The Jeep took him over snowy back streets, onto the main roads, and into London with very little drama. Bryce hunted down a sufficiently seedy area and made parallel parking an exercise in tessellation, emerging at long last to start pavement-pounding.
He returned after walking a block to pick up the printout he had left in the glove compartment.
Properly equipped at last, he lit a cigarette with his back to the mild, but bitterly cold, wind, turned up his collar, and started to make his way through the tattoo joints he was able to sniff out, poking his nose in to see if any would work for him. He was not terribly concerned with the quality of art in the portfolios, the cleanliness of the shop, or the standards of hygiene practiced by the needle-wielder. No, he had his printout, so what did he care about artistry? And it would be mighty rich of a bloke who smoked as much as he did to nit-pick about latex gloves and autoclaves. No, he was simply hunting down the most garrulous artist he could find.
He knew he had struck gold when the bored-looking man in one shop, a man with no hair on his head but a beard that would give Rapunzel pause, bellowed a greeting as soon as he walked in and immediately told a pointless yet bawdy tale of his time in some kind of military service or another. Bryce handed over the printout and told the man to go at it.
The end result was always very pleasing to Bryce, but he hated the process. The buzz of the needles sent chills down his spine that rivaled those created by a dentist's drill, and the burn made him want to jerk out of the chair and dance around the room, slapping the patch of skin in question. In order to sit still through the whole bloody process (in every sense), he wanted a tattooer with good stories - hell, even mediocre ones would do - and the desire to tell them.
"Oi, you've got a few already!" the man (his name was Butch, he barked at some point) bellowed as Bryce pulled off his shirt. He poked and prodded his way around them before seating Bryce and pulling out his gear. "None with names, though," he continued, as Bryce shifted and tried not to look at the man's setup. "Good choice, that. I don't do names no more. Too many buggers come back wantin' the name of their fiancée or girlfriend or boyfriend or bleedin' dachshund covered up. It makes some money, but I hate to think of the hard work I put in gettin' covered up, you know?"
"Whot if they're married, like? Wedding anniversary tattoo, and all?" Bryce asked, as Butch swabbed his forearm down with alcohol.
Butch gave a startlingly high-pitched laugh. "I seen all of those wantin' to get covered up!" He hung the printout on the wall with clear tape and squinted at it. "Thirty years married, oops, can you cover this up with a tiger or summit?" He chuckled again as he started up the gun, and Bryce clenched his teeth at the buzz.
"Whot's the strangest one you've had to do?" Bryce asked, raising his voice.
Butch's booming voice drowned out the buzz satisfyingly as he started to ink in the outline. "Oh, I dunno. I seen all kinds a' strange things. Guys who are all badarse wantin' to get their testicles tattooed..." Bryce cringed. "Women wantin' to get their naughties done. I tell you what, those bits look a lot less enticin' when you've had to stare at 'em - and smell 'em - for hours on end." He winked at Bryce.
"Not me thing," Bryce replied, surveying the work as Butch rolled back in his chair to get a fresh dose of ink. Not bad.
Butch grinned, a broad gash of yellowish-white in his pile of curly black beard. "Bat for the other team, eh? Can't say I blame yeh!" He ducked in for another go. "Bet it makes life a lot less complicated, don't it? Like another species, birds are."
"You said it," Bryce agreed. "Not that some blokes aren't."
Butch wiped off ink and blood, then went in for the detail work. "Yeah, like them fancy-arse blokes who wear suits all day and get on twenty-grand Harleys to go ta the coffee stand on weekends. They want them little tattoos where nobody but their mistresses and maybe their wives will see 'em. Why bother? Bet they're the same kind who wear women's underwear." He snorted. "Give 'em a tattoo that ain't a inch square, and they're leapin' all over the place. Buncha wet ponces."
"Hardly worth your time," Bryce muttered, leaning back and pointedly not looking at the vibrating needles as they jabbed into flesh.
"Nah, it's great." Butch snorted again, wiped away another smear of ink and blood, and dove in again. "I got a minimum, I do. I like them little ones. A day of those pays for a weekend in the country."
"Yeah, and the middle-age broads wantin' Betty Boop on their bums..." Bryce muttered to the ceiling. The buzzing stopped, and Bryce looked back down. Butch was glaring at him.
"I got Betty Boop on me thigh," he growled.
"Yeah, and you ain't a broad, and it's not on yer bum," Bryce replied, winking. Mollified, Butch went back to the tattoo.
"How about yer bi... bloke?" Butch asked. "Into these? I give a break on doubles."
"Nah, he don't like 'em,"
"Ah, well." Butch sounded disappointed. "How will he feel about this one, then?"
"His own problem," Bryce replied, quite confident that his words would never make their way back to Hillary. "He don't like 'em, he can find someone else."
Butch snickered. "Well, yer done," he said, bringing back that yellow-gash grin. Bryce looked back down, surprised, but as Butch cleaned the area with a fresh towel soaked with alcohol, Bryce saw that it was, indeed.
"You're fast, mate," he said in admiration.
"Ah, that's what the birds say," Butch replied, giving Bryce another dose of that odd high-pitched giggle. He dipped a tongue depressor in a jar of Vaseline and smeared it on the tattoo. "Now, keep this on fer two hours. Wash it and put some lotion or somethin' on it. It'll peel for a couplea days, and don't scratch it. You should know all that by now, righ'?" He looked pointedly at a dagger on Bryce's shoulder, a blurry edge betraying where he had scratched at it.
"Yeah, yeah." Bryce paid Butch, tipped generously, and, when pushed, promised to recommend his friends to the man. He stifled a chortle at the thought of Lara sweeping grandly into the shop to get a rose on her bum. What a bunch he had gotten as friends lately, hadn't he?
One of that bunch was waiting in the garage with his arms crossed when Bruce pulled in. Bryce leapt out of the Jeep with a grin and tossed the keys at Hillary, who unfolded one arm to catch them without his glower slipping. "I've been looking for you for an hour," he ground out.
"Whot, you my nanny now?" Bryce asked. He did not feel in the least bit upset. His outing had rejuvenated him, after weeks - god, had it been weeks? - living almost exclusively in his trailer. He spread his legs slightly to stand in a mocking echo of Hillary's own stance.
"No, but I am responsible for Lara's vehicles, so when you steal them..."
"Oi!" Bryce interrupted. "I borrowed that! You knew I was comin' back."
"I would if you told me you were... 'borrowing' it," Hillary replied, walking over to the rack on the wall to hang the Jeep's keys in their place. I'm surprised he didn't clean them first, Bryce thought to himself, then had to stifle a giggle as Hillary pulled them down, rubbed off some speck of something-or-other, and hung them back up.
"I couldn't find you," Bryce replied. While it was true that he didn't find Hillary, he had known where the butler would be at the time, and chose not to look in Lara's study. He had been annoyed at the man's prioritization, after all, and had been in no mood to talk about it. But he decided to make the best of his oddly elated mood, and grabbed Hillary around the waist. "I found you now, though. C'mon."
Hillary pulled the arm away. "I have things to do..."
"Yeah, and I'm one of them," Bryce interrupted, grabbing him again, pressing a kiss to the frowning mouth, and yanking. Sometimes, he thought as Hillary yielded and let himself be dragged, pretending a smile wasn't tugging his mouth in the other direction, being a stubborn bastard is a useful thing.