Everything & Nothing

little things - ducaleon r.

As much as Ducaleon wants to stay away from Tempest, he simply cannot—to him, she's become alluring in every way imaginable. Her nature and character, so beguiling. Her actions and behavior, so adorable. Her appearance, he knew she was pretty, but recently, he has come to regard her as an exceedingly appealing female.

His existing fondness for her came in stages...

As he put the needled tip of the buzzing tattoo machine to the skin of his umpteenth customer of the day, all of Ducaleon's thoughts drift to his foremost encounter with Temp. He was in Mayhem to buy the new release by Opeth. Apparently, she'd started her first day there and was being given instructions on what to do and how to do them—repeatedly being told the Dos and Don'ts of her job as a salesgirl. He hadn't paid much attention to her—pertaining to his lack of interest and his hurry for a pending errand. Then came his second encounter with her—well, it wasn't much of an encounter, given how he'd only woven around the store and watched her go about her work, simply because it was entertaining to watch her get so deeply engrossed in arranging the new stock of records that she kept running into moving people and static shelves alike.

After that one very stalker-ish move, every time Ducaleon visited Mayhem, his attention kept getting drawn to her, as if she were telepathically pulling the line of his sight to herself. She was always engaged in doing her job to the ultimate perfection, never giving him a second thought, until that fateful day.

The day she came in as his new roommate.

"Ow! Calm it, man!" Ducaleon is snapped out of his thoughts by the wimp on his tattooing recliner, wincing and trying to pull his forearm away from the needle. His whining resumes, "dude, that hurts. C'mon—"

"Suck it up," Ducaleon cuts him off, annoyed. "Tattoos are supposed to hurt."

"Sorry." The youngster finally stops struggling. "It's my first time."

"You don't say."

The Guns 'n' Roses lyrical tattoo takes another hour to finish, after which Ducaleon sprays the antiseptic ink-retainer on it and rattles off the 'new tattoo care instructions' to the guy. He is glad when the boy leaves without another complaint of 'is it normal for this to sting so much?', it was beginning to trip off a loose nerve. Now free for the moment, his cerebrations go back to the day Tempest had decided to live in The Phoenix Rising.

That day, passing the way it did, had occurred either for the betterment or for the worsening of his already miserable life, Ducaleon still cannot grasp which. The former assumption seemingly almost overpowers the latter, however, there has been and will always be his current situation, the reality of which lurks in the shadows—silent and calculative—and quick as a snake, it strikes just when positivity appears to be winning. Constant remembrance of his state of affairs—the dark, nefarious side of his life—about which only Raidho knows, compels him to keep from forming any bonds with people. Should he succumb to the need of harboring emotional attachment with anyone, he'll not only be endangering the lives of concerned individuals, but also revealing his vulnerability—his strong will to protect and save those he loves, by any means necessary.

It's been nearly two months since Tempest Richards moved in with him, Ducaleon retains that day in his mind as clear as a cloudless, blue sky. Curtis had told him that he'd be having another one in his apartment soon; someone to share the burden of the rent with him and to occupy the half empty condominium. Nevertheless, Ducaleon hadn't expected that someone to be the lively little salesgirl (whom he occasionally stalked, purely for his mental recreation and nothing more) at his frequented record store. She'd come with a friend of hers, someone he'd made out as another regular customer of Mayhem—the eighteen-year-old Rhys Morgan. Ducaleon had done a double take upon catching sight of the familiar redhead standing frozen beside Rhys.