Nothing Stops At Skin Deep

📅 December Of 2019

〚ᴄᴡ ғᴏʀ ғʀᴇɴᴄʜ. ᴀʟsᴏ ᴀʟʟᴜsɪᴏɴs ᴛᴏ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ʙᴜʟʟʏɪɴɢ〛

The world felt altered to Kohao, leaving the tattoo parlour. It’d been a six hour session, his third in two months. The final one for the cover-up on his chest and rib cage...Though he’d have another in January for his back tattoo. His body ached; his head felt light.
Drink water. Use Aquaphor. Don’t pick when it scabs. 
When he got home and sat on his bed, Kohao felt profoundly aware of the plastic wrap covering the new tattoos: New ink over old ink, new blood over old blood. 
Metaphor felt heavy. 
So did reality. 
He could trace it all back to September, to Teagan, to that realization about the ways he’d chosen to brand himself as a younger man. And in some ways he felt like he was cheating or lying by covering them up; like KILL MANKIND had been a warning label he deserved to wear and he was putting people at risk by slapping Klimt over it. And his back, that was, or would be, something too… 

Kohao dragged his hands down his face. Eric and Dylan were still there; still martyrs, to his skin, until January. And then...they’d disappear into Paul Jouve’s Panthère noire debout. Kohao flopped back on his bed; everything felt somehow disjointed or distant.
It wasn’t just that it in some way felt like loss or lying; there was weight to the new ink under his skin. Klimt’s Pallas Athene. And then there would be a panther, a black panther, another thread to Athena. Or a handful of threads: To her, to the past, to the things he cost her he never even knew about. Because Jouve’s work had been Devon’s idea, and that...That was a whole can of worms. 
He remembered the day, earlier in the year, where Athena had mentioned that she’d run into some people from high school...

“Savannah and Devon,” Athena said from where she leaned against the counter, “I knew them in middle school and...sort of 9th grade. They have a cafe not too far from here.” Her tone and expression were unreadable, and Kohao frowned his incomprehension.
“Okay...Why are you telling me? No offense—Just...What’s the deal with them?” he asked, and Athena’s brow furrowed, her expression creeping towards sour.
“They were my friends, kinda. But they quit talking to me when I started hanging out with you because they couldn’t get over their cliquey bullshit and their loser boyfriends. They apologized and I guess I’m thinking it over...But it just doesn’t feel like I’m owed an apology as much as you are. I wouldn’t feel okay patching shit up without you.”

Kohao wasn’t really sure why—maybe because his mere existence had cost Athena the friendship so the least he could do was let her have a second try—but whatever the reason, he’d agreed to go with her to meet Savannah and Devon. At their cafe. And even with Athena giving him reason to expect an apology, he was still surprised to get one...Or two.

“David, salut. We didn’t really talk in school, I know—I’m Devon, if you don’t remember me,” Devon started, briefly averting her eyes. “I remember you, though, and I just wanted to say that I’m sorry that you got treated so badly. And I’m truly sorry for the role I played in all of it. I didn’t stick to my morals the way I should have as a teenager and I let the group I was part of cast people as pariahs. I really apologize for that. C'était injuste.”
Kohao didn’t have a chance to reply before Savannah stepped up. Unlike Devon, she was able to hold his gaze.
“C'est la même chose pour moi...Same here,” she said. Her voice was softer than Kohao’d expected from her piercing eyes. “We also never spoke directly, but I know that I didn’t do you any favours by following the crowd in cold-shouldering the so-called “undesirables.” And I know both Dev and I had boyfriends who were...explicitly cruel to you. Pardonnez-moi, je suis tellement désolé; I’m so sorry to have never called that out. I should have.”

It had started out as to be a long, tense meeting after that; Kohao had at first offered a cool ‘Thanks’ rather than any forgiveness, and as they discussed high school over coffee he’d been visibly agitated whenever certain names had come up. But Savannah had noticed that, somehow: The correlation between name-drops and his clenched fist—and had dryly offered the update that the last she’d heard, Trent had three DUI’s, a totaled car, and a shattered femur under his belt; his sports career was about as close at hand as achieving world peace. To Kohao’s interest, sharing the information made her smirk. “Demande toi,” she’d said to him, “Do you think you were the only one he ever pushed around?”
Things had started to loosen up from there, and despite having gone in with next to no expectations—to give Athena an opportunity at friendship but with no intention of winding up with anything of his own—Kohao had ended up liking Savannah and Devon. They were witty and interesting; had shed their past and become far different people than either of them had expected to be. It was a journey and a half of self-discovery: They’d started out as athletes—and athlete’s arm-candy—and upon becoming disillusioned with that, drifted into artistic inclination; international academia and overseas studies, somehow ending up at becoming business owners back home. It was objectively impressive and Kohao had come away with an entirely unexpected re-acquaintanceship. 

...And they were artistically informed: They knew artists and knew of artists. So when just a couple months ago he’d started looking for how to start leaving his own past behind by way of covering his tattoos...Well, he’d needed art. “Dark,” he’d clarified, “I need something with a lot of black.” And Devon had come through with Jouve. 
“I’ve been reading ‘Paul Jouve: Peintre, Sculpteur, Animalier’ so he’s right at the top of my head, but he’s done a lot of panthères noires. You could match Athena,” she’d said, not even aware he’d already decided on Klimt’s Pallas Athene for his chest. And even if he didn’t believe in fate, it felt like something, like Athena was at the heart of it all and everyone could sense it. So...Panthère noire debout it would be.

Laying in his bed and staring up at his ceiling, Kohao watched their lives intertwine in his mind’s eye: Athena coming to his defense in ninth grade; Athena, his first real friend. 
Athena, nearly dying; him, desperate to save her life.
Athena’s older brother being the one to save him; the secret and lie within it all that Kohao couldn’t bear to come clean about.
Then Athena doing music with him, Athena believing in the band, her brother being the one to name it.
And now—Athena’s girlfriend dragging him into realization, Athena’s old friends helping him to bury the past, all the ink in his skin leading back to her. 
Absently, he wondered if he’d ever manage to make it clear that he knew he owed her everything—or if the inclusion of ‘honesty’ in ‘everything’ would keep that forever an impossibility.

Kohao’s train of thought was broken by Chey’s abrupt arrival in his room, a smile of greeting already in place.
“I thought I heard you come back in! That was your last session, right?” he asked, ignoring the desk chair and sitting down beside Kohao on his bed without invitation. Perhaps he just knew he didn’t need one.
“Yeah. Last session for my chest and shit. Getting my back done in January,” Kohao replied, sitting up.
“Well, let me see!” Chey’s eyes were bright and excited, so Kohao ended up ceding to the request; he pulled his shirt over his head with a shrug and a tired eye-roll. Chey let out a low, impressed whistle and leaned to the side and back a few times to better take it all in.
“Wow, it looks incredible. You feel good about it?” he eventually asked, still smiling. Kohao shrugged one shoulder, looking down at his hands in his lap. 
“I don’t know. It’s like I can still feel all the old ink. Still chose to get that even if I cover it up,” he said dispassionately. He knew he wasn’t responding appropriately—he did like the work, it was well done, the tattooist deserved that acknowledgement—but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was just drawing on some new self, some 2-dimensional imitation of someone better. There was a lull in the wake of his words; a brief quiet moment where Kohao kept his shoulders slumped, looking at his hands.

“...You’re choosing to get it covered up too, though,” Chey eventually said, rather gently. “Let yourself have grown, K-O. You have.” He held out his arm, in obvious indication of the bouquet tattoo at his inner elbow that had taken the place of a stick-n-poked needle. 
“I still know the syringe is under these. But the flowers feel like they suit me better, now.” He dropped his arm and inclined his head towards Athene. “She’s not the change. She’s proof of the change.”