Theme: #86. Seeing Red
o o o
The boy clung to the arm of his chair, trying to not move, to not cringe away from the buzzing needle currently marking his face. He could do this. He could do it, he wouldn't cry he wouldn't flinch he could handle this he could he could he could -
"Need to scream, boy?" Uncle Mitch, from behind, who's strong hands were holding his head still.
"Uh huh." The tattooist - his cousin, Baja - chuckled and sat back. The boy in the chair immediately howled in pain, blood, tears, and dribbles of red-brown ink running down his cheeks.
The loud noise raised a laugh from the from the surrounding crowd of men. Redheads, each and every one, some dark red-brown, some pale red-blond, some bright red-orange curls, some, like the boy in the chair, brilliant candy-apple red. They were all there, watching the boy gain his marks, watching him get the red-brown tattoo's along his cheekbones that were the family's sign of manhood.
The boy's watering eyes scanned the crowd - there. Near the back wall, hair as bright as his own, a blue suit, and a too-dangerous grin as he spoke to the one non-family member present. "How's it feel, kid?" He asked the boy, grinning.
"About how you look," He shot back. "Painful as fuck on the eyes."
The comment earned the boy another round of laughter, and a couple claps to the shoulders. He knew, if his mother had been there, she would have chewed him out for such a thing. But this was for the men only, the women had their own rituals to go through.
He steeled himself for the pain, laying back in the chair again. Uncle Mitch gripped either side of his head, and Baja started the needle up again, leaning over him with a grin. The boy stared across the room, focusing on the blue-suited man and the marks beneath his eyes. He was the oldest, the golden child of their rough, wild family, the first in the generation to make it above the plate, and the boy wished only to be like him.
Then his vision was obscured with tears of pain, and the buzzing of the needle-gun was echoing through his head. He grit his teeth, fingers digging into the wooden arm rest as Baja finished the sweeping, elongated drop shapes that traced the lines of his cheekbones. Finally, the torture was finished, and Mitch was carefully wiping his face with a clean scrap of cloth, and the boy sat up, no longer a boy, but a man within the family.
Reno came up to him, grinning down at the youngest of his brothers. "Well, sorry I can't stay for the party, Ale," He said regretfully. "Work's a bitch right now. But next time I get a day or so, you an' me'll go up to the Saucer, alright?"
"I'm holding you to that." The boy replied with a grin. "Don't go getting shot on me before we go." He then frowned, and poked his brother in the arm. "And don't call me 'Ale'. It's Alejandro. Got it memorized?"
o o o
Everyone and their grandma knows about the similarities between Axel and FFVII's Reno (If you don't know, they have the same voice actors in Japanese and English, red hair, bad-ass attitudes, and marks under their eyes. Rumor has it, Nomura even said Axel was a kind of alternate Reno) Well, everyone and their grandma also thinks Axel is Reno's Nobody. I obviously don't think the same :3