Work Text:
You ink his arm for the first time one hot night, in 1986. You're getting ready to close and he comes to your parlor looking like he's going to mug you then strangle you to death. You can't help the first impression: despite looking like he can overpower an army of people and then some, he's deathly thin, his long hair is splayed over his shoulder completely unattended, and dark rings circle his eye, as if he hasn't had a wink of peaceful sleep for a whole year.
You think eye, because he only has one; he wears a medical eyepatch over his left eye.
"Hey," he says, his voice a low, exhausted timbre, "can ya ink my arm for a sec? Won't take long."
Apparently, it really won't---he simply asks you to ink one dark line onto his forearm. You raise your eyebrows at him in question, but he shrugs you off and pays you for your services before quietly leaving.
You don't see him again.
--
Two years later, and he comes back. You remember him, because of course you will; you don't get one-eyed customers everyday. He looks the same but not at all: he's still thin, his hair is still long, and his eye still looks like he hasn't slept well, but he looks cleaner, his hair is tied back in a tight ponytail, and he wears an expensive-looking tuxedo. His medical eyepatch is now replaced with a leather one. When he speaks, his voice is as smooth as glass, easy to the ears but so susceptible to break.
He lifts his forearm and moves his sleeve to reveal the line you inked on him two years ago. Bruises pepper his arm, and there's a large, ugly purple covering most of the line you put on him.
"Can ya add one?" he asks. You nod.
He hisses in pain while you ink him, his hand clenching into a tight fist, but he doesn't tell you to stop.
You don't ask questions, and he doesn't tell you anything.
--
He comes back in the same week, asking you to add two more on his arm. You recently heard about the death of a cop and a yakuza executive, and a day after you inked the one-eyed man, you heard about an explosion that killed the owner of a massage parlor.
Three deaths, three lines, all in one week. You agree to ink him.
You don't ask questions, and he doesn't tell you anything.
--
He comes back several months later, just when you're starting to think you'll never see him again, and you almost don't recognise him now: he wears a tacky snakeskin jacket without anything underneath it, revealing a lean, shapely torso and the hints of an intricate tattoo on his chest; he cut his long hair into a choppy undercut; and there's a glint in his eye that puts you on edge.
If there's anything that remains the same, though, it's the leather eyepatch and the dark circles under his eye.
He asks you for another line on his arm. That makes it five now, and despite having an inkling of what these lines mean, you wonder if you finally earned the right to ask him what they're for.
In the end, you don't ask questions, and he doesn't tell you anything.
"I'll be back," he says, after all is said and done, and to someone else it would have been a promise to look forward to, but not to you. With his back turned to you, he doesn't see you grimly nod, and he walks out of your parlor and back to that dark world he thrives in.
--
As promised, he does come back, one week later.
He cries while you ink the sixth line on his skin.
You don't ask questions, and he's grateful.
--
He comes back, almost a decade later, the years etched on the lines of his face and his losses still inked as lines on his skin. He sits in front of you, arm outstretched, and he tells you to add another one to the pile.
--
He comes back again, not too long after the last one, and you know that he'll keep coming back, asking you to add another line, until the last one you'll ink onto him will be for his death.
But as always, you don't ask questions, and he doesn't tell you anything.