Page 182 of Inbetweeners
Script laughed. “Cool hair. It suits you. This is what you both want, right?” He showed them a picture.
“Yes.” Emmett nodded. “Across our wrists.”
Phoenix sat in the treatment chair and rested his arm on the padded support.
“Would you like a drink?” Emmett blurted. “I would. I’ll just go and get one.”
He fled.
“Make sure you come back,” Phoenix called.
Emmett didn’t leave the shop. He just couldn’t watch. If Phoenix so much as flinched, it would give Emmett a problem. He ought to have gone first.
Things were working out so far for them. They had a lovely flat in Greenwich. They’d only fallen out four times in IKEA, a place they would not be visiting again. Together at least. They’d not been given anything too difficult to do for work and mostly those were jobs with their colleagues.
Tar wanted them to all get to know one another. Emmett had run a honey trap with Matthias and Phoenix in a vampire bar to catch a vampire who’d been feeding from humans. Phoenix and Emmett were both set up as targets, but Emmett proved irresistible, much to Phoenix’s irritation. But the job was done and the vampire dealt with. Warnings given and the bloodsucker was under notice.
They’d been to see Orion and while they couldn’t tell Phoenix’s brother exactly what they were doing, it was enough that the brothers would be in each other’s lives, along with little Phoenix. Emmett had been persuaded to go and see his siblings using the same identity as he had with his parents and he’d been touched to see photos of him in their houses. The money he’d left them had been appreciated and Emmett had been pleased when he knew they remembered him only with kindness. He was even more touched that his brother and sister had tried to persuade their parents that Emmett should be an organ donor. At least they’d tried.
But even though his entire memory had returned, he wasn’t looking backwards, only to the future. He and Phoenix had been lucky. Very few people got this sort of second chance. Phoenix wasn’t the only one who’d risen from the ashes.
“I’m done,” Phoenix said. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all wrapped up. We’ll look at them together.”
Emmett took Phoenix’s place on the chair.
“Make sure you give his unicorn a smaller horn than mine,” Phoenix said.
“You’re not even funny anymore.”
Phoenix laughed. “That didn’t last long.”
“Ready?” Script asked.
“Yes. Go and get a coffee, Nix. And don’t come rushing in if I scream.”
Phoenix smiled and disappeared.
“Please tell me he was a complete wimp.” Emmett stared at the tattoo gun in Script’s gloved hand.
“Cried like a baby.”
Emmett sighed. “Why does everyone lie to me?”
But Emmett got through the very short session without flinching too much. He liked what Script had done. As the guy wrapped Emmett’s wrist, Emmett whispered, “Can you put this on for me?” He held out a temporary tattoo and his other wrist. “Then wrap it up?”
Script grinned. “Okay.”
They went straight to work from the tattoo shop in Greenwich market.
“It wasn’t too bad, was it?” Phoenix said.
“Not too bad. I still don’t get why it has to hurt at all. You could have your skin numbed. Why don’t they do that?”
“I think the discomfort is part of the experience. You earn your tattoo. But maybe it’s harder to tattoo numbed skin, I don’t know.”
