Anyone who tells you that tattoos don't hurt is full of shit. They do. It's just that the outcome is generally always worth the pain. But in the moment when someone's jabbing needles into some of the most sensitive parts of your body, you definitely question your decision, and your god damn sanity.

"You look constipated," Evie said with a grin as she twirled around in one of the wheelie chairs in front of the table.

"I'm in pain," I groaned. "Gatorade me."

Evie rolled herself over to the bench where we'd thrown our bags and grabbed what was left of my glacier freeze Gatorade, holding it up to my mouth so I could take a sip through the straw.

I was stomach down on the table going on an hour of the shark I was getting tattooed around my knee ditch - jaws open so when I bent my knee, the mouth closed. I didn't plan out tattoos as thoroughly as I used to, and at this point I got them just to get them. Anyone that tells you all of your tattoos have to have meaning is also full of shit.

"How much longer?" I asked Frankie. It wasn't like I could rotate my head exorcist-style to check the progress, but I'd learned to go on feeling. Line needles were less painful, and coloring and shading was a bitch.

"Maybe another hour?" He had one of those gravelly Long Island accents - the kind that sounded like he should have been an extra on the Sopranos and not tattooing punks like me on the Lower East Side. He looked the part too, all beefy and thick-browed.

I'd been seeing Frankie since I was 19, and the industrial-style loft hadn't changed one bit in the last seven years, with paintings and doodles from all the artists that had worked for him over the years up and down what were once pristine white walls. Frankie mentored people and sent them on their way, and I was usually one of the dumb assholes who volunteered parts of my body to the apprentices for little things like dot work to fill in gaps on my arms, roses on my hips, and even the soot sprites from Spirited Away around my ankles. But Frankie did all the big stuff, and the painful stuff.

I groaned again and pressed my forehead down into my folded arms.

"Hey, you wanted color my man," Frankie continued. "Woulda been almost done otherwise."

"I know, I know," I muttered.

Evie wheeled herself away again as she took a sip from my Gatorade and grabbed her phone from her bag. "You know, most people handle stress by meditating, going for a run, or even shopping. You on the other hand get tattoos in extremely painful and unnecessary places."

"It's not unnecessary when I'm legitimately just running out of room," I told her flatly. "And I'm not stressed. I'm annoyed. There's a difference."

Evie flicked her wrist at me dismissively. "Okay, well regardless of whatever you want to call it, I don't understand it."

I winced as Frankie hit an ultra-sensitive part of my knee. "I had this argument with Raf already. Like, what the fuck does Polly Pocket think she's gonna do for us that I can't do better?"

At least, it started as an argument until Raf, as usual, owned up to the "Godfather" moniker we'd given him years ago and effectively talked me off the ledge. That didn't mean I still didn't want Evie in my corner about the whole contrived social media bullshit thing. I didn't like outsiders. 

Evie scoffed. "Plenty, if you just come out from your little fallout shelter to see for yourself."

"I like my fallout shelter," I grumbled, putting my head back down in my arms to try and focus on the sound of the blood rushing through my ears. There was a pause, and I knew Evie was thinking long and hard about what she wanted to say, like handpicking stones before you threw them at someone, hoping it wouldn't completely shatter their glass house. She did that a lot now, and while I was pretty sure she knew that I knew, she still did it.

"I know there's part of you that hates all the changes we've had to make," she finally said, and I looked up to see her sketching on a piece of discarded stencil paper. "But I know there's also part of you that knows this is the best we've ever sounded. You and your perfectionist ass has made a perfect EP, and soon other people are going to be hearing it, whether you like it or not. I'm not trying to belittle this mental block that you have, because I really do understand but...I don't know Devon. This could be huge for us. Aren't you tired of playing Tuesday night shows at dive bars for middle aged men?" 

The thing about knowing someone for as long as we had known each other was that you become so fucking transparent to the other person, whether you wanted to or not. You see everything, internal bleeding and organs and all. Evie might have thought that just because she could see my wounds that she could stitch them up.

"I am, I am," I admitted. Nobody wanted it more than I did, but I wanted it to be my way. I'd spent too much of my life being forced to follow someone else's agenda, and I was done with that shit. Damaging my voice was bad enough, but now being paraded around like some contrived garbage rock industry plant was basically taking a boulder to my glass house. "That still doesn't mean we need Polly Pocket hanging around and doing...whatever it is she thinks she's gonna do. She's just gonna get in my way and fuck up my whole system."

Especially with the way she looked up at me, like she thought she had me all figured out with those big blue eyes of hers - the ungodly deep sea monster lurking blue kind. That, and if she was going to keep wearing those skimpy tight shirts like she had the other night that helplessly drew my gaze downwards like a complete fucking douchebag.

Evie clearly saw through that too as she smirked to herself. "Her name is Sienna, you know. And I hate to break it to you Dev, but Raf's already hired and paid for her - with your money, I might add - so would it kill you to just be a little nice?"

I snorted. "It might."

I glanced over to see Evie typing away furiously on her phone.

"You fighting with Avery again?" I asked her.

She furrowed her brows before putting her phone face down on the table. "I don't know why I bother since it's not like we're getting back together or anything."

"Okay, so fuck her then." I grit my teeth and winced as Frankie hit the deepest indent in the back of my knee. It felt like someone was lighting my skin on fire. "You don't need her."

Evie rolled her eyes at me. "Just because you are a cold and unfeeling body doesn't mean we all have to be. There's nothing wrong with wanting a happy and stable relationship."

"Happy and stable? Oh I'm sorry, then I must have imagined that night last month where you sat on the floor of my loft, hysterically crying over a tub of ice cream because we saw her at Dio with someone else," I scoffed, adjusting myself on the table just slightly as Frankie took a break to get more ink. "It's just...why put yourself through that shit?"

Evie let out a sigh and tapped the back of her phone case with her nails. I'd become so caustic with everyone around me, and sometimes I had to remind myself that Evie was the last person who deserved it. Then again, she was also one of the only people who saw  so clearly through my glass house past all of that. "One day Devon, you'll understand."

I pinched my lips together. "Mmm, my cold and unfeeling body disagrees."  

This time it was my phone that buzzed on the table, and when Evie grabbed it for me, she frowned at the caller ID. "It's your mother."

"Nope, no way," I blurted out, shaking my head furiously. "Ignore it."

Evie heaved out another sigh as she put my phone face down beside her own on the table. "I do feel compelled to remind you that access to your trust fund is contingent on you not ignoring her."

"No, it's contingent on me following her stupid rules, which do not include social calls. Besides, if I told her I was getting a tattoo, I'd hear some variation of oh my god, don't you have enough or when are you going to get over this phase you're in?" I felt all that caustic energy turn to bile in my throat, and it tasted like I was going to be sick. "Talking to her gives me indigestion."

Evie nodded and threw her hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay, I get it."

No she didn't, but she tried.

"Alright kiddo," Frankie chimed in. I'd been so wound up by the very notion that my mother had called me, I hadn't realized the needles had stopped completely.

I nodded to Evie, signaling to have her check it out. She sighed and shook her head, the corners of her lips upturned just slightly. "Your cleverness is annoying."

"That's what I like to hear." I rolled over and slid myself off of the table after Frankie wrapped it, and it ached to walk. The things I did for my fragile self-esteem.

"It's so weird seeing you with short hair," Frankie chuckled as he clapped his meaty hand down on my shoulder. "If I didn't know your ink so well, I wouldn't have even known it was you when you walked in."

"Yeah well, you weren't here when I had Mads touch up my Kraken back in March." I instinctively brought my hand up to my neck, tracing my finger along the curls of the tentacles until I hit the soft bit of skin where my scar was.

"You keeping it short then?" he asked. 

"We'll see."

That was kind of a lie. Even though I was mostly used to seeing my neck every day and decided I would more or less keep it short, it didn't change how aware I was of how much people could really see my face now. Longer hair was always a curtain I could have hid behind, and now I felt like an open window for people to look directly into. I guess the same could have been said for all the tattoos. God forbid people actually saw my body for that glass house it was. Something that people like my mother would never understand was that covering it with art made it harder for people to see inside.

⋆ ★

no your eyes do not deceive you - i've made the decision to make FEEDBACK DUAL POV!! there is something about devon's character that is begging to be seen as more than just a love interest, and y'all know how much i love my tortured male povs. also i love his friendship with evie and i'm stoked to get more into that.

would love to know your thoughts on king devon's first pov <3