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It happened on a Monday. Levi was convinced that nothing interesting or good ever happened on a Monday but he was wrong. He had opened up his shop—a tattoo parlor—and had said good morning to his employees, two very talented artists; Jean Kirstein and Moblit Berner (a new hire).
Dust motes were dancing in the sun that shone through the front windows and it was warm. It was going to be a calm day, he hoped.
He was restocking the boxes of black latex gloves for them when his roommate and best friend Hange burst in. Hange never did anything subtly. They talked loudly, drank wildly, laughed uproariously, and had not the slightest inkling of tact.
“Leeeviii!”
“Hans. To what do I owe this visit? Did you wash the breakfast dishes?”
Hange blanched and hunched their shoulders. “I’ll get to them later …”
Levi scowled.
“Okay, as soon as I get done here!”
“Wait … what do you have to do here? Why aren't you at work? How is the world of botany getting by without you?”
Hange almost vibrated where they stood. “I want a tattoo!”
Levi stared. “Huh, well that’s different. Why now?”
They threw themselves onto a tattoo chair and grinned. “Just thought of it!” There’s a mycologist in our office who has the cutest tattoo of—”
“A my-what-a-gist?”
“Mycologist. They study fungi! They have the most adorable mushroom tat.”
“Are mushrooms fungi?’
“Don’t say ‘fun-jee’ it’s ‘fun-gee’ with a hard ‘G’.”
“Fucking rules …”
“So I want a tattoo! I was thinking of a vine climbing up my arm!”
“Well Jean has an appointment for this morning but my new guy is free.”
Hange hesitated. “Is he good?”
“He wouldn’t work here if he wasn’t.” He tossed a notebook at her. “Here’s some of his shit. He’s amazing and really gets into all the organic looking stuff. Right up your alley.”
Levi left them with the notebook and wandered off to wipe down the three tattoo chairs and the stainless steel trays that held their instruments. Hange was ohhing and ahhing and making other various sounds of pleasure when they suddenly thumped one index finger onto a page of the notebook. “This is it! This is the one I want!”
“I can do that one with or without flowers,” a warm, deep voice said behind them. Hange spun around and froze.
“Moblit Berner, Hange Zoe, my roommate and general pain in my ass.”
Levi was about to spray the disinfectant solution again when he realized that neither one of them had moved. They were face to face, mouths slightly slack, staring.
“Hey, snap out of it, you two. What are you in love?”
Moblit went bright red and Hange grinned like a maniac. “I think I’d like flowers.”
Moblit nodded and stared at the floor.
“Are we ready to do this? I assume that since I want it all the way up my arm and onto my shoulder. I’ll have to get my shirt and bra off?”
“Uh-huh,” Moblit muttered, still red.
Hange traipsed off to the restroom and Levi hissed at Moblit. “What’s the deal Mobes?”
“I just … I just … she’ll be half naked!”
“Jesus, you’ve seen tits before! You did that ink on that African American woman who had some of the finest tits I’ve ever seen!”
Hange reappeared, sans shirt and bra, and threw themself back into a tattoo chair. “Ready?” they asked. They showed absolutely no shame about their state of undress.
The other tattoo artist, Jean, walked by in leather trousers and a see-through shirt that showcased his pierced nipples. “Nice knockers, Hans!”
“Right back atcha, Jean-bo!”
Moblit looked as if his head would explode. He hurried off to get his sterile packs of instruments.
“Jeeze, Hans, Jean, give poor Mobes a break!” Levi said.
“He’s so shy,” Hange enthused. “It’s cute!”
“Since when has he been shy?” Jean asked. “He pierced some lady’s clit just yesterday. Like face first in the pussy.”
“I dunno. I’ve never seen him like this. Maybe it’s Hans.”
“I for one, am glad you hired him,” Hange said dreamily. “He’s incredibly handsome.”
“Great,” Levi grumped, “now I have to put up with love struck fools.”
Hange’s tattoo took about eight hours in total so they did four hours, then came back on Wednesday for the second four hours.
Levi was unloading a box of gauze pads when he heard an odd noise. It was laughter. Moblit’s low laughter. He looked curiously just as Moblit said something quiet to Hange who brayed in delight and grabbed his arm.
A small smile lifted the corners of Levi’s mouth. Being non-binary could be hard and Hange had trouble finding people who liked them as-is. They seem to have found it in Moblit. That made Levi very happy.
The end result was a sleeve of bright magenta Bougainvillea cascading over Hange’s deltoid and trailing down their arm. It was gorgeous and Hange was thrilled.
They gripped a blushing Moblit tightly, “I want to do something for you! For this gorgeous tattoo!”
“Y-you paid for it …”
Hange brushed that aside. “You should come over to my place and eat supper!”
Levi took the opportunity a few minutes later when Moblit was cleaning up his station with a tiny smile on his face, to drag Hange out of earshot.
“What are you thinking?” he hissed. “You can’t cook. Hell you can’t boil ramen!”
“I could learn!”
“Before Friday ?!”
Hange made puppy dog eyes.
“Oh, dear god.” Levi massaged his forehead. “My poor kitchen …”
After work, Levi trailed after Hange to the grocery store. Hange had a Toyota Tercell that had seen better days and Levi rode a motorcycle so if he wanted to get a reasonable amount of groceries he had to tag along with Hange.
Plus he wanted to try to ameliorate the whole cooking situation if possible.
Hange picked up a pack of meat. “Should I do steaks? Or chicken?”
Levi scowled at the prices. “You couldn’t cook steak or chicken if someone put a gun to your head. It would be a waste of money.”
Unperturbed, Hange wandered off down an aisle. “What about pasta?!”
Levi hummed. “Pasta might work. You could do a quick and dirty spaghetti.” He tossed a few boxes of noodles into his basket and Hange, happy, added spaghetti to theirs.
Their mood soured quickly. “Oh, what if he doesn’t like it, Levi? What if he hates it?”
Levi rubbed their arm that hadn’t been freshly tattooed. “Don’t let it worry you. If a guy likes you and you feed him, it could be gruel and he’d love it.”
Levi spent that evening and the next two days prior to the big cooking experiment coaching Hange on making spaghetti. “Just boil your noodles al dente—do you remember al dente?”
Hange nodded seriously.
“I’ll do your mise en place before I leave and you just add the stuff to your sauce, simmer, and stir. Got it?”
“Got it!”
Levi fried down onions and garlic and green peppers in olive oil and set it aside for Hange. All of the spices and such were measured out and placed in separate containers. All Levi had to do was skedaddle—so he did, right at five fifty.
The doorbell rang at precisely three minutes to six. Hange vibrated with excitement and hastily wiped their already messy hands on the one of Levi’s good aprons that they were wearing.
Hange opened the door to Moblit looking nervous and bright red. He was holding a pot of daffodils that had, in the center, a small bougainvillea climbing up a little bamboo ladder.
He thrust the pot forward. “I thought you could repot it into a bigger pot and put it on your balcony. Daffs and bougainvillea are both very forgiv—”
Hange snatched him by the sleeve and dragged him into the flat. “You are so CUTE!”
Hange bravely squashed him into a hug—he barely got the pot of plants out of the way.
“Where on the balcony should I put it?” Hange asked.
“That corner seems n-nice.”
Hange grabbed a gallon sized jar out of the fridge filled with a golden brown liquid.
“Tea?”
“Thank you. Mmmm, it's been a while since I’ve had proper Southern Iced Tea.”
“Levi’s our Southern boy.”
Moblit’s eyebrows lifted. “I never knew.” He sipped his sweet, strong tea and sighed happily.
“So you’re from the South?”
“Auburn, Alabama, but don’t hold that against me,” Moblit laughed. “I’m not some dumb redneck, I swear, or I don't try to be.”
Hange laughed, deep and throaty, and Moblit got a little thrill. He liked that wholehearted laugh.
“You couldn’t be a redneck if you tried.”
“Where are you from?”
“Connecticut. My birth givers still live there.”
“I take it you don’t get on.”
“Not at all. They couldn’t handle having a non-binary child or one in the sciences. I was supposed to be a nurse or a school-teacher or, best of all, a stay at home mom.”
“You could still be a parent. You’d make a great parent. What they think doesn’t matter.”
Hange’s heart swelled and she gazed at Moblit happily before crossing to the stove.
“Here, try this,” Hange said, scooping the stirring spoon brimming full of spaghetti sauce and turning toward Moblit. What they didn’t know was that he had stepped up right behind them … and the spoonful of red sauce hit him right in the chest. For a breathless moment they both just stared at the dripping mess, silent.
“Ooops,” Hange said.
“Well, it was a boring shirt anyway,” Moblit said.
Five minutes later Hange was rooting through their wreck of a closet looking for likely shirts. In the end they had to give up. The broad shouldered, six-foot tall Moblit couldn’t wedge himself into one of her t-shirts or Levi’s either.
“We’ll just have to go into the basement and wash your shirt.”
“But I’d be half naked.”
“Hey, you saw my tits.” Hange smiled crookedly and Moblit went red.
Levi had just finished up a tat and had switched his phone back on when it buzzed.
[Shitty Glasses] “OMG! OMG! O. M. God!”
“What?! Jesus!”
[Shitty Glasses] “I’m sitting in the building laundromat with Moblit an he’s HALF NAKED!”
“What the hell, Hans?! What are you doing to my employee? Are y’all doing it on the washing machines?”
[Shitty Glasses] “No, dirty mind! I spilled sauce on his shirt.”
“Yeah … right … sauce …”
[Shitty Glasses] “DIRTY MIND!”
“You’re the pervert here! What did you do to the poor man?”
[Shitty Glasses] “ I was trying to cook the spaghetti …”
“Oh, fuck. Say no more. I take it my kitchen is a disaster area?”
[Shitty Glasses] “Maybe a little. That red sauce is hard to get up. If you try to wipe it it just spreads around.”
“Double fuck! Don’t touch anything else! I’ll deal with it when I get home!”
Levi clicked off and wondered what he’d done to deserve such a klutzy best
friend.
Later, Levi got home just in time to catch a glimpse of Moblit’s broad tan chest as he pulled his shirt back on in their living room.
He coughed, discomfited.
Hange was spellbound and stood there smiling like a goober.
Levi cleaned his kitchen and remade the pasta. The sauce was fine—it just needed heating up.
Moblit and Hange sat on the same side of their tiny kitchen table, backs to Levi and spoke quietly, heads together. Levi, shaking his head and smiling served them their spaghetti and even dug a nice Pinot Noir out of the cupboard and poured it for them. He then discreetly slipped off to his room.
“I had a really good time,” Moblit said at the door later.
“I’m sorry about supper.”
“It was wonderful.”
“Yeah, thanks to Levi.”
“Bull. You cooked everything before!”
They both stood in embarrassment in the open doorway and stared at the carpet for a bit.
“Will I … will I see you again?” Hange asked quietly.
“Do you need another tattoo?”
Hange barked out a loud laugh and grinned.
“Can I kiss you?” Moblit asked suddenly and a bit breathlessly.
Hange’s mouth dropped open.
“Too soon?”
Hange answered that by throwing themselves into his arms and kissing all over his face. They ended in a passionate liplock and Levi, pressed with his ear against his bedroom door, smiled.
They chose to go out for their next date, a low-ceilinged local Greek restaurant that kept the lights turned down and had drippy candles in chianti bottles at the center of each table. They held hands across the tiny tablecloth and generally acted besotted. Moblit ordered a Greek salad and Hange ordered a gyro ( they pronounced it “jy-roh” instead of “year-roh” and Moblit cringed slightly. Well, nobody was perfect,) and a crisp sauvignon blanc.
“I really love your accent.” Hange said suddenly.
“That Alabama twang?” Moblit asked, laughing.
“Well I’m used to the smooth dulcet tones of Levi’s South Carolina accent so I guess it kind of grew on me.”
“You love you some southern boys, eh?” Moblit asked, exaggerating his speech playfully. Both he and Hange blushed at the implication of what he’d said. Love? No surely not … They loved Levi as a friend but they hadn’t known Moblit that long.
Red-faced, Hange stared at their clasped hands. Truth was they could really, really get used to this.
Their food came and Hange made a splendid mess with their gyro and Moblit got plenty of opportunities to wipe their face for them and shyly chase bits of lettuce on their shirt.
Later they walked up the stairs of the building and Hange suddenly said “I want to show you something!” They headed up higher than their apartment to a rusty door that led out onto the roof. Someone had put lawn chairs out and fairy lights and a metal fire pit.
“Is that safe?” Moblit asked pointing at the fire pit.
“Not at all, but hey, life is short!” Hange switched on the fairy lights and threw themself down onto a folded out mat that had come off of an outdoor furniture couch. Moblit gingerly sat next to them.
“This is nice.”
Hange sighed. “It is.”
“So tell me some things about you and Levi. How long have you known him? How did you meet? Have you known Jean as along?”
Hange enthusiastically launched into extreme detail, telling every secret and relating every embarrassing moment in their long history of them and Levi.
A few minutes later Moblit rested on his back and Hange rested her head on his stomach while he played with their hair. They talked late into the night, Hange’s head pillowed on Moblit’s stomach, their head bouncing gently when he laughed.
Moblit became a staple there at their apartment, often riding ‘home’ behind Levi on his bike.
After two weeks Levi began to hope desperately that Moblit would kick his roommate out and let Hange live with him. He meant no offense but the two of them snogging and groping on the couch at all hours made for an uncomfortable atmosphere for Levi not to mention that it made it more difficult for him to bring people home himself.
It all came to a head one day when Moblit had off. Levi didn’t know that Hange had gotten the day off as well.
Moblit often ‘apologized’ for spending so much time at Levi’s and Hange’s apartment that he cleaned or cooked or both. Levi appreciated the effort and was well pleased; Moblit was a good cleaner and an even better cook.
So when Levi walked in the door that Monday afternoon, he was delighted that the apartment was almost painfully neat. What in the world had possessed Moblit to take such care in cleaning? Levi didn’t expect everyone to be as exacting as him and … what was that noise?
Levi listened carefully. It was a rythmic … moaning? Interspersed with a muffled …
“Agnh! Mph! Mph!”
Levi froze. That had come from Hange’s room and was not Hange. It sounded like Moblit. A gagged Moblit. Levi, embarrassed, crept into his room. He knew Hange was an odd one but what in the world were they getting up to?
The sounds continued even after Levi got in bed and pulled a pillow over his head. Knowing that Hange loved strap-on toys didn’t help Levi’s cringing imagination.
The next day, at the tattoo parlor, Moblit was all smiles (and walking a bit gingerly.) Hange dropped in at noon and the two of them engaged in a sloppy liplock over a tattoo chair that Levi had to break up by clearing his throat. Both separated, red-faced.
After Moblit drifted off, grinning, to get ready for his next appointment Hange ran up to Levi and gripped his arm so tight it hurt.
“Oww, fuck, Hans!”
“We’re together!”
“What?”
“Moblit and I! We’re officially an item!”
“A tattoo artist and a botanist? That sounds like a cheesy fanfic.”
“Well, we are that fanfic!”
Levi softened and smiled his tiny smile. “I’m so glad for you, Hans.” He patted their arm. “Do you love him?”
“Oh, god, Levi, I think I love him!”
“Well then, everything is right in the world.”