Neil Josten Fan club

Inked on the skin

**Note** It's late, I'm tired but I am a simple bitch who loves tattoos and I know, I just KNOW, that Neil is a chaotic person like me who would get a tattoo day of if his best friend asked him too (yes my best friend did do this to me and yes I do love my tattoo and her). So, my loving interpretation of Neil and tattoos.

Neil wasn't really sure how he ended up here. Allison was shaving the back of his calf preparing it so she could take an electric tattooing needle to his skin. She refused to tell him what it was going to be and he has no idea how he agreed to this. It had something to do with owing her a favor and best friend code and well...it was very difficult to say no to Allison when she wanted something. 

"Please tell me you're using a clean needle," Neil piped up sitting face down on her couch.

Allison scoffed, waving him off. "Of course I did Neil, chill I know what I'm doing I've been taking classes."

Neil huffed hoping it conveyed his apprehension. She seemed to get it because she said, "Look I wont do it if you honestly don't want me to but I think it'll look good. Also, I promise you're going to like the design I picked out."

Neil trusted Allison, he really did but...Well he had enough marks on his body already. And maybe it was that Neil couldn't see her face, or maybe it was cause he really did want to back out, but he said, "Allison, don't you think I have enough permanent marks on me as it is?"

She was quiet for a moment, and it was all Neil could do not to bury his head in the pillow and avoid the agonizing silence that was charged with pity from his friend. All she did though was swing her small swivel stool around to where his face was and make him look at her.

"Do you want to know why I am learning how to tattoo?" She said.

Without answering her, she continued, "I'm learning because all my life I have had people telling me what I can and cannot do with my own body, and this is something that I can have on my skin that makes sure everyone knows that I am not someone who can be owned."

her face was full of cold determination, a fighter down to her marrow even though she might not look it. Neil couldn't help but smile at her strength, it hit him somewhere warm in his heart. How proud he was of her. 

And she made a good point. Neil had never liked the way he looked. Sometimes he looked in the mirror and saw a stranger, the ones he'd become for 8 years on the run. Sometimes he sees his father, his eyes, his smile, and he wants to rip his own face off. Sometimes he sees Nathaniel, under Lola's knife and on his way to a shallow grave. None of it had ever been his choice.

But this, this he could chose for himself. This would be of his own making. It would be his. It felt like a release of something he'd been holding on to, it felt like a fuck you to everyone who'd ever hurt him. And Neil was an instigator at heart.

"Do it," was all he said and the answering smile on Allison's face said she knew exactly why he'd forged ahead. 

The tattoo didn't hurt as much as he thought it might, but that could have more to do with Neil's unnaturally high pain tolerance than anything else. His foot fell asleep after a while but other than that it was more uncomfortable than anything. After 2 hours, Allison announced she was finished and put a thin wrap layer over the fresh skin.

She explained that he couldn't take it off for a while because it needed time to heal so Neil didn't get a chance to even discover what it was until the next day. What he saw took his breath away. 

Allison had tattooed a geometric line design of a fox with thin black lines and inserts of orange and white subtly looping through the foxes fur. He also noticed a small number 10 woven into the foxes swooping tail, marking the tattoo with the thing that represented him best. His Palmetto jersey number.