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 Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:55 pm
The shop was always slow anymore. Minutes ticked by for the piercer brothers, who often squabbled about who needed to do what and how they were gonna market to new customers and how tips should be divided and who should try to convince Laike to mop the floor. For Laike, however, his short shift oft flew by with the assistance of Youtube videos and Twitch streams. Point of fact, the gloaming boy passed the last hour and a half watching an Overwatch streamer.
His leisure time would soon end, however; a glance up at Ashara's mall entrance assured him of company. Groups were beginning to gather in the corners of the mall atrium, and were beginning to move in steady streams around the bend. Inevitably some teens would get curious and try to talk their way into getting a piercing while he was on the clock again.
Laike hated those sorts of confrontations; he always directed them toward Brian, who would invariably tell them off.
Until that time, Laike was cozied up with one ankle on top of the opposite knee, and his shoulder pressed up against the shop's wall. In front of him was a sneeze shield and the register proper, with some added plants to give customers a reason not to look at him. The otherwise clinical white space featured only merchandise and photos of past concerts that the brothers had collected; the plants (and Laike) were the oddities in the space.
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Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 8:59 pm
Ty hated malls. He'd never liked them, not even as a teen. Malls reeked of conformity. All the homogenous little stores, the chain restaurants, even the people who shopped there all reeked of it. But sometimes you could find a small hidden gem amongst the dross of sameness at the mall, a secret unexpected treasure. That was what he hoped he'd find here today. He'd heard of this place from one of the other dancers in the corps de ballet, a girl who had a secret piercing that she had gotten here. Ty, to his credit, didn't ask her to show him, but the idea of secret piercings intrigued him; he had several piercings in his ears, largely hidden by his longish, thick black hair so that the ballet masters would forget to order him to remove the jewelry. He felt like he was pulling one over on them when that happened. But he liked getting pierced. It was a huge endorphin rush. By the time he located the shop he was looking for, there was already a small mob of teens lingering outside the place, and Ty sighed. Why not just do it, he thought as he strode past them and into the shop. Looking around, he was slightly disappointed at how sterile it looked. Must have been a concession to being allowed in the mall. The only bits of non-conformity in the place were the plants at the counter and the young man who sat half-hidden by them. Ty approached the counter and peered down over the sneeze shield at the guy. "I'm interested in getting some piercings. Do you have any openings today?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:11 am
Clinch time. The match was drawing to a close with seconds left, both teams were evenly matched, and his streamer of choice fell silent as she concentrated. Laike stared hard at the flashing screen under the table —
Until someone talked to him and he juggled his phone with a small yelp. The phone hit the floor with a clatter and he slipped off his stool to grab it, but hit his forehead on the lip of the counter on the way down. A small 'oof' and an even smaller hope to salvage his dignity later, Laike was almost ready to deal with this customer.
Almost, because he never really was. "H-hi. Right, uh, openings." The question gave him the perfect opportunity to not look the guy in the eye, even if Laike already knew the answer. Pawing the iPad back toward himself, he poked around on the screen with his ring finger and pretended to scroll a few times. "Tyler takes off at three, but Brian's open until seven. Thennnnn… eight to close." Which made them sound bad at their jobs, but their portfolio said plenty about how competent they were. And they weren't paying him to advertise, anyway.
Still dodging eye contact, Laike looked at the laminated price list to his right. "What piercings did you want?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:35 pm
Ty watched the guy fumble his phone and fall off his seat with some concern -- and some mild humor. He felt bad that he hit his head on the counter, but damn that was kind of funny. "Nipples," he replied, looking down at the pink-streaked top of the clerk's head as the other collected what was left of his dignity. "But I have some questions first. Like how long do you have to leave them in once you get them? How easy are they to remove, and more importantly how easy are they to put back in?" With a casual grace Ty straightened just a little bit before continuing (probably unnecessarily, but he was proud of what he did for a living). "See, I'm a dancer with the ballet, and they make me remove my ear piercings before performances." He pushed his hair off of his ear on the left side of his head to reveal several small rings from a lobe to an orbital, a tragus, a snug, and an industrial. "It's asinine and antiquated thinking, but this is classical ballet so whatever," he shrugged, then added with a wicked smirk, "The ballet master's gonna have a ******** fit when I show up with my nipples pierced."
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:38 pm
Oh heck oh no oh s**t oh ********> was a common mantra in Laike's head on the rare chance that someone spoke to him, but to ask him questions —
well, it was enough to send him over the hump of crippling anxiety and into the valley of apathy. Rubbing his forehead (and still not making eye contact), he nodded along to the questions. And the added bit of unnecessary explanation (because Laike never understood why people felt the need to justify their weird requests to him. It's not like they needed his judgment if it was an appropriate reason to take their piercings out or not? He was just the cashier, and only sometimes at that??). Ballet dancer wants nipples pierced, wants to be able to take them out. Okay. He knew most of this.
"Right now they're running a deal where you pay for the jewelry, and the piercing is half cost. Right now we have straight and curved barbels, and captive bead rings in, with straight barbels on the cheaper end and captive beads are more expensive. That's anywhere between 45 and 60 per n****e." He sniffed. His head still hurt.
"Nipples take like, six to twelve months to heal." Slowly he started to lean against the wall again. "They're going to tell you not to play with the jewelry at all, or remove the jewelry for at least three months. So basically, until you're ready to change the starter jewelry out.
"Removal just kind of…" Laike shrugged. "Depends on the jewelry you pick. And your n****e too, I mean — taking a captive bead ring out of an inverted n****e is just going to be harder than taking a straight barbel out of a… Usual n****e." Whatever those were called. Laike tried to obscure a flush by rubbing his face. "The piercer will be able to tell you better about what you've got going on."
He leaned back in his stool, lanky thing bent like a snake so he wouldn't have to be as loud. "Brian?"
"Need a minute," came the voice beyond the back room door.
"Um. Anyway." Rubbing the back of his neck, Laike looked to his steadfast tiger lily companion. "Do you think you can go three months without being told to take them out?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2021 6:33 pm
"Good deal," Ty nodded, allowing the clerk to continue. He listened, nodding as the process was explained to him and raising an eyebrow at the healing time. Six to twelve months??? Oh s**t. That was going to cause some problems, unless he came up with a cunning way of staying out of trouble while keeping the n****e rings at the same time (he'd already decided he was getting captive bead rings done). He'd have to think on that… probably while he was getting pierced, because he was going to do it anyway, ballet protocols be damned. Besides, he didn't think he was quite ready for a Prince Albert. Yet. He thought about the problem at hand as the clerk explained that the piercer would have more answers. "That makes sense," he said. "I'm pretty sure I can go that long without taking them out. Hmm." Ty furrowed his brow in thought, trying to recall if there were any productions upcoming that would require him to dance shirtless. Unable to think of any, he nodded again. "Yeah, I can go three months, maybe longer." Ty looked at the tiger lily that had the clerk's attention as they both waited for Brian to make his appearance. "Nice lily. Looks really happy."
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Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 3:53 am
Yeah, I can go three months sounded like business, and while Laike understood that business was good and kept him employed, he still felt that pang of letdown whenever someone was truly interested in getting pierced. Dutifully, however, he opened the nearest rolling drawer and took out a clipboard and consent form. It was only a few seconds' work to go through and place an x by all the mandatory fields.
He paused at the lily comment, and responded unthinkingly. "Oh, Aurelion? Yeah, he loves this place for some reason. I have to keep telling Tyler to stop overwatering him, though." He restrained himself to only a small pout for this extra level of effort.
Laike set the clipboard and a piercing aftercare guide on the desk, then pushed them forward beneath the sneeze guard. "You've proooobably seen these enough so I don't need to explain them." It was a hopeful statement, that the customer might spare him the rigamarole of explaining what the consent form was and why it was important. He already had to do that way too many times for teens, and Ballet Dancer Whose Name He Didn't Know Or Ask For had a bunch of piercings that Laike hoped he didn't get at Claire's.
"Oh, and you can smell him, if you want. He doesn't mind. Uh — Aurelion, I mean." Not Brian. He tapped the pot forward with a middle finger in case Mr. Ballet forgot.
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Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:13 pm
"Aurelion? That's a great name for a tiger lily." Ty leaned over and sniffed the orange blossoms. "He smells lovely," he said, allowing himself a slight smile. It was clear that the clerk adored his plants, and that they were indeed very happy here at the piercing shop. That was a good sign -- at least the clerk cared about his plants, even if the piercers did overwater them. He accepted the clipboard and the aftercare guide; pocketing the guide, he proceeded to fill out the consent form. "Yeah, I've seen these a bunch of times," he assured as he filled it out, initialing the checked spaces on the form and writing and signing his name on the bottom, complete with date. "I've been to a few other shops in town, but a friend recommended this place, so here I am," he shrugged. "She said you guys really know your stuff." Ty's golden eyes looked down at the seated clerk almost as if to say prove her wrong, I dare you.Pushing the clipboard back under the sneeze guard, Ty eyed the flowers again. Their presence seemed to make the rest of the shop seem more alive, less sterile. "What else do you have? Plants, I mean. There's quite a collection here."
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Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 3:54 pm
"Uh, thanks? I might've namedallmyflowersafterleagueoflegendschampions." Laike's sof gaze hit the counter fiercely, and he stared with intensity at the edge of this boy's clipboard. Then it occurred to him to creep, and there it was — the guy's name was Ty, looked like. Short and easy, like Li.
Wait, no, that was wrong. Li wasn't easy. His name was.
Work was easier to discuss, and Laike clutched onto the welcome change of topic. He also remembered to breathe, which garnered its own swell of pride. He was doing the conversation thing and not sounding like a moron! A veritable rarity.
"Not me — I'm not even an apprentice, really — but Brian and Tyler do. Brian's been doing this for like, longer than I've been alive, and Tyler's sister tutored him in anatomy and physiology. She's a doctor, so she's also the go-to for any infections or whatever stuff happens to clients like that. Oh, and Tyler's run his own piercing parlor for ten years before this. He usually does the crazier things? Like dermal anchors and body modifications. He'll talk you into a split tongue if you let your guard down."
As if to prove that Laike had successfully resisted Tyler's split tongue talk, and to demonstrate how strange a split tongue was, Laike poked his tongue out and wiggled two fingers beside it independently.
By then, Ty had finished his application, and Laike reverted to as much professionalism as he could manage after that. The papers were taken, looked over for completion, folded, filed. All was well. Until the flower talk returned.
"Well, uh, here it's mostly different breeds of lilies. There's some bamboo behind them, too. And some moth orchids. That's basically all the friends they'll let me take into the shop. Tyler said if I bring in another, he'll give it a piercing." Laike deflated with a strong pout.
A couple raps on the counter and Brian — the older of the two, a slim-shouldered gentleman with sturdy physique and a hairline that retreated faster than Laike's confidence. He approached with a strange gait that said fake leg, though his demeanor was unhurt by it. "You rang?" He drawled in a fantastically accurate Lurch voice, then clapped the shy boy on the shoulder (which shocked the boy out of his moodiness). To Ty, he offered, "what can I do ya for?"
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