Even if Ravi didn’t really like the situation, he was still doing his best to create something amazing. That was always his M.O. If he was going to ink someone and have it be on their body forever, then it needed to look good and speak to his talents with art. Just because he didn’t like who he was doing it for didn’t mean that he was going to do something ugly. That would just be wrong.

So, it made him grin a bit when ‘Gawain’ admitted that he loved the design. It always made Ravi happy when people loved what he did. It reminded him why he even did it in the first place. It certainly wasn’t to stay up late and deal with strange situations, anyway.

”Alright, then. Ready to go?” Ravi asked, trying to sound as nice as possible. They were going to be alone in a room together for the next several hours, anyway. He needed to at least be civil.

After getting the go-ahead, Ravi grabbed a pen and began to sketch out the design that he’d just done on paper, working hard to replicate the image in the same way over the grooves and contours of human skin. Things always looked different when the surface wasn’t entirely flat.

”So what made you want to get a tattoo?” he asked casually, trying to make small talk. It was always good to distract people when they were about to get needles repeatedly stabbed into their skin.

The design looked really cool. It was original, and creative, and it combined symbols that were entirely his own. Gawain was impressed. This Ravi guy might not have been very friendly, but he was very good at his job. And friendliness took second place to talent when he was about to pay the dude for engraving the design on his skin for eternity.

>>”Alright, then. Ready to go?”

"Yup." Gawain sat back down, bracing himself in a comfortable position to make sure he would not wince or wiggle. The closest think he had ever done was sitting still while being stitched up; he had some experience. He wanted the tattoo on the shoulder blade that was not marked by the shattering glass - shaped scars.

>>”So what made you want to get a tattoo?

"Well... my look is not exactly constant" Gawain smirked as Ravi started working "I wanted something that was distinct... something that was personal. Especially now that there are body doubles walking around for everyone from the other side of the portal..."

Ravi nodded at Gawain’s answer for why he wanted a tattoo. They got all kinds of people in that little shop, most of them with very different answers for the very same question. There were people that got tattoos for memories, for sentimental purposes, for aesthetics, and for various other reasons that would take too long to list off. The only reason that they would actually send someone away would be because they were too drunk to actually give a proper reason. They weren’t that kind of parlour.

Gawain’s reason was a little different than the rest, though. New York had been a strange place to be ever since the rift, and it was affecting everyone differently. Those who ran into their alternate versions tended to either get the short straw or the long one, depending on how they got along. Ravi had been lucky enough to avoid that so far, but he’d heard some horror stories. His worst fear (that he was keeping to himself) was that his other self was a mutant of some kind and had a completely different life than him.

His life was important. It was his. Sh***y things had happened to him, and then he’d shaped it the way he wanted it. It had taken work, and now it was his. To hear that there was another version of him, living a life that he never would have wanted or going against his core values would be devastating.

So, all in all, he couldn’t blame the person for wanting to get a mark that would be entirely theirs. They would never be mistaken if they had that symbol to call their own, even if they didn’t have the same appearance from day to day. On one hand, Ravi had to commend him, but on the other it freaked him out a little. He shook the thought away and readied his tools, trying to focus on the task at hand.

After a three second countdown, Ravi started the inking process. He followed along the lines that he’d drawn out in pen and the image began to take shape. ”Let me know if the pain starts to become too much to handle, or if you’d like me to stop for a little while.” It wasn’t uncommon for that to happen, actually. People were often surprised by just how much it hurt.

Ravi did not comment on the mention of doppelgangers. He either already knew that they existed, or he simply thought that Mirror was not telling the truth. Not that it mattered. Mirror idly wondered what the guy's doppelganger on the other side would be like. Maybe he was a mutant. Wouldn't that be fun...

Gawain had never gotten a tattoo before. He was not unfamiliar with pain, though, but still, as Ravi started working on the design, he braced himself. It was a strange sensation, not unbearable, but definitely... there.

>>”Let me know if the pain starts to become too much to handle, or if you’d like me to stop for a little while.”

"I'm good so far" Gawain noted, keeping still as the artist worked. The silence grew long, which was uncomfortable with so many things hanging in the air. "So... any excitement so far with the rip open downtown?"

One thing that Gawain had going for him was that he was very still. He either had a very high pain tolerance or he had gotten used to experiencing things like that. Either way, it was working in his favour in that moment. It was always difficult to get a good picture when people were squirming under his hand and causing his tools to shift unexpectedly.

He allowed him to keep going, so Ravi did. He worked mostly on the outlines first, intending to go back and shade once the image was clear.

>>"So... any excitement so far with the rip open downtown?"

Ravi thought as he continued to work. As an introvert who usually worked on people that were too distracted to talk, he was used to long silences. For some people, he actually avoided talking to them while he was working on them, because it was too much for some. He tended to gauge it at the beginning and then continue to alter his stance as the time went on.

It seemed that Gawain was a talker. Wonderful. ”Uh, some. We got a few people in that wanted stupid tattoos about the rift. Pictures of it, quotes like, ‘the rift f***ed me up’, or ‘rifters’, and even, ‘rift 2k17’. I’m sure that’ll all die down in a few weeks.”

He cleared his throat and bounced back a question, trying to be as polite as possible. ”How about on your end?” After asking the question, he realize that he actually had no idea what this guy did for a living. For all he knew, it was probably some sort of mutant organization.

Gawain stayed still as Ravi worked on the design. It did hurt, but the mirrorwalker was very determined not to mess it up by squirming. There was already a chance that it would look different on Maya.

>>”Uh, some. We got a few people in that wanted stupid tattoos about the rift. Pictures of it, quotes like, ‘the rift f***ed me up’, or ‘rifters’, and even, ‘rift 2k17’. I’m sure that’ll all die down in a few weeks.”

Gawain snorted. Of course people would run and get tattoos about a once-in-a-lifetime scientific event and make it sound like a music festival... he was sure that requests like that annoyed the artist, and also that many of those people would regret it on the long run. As far as Mirror was concerned, the rift was not exactly a thing to celebrate.

>>”How about on your end?”

"Plenty of excitement." Gawain smirked. He was not about to spring the news on the guy that he was an X-man. Not exactly hiding it either, but if he was uncomfortable with mutants, he was definitely not going to like Gawain's day job. "Met some doppelgangers of friends, which is freaky. Even took a short trip to the other side..."

The image was coming quite nicely on Gawain’s back. It was easily taking shape, and he was being still enough that there were no issues. With any luck, they would finish quickly and then Ravi could go back home and sleep for what was left of the night. His boss had been nice enough to at least give him a half day so that he could sleep for the following morning.

They were still discussing the rift to make conversation. It was definitely a hot topic around the city, and people were only just getting over the shock of having it be there. It did seem rather crazy that it was even happening. Ravi likely wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

It had really stirred the pot in New York, so there was a bit of excitement for everyone. It was easy to make small talk on such a topic, because nearly everyone had a story about it, no matter how exciting it was. There were definitely people who had been more affected than others, and their stories would always be more exciting, but everyone had something to say on the matter.

”Doppelgangers, huh? Did you meet your own? How similar were they?” Ravi asked. That was actually rather interesting. There was lots of chatter about body doubles, but he’d yet to meet someone who’d actually encountered their other self. Lots of people talked like they had, but few were actually successful. Ravi had yet to find his own. ”And what’s the other side like?”

Gawian stayed still as Ravi worked. He glanced at the design sometimes, trying to imagine it on his own skin. It was going to look cool... And hopefully stick even through the shifting.
The conversation was not exactly flowing, but at least they were not in awkward silence anymore.

>>”Doppelgangers, huh? Did you meet your own? How similar were they?... And what’s the other side like?”

"Some are pretty different" Gawain admitted "Same face and different powers... or same powers but different face... sometimes it's hard to tell. It is very similar and freaky at the same time. Like, not different enough to be sci-fi, just... disturbing."

What exactly constituted the kind of different or disturbing that Gawain was talking about, Ravi didn’t know, but he could certainly imagine. He had thought about taking a peek over into the other side from time to time, but he knew that it would only unsettle him. He would be a) travelling through something that was likely created by mutants, and b) seeing an alternate reality in which things would be different. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to unpack all of that.

Hearing it all second hand wasn’t all that bad, though. Other people could deal with the strangeness of seeing a different version of themselves while he could sit in his chair and hope that he would never have to.

”That certainly sounds like it could keep people up at night,” he commented rather blandly. It wasn’t as if he was trying to make things awkward, but it just seemed to happen. He was finding it difficult to interact with this person, even after he had tried to convince himself otherwise.

The conversation continued on like that for most of the process. It was slightly uncomfortable and stunted, but never enough to warrant any kind of offence. For the most part, it just toed the line. Finally, though, they were nearing the end of the tattoo process. The black and white parts were finished, so that just left the coloured areas.

”Alright, so what colours do you want me to use?” he asked politely, gesturing to the display of colours in a little book. He held up a mirror so Gawain could get a look at what the nearly finished piece looked like on his skin while he decided. He needed to get an idea of the full image before picking something that would be on his body forever.

>>”That certainly sounds like it could keep people up at night,”

Ravi sounded... marginally excited. Not excited, really. He had either already seen another universe, bought the t-shirt, and was done with the hype now, or (much more likely) he was just not all that much interested in the conversation he had to carry while also making art. Which, ultimately, Gawain was okay with. He was getting a cool, personal tattoo, and he really did not expect the guy pulling the late night shift to be nice about it.

>>”Alright, so what colours do you want me to use?”

"Umm... well, the coat of arms is red and gold" Gawain noted "Red, like in... heraldic red." How many red options did a tattoo parlor have, anyway?... Heraldic red was basic red, because colors needed to be basic and easily distinguishable on a battlefield. Nobody cared about matching shades in the middle ages. Not that Gawain was going to explain that to Ravi. "The pentagram is gold, originally, but..." people did not get gold tattoos, did they "Something close to that is fine."

Ravi liked that, in the very least, Gawain knew what he wanted for his tattoo. He had had so many walk-ins that didn’t have any inkling as to what they wanted and ask him to just do what he felt like. The issue was that he didn’t have a lot of creative juice left after going with someone else’s idea for so long, and he had no idea if the person would like what he did. Especially since it was going to be on their body for the rest of their life. It saved a lot of heartache for them to just tell him exactly what they wanted. Gawain had that down.

”Red and gold it is,” Ravi nodded, readying the correct inks for the process. ”We don’t have gold ink, but we shade to make the yellow look a little more metallic. Don’t worry, you’ll see it once it’s a finished product.”

With that, Ravi set back to work. He could already see where the colours belonged, so it was just a matter of putting them in the correct spots. He worked rather quickly, but still with his usual level of detail and mastery. He did like his craft, after all. There was no use doing it if he didn’t.

A little while later, the tattoo was complete and colourful. Ravi set his tools back down and leaned back against the chair. He grabbed the hand-held mirror as he let out a sigh, taking in his finished work. ”What do you think?” he asked, holding the mirror up at an angle that Gawain would be able to see.

Gawain explained the colors the best he could, and Ravi seemed to understand what he was going for. It just went to show that he really was a professional, however grumpy.

>>”Red and gold it is. We don’t have gold ink, but we shade to make the yellow look a little more metallic. Don’t worry, you’ll see it once it’s a finished product.”

"Sure." Gawain nodded, keeping still while the tattoo artist worked on the colors. It took time, but he didn't mind, as long as the final product was worth it. He could be patient, and bear the pain. Finally, the needles stopped, and he was handed a mirror to finally take a look.

>>”What do you think?”

"It looks... awesome" Gawain grinned, peering into the mirror. The design was great, and it looked exactly like he'd imagined. Ravi had done an excellent job. "That's... perfect, really. You are really good at your job."