He's Not My Type

17

The sun has well set by the time they're walking down the road by the canals. The muted thrum of music and club-goers from Triangle and the other clubs and bars drifts over to their quieter side.
Christian and Richard both have their phones out, debating whether to try texting someone named Naughty Boy again, when a loud ding sounds into the night.
Elijah fumbles at his own phone, almost dropping it into the canal below. When he looks up, both Christian and Richard's eyes are on him.
"Sorry, sorry." He glances down at it to check and shakes his head. "Sorry, it's just my flatmate's new tattoo-"
He's about to turn it off when a hand circles gently over his wrist.
"What's that?" Christian asks, staring down at the photo.
"It's, um. You remember Leigh-Anne, right?" Elijah says. "She'd been wanting to get a butterfly for a while and she finally found someone who could draw it the way she pictured it. It's nothing important. I didn't mean to interrupt."
"Can I?" Christian slips the phone out of his hands and then zooms in on the photo. "Shit. This is from tonight?"
"Yes?" Elijah says, confused. "I mean, it's probably from right now. She'd said she was going to go after her shift at the pizza place."
"Which shop is this?"
"I can ask? Um. Why, though?"
"Payno." Christian nudges Richard, who's been staring unseeing out across the empty canal below. "Look at this."
"What?" he demands. But then he looks down at the phone in Christian's hands and inhales sharply.
Elijah peers over their shoulders to see that Christian has zoomed in not on the reddened skin around the new butterfly on Leigh-Anne's shoulder, but on a bare tattooed arm caught the corner of the photo.


The tattoo artist is bent over the arm of the only customer inside Ink Again. His head is shaved and the tattoos on the back of his neck extend up the between the bones of his skull.
"It's him," Richard whispers and starts to step forwards, but Christian grabs him by the arm.
"If you're looking for a tattoo, can look for our samples, but we're near closing." Elijah turns around to see a man sitting on top of the front desk.
At the sound, the tattoo artist jerks up. His eyes widen as he takes them in.
"David," Richard says, voice breaking.
It is David, Elijah can tell now. He has the same dark eyes, same sharp jaw, same piercings. Just the long hair that had been pulled into a bun has been shaved off.
"What's going on?" the customer asks from his seat.
"Um," Richard starts.
"Nothing," Christian takes over when Richard appears to be incapable of forming proper words. "Heard there was a sick new artist who just started. Wanted to check him out."
David's eyes get even wider.
"Should we go?" Richard asks, voice coming out strained. "I - we - I can go. I didn't mean to interrupt."
David exhales a brittle breath but then glances down at the customer's mostly-finished skull and crossbones. "Well, about done here, anyways, aren't we?"


They stay long enough that David finishes up with the customer and the man at the reception - also named Richard, it turns out - leaves him to close the shop. Apparently, he's the proper tattoo artist and David has been taken on to finish the apprenticeship he'd dropped out from a year ago.
"Where are you staying, mate?" Christian asks as David fiddles with the shop key ring.
David's eyes skitter away without answering.
"Come home."
"I'll leave." Richard's words come out in a desperate rush. "I'll stay with my sister for a while. If you don't want to see me, if that's why you haven't - you can have the room back. I'll get all my stuff out tonight-"
"I don't want you to move out," David snaps, interrupting him. He reaches up to run his hand over his shaved skull. "Fuck. That's the last thing I want."
"It is?" Richard asks, voice breaking. "Are you sure? Why didn't you come home then?"
Feeling like an intruder, Elijah attempts a surreptitious step backwards, but just ends up hitting the edge of a worktop and knocking over a cup of drawing pencils.
The others all seem too occupied to notice, though, as he scrambles to clean them up.
"Well, how about because I was a fucking mess?" David demands. "Is that a good enough reason?"
"You weren't a-"
"I was. I am. You deserve better than dealing with my shit," David says. "So much better. You both did."
"Don't be an idiot," Christian snaps. "You never had to leave. We wanted you any way you were. How do you not know that?"
David's mouth parts, but he doesn't say anything.
"Were you ever going to come back?" Richard ventures in a small voice.
"Yes," David interrupts. "I just thought I'd get my life in order first."
"Well, looks like you got this proper new apprenticeship, so, congratulations, Malik, it's in order," Christian tells him. "Now, come home."
"Trust me. You don't want me there. It's not even been three days since the last time I - Look. Fuck." David crosses his arms around himself. "Do you know the longest I've ever gone? Not even a bloody week, mate."
"And, what? You think it'll be easier whilst you're living - wherever the fuck you're living?"
"I just-"
"Come home," Christian says firmly.

"David asked me one day if his boy could move in," Christian tells Elijah as they walk back along the canal.
After finally exacting David's promise to come back, they'd left him alone with Richard back at the shop for some privacy.
"Yeah?" Elijah says.
"He was this annoying straight-laced lad who wouldn't let us smoke indoors, but it meant we could split the rent three ways so there was that."
Elijah gives him a small smile.
Christian stops abruptly and glances around. "Where are we going?"
"You could, um," Elijah says. "Come back to mine