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Narrowed eyes were joined by a crinkled nose when Penny expressed a rather clear flaw in her plan. Okay so there wasn't really anyone who she would have told. Her wife ran with in a very tight circle; if she wasn't talking to Lucy, she was only really talking to her brother. Begrudgingly, she might have talked to Carleigh, who would have loved a glimpse into the ink manipulator's next thoughts, she was sure.
"Present one was totally me letting you skirt your family and really, mine for these holidays." Lucy pointed out. After all, they both knew her father would have been there in a heartbeat if he had been allowed. She mightn't have been in such a teasing mood if that had happened.
She totally deserved recognition for that bullet.
Turning around, Lucy took steps away from her. Prepped and ready to go was the vinyl player she swore she needed but rarely ever actually used. A flick of the switch on and a clever placement of the needle and Lucy paused very briefly before the device before finally a melody hummed through the speakers at the ready.
Turning back, she raised her hand once in her direction, not quite looking her in the eye.
"Get up." She ordered, then indicated to herself; "Come here."
Lucy couldn't help but wear the usual grin for the swear that passed her lips. She'd been good all day in the presence of vibrant young ears. And although she believed he couldn't make sense of the language she used, she wasn't willing to get into that fight with her.
At least, not yet.
The small kiss she received did nothing to settle the restless way she felt, but that was fine. She was anxious for another reason entirely as she watched her love sit beside her. It made it difficult to consider getting up, but she was determined not to get caught in proximity while she had some momentum driving her.
She sprang up out of her seat, fingers racing through her hair to draw it over her shoulder. Turning on a heel, she faced the woman she loved like she was on trial. Hands pressed together. "Okay, so like I know we didn't talk about gifts and shit and usually that means you don't wanna do gifts or whatever so I defo took that into account before I did anything." She explained, like a prelude to something greater. Pointing a finger towards her, she narrowed her eyes slightly.
"If you ever tell anyone what I'm about to do I will fucking ruin you, Serrano-Blaise, and I bloody well mean that."
Letting go did exactly what Lucy wanted it to do; it forced an imperative shift in her counterpart. She clearly didn't like the distance between them either, and though it was annoying to watch her make it worse, she knew it was only to make it better. Instinctively, Lucy moved to the edge of her seat, fingertips gliding across the form that was so much closer now. There was obvious relief in her expression now that something wasn't stuck between them.
She glanced up then, chin lightly pressed against her. "Yeah. Cause it's fucking Christmas." Lucy explained, like that was an appropriate explanation. "It's your go. I got something for you."
Brief frustration washed over Lucy in a fast wave; she didn't like the distance between them and how impossible it made everything feel. She had shown odd patience; the kind she was hardly well known for, especially when it came to dividing attention with anyone else. She didn't frown because she was better than that. Probably.
The smallest sliver of contact did nothing to quell the way she felt, but it was welcome all the same. It was thoughtful, the way Penny paused like she was searching for the best word to describe him. In the end, they likely both knew where she would land. He was perfect. That description felt so right.
"Okay." Lucy declared, offering a slight nod on obvious agreement. He was delicate like glass in the eyes of the ink manipulator, and a very real part of her was still afraid to break him. "Are you ready?" She asked then, squeezing the arms she held once more before she let them go.
Penny's footsteps were too quiet through their home, or perhaps the Australian was just too focused on what she was doing. Anything was better than aimlessly waiting for her to be free; that almost felt childish. There was a slight jolt to her system physically when familiar hands reached for her, offering their natural spark. It had her straightening her back. Lips pressed against the top of her head, and she was moving almost instantly.
She abandoned the controller linked to the match she was currently in like it didn't matter. It didn't matter. Hands reached for the arms that held her, fingers curling around her skin and applying pressure as if she was actually trying to pull her over the back. Anything to get a little more. She tilted her head up, dark eyes going bright at the sight of her.
"How'd you go?" She asked lightly, though she sounded eager, too.
Lucy was growing used to Christmas day without her family. However, she couldn't say the same for them. Her father made a very harsh point of calling on both days; once for the Australian time zone, and once for their actual time zone. Lucy humoured him in tandem with the rest of her family as they squeezed into a phone screen, bombarding her as they lamented over her absence. Their absence. Really, it was all about his absence. This was his first Christmas, and that was a big deal for the Serrano family.
She knew on a very obvious level that Penny would be glad they couldn't afford to make it. It was nice to (mostly) have the day to themselves. It was weird to hear her dad say he had her eyes, like that was possible. It was hard not to laugh at him; she totally failed. She was a little sad when she got off the phone, if only because Lucy was so naturally family orientated. She might have hated a lot of them, but the day felt a little wrong without them physically.
But it was super nice to not be bogged down in the intensity that was families. Lucy had been patient as she waited for their son to fall asleep for the night; she mulled around the living room like she had a lot to do, but she really didn’t. By the end of it she’d ended up on the couch trying to engulf her mind in a game while she waited for her love to have time for her.
Lucy Ellis Serrano-Blaise FACE CLAIM: Lights Bokan
♦ THE BASICS ♦
AGE: Twenty-Three GENDER: Female ORIENTATION: Unsure POSITION: Tattoo Artist
♦ THE ABILITY ♦
POWER:Melanokinesis: Lucy can bring her drawings to life wherever she creates them. She can manipulate pigments on a page, walls or even on skin to allow it to move slowly across the canvas. Simply put, if it’s based with pigments - such as pen ink or paint for example - it's able to be manipulated. The largest way she uses this ability is during the tattooing process, where she can tweak the needle's placement of ink in order to produce perfect imagery.
LIMITATIONS: Colours and shapes can be changed without the use of direct contact, though it's always easier and much less strenuous if a physical connection is involved. Direct contact is needed with older substances. As such, the ‘fresher’ the ink, the easier it is to manipulate. Something recently applied to the skin, or any kind of surface is lively enough not to have dried or settled, and so it remains as a skimming, workable layer. A secondary coat of paint renders the first untouchable. Completely altering an aged tattoo is impossible as it's too set in place to move drastically; the most that can be done is to shift the 'bleeding' ink back into its original position.
SIDE-EFFECTS: She cannot keep the same drawings on skin for an extended period of time otherwise she runs the risk of developing ink poisoning due to the likely nature of the substance used - the ink from a pen, for example, isn't sterile like the application of tattoo ink is set up to be. Further side effects from this ability include headaches from the overt concentration used, and muscle pains if she uses the ability on herself. Since manifesting at sixteen, a majority of her own tattoos have been in a state of near-constant, natural manipulation. Tied directly to her, the inhabitants on her skin seem to carry personality traits from the manipulator herself; they can often give away an emotional discourse by the nature of their own movements, and they are practically uncontrollable.
♦ THE FREEFORM ♦
“Born and bred in one of the world’s shittest, backwater, middle of piss-nowhere towns, and you bitches drop me in one of the redneck capitals of this shitty country. You’re cunts; you shoulda left me there.”
Being from a very small town in Australia has absolutely no perks. Calliope in Queensland held a general population of about three-thousand. She was never built for the country life. She would have left either way. Thankfully - or perhaps unthankfully, as she’d have it - she was plucked from the torturous lifestyle when she was sixteen. The then-hyper aggressive teenager had manifested by moving a drawing on her arm in the middle of class. She barely had a day to register what had happened before they were scooping her up and shipping her off.
It was almost a request. It wasn’t like she wanted to stay; her family were the ones who never wanted to lose her. She jumped on that plane like they didn’t even matter. A tumultuous kid with a shitty attitude thrown into a school she still didn’t like.
She was a problem student. She constantly graffiti’d school property in the name of training. She actively bullied people for no reason with no obvious sense of remorse. She didn’t apply herself. She had an attitude problem. She failed her senior year. Twice.
“It’s not a matter of a look, whatever the fuck that means. I got alotta tattoos for alotta reasons. If you wanna know more, you just gotta ask.”
Stumbling into her now-career of choice was a complete accident for Lucy. She’d walked into a tattoo shop to look at getting a touch up; just because she could manipulate ink didn’t mean she could inject it into her skin. Her artist had some of the keenest eyes in the universe - an unnatural trait just like her own, of course. From that encounter an odd friendship was born. From that odd friendship, a career followed.
Over two dozen tattoos cover idle parts of her body now. Her youngest seemingly permanent markings came at the young age of fifteen, drunk, in a kitchen at a party and before she had ever developed the skills to alter the ink beneath her skin. They spanned in waves, some in rapid succession and some years apart.
There are the particular and the random, and then there’s one exceptional mark she allowed a very unskilled apprentice to wrap across her left hand; most days wears it a shakey resemblance to a signature with a single word; Penny.
“I dunno; it always felt like there was something more to dig for, y’know? Higher levels and shit. You wanna be your best you for that fucking person. Anything less is just shit.”
Lucy never thought she’d be able to wear the title of a highschool sweetheart. She still couldn’t, really. There was nothing sweet about the pair. At least, not the way she let people see it. It was an accidental understanding built with someone she had never had anything but negative words for her. She had gone to mercilessly teasing and arguably bullying the awkward, arrogant, up-her-own-ass British girl to following her home most nights. Then every night.
Then she loved her, despite a long and heavy stint of denial. Then she lived with her, somehow surviving through the trials and tribulations a magnetic personality had given her. She made friends like she wasn’t even trying; she wasn’t. But she’d only ever loved one person.
So, cleverly enough, she married her. There was no hectic and heavy celebration. There were no white dresses, no aisles, no vows. It didn’t matter where it happened or even how it happened. That was the point. It just happened.
“The first time I saw him, I thought I was gonna die. Crawl up in a fucking ball on the bloody fall and just die. Cause he’s a pure fucking gem of a thing, right, and I’m a mess.”
Her wife hadn’t been a pain in the ass for nine months. At least, Lucy didn’t think so. Penny was always particular, and that meant the Australian’s life always worked to a particular set of rules. Pregnant Penny had spent nine months ramping it up. Today was no different, but everything was about to be different. Penny hurled obscure insults at her like she’d taken a piece of the Australian’s personality with her powers. She’d done a lot of dumb things in her time, and Penny rarely let her get away with them without a comment or two. It washed over her again in droves in a matter of hours. Truth be told, she didn’t care.
Childbirth was the most excruciating, most tumultuous and most devout thing to be part of. She felt literally weak at the knees, like she’d done so much more than stand there and be actively present. Perhaps just being there was what warranted such a reaction.
She spent nights contemplating what a higher magnitude would feel like; what it was to be the one to physically live it. She spent nights knowing she wasn’t ready for that. She found a new level of devotion - dedication, idolisation, glorification and allegiance - to the woman who offered her such a sacrifice.
“She looked like a Goddess. I mean, a pure fucking Goddess. Cause she was. And she is.”
Fear must have coloured her features with such a heavy hand that she couldn’t quite shake it. Lucy knew when those familiar dark eyes looked at hers, they caught sight of it immediately. It was different, too. Different from what she’d remembered. Rarely had the Brit seen the Australian look fearful. This was a new brand. A new twist.
She was afraid to hold him. She had been since he got here.
And filtered amongst that newly developed brand of fear was an attuned sense of wonderment. Worship. She was always in awe and never jealous of the fact that her love had the amazing ability to just… Know what needed to be said or done. Because she also knew when to combat the ink manipulator’s protest. Arms circled her own; a small stint of life placed into heavily inked, heavily trembling hands. Delicate, smarter hands cocooned her like a safety net, settled beneath her forearms. Underneath his head.
They settled back slowly, after a time. Across her shaken skin to her waist. Fingertips delicately strung across the small of her back. Lips against her shoulder. He’s your son; don’t deprive him the joy of knowing you so young.
♦ THE PLAYER ♦
USERNAME: Eddie AGE GROUP: Twenty-Six EXPERIENCE: You're my people WHERE DID YOU FIND US? You're my bitches (I'm your bitch)
