Chapter Text
The loudest fucking noise in the world blares out of your phone and you snap from sleep to full wakefulness in less than a second, groaning at how fast you sat up. You rub your eyes and reach blindly for the phone on your bedside table, flicking your thumb across the screen to stop the blaring TARDIS noise from starting up again. You huff as you finally open your eyes and look at the clock. 10:15am is what the glaring light on the screen tells you when you squint at it. A deep breath escapes your lungs before you shift to put your feet on the ground, blanket still wrapped vaguely around your waist.
You take in your dimly lit room, blackout-curtains hanging over the windows, a scattered mess of dirty clothes and art supplies creating a minefield across the floor, computer desk with the screen still playing the video series you had fallen asleep to a few hours ago, and your cat, incessantly scratching at the closed door wanting to escape into the rest of the apartment. You yawn away the last of your sleep, stretching as you get up to open the door for the stripped fluffball. He dashes out of the room ahead of you, into the small hallway leading to the rest of your tiny apartment. You shuffle to the bathroom, barely glancing at yourself in the mirror, knowing there are dark bags under your eyes. You start the water and jump into the shower, washing yourself as quickly as possible before stepping back out, the room filled with steam. Again you dry yourself as quickly as possible, no glances towards the mirror.
Back in your room you pull on your tightest binder, the one that velcros on the side to stay tight all day. Once that’s done you breath a little easier as you start working on picking out clothes. A red sleeveless zip-up shirt and a pair of skinny jeans with patches stitched into them got thrown on, along with a pair of black high-tops.
You run your hands down your ink-covered arms, before stepping back into the bathroom to finally look in the mirror. Short red-dyed hair with blond sides, grey-blue eyes and a rather dissatisfied expression is what you are met with. The bags under your eyes were worse than you thought they would be, but considering you got maybe three hours of sleep, it was understandable.
You head into the living room of your apartment, seeing the clingy furball of a cat had made his way to his food dish and was yowling at you. “Shut up, Khan… I’ll feed you in a minute.” You huff at the cat, pulling the bag of his food from a cupboard under the sink. You fill his bowl and check his water dish before finding food for yourself. You settle for a couple pieces of toast, after a glance at the microwave clock told you that you were running a little late. Your first appointment of the day was supposed to start at noon. Luckily it was just a consultation, an easy start to an inevitably long day. You loved what you did, but sometimes the rather repetitive designs that people walked in with could get boring really fast. Hopefully the consult would result in you being able to use some original designs. You finish your toast as you wander around your apartment grabbing your phone, cigarettes, and other necessities for the day, tucking the small things into your pockets. You pet your cat before heading for the door.
The door in the living room leads down some stairs and outside, the mid-day sunlight making your squint for a moment as you lean back against the door to light your first cancer stick of the day. Your skin warms in the light as nicotine finishes pushing away the last of your sleepiness. You pull the keys from your pocket and walk two steps to your left, shoving them in the lock of a glass door.
Your tattoo shop, the Shattered Soul is directly under your apartment and rather small, but in a comfortable way. The full sized windows on the front side allow for plenty of light during the day, and a rather nice view of the main streets of Victory, the city at the base of Mt. Ebott. When you had moved here as a kid you had always wondered why it had been named that, and when the Monsters had reappeared that question had finally been answered.
The shop itself had a couple stations set up, the smell of disinfectant always permeating the place. You headed for your own station near the front after flicking the open sign on. Your station is probably the most cluttered, since you were here the most out of all of the artists. The shop had been a beautician place before you bought it out, and you had kept the barebones of the individual stations, as to provide better storage for the machines and inks that made up your day to day life.
You grab your sketchbook out from the nook you kept it in, flipping to the designs for your consultation. You go over them while you wait, checking the lines and making minor adjustments to the ideas that you had.
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The consultation went really well. They loved your designs and were definitely thrilled with your thoughts on how to do the piece. The tattoo itself was a large back piece, with all kinds of different videogame and tv show references through out. Luckily you had known all of them, considering your rather nerdy status when it came to things like that, it wasn’t that hard to do the design. The customer made their next appointment to do the outlines for later in the week and placed their down payment before heading out.
After that most of the early afternoon passed like a blur. Your other artists came in and started their own appointments, you took some walk-ins as well as your own customers. It was a rather simple day all things considered. None of the tattoos you did were too extreme and all of the customers were super happy with your work when you were done.
You were getting ready to pack up for a quick lunch break when the doorbell jingled, signalling a new person. You glanced up and at first all you could see was the silhouette of someone standing in the open door. The shape seemed off to you, and that’s when you realized it wasn’t a human. A Monster had just wandered into your shop.
You had never paid much attention to the Monsters around town. If they waved or nodded to you you would return the courtesy and if they asked you something out on the street you would answer, but you had never really paid them any more mind than they probably did you. So a Monster coming into a tattoo shop surprised you. Their biology was so different that you weren’t even sure if you could do a tattoo on them or not.
You got up and approached the small desk area you kept in front to greet new customers, and the Monster made their way inside enough for you to see them clearly. It was a Skeleton monster, about your height, but stocky. A blue hoodie and basketball shorts, with slippers? Wow, this guy was really laid back you could already tell.
“Welcome to the Shattered Soul.” You say, trying for some semblance of a smile, your confusion about why they were here was very clear. “My name is ______.”
“I’m Sans, Sans the Skeleton.” You hear him say in response, though he is looking around the shop like he wasn’t entirely comfortable.
“What can I do for ya?” You ask, figuring he probably had questions. The white pinpricks that you could tell were his eyes turned back towards you and then suddenly blinked out. He seemed a lot less laid back, and you felt a shiver crawl down your back at the sight.
“You know shattering souls ain't the nicest thing to do to a new friend…” His voice is deeper this time, and vaguely threatening. All you can think is ‘Oh Shit’.
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“W-we don’t actually shatter souls here…. This i-is a tattoo shop.” You explain quickly, a little worried for a moment. You could feel a vague static in the air, with Sans seeming to be the source. “Its just a name I came up with for the shop.” You kind of mutter, anxiety starting to get the best of you. The lights in his eyes pop back like they were never gone and he grins at you like you were his best friend.
“That’s good to hear.” He said, looking around the shop again with much less trepidation and more interest in what was actually going on. The buzz of one of the tattoo machines could be heard from where you both were standing, as well as the mumbling sound of Todd talking to his customer as he worked. Todd was your second in command when it came to the shop. He was the only other person with keys to the place, and worked well alongside you. “So, what’s this place actually about then?” Sans asked, turning back to you with curiosity.
“We do tattoos and body modifications here.” You say, waving a hand towards the photos on the walls of previous customers and the work they had done on them. A few of your own tattoos were also displayed in the photos, considering Todd usually did your work for you, since he had the best grasp of your art style when you designed a new one for yourself.
Sans looked over the images and then back at you, particularly the art that decorated your skin. In your sleeveless shirt it was pretty easy to see all the art covering your arms and the one creeping up your neck as well from under your collar. The upper part of your right arm was a circuit-board design, thick black lines that interconnect to make the design with a circle in the middle of it filled with a three triangle design that would be recognizable to anyone vaguely nerdy as the Triforce. The lower part of that arm was covered in different designs; an aperture in blue, a tattoo gun up near your hand, and interconnecting swirls bridging the two together in a multitude of colors that meld together. Your left arm has a tribal design that comes down from the top of your shoulder, carefully placed designs throughout it that denoted several other nerdy references including Assassin’s creed. The part of your arm below the elbow was still blank on that arm, you hadn’t had a chance to figure out what you wanted there yet. You did have more tattoos, but none of the others were visible to Sans as he took in the intricate designs.
“Wow, bud. Didn’t know humans could do this to themselves..” You cringe slightly at the rather friendly nickname. You weren’t really close friends with anyone beyond maybe Todd, and even then you never really spent time with him beyond work.
“Yeah, I’m the owner of this little shop and also one of the artists. Todd is one of the other artists, and we have someone that does piercings and other modifications.” You explain, waving your hand towards the back as you mention Todd.
At this point your anxiety about his earlier darkened eyes had faded and you were at least a little more comfortable again, and were starting to get curious about this unusual skeleton. “We don’t really get Monster clients here though, was our name the only reason you wandered in?”
“Yeah, pretty much… Though this stuff is actually pretty cool.” He says with a shrug, walking a little farther into the shop, still checking out the pictures. While he’s looking around you study him a little more, noting that his bones seemed thicker than a regular human’s, more sturdy and the spaces between them were small, though you could still tell that none of them were grinding together at all. The buzzing from the back station stopped and you could hear Todd and his client talking a little louder as they head towards the front of the shop. The client was an older woman, who had just come in for a touch up on some older work.
“What’s this thing doing here?” The woman asked, clearly upset by the skeleton wandering the shop.
“He’s just looking around a bit, nothing to get so huffy over.” You tell her. Todd gives you a confused look and you wave him off for the moment.
“Well, if you start serving those things here, I’ll find another shop to go to.” She said, clearly in a rather angry mood.
“You do that then. We serve all kinds here, but maybe we should stop serving people like you.” You replied fiercely. You had made sure to keep from glancing at Sans during this confrontation. The woman handed Todd the money for her touch-up and stormed out of the shop, the bell on the door jingling angrily. You sigh and run a hand through your hair before glancing up at Todd and Sans, who were both looking at you with very different expressions. Todd looked confused, and Sans, for some reason, looks impressed.
“Whatever” you huff out and shrug. Todd just shakes his head at you and heads back to his station, nodding to Sans as he passes back past the skeleton.
“You got a good Soul, Kid.” Sans says to you, picking up one of your business cards off the front desk and a pen, writing something down quickly before tossing the pen back into the cup. “You need anything, gimme a call.” You take the card with confusion written all over your face. You glance down at it to see his phone number written in a scribble on the card. You look back up to ask him why only to see he was just gone. The bell on the door hadn’t even jingled to note his exit.
“What the hell just happened?” You ask the air around you before shaking your head and pocketing the card.
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You finally lock the shop up around midnight, after kicking out a few drunk people that were daring their buddy to get a drunk tattoo. You had a strict rule of not tattooing people when they were drunk. Todd had left hours ago, and you stood outside the shop, watching the bar hoppers, trying to decide if a drink would help you get to sleep faster, but decided against it. You smoke outside your door for a minute, enjoying the quiet mummer of sound that was the night life of Victory before taking the stairs back up to your apartment two at a time.
Khan was yowling at the door when you walk in, letting you know how peeved he was that he was alone all day. “Shut up, wiggle butt. I know.” You tell him, resigned to the fact that he will never stop doing that when you’ve been gone all day.
You go through your evening rituals; eating a microwave meal, feeding the cat again, changing into comfortable pj pants and finally taking off your binder for the night. You weren’t that large chested naturally, but even that little bit of extra fat and flesh made you incredibly uncomfortable with yourself in public. You curl up on the couch when all of this is done, a sketch pad resting against your thighs and a pencil in your hand. You wanted to work on something, and weren’t entirely sure what. You just had the urge to draw.
Music playing low throughout the room and the dim lights from the kitchen lull you into a kind of trance, the faint sound of pencil on paper and the dark shading in spaces keep you from focusing on anything else around you. At some point Khan had curled up next to you on the couch, a warm weight against the side of your leg. When you finally put down your pencil and look at the work you are completely surprised by what you find on the page.
San’s face was prominent, surround by what looked like computer glitches. His one eye was completely black and the other was brightened by a shade of blue that seemed like flames. You could see small cracks around his eyes, the left on going up his skull slightly and the right one cracking slightly towards his smile. You had no idea where the image had come from, considering you don’t remember even seeing cracks on the skeleton’s skull when you had met him that day.
You put down the paper, a little uncomfortable looking at the image. You check the time on your phone and sigh. It was already 3am and you had clearly lost track of time. You stretch your legs from the fetal position you had been in for the past couple hours and stand, grabbing your phone and cigarettes off the table and head back to your bedroom.