Caraphernelia {Frerard}

c h a p t e r t w e n t y o n e

Caraphernelia

As the river flows gently to the sea. Darling so we go some things were meant to be. Take my hand, take my whole life too, but I can't help falling in love with you.

Twenty Øne Pilots - Can't Help Falling In Love (cover)

f r a n k

I smile up at Grace as she comes into the room behind the shop she was currently working in with a few other tattooists. I finish up with putting all the sterilised needles into their rightful place and placing the inks back into the cupboard below the washing up station. Grace grins even wider when she sees me stand up, "hey, Frank? You wanna do a small tattoo for me? There's a guy here that wants some initials under his collarbone so it's nothing with major detail or anything that will make your first proper tattooing experience a living hell."

I widen my eyes, surprised that I was allowed to tattoo someone so soon after arriving to Grace in hope of spending time with her. It had only been four days and I had gained around seven new tattoos, a renewed love for spray painting any surface I could find and getting high with amazing people. Such a throwback to when I was in school.

"I'll fuckin' do it, I'm so glad you're letting me do this, this is amazing. I never thought that you would take your time to teach me and let me practise it." I let out within a time span of around five seconds. It was a form of my word diarrhoea that happened when I became overwhelmed with excitement, but Grace lets it slide and just smiles, hanging her head so that some of her blonde fringe covers her face up, "c'mon, can't keep the dude waiting too long, I said I'd only let him wait five minutes."

Grace goes to the bottles of ink and grabs out a black one, "I've set up the tattooing machine for you, so as soon as you're ready and you've sorted out the style he wants the tattoo to be and shit, you can start inking." Grace leads me out of the back room and into the main room where there were two people already being tattooed, neither of them flinching but just making casual conversation with whoever was tattooing them.

I hadn't ever expected that I would enjoy myself half as much with Grace and away from Mikey in a million years when Mikey had told me that I was going to be spending sometime with Grace whilst he stayed at his parents' home for the remainder of however long he had planned for us to stay. Honestly speaking, just having the space and change of scene and activities made me feel as though I didn't have to deal with so much shit.

This was a great place to be taking time away from outside the shop, this tattooists seemed to just cut off any form of communication from the rest of the world, just filling the room with happiness, conversation and a constant buzzing. Over the last few days with Grace and co., I had been the happiest I've been in months, they were a carefree group of people, only serious when they were tattooing people. Even then, they were still great people to be around.

And maybe it had been the joint that Grace and I smoked just before shop opened up still having its effect on me, but I only smiled widely when I see Gerard stood there, his eyes bouncing excitedly between all of the art that was displayed on the walls. He then went onto looking at ornaments and the huge kaleidoscope tapestries hanging up.

I felt like I practically bounced over to Gerard, smiling at him as if he was just another customer of Grace's and wasn't the reason I felt like shit in the first time. I wasn't going to let my good mood float away now because I had a problems with him. Plus, this was a way for me to get at him and overcharge him for a tattoo. Maybe I'll fuck it up on purpose.

Gerard doesn't notice me at first, his art hoe side was showing and he ignored me for the the paintings and tapestries and examples of the works done over the years here.