By @pixielove on AO3
Summary:
People always wanted to know the meaning behind tattoos. Harry liked to think his body was covered in meaning, that all of this ink scattering his body depicted the secrets he couldn't tell the world, but maybe Harry had been wrong. Maybe his tattoos were meaningless. Maybe they were as bullshit as his relationship with Louis Tomlinson was.
Work text:
*****
Heart pounding beneath his ribcage, Harry settled back on the leather bed, waiting for the buzzing of the needles to approach his skin. A sense of adrenalin always seemed to wash over him before the needles even touched his skin, maybe to prepare him. It was never too bad though. In fact, it was quite pleasant, he thought. His artist - he didn't know his name, applied the stencil to Harry, just beneath his collarbone.
"What's it mean, then?" the young tattooist quizzed Harry as he got himself prepared. Harry looked down at the design. 17Black.
Harry smiled, dimples pulling out. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you," he laughed, as the artist changed the track on his iPod which was plugged into a huge stereo surround system.
"I look inside myself to see my heart is black,
I see my red door I must have it pained black
Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts,
It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black..."
"What's this?" Harry asked, gesturing to the song, as the tattooist moved to sit down, grabbing his tattoo gun and dabbing it in the ink.
"'The Tea Party' they're called. 'Paint it Black,' is the song, which is rather ironic. Now you have to tell me what '17Black' means. C'mon. I can keep a secret. I mean, I know tattoos don't have to mean anything. See this fucking skull and roses?" he asked, pointing to a tattoo on his arm of a skull with a blue tongue coming out of its skeleton mouth and roses blooming from its eyes sockets, "Don't mean a thing. But 17Black looks like it means something. Favourite sports person or something? Is this their number, then?"
Maybe he was being conversational to keep Harry distracted as he started on Harry's stencil, dragging the needles along, puncturing his skin as he went, a stinging sensation following. Harry was a little distracted, distracted by potent blue eyes, the memory of a hushed whisper tingling through his eardrums, making playlists for one another, a soft touch in the dark, frantic kisses against the wall. The tattooist, however, was rather astute. It was for his favourite "sports person," just not in the way the artist thought.
"Yeah, I guess."
"What is it? Soccer? You a big fan, then? I don't really get much into sports myself." Before long he was colouring '17Black' in, black ink, thick.
And Harry just blurted it out. "My boyfriend. His shirt, for soccer." He was starting to feel light-headed and a little dizzy as the needle dragged around the same spot for too long. It made him feel relaxed, a little too relaxed, almost faint.
"Nice! Though I don't usually recommended couples tattoos. I straight up refuse to tattoo couples names. You can always act like a symbol for your relationship means something else if you break up, but if you have their name on your skin, you can't quite get away from that. I mean, you can always try laser removal but it's more painful and expensive and it takes heaps of sessions...plus it never really goes away completely."
Harry hadn't really thought of the implications of what would happen if they broke up. Their relationship wasn't typical or orthodox in any way whatsoever anyway. "He'll always be with me, even if...you know, if things changed. I don't think they will. But if they did, we'd always be best friends, so I don't think I could regret any of this..." he said, gesturing at his other tattoos.
