Bucky
He's at the front door before he realizes he's opened it. Stepping into the brightly lit tattoo parlour a few blocks from Brooklyn. He didn't mean to actually go inside. Tattoos had never really called to him. But she did. The woman behind the tall bar that served as a front desk. It was facing the left wall and she was on the right side of it. And he couldn't stop looking.
The bar was tall and open. Letting her long legs show as they bent under the bar stool beneath her. Creamy flesh flowing from high waisted black shorts. Blood red heels on her feet, the heel of the stilettos hooked gently on the bottom rung of the barstool.
His eyes travel from heels to calves to her thighs. Trim and fit but not overly so, but he was staring more at the writing scrawled over the entirety of her left thigh. In sprawling cursive was a phrase he hadn't heard before but called to him. 'Embrace your darkness'
But there's more. Eyes traveling up from her hips to the high waisted black shorts. Over the spanse of her bare stomach where he can see the tinkling glitter of a belly button piercing. Her far too small wrap top bare held her full chest up against her sternum, baring so much skin he wanted to flush. There's some more of that same cursive over her bare ribs and left side. 'The woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep' the scraggly creepy twists and turns of a dead tree sprouting from around the phrase.
He's staring too long, it's only a moment but it's plenty of time for the door to chime with his entrance and for her head to look up at him. He's hit with the palest green eyes he's ever seen, steering right down to his bones as she sits up straighter. Dark chestnut hair falling in thick locks of curls over her shoulders and back to tickle at the flesh of her lower spine.
There's more writing inked into her skin on her left bicep. The image of a slim and frightening grim reaper with the phrase left in inked under the darkened shadow beneath the reaper. 'When I died, the reaper gave back my soul, heaven deemed me unworthy, hell feared I would take control'
Bucky's brows furrow at the many dark phrases inked into her soft skin. She's standing now, her head tilted to the side as if she's waiting on singing and it takes him a moment to realize she's spoken to him. He speaks softly, saying he's just taking a look and he's never been inked before. And he sees her smile as she pulls out a thick binder full of pictures. Let's him flip through the custom works, explains its her shop and that's her artwork in the pictures.
He takes a quick glance at her chest by accident, eyes skirting over her full chest. Which is amazing but he's more focused on the black scrawl then the perfect round globes of flesh. 'My mistakes are my own'
His eyes find a picture in front of him. Two fallen angels knelt on the ground. One still holding a sword in his right hand as he tries to drag his broken comrade back to heaven. But his wings are scared and hurt, battle smashed and their both being pulled into the darkness. His eyes can't look away and he wants this image forever.
Because right there in black ink is himself and Steve. Steve lost him on the train and he followed suit with felling the plane that was going to bomb the city they loved. Both of them drowning in the shadows because of losing the other. It's calling to him and he suddenly realizes why people get the tattoos. Why they sit through the pain and the needles for hours.
He points to the image. And her eyes widen. She expresses something like that could take hours and it could be painful for first timers. She's my talking him out of it, simply telling him what was to happen if he did get it. He nods, pain makes no difference anymore to him. But she doesn't need to know that.
She smiles and flicks a switch under the bar, the 'in session' light coming on in the window. He follows her back to the black leather chair and he's he with a sudden memory. But he pushes it back, he asks as he sits down if she can make a change to the tattoo. 'Anything you want Sugar.' And he smiles and calls her doll. Asking to change the sword for a shield. A round one with no colours, just shading. It's easy for her to change it up. She's a professional.
He has to trust her now because she needs the entire spandex of his back and shoulders bare for her to work. Reveals the scarred tissue over the lining as the metal sprouts from flesh. She stills but closes her eyes, not saying a word as she places her hand gently on his metal plates forearm. Her eyes say it all, there's no pity or fear. Simply a guilt that something could happen to someone.
There's a way of locked eyes before he lays on his stomach on the now flat chair. Arms crossed gently relaxed and settled on the little padded bar under his chest. So the skin doesn't stretch as she works. She warns of the sting but he simply hums and enjoys the feeling of her fingers on his broad back. Even with the rubber gloves on it still calms his mind for a short time.
Hours later he's nearly asleep in the chair when he feels a gentle pat on his shoulder. He stands and he can feel the tightness in his upper back but he knows it will be gone in an hour with his healing. She turns his toward the mirror and ask him to take a look. An excitement and nervousness on her face as he turns and look over his shoulder at the masterpiece etched permanently into his flesh.
It's too amazing too describe. He looks back and forth. Goes closer to the mirror and takes into the absolute painstaking details put into the shading. He turns and smiles brightly even for him and she smirks right back. Relief that he likes it over her face as he pulls his hoodie and shirt back on over the metal of his arm.
Watches as she turns and he can now see the right side of her body more fully. There's another tattoo over her right thigh. Thicker and more bold then the others but still just as intricate and dark. 'I don't fear the shadows, the shadows fear me' he's struck by the phrases and the meanings behind them coming from this woman in front of him.
the long silky hair to the blood red heels. The ink covering her skin to the perfect frame of her eyebrows. She's got a multitude of rings over her fingers. A set of dog tag on a short chain around her neck like a choker. And now with his own across his back. He can see why she has so much needled into her flesh.
He pulls on the charm he hasn't used in decades. Leans on the bar and crowds her space just a tiny bit as she counts the bills he laid down to pay for her efforts. Her dark pink painted lips quirk and she leans back into his space, accepting his challenge.
They go for coffee at four am. Then walk Central Park till dawn. Breakfast at a small diner near the tower. Parting ways with phone numbers in cell phones and a lingering kiss that's got her head hazy and his mind racing.
It only takes the team a day to see the ink on his back. He no longer wear shirts or tanks as they train or spar. He's proud of the work etched into him. And a few months later. There's another. And another. And another.
And then she's living in the tower and opening up three new shops because the Avengers all have tattoos by her own hand and skills.
Then there's a red star and lines etched over like plates on her right shoulder and bicep. 'Barnes' written in thick bold print like the cracks on glass up close.
He never asks about the darkness around her tattoos or the reason she has then. But she tells them to him anyways. And he thinks she's lucky to be alive from her hardships. She doesn't judge his own anxieties and fears. Only tells him to be strong and that she loves him.
And then there's a line over the ring finger of her left hand. A Celtic style band that hides slightly under the thin silver band holding black diamonds and a red ruby in the middle.