2020-07-01 - Scars, Ink, and Hot Water

It should be too warm for a hot tub to be fun. But then, this one's on the ground floor of an air-conditioned building, and thus it's pleasant enough. It's certainly a blessing for those with old injuries and older bones, and Joe's taken advantage of it plenty of times.

He's there now, lounging mostly submerged, head resting on the rim. Hair plastered to his skull, and an expression of leonine contentment on his features. He's dressed in board shorts in shades of blue, and a matching rash guard, as if he didn't care to display the ink or scars usually hidden by street clothes.

August is here as well, owing to Joe's generosity (because Thorne won't sell a hottub and pool only pass, the stingey classist bastard). His boardshorts are an abstract floral print in bold colors (red, blue, yellow, brown, and black on cream), but he's foregone a rashguard or t-shirt like he would at the beach. This makes it easy to track the line of puncture-wound type scars--all but one covered by tattoos--marching from his left thigh to his shoulder. The left shoulder scar is now incorporated into a fig and leaves tattoo; just visible under the boardshorts is the leg scar and its ravens tattoo. The belly scar sits exposed, though the midline incision which no doubt dealt with those injuries has a brilliant yellow, black, and white orb weaver and bloodroot flower over it.

"Thank you again, Cavanaugh, this is fine," he says, voice low and eyes half-closed. He hasn't gotten his head wet, so his hair's in its usual state.

"This whole pool and spa thing is honestly why I picked here to rent," Joe notes, voice dreamy. He's brought booze down in the form of cider and beer in cans, in a little cooler. "It's fuckin' worth it, to be able to get in the water at any hour...and this is a godsend in winter. I usually do laps every day, float a while...." He's idly waving one hand back and forth, playing with the bubbles and foam the jets kick up. "We'll have to do this more often. Fuck, I've got waterproof playing cards, we should have a regular poker game, whaddaya say?"

"Mmmmm, yeah Ellie got herself a hottub at the house, I used that a ton as soon as it was in." But Eleanor is working tonight, and so August is here, relaxing with company. Also they're spending more time out at the cabin, since August has been struggling to be in the city. Too much attention from Them.

He mouths 'waterproof playing cards' like it's one of the most absurd things he's heard of. "How's that work, you just have to do five card draw? No table games?"

That's a poser, and Joe considers it for a second, brows rising. "That's smart. I ever buy a house here, I'll have to have one in. Or get one with one...." He muses. "Yeah. Could do. Or I've seen little floating table surfaces. Could use that...." It is ridiculous, but then, ridiculous is so often this thing. Absurdity has never put him off, has it?

He takes a long pull from a can of local cider, settles back down in the water.

De la Vega's not normally the type to dress loud, but apparently hot tub time is an exception to the rule. He turns up in a pair of board shorts and a towel slung over his shoulder, fiddling away on his phone as he prowls over to where the pair are settled. The shorts themselves are resplendent in the colours of the Mexican flag: red, white and green, with a crested eagle done in an aztec style on the left leg. Boatloads of tattoos scrawled up and down both well-defined arms, flank and back, along with the very edges of the Yāōmītl that Joe's seen before, under the hem of his shorts.

"She's a smart lady," August agrees. He thinks about the floating table, eyes tracking the bubbles as they swirl and froth about, no doubt trying to sort these logistics in his mind. What he's seeing is a game of Hold 'Em gone horribly awry when the floating table up-ends the cards into the water and there's an argument as to whether or not the hand still counts.

He's leaning back to grab a cider when he spies Ruiz. "Hey you. Glad you're back in one piece. Cavanaugh, would you like a drink."

Ruiz in Mexican flag swim gear is apparently enough of a vision to make Joe choke on his cider when he sights it. It's not like he doesn't see the cop utterly naked on the regular, and god knows he's seen him in swim gear before....they were both stationed in Pensacola, for instance. But still. He's reduced to thumping his own chest and coughing through his grin.

"Hey there, mi rey," he says, when he can talk again. "Like the shorts." He's grinning like a fox, unable to help himself. To August, "Nah, I'm good for now." Even though he just finished that can.

There's a deck chair set up not too far from the hot tub where the pair have parked themselves, and the cop unslings his towel from his shoulder, and tosses it across the seat. Back to Joe and August, he finishes composing his message, switches off his phone, then tosses that atop the towel before turning to climb in. "Fuck, that's hot." Yes, Javier, it's a hot tub. "Thanks, baby," he murmurs to the blond with a relatively chaste peck, interposing himself next to the man with a guttural sigh as the heat sinks into his tired body. "Roen. The fuck is up with those?" Shorts, apparently.

August's lack of reaction to those same swim trunks speaks volumes to what might be lurking in his closets and drawers. "Are you disparaging his boardshorts, Cavanaugh, those are perfectly good looking." He opens the cider, takes a drink and leans back.

"What's up with them is, I like how they look." He sniffs. "Anyways I just defended yours, don't go insulting mine." Is he secretly hoping Itzhak shows up in something truly ludicrous? Yes. Will it happen? Time will tell. "Cavanaugh was suggesting with make this into a regular poker game."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Mexico is a noble country, inhabited by a proud warrior people." Yes, Joe is absolutely teasing Ruiz, even as he bends his head to accept the peck. In that he's grinning like a possum in a hall closet. "And they look wonderful on you," he assures Ruiz.

"Yours are just fine, too," he adds to August. Joe's gone for his usual super-boring-conservative gear. Navy solid board shorts, a rash guard in navy with lighter blue side insets. "I was saying that I've got waterproof playing cards, and they make little floating tables." Now there's a ludicrous image, the four of them in the tub, solemnly playing poker.

And when Itzhak shows up, a little while later, he's wearing very, very, very snug little shorts. They don't come even halfway down his thighs. At least they're not gold lame`...but they are magenta paisley. And they don't leave much to the imagination. There's a lot of tattooed ex-con on display, plus that weird white fractal scarring on his right side. When he's not wearing this many clothes, it's much more obvious that his proportions are far from classical; he's just a tall skinny wiry dude with legs for days and oversized hands and feet and schnozz.

"Why don't this state got any real beaches, Roen I hold you responsible," is how he announces himself. He tosses his towel and aviators on a lounge, then plunges into the pool. Sploosh!

"They're paisley," de la Vega points out unnecessarily in a low mutter, right as Itzhak appears in yet more paisley. "The fuck is this a conspiracy?" he demands to know. "And I wasn't insulting yours," he grouses back at August, slinging his arms along the side of the pool, one casually going behind Joe like he's making a move. Though he isn't, really. He's far too busy staring at whatever that is, that Rosencrantz is wearing. Like he wasn't aware they made swim trunks that tiny for men. "You're all fucking ridiculous," is what he concludes with, wincing as Itzhak sends up a veritable tidal wave of water as he dives in.

"Why thank you, Cavanaugh, yours are fine too. Understated's a good look on you." August raises his cider in appreciation, scowls at Ruiz.

"These are floral, not paisley," he says, offended. And he downright cackles when Itzhak appears in that choice of attire. "Now those are paisley." Raising his voice, he calls, "Beaches cause skin cancer," just before Itzhak lands in the water.

That vision stunned Joe into kind of a reverent silence. He's also seen Itzhak in the altogether before, too, but....paisley apparently deserves respect. "Man, you got no idea," he adds, but it's almost absented. He blinks against the spray from Itzhak. No need to make a move, really.

Then he finally peels his gaze away to look at Javier. "What, you hate paisley?" he wonders. Now it's apparently time to haul himself out of the water long enough to get himself another cider. - standing there dripping as he rummages among the ice cubes for the can he wants. "Y'all want a drink? I've got beer and cider," he says, simply.

Itzhak swims like an eel, apparently, no powerful plowing through the water so much as slipping through it on a long weird undulation. One lap, then two, then three or four, until he's breathing hard when he surges out. "Beaches don't cause skin cancer, what's this with the correlation and causation, I thought you were a scientist," he grouses at August, coming over dripping. He swipes his wet hair out of his eyes and bumps shoulders with Joe and helpfully rummages in the ice chest for cider.

Ruiz turns his head and squints at August's nether regions when he starts making distinctions between floral and paisley. Then he concludes after a few moments, "Looks like fucking paisley to me." Joe's query doesn't get him to look over, as he's rather busy feasting his eyes on the fiddler in tiny pink briefs doing laps at the moment. But he does reply abstractedly, "Beer. And lose the goddamned shirt, Cavanaugh."

"I'm good," August says to Joe, gesturing with his can. He shrugs at Itzhak. "You were jumping in the water, I had to be succinct. It's completely true that a predilection for tanning but a lack of proper skin care using protective creams or adequate clothing and over-exposure to the sun, coupled with any pre-existing variants for cancer susceptibility, cause skin cancer. However, in the absence of a proper beach, all you're left with is tanning booths, so it definitely cuts down to not have good beaches." He has a drink of cider, cuts a look at Ruiz. "Now that I'm done explaining the correlations and causations of skin cancer, do you want a definition of paisley?" He frowns a little at Ruiz's insistence Joe take off the rashguard, but withholds comment.

Two ciders and a beer, handed off. And then Joe's peeling off the wet rash guard. No particular fanfare - he drapes it over the back of another chair to let it start to drip dry. There's the rest of his ink; the Doctor's reflected strike doesn't seem to have ruined the compass rose tattoo, and ship, swallow, firebird, and orbiter are all clear and vivid as usual. A bit of a farmer's tan is plain. While face and throat and forearms are all weathered, the rest of him's pale....and the burn scars that smear up from the waist of his boardshorts, climbing up the left side of his waist, along with the railroad stitchmarks of the surgical incision, are a bright pink in contrast.

Then he's giving Itz an affectionate shouldercheck, and stepping back down into the hot water of the tub, resuming his former place.

"That's bettah," Itzhak says to August, sounding satisfied. Yes, now August has satisfied his rigorous requirements for accuracy.

He doesn't join the other men right away, frowning faintly and standing there, can of cider in hand, enormous nose pointed towards the back of the building. It's a posture of alert wariness, something that irresistibly recalls the gracile creature that dwells in his soul. Close up, he's got bruises on ribs and belly.

Frowning like that, he glances at Ruiz, then August, then Joe, as if counting them, then away again. Then he does a heck of a double take at what Ruiz and August are wearing. "Nice," he says, grinning lopsided. "Youse guys know how to party."

Party? It's nothing about partying, and everything about national pride, judging by what Javier's wearing. And speaking of scars and bruises, he's actually got a nasty purpling one on his throat, along with a smattering of curious dashes marched up his left forearm that appear to have been made with a knife. Every group of five is crossed through, like one might mark a score. Or the passage of time. "Rather you didn't," he murmurs to August, reaching for his beer as it's handed down, and cracking the top. The can's tipped back for a few long swallows, and he reaches up to put fingers through Joe's hair absently while he waits for Itzhak to take his sweet ass time in joining them.

"You coming?" he asks the musician. "Or am I going to have to drag your skinny ass in here?"

August dips his head at Itzhak, gracefully accepting his approval. The pause has him sighing and gesturing, echoing Ruiz. "Would you get in here already." To the relief of all assembled, he doesn't talk about paisley.

He gives Joe's scars a frank assessment, the sort a fellow victim of a nasty incident would. "Damn Cavanaugh, that's impressive to come out of alive." He bobs his eyebrows, has a bit more cider.

He was already flushed from the warmth of the water, but now it's an actual blush that puts in an appearance, turning him from faintly pink to brightly so. Ducking his head into the cop's caress, unselfconscious as a cat. To August's comment, he says, voice a little hoarse, "'s from the wreck that ended my career. Broke the corner of my hip real bad, bones are really fuckin' weak after long term spaceflight....and the damn thing was on fire when they pulled me out of it and I got burned real bad. I don't remember it, happily, I'd blacked out on impact."

Then he's peering over at Itz, but doesn't prod him verbally. Almost as if trying to catch whatever scent or sound is giving him pause.

Make him drag him in? Itzhak smirks at Ruiz, eyebrows quirking. "Don't threaten me with a good time, Javeleh." Whatever twinged at him, he puts it aside in favor of slithering into the hot tub on Ruiz's other side, bracketing him between him and Cavanaugh. Like a pair of leggy matched Thoroughbreds, those two. He picks up Ruiz's hand to drop a kiss on the back.

Whatever twinged at him, it's clearly not been forgotten. Ruiz's dark eyes mark the fiddler's eventual path into the hot tub with a thoughtfulness he doesn't bother to hide. There's a strain, too, sitting just under his apparent ease; he did just return from a pretty fucked-up Dream not a day ago, after all. He's probably still out of sorts about that. "And he calls himself weak," he murmurs to August, with a hitch of his chin to indicate that he's referring to Cavanaugh. The kiss to his hand earns a faint, crinkle-eyed smile, thumb grazing Itzhak's jaw, and then it's back to swigging his beer and thinking.

August listens to the description, curiosity and sympathy jostling for supremacy on his face. And maybe a hint of envy, when Joe mentions being out for all of it. How different would his life be if the world had gone black when the wall had landed on him? Immeasurably so. "Thank God for that, at least," he says, and bobs his eyebrows.

He sips from his cider, snorts at Ruiz's comment. "Well, the bones might've been, but the body and the soul sure weren't. Here's to telling disaster to get fucked."

"I woke up in flight over the Atlantic," he says, still quietly. There's that flat blankness in the blue eyes, memory like a lens blinding him to the others there. Relaxed, still - he's by Javier, in good company and warm water. But the memory of pain is enough. "Break-through pain got to me. Kind of drifted in and out - I didn't really come back to myself until a few days later, and by then I was in Walter Reed."

Then he's settling his metaphorical feathers, and blinks. "Yeah. Lucky men." Not even a hint of irony. They are.

A couple of low-voiced words pitched into Itzhak's nearer ear, Javier's nose sifted into the man's damp hair as he intimates whatever that is, quietly. Then his gaze travels back to the other two, his arm still draped around Joe that's not encumbered with his beer bottle. Seems he's got nothing to add; or he's lost in the darker recesses of his mind, remembering the other crash the pilot was in. And the aftermath that nearly killed them both. He tips his beer back, swallows, sniffs some dampness out of his nose.

Joe's recollection stirs similar memories in August; he makes a low sound, takes to staring at the foaming water. After a time, he says, "I passed out the second they got the wall off me. Like it...interrupted my concentration, you know? As long as nothing changed I could stay awake under there but once it did," he raises a hand, snaps his fingers, "everything caught up with me." He narrows his eyes like he's thinking, shakes his head. "I don't remember the flight to Landstuhl. Honestly," he laughs, bitter, "don't remember Landstuhl much either. A little--the doctor who," he taps the side of his head, "fixed my hearing. I talked with her a lot. But I was on so many damned drugs, it's a blur. Then, they shipped me back stateside to the Portland VA for the non-neuro stuff."

He sighs and has a drink, which finishes the can, so he sets it on the deck behind him. "Hopefully we didn't burn it all in those fine, memorable moments." He smiles, rueful and a little fierce.

He hadn't heard that part of the story before, by the intent look Joe gives August. It is, for a moment, the ghostly image of the young man he was, with a goshawk's sharp gaze....though they've all seen him. Ruiz the real thing, August and Itz the stone-faced facsimile on the Patusan. "I don't remember Landstuhl at all," he agrees. "I was there, though, once, after an incident in Afghanistan. Had to eject over the Korengal, no fuckin' joke. That time I didn't come up out of it for a weak, I was basically comatose when I arrived." That might explain what's clearly a bullet entry wound on his chest, and its matching companion on his back, rondels of scar tissue.

Then he shakes his head. "No, it don't work like that. Some get all, some get none. We get all." And if that isn't a motto for that golden boy life....

Itzhak bows his head a little, listening. His hair, when wet, becomes twirly tendrils. Glancing at Ruiz, eyebrows tilted up in that wistful way, he shakes his head. "Nothin," he murmurs, and wriggles down in the water so it laps over his shoulder. That way he can lean his head against Ruiz's bicep, and listen to Joe and August telling their stories. His gray-green eyes flick from one man to the other as they talk, landing on scars and tattoos.

Still no contributions from de la Vega. No war stories, no corroborations. But then he's never been one to volunteer much about his time in the service. He finishes off his beer while Joe brings up the Korengal, and the ejection, and maybe he's vividly remembering that CFIT his jet took into a mountainside. The shattered, smoking remains of it as his ragtag unit arrived, poking through fried electronics with the muzzles of rifles while the scent of char and tobacco hung heavy on the air.

"Going to grab another drink," he murmurs to Itzhak after a time, reluctantly shifting out from under the lankier man, and wading his way to the edge of the pool before hoisting himself up and out. Water sluices off swarthy, inked skin and ridiculous board shorts as he prowls off to find more alcohol, half listening to Joe and August still talking.

August grimaces. An ejection, and in Korengal Valley no less. He hasn't been there to know it personally, but he's talked with enough who were. "That's ugly, even if you blessedly didn't have to remember it." Terrifying, he means, because that underlies all these stories: the sheer terror of knowing this was probably it and well, sure, everyone knew what they were signing up for in the abstract, but having Death actually come shake your hand and ask you if you wanted some pretzels and a cup of water on your one way flight to hell was another thing entirely. Certainly at all of 21 years August hadn't actually been prepared for it.

He laughs, though, bitter again, for Joe's proposed model of luck. 'We get it all because other people get none.' Sighs, watches de la Vega go to get a drink. "Sure feels that way sometimes," he murmurs. "Didn't die in that hell like I probably should have, didn't get HIV like the others," he sniffs, "and They haven't got me yet despite not keeping quiet. Plenty of other people who can't say the same." He closes his eyes, lets his long legs float in the water. "So it goes."

"Oh, I 'member all the shit that went before. It was over a fuckin' week down there 'tween havin'a pull the switch and getting casevaced," Joe explains, that calm leaving his face. Even the remembered fear is enough to have his expression go odd - vulnerable and raw, in sharp contrast to his usual easy good nature. "I got fuckin' shot and we had one of the worst blue on blue messes in that whole goddamned war. It was a clusterfuck in the first degree. I lost my backseater....." His breath sighs out of him, as if he's forcing himself to calm.

Then he looks to August. "I been lucky as hell, all my life. Didn't get HIV myself. Survived an ejection into hostile territory, the worst spaceflight disaster since Columbia, and a real stupid suicide attempt. I shoulda been dead a dozen times over, but....here I am." And his gaze goes to the others, in turn.

Itzhak can't help the appreciative look when Ruiz gets out. Even given the Mexican pride board shorts. Especially given the Mexican pride board shorts. He grins to himself, eyebrows doing something flirtatious, before he pulls himself back ground from ogling the interim Chief of Police. August and Joe are talking about serious things! ...things that he can barely follow, given the amount of military jargon, but whatever, he can still listen to the way they talk. Like a dog who doesn't know he's being told to stay out of the trash. He meets Joe's gaze for a moment, all he can manage, before he drops it again. "Luck's been shit all my life," he mutters, "but somehow I wound up in a hot tub with the three hottest guys in town, so whaddayagonnado." His mouth hitches in half a wry little smirk.

Mexican fucking pride, baby. He may be a naturalized citizen of the United States by now, but a part of de la Vega's heart still lives in his homeland, and likely always will. With his back to the trio, the intricate cephalopod articulated up along his spine and flank, with the tips of two of its arms extended up the nape of his neck, is fully visible. As are those names inked into his right flank, somewhere between fifteen and twenty at a guess. Neat, regular rows marched from armpit to hip.

He fishes about for another beer, pops the cap off with his thumb, and wanders back over to lower himself into the tub again. "Maybe it's time you re-evaluated-" He grunts as he settles into the water beside the taller musician, and eases back against the pool's edge again. "-your luck." As for Joe, no words. He simply winds an arm around him when he tails off about his backseater, squeezes his shoulders tight.

"Ah," August murmurs. He cracks his eyes open to survey Joe. "Sorry to hear that. It's a shitty enough thing to deal with all of that when you do plan to be doing it." He takes a moment to eye Ruiz's tattoos which are, like his own, normally not on display, closes them again. He laughs at Itzhak and reaches out to nudge him with a foot. "Please, like you don't have half the town eyeing you up and down every time you get up and perform. What he said."

In a tangential topic shift, he continues, "I think I've picked out what's going on this last scar. After that I have to decide where to put 'em some other way." He grunts. "I guess they'll hurt less to get, at least. How about you, slacker." Another nudge for Itzhak. "Getting anything new soon? You need to catch up."

"Yeah," Joe says. "Javier there saved my life, he was one of the Marines on the ground that had to come get me. Picked me out of a goddamned tree." Picture Joe treed like a frightened cat - nothing so adorable.

Then Joe's blinking at August. "What....oh," he says. "You're coverin' em, huh?" Unthinkingly, he touches the long scars on his arms, as if considering doing something with them, ink-wise.

Itzhak immediately turns red and scowls ferociously at August. Super. Ferocious. "Ahh shut ya yap, Roen," he mutters, and sinks entirely under the water. He resurfaces all glossy, wipes his eyes and glances at Joe, and reaches over to rub his arm. Then Ruiz is back and he settles against him, without shame snuggling right up to him. About his luck, he says nothing, but about his ink, "Yeah, I thought I could get somethin' protective. Seals of Solomon."

"What're you thinking of getting?" Ruiz wants to know, cutting a brief glance August's way to make it clear whom he's talking to. Joe's released after a moment or two of that fierce hug, lest he appear too gay about the whole thing. Can't have that, now. The remark about saving his life, though.. well, if the Mexican were a blusher, he'd probably be turning red, right about now. He dunks his awkwardness in a big swallow of beer instead, and slings the bottle-holding arm around the wet, lanky fiddler snuggling up to him.

August makes a low, speculative sound, glances from Joe to Ruiz and gives the later a speculative look as he totally doesn't blush, instead knocks back his beer and cuddles a guy in skintight fuscia paisley swimshorts in the least gay manner possible. Then looks to Joe again.

"Less covering, more, integrating." He sits up, traces the scar that helps form the interior of the fig syconium a little under his shoulder; the source of the injury which necessitated the longer, thinner one up on the shoulder proper which is part of a bittersweet vine. The scar's not so visible, like this, might even be hard to pick out until you knew where to look, but when August presses on the skin the flush from the hot tub water makes it more obvious. "Here she used the scar to make some of the little flowerheads inside the fig. On my back, the spinal scar's the bisection of the skull. She tattooed up next to it, to make it stand out a little. Same sort of thing with all of them, working the features into the tattoo. Except, ah," he pats his belly, which is under the water, "this one hurt like a motherfucker, almost at much as," he jerks a thumb at his back, "the parts over my spine on that one."

He gets a thoughtful look, worrying at his lip as he turns something over in his head. He sets whatever it is aside with a shrug of his shoulder. "Long as you're okay with that, it can really help you...take ownership of what it did to you. So it's not just something that left your life in ruins and killed the guy you used to be. Not some car you wrecked rusting on your front lawn to remind God and everyone of what happened. It's just another part of who you are."

He snaps his fingers and points at Itzhak. "That's genius. Tattoo useful shit." They are wizards, after all. (He's given up trying to think of them as otherwise, what's the point.) He looks down at the naked scar. "Probably a snake. I don't have a repite yet. Moth, spider, birds, elk--no reptile. Maybe, one shedding its skin, with a skeleton. Transformation, you know? Shaping. With a toad lily and a marshflower."

A little too late on that one - Javier's been too cuddly this evening. Joe gives Itz a grateful look...and he's simply hitching over to lean against the cop's other shoulder. Boxed in by both his boyfriends, what a terrible evening for Ruiz.

He's looking at August's ink thoughtfully, cocking his head, a motion reminiscent of his bird self. "That's a good thought," he says, glancing at the fiddler. "All mine've been....commemorations. Victory marks of a kind, or memorials." Like the firebird that curls on his pectoral, a whorl of scarlet and gold, with that name under it in Cyrillic script. "I never thought about....about doing something with my scars, or as a kind of magical invocation."

Itzhak sighs a quiet exhale of relief when Ruiz gets his arm around him. He tries not to make it too obvious, but the way his usual angry tension eases in him...well, it's obvious. But he perks up when August says he's a genius. That's right. Genius right here. "Defensive, offensive," he says, first the right hand, then the left. "Backs of my hands. Could get 'em on the palms like John Constantine but palm ink fades really fast. ...maybe," he adds, suddenly, "maybe I could make it stay. It's molecules..." oh no, he's got an idea.

Ruiz doesn't really look too clear on whether August answered his question, at first. But then he does eventually get around to it, in a rambling sort of way. "Transformación," he murmurs, eyes on August. "Entiendo."

How the fuck he managed to wind up stuck in a fucking hot tub with three chatterboxes is beyond him. But at least two of them want to cuddle, and that's not so bad.

He has to reach around Itzhak to drink his beer, so the fiddler's either going to have to put up or shut up. The inked fingers of his other hand rest, swarthy in contrast to farmer's tan, against Joe's shoulder. Absently tracing the tattoo of the orbiter inked into the big muscle of his shoulder while the three talk ink and their impetus.

August nods at Ruiz. "Probably a kingsnake," he adds. "Just need to pick what it looks like. Maybe this guy," a quick glance at Itzhak, "has some ideas."

He scratches at his beard, thinking over the idea of making the molecules 'stay' for a troublesome tattoo. "Might not be worth their attention. Back of the hand's just as good for what we do. Anyways," he arches a brow, "you come across something that does shit to your mystical tattoo, palm is gonna be a bad place to have it."

Another nod, now for Joe. "Just make sure you get someone who knows how to tattoo on scar tissue."

The idea of defensive tattoos on Itz's hands makes Joe grin. "'s like in that book I gave you," he tells him. "I bet you ain't read it yet, but the hero has 'em." He doesn't sound impatient about it. They live busy lives, how much time does Itzhak have to read?

'Ad Astra Per Aspera' reads the banner twined around the orbiter - she's done in not just black but flat white, too. Strangely dimensional, in the way that sort of ink looks....and old school shading. "I like the idea of using it as magic," he says, clearly tickled at the idea. He's got that look in his eyes. "Maybe not directly on it, but....around it. A reply to it..." He's hitched himself closer to Javier, rests his cheek on the cop's shoulder for a little. Like he's buzzed enough and relaxed enough to forget his usual reticence about PDA. Especially when he reaches across the cop to take Itz's hand.

"But palm would be bitchin'." Itzhak's motivations are thusly revealed, the same motivations that make him drive that ridiculous Stingray and have a sleeve full of fruit and flowers and wear a skull-and crossbones-belt buckle. It's bitchin', man.

Jostled a little by Ruiz reaching around him, he takes it with good humor, glancing at him when he says that Spanish word. "Yeah. Transformación." He mimics it pretty well despite his New York accent flattening the vowels and sharpening the consonants. "We're all pretty fucked up, why not do something rad?" Joe reaches across to take his hand, and he blinks, his expression amused but tolerant. Cavanaugh's on the good shit, apparently. He squeezes Joe's hand back.

"Thinking of getting a serpiente emplumada myself, maybe right here," Javier confides, unslinging the arm around Itzhak, with the beer bottle, to indicate. The one with those fresh cuts in the pattern of hash marks carved into his forearm. It's one of the few spots on his body with room left; the right arm's chock full of fishing trawler, ocean waves and the sugar skull with a rose blooming out of its mouth. "Or maybe somewhere a little more private. I haven't fucking decided." Dimpled smile when he confides that part in a low, smoky little murmur, and after a slug of lukewarm beer, his arm drops back around his boyfriend. Right in time to watch the pair holding hands. Isn't that cute.

Body slid down a little lower, he rests his head against the pool's edge, shifts it to get comfortable, and closes his eyes. Yep, this is pretty much the life.

"Near it," August echoes, liking the idea. "About it, even--a tattoo of something we've seen or somewhere we've been, over there, might be a way to record it." They were already recording their lives on their bodies, what was a little more?

"It can be bitchin' on the back of your hand." He chases that with a tight smile of 'think of your fancy magic tattoo searing into your palm for magic reasons'. "But, why not indeed." He nods at the idea of a serpent tattoo on Ruiz's arm, coughs a laugh at the idea of it going...somewhere more private. "Let us know how that goes, if you opt for that placement."

It is the good shit. Joe's mellowed out, one way or another. He gets the joke and frankly snickers like a child at the idea of a snake tattoo somewhere private - gives the arborist an impish look, from the shelter of Javier's shoulder.

To Itz, he says, "That was like the battle cry of so many idiotic decisions when I was in the military. I include myself among those idiots, by the way." Still holding hands with the fiddler across Ruiz's belly, like they'll keep the Mexican from going anywhere.

Itzhak grumbles in Jewish. Ugh, stupid Roen and Cavanaugh, being like, sensible and shit. But he doesn't mean it. It's just kvetching. He shoots Ruiz a sly sidelong look at the suggestion he might get a snake tattoo somewhere 'more private', leans over and smooches him on the cheek like a big gay. "Gonna swim some more." Out of the hot tub he goes to plunge back into the pool. Splash!