Needling the Canvas || Dean and Luna
@incre-et-painture
Luna paused briefly to enjoy the bright, stuttering play of neon across her face before she trip-trotted down the stairs and through the heavy, scuffed door that led to the basement-level bar below. She waved breezily to the broad-shouldered bouncer, her dreamy smile not at all dented by Millicent’s usual surly glare. She didn’t try and stop Luna from entering, although her eyes narrowed and her muscles shifted in a way that indicated she would do so gladly if only somebody would present her with a justifiable reason. Since Luna hadn’t realized that she annoyed the other woman, she simply skipped past her and into the bar proper.
Inside the lights were both dim and sharp, the illumination coming as much from the bounceback of the aged mirror behind the bar as from the bulbs themselves. Luna blinked a few times but didn’t bother to wait until her eyes adjusted; it was a relatively straight line between the door and the bar and she could see well enough to avoid bumping into anything as large as tables or people, probably. She headed straight for the tall, lean man behind it, slowing as usual to allow herself to enjoy the beautiful and fascinating sight of his tattoos moving beneath his skin. Her mother had done very nice work on him to begin with, back when he had been her subject -- while Pandora was only an amateur artist she, like Luna, had a knack for it -- and he had improved on that start greatly in the past few years. Every time Luna saw him there was new, even prettier artwork crawling up a limb or curling around a joint; she wasn’t sure if that was because he tinkered on purpose with his tattoos or because they had a mind of their own.
The end result was the same and Luna enjoyed looking at him as much as she did the canvasses in the local museums and the homemade paintings on her walls at home. Her dreamy smile widened into a bright, beaming burst of good cheer as she slid onto a tall stool and braced the toes of her purple sandals against the metal rail below. “Hello Dean!” she said happily, following her greeting without preamble with, “Did you hear the Tate wants to hold an exhibit of actual, authentic wix portraits?”