyway," He shrugged, dropping his shirt casually with a shrug. They weren't all that close, but either way, he wasn't the type to plan those kinds of things with a big picture in mind.

"No, no, feel free," He leaned forward with a grin, prompting Dean to pick up his own creation where Ollie and his housemates had left off. "I like that," He nodded, watching as the words danced around the petals of the sunflower in a flowy script. "That's beautiful," He beamed, chin resting in his palms as he watched like a kid at Christmas. "Even something up the stem, here," He ran a finger just above the parchment, head tilted.

"Think I'll keep it all black..." He sat back again in thought. As colorful as he was, having colored tattoos didn't really appeal to Oliver. "Something simple," He looked sideways to Dean.

Dean smiled to himself, doing his best to act like he didn’t notice Oliver’s admiring gaze. A lot of people thought this part was neat. Even moreso when he lifted the final image onto their own skin, setting it there  translucently as a guide for the needle. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the attention. That had been half of the reason he’d liked to draw so much as a kid. Once he started having to put work in to get the compliments, in class with a bunch of other artists it got a little rougher. It was nice to be back in the realm of the easily impressed.

Oliver lifted his shirt to show him a surprisingly large tattoo below his ribcage. “That’s beautiful,” Dean said at once. It looked as if, aesthetically, Oliver Rigby was a man after his own heart. Dean had always been something of a minimalist, a lover of plain black, flat fields of color, simple linework. At the beginning he’d gotten a large number of clients with different taste. For his development, probably, as an artist who could only do one thing was only good for very few people, and he was thankful for it. But he was still glad to get more like-minded clients fielded to him these days. “Yeah, that sounds good,” he said. “And you’d like it around this size, or any bigger?” It was easy enough to resize magically before inking; but he still liked to get an idea beforehand.

Dean moved the text again as per Oliver’s suggestion. “Like this?” Personally he preferred it under the petals, but he wasn’t the decision-maker here. Looking up, he jerked a hand toward the back of the shop. “You ready to do it right now?” he asked. “If you want to follow me back, we can get started.”

[out]

"Thanks," He meant it, too. A compliment was like air to Ollie and he all-too-eagerly drank it in. Green eyes flicked over his bare skin brandished with black ink— a monarch— it was more subtle with the years and the movement but it still struck him somewhere deep in his chest. Oftentimes he forgot it was there altogether but when he did remember he was brought back to another time entirely. That was the draw of tattoos, wasn't it? Their permanent nature. Their reminder. A tentpole of another time.

Oliver eyed the moving ink on parchment and tried to assess how it might look on him, to no avail. "Maybe a bit smaller..." He sat back further in thought. "What do you think?" He over at Dean curiously. The man had an eye for that sort of thing and his opinion in that sense was more than valuable.

"Perfect," He said dreamily as the words flowed into the stem in an instant. Magic was magic for a reason, and he would always be in awe of it. "Lets," He agreed in an instant, pulling himself from the couch to his feet, running a hand over the cotton fabric of his shirt that had wrinkled. "Thanks again for this," Ollie said appreciatively, catching the summer sun as it drenched the front sitting room of the tattoo parlor. He imagined Dean was not an easy appointment to make if his artistry spoke as much.

[fin]