[M->Tattoo Ink]

“I just think they’re really cool!”

Axel chuckled, gesturing limply at Sabrina. “Yeah? Then why don’t you just get one?”

Sabrina paused, shaking her head before answering. “A… tattoo?” When Axel nodded in a manner that indicated how obvious he felt that was, she continued. “Well, you know, there’s just stuff I’m not sure about…”

“Like what?”

“Well, I don’t know, it’s just… I have a thing about needles, right? Wouldn’t they hurt? And the idea of going to a shop where some people that I don’t even know just have to look at me and touch me and all of that? Not to mention that it’s something permanent that I’ll be spending money on, and I don’t even know how I’ll feel about it after the fact.” Sabrina sighed and stood up from the bed, pacing around the small bedroom they shared. “But all that said, I do want one. They’re just so cool, and I’d love to have a piece of art like that to show off and just have on me.”

Axel sighed, not out of frustration but out of sympathy. He hated seeing his girlfriend like this, and just wanted to help her. “Tell ya what, hun. As soon as you feel like you want to explore this and see where it goes, I’ll be by your side the whole way, I’ll take you into the shops, we’ll meet the artists together, and I can help you choose a piece you’d like.”

Sabrina shrugged, sitting at her desk. “I think I’m too scared to even take that first step, that’s the problem.”

Axel gave a beautiful smile and nodded. “Well, any way that I can help you get your first tattoo, I will.”

A quirked eyebrow came from across the room in response to Axel’s sweet commitment. “Hmm, that reminds me of something… say that again?”

“I’ll… help you get your first tattoo? Any way that I can?”

Sabrina was only half listening, digging through the pile of books on her desk. “Ah, here we go! My grandmother said she found this book at a strange shop run by an old man. He made a big deal about how magical everything he sold was, but my grandmother just thought the book looked cool and that I would like it.” She turned and smirked at Axel. “‘Ligatus Promissa’, which seems to be an attempt at saying ‘Bound Promises’ in Latin. Basically, it seems to be spells for making sure people keep their promises. Want to try it out?”

With a laugh, Axel shrugged his shoulders. Both he and his girlfriend had a passing interest in magical superstition and culture, though more for the themes, colors, and styles of things. Of course, they had both heard the rumors of magical going-ons in The City, but neither of them truly believed it. Girls made of fabric showing up at the local college? A woman who spent more time as inanimate pieces of art than as an actual human? Supposedly, there was even a catgirl cheerleader hanging around the fraternities that once was human - and male. Of course, neither of them actually believed these claims. People made up fantastical stories all the time, and it was probably just the work of some strange storytellers.

So, neither Axel nor Sabrina thought much of the spell she awkwardly read out. It sounded strangely formal, despite being in some unknown language the pair had never heard before. Words and sounds repeated frequently, and the entire spell took up multiple pages in the old tome. Before long, though, Sabrina finished reading it.

They looked at each other, then back to the book, then back to each other.

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened, they both rationalized. It’s not like magic was real.

Like a damn bursting, the pair both started laughing, and Sabrina tossed the book aside to join her boyfriend on the bed. Within moments of hitting the lights and collapsing back onto the sheets, both of them realized how tired they were.

“I love you, Sabrina.”

“I love you too, Axel. Thanks for not making fun of me for the tattoo stuff.”

In response, Axel started to snore, and Sabrina couldn’t help but to giggle softly. After a few moments in the dark, Sabrina felt Axel move and shift next to her. Gently, she reached her hand out, hoping to stroke his shoulder to coax him back to sleep, but she never touched him. Confused, she started patting the bed next to her, finding it completely empty. It seemed weird that Axel would wake up right after falling asleep to get up, but maybe he had to use the bathroom or something. Sabrina sighed, and rolled over, and noticed something moving in her room. A dark silhouette seemed to fly through the room like a shadow, though it had stopped right in front of her, in mid air off the side of the bed.

Hesitantly, Sabrina sat up in bed and the shadowy form followed her movements. She gasped, bringing her hands to her mouth to hold in a shriek, and strangely the dark mass did the same thing. After a few moments where both her and the form were completely still, she reached out slowly and flicked the light on. She gasped, and so did the intruder to her room, albeit silently.

In front of her, in a sitting position despite floating in midair, was a blob of ink shaped exactly like her. She could tell it was ink by the way that colors seemed to shimmer and flow through it’s mostly black surface. Sabrina waved her hand, and the ink blob waved back. She stood up, and the figure assumed a standing position, maintaining its distance of little more than an arm’s length away.

Suddenly, the magical book on her desk dawned in her head. “... Axel? Is that you? Are… are you going to be my first tattoo?” The strange shadow form in front of her didn’t respond, instead pantomiming her motions as she spoke. Sabrina reached out, and as she did, so too did the ink. Their fingers met, and Sabrina’s digits disappeared into the darkened hand. It felt warm, as though it were body temperature. At this point, she was all but certain that this was her boyfriend, now formed into ink, which meant he was to be her first tattoo. A rather odd interpretation of “helping” her get her first one, but it made sense.

Which meant, she needed to figure out what tattoo he would be. Since touching the ink, she could feel it needing a form, a decision from her on what to become. All her fears of the tattoo being something permanent returned, and she had no clue what she wanted. If anything, it was compounded by the fact that this was her boyfriend, and now she had to make a choice of what he would be.

In her panic, an image formed in her mind. A simple rose on the side of her arm near her shoulder. Small, discrete, simple, and something she probably wouldn’t regret in the future. As if on command, the blob of ink flew at her, completely enveloping her body. It seemed to contract and shrink, soaking into her skin. Sabrina flew to her feet and sprinted down the hallway to the bathroom.

And she looked entirely normal, save for the small rose on her shoulder. She turned and admired it in the mirror, biting her lip. It looked… nice, honestly. It was definitely a real tattoo, fully healed and set in her skin. It looked like something she could see herself getting. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so hard to imagine that she could wear something like that for the rest of her life.

The rest of the night was spent studying the now-too-real spellbook. Was there a way to reverse it? Not that Sabrina could find, which made sense. It wouldn’t really be a good way to bind a promise if it could just be canceled. All she could find were vague hints that once the promise was completed, the magic would end. Did that mean that Axel was now stuck as a normal, non-magical tattoo? Or did she need to actually get a real tattoo to free him. Finally, after long hours of studying, Sabrina couldn’t keep herself awake any longer, and passed out at her desk.

 ===

“Hey, hun, wake up. Hun, come on, wake up.” Someone was gently shaking Sabrina’s shoulder. As soon as her sleep deprived brain put together that this was her recently tattooed shoulder and that she would have to explain the sudden rose to whoever is waking her up, she was fully awake, and spun around to see whoever was rousing her.

It was Axel.

“You! You’re… you were my tattoo!”

Axel just chuckled in response. “You had that dream too? It felt like I just became a part of your skin, but I woke up in bed all the same.”

Shaking her head vigorously, Sabrina argued back. “No, you really were my tattoo. You were a rose, you changed right after you went to sleep! But… you’re back.”

Axel’s smile faltered a little, concerned about his girlfriend. “Hey, I let you sleep in till noon. You must have had a weird dream or something. Let’s forget it and move on.”

So, they did just that. Sabrina couldn’t shake the feeling of how real the night before was, and despite Axel’s nonchalant attitude, he was struck by how convicted Sabrina was about it. Still, the pair went to bed, and like usual, Axel fell right asleep before the lights were even off.

Perfectly on cue, his body disappeared from under the covers, and a feminine figure of ink floated to lay in the air above Sabrina’s own body. She stood up and moved over slightly, watching the blob follow her. She glanced to her desk, where her laptop’s webcam was recording. Proof, for when Axel woke up again. She knew she needed to show him the entire transformation into a tattoo, so she started to reach her hand out toward the figure while visualizing the rose again, but hesitated.

Who said she needed to do the rose? It clearly wasn’t permanent, and it would be gone in the morning before anyone saw it. She looked around her room for inspiration, before chuckling and smiling at her darkened clone. “Well, why not try it, right?” She reached her fingers out, making contact with the ink. Just like the night before, it flew at her, coating her entire body before receding away. This time though, she didn’t need a mirror to appreciate that the changes had occurred.

Her entire right arm, from the shoulder joint to the tips of her fingers, was covered in ink. Between the various shades of gray and black that adorned her, her pale skin was nowhere to be seen. Human skulls stared unblinkingly from her skin, with skeletal fingers wrapping around the jawbones and hollow eye sockets. Along her forearm, the mass of skulls was overtaken by long and narrow bones that seemed to spiral together before meeting at her wrist. Her hand was entirely covered, much like her arm, but this seemed to be just a view of the bones of her hand as though there were no skin or muscle to get in the way of viewing them.

Sabrina twisted and flexed her arm, looking at every angle of it with her mouth slightly agape. In the back of her mind, she knew it was a temporary change and would go away come morning - or whenever Axel woke up - but she still felt irrationally anxious about it. This was a massive tattoo, something that would be absolutely unmissable. There was no hiding something like this. Her fingers ran over the tinted skin and she felt no difference. Of course, there wouldn’t be one, but to Sabrina’s mind it was still surreal.

With a start, she realized the camera was still recording. Meekly, she waved at it. “Hey hun,” she started, unsure what to say next. ‘Somehow you became my tattoo and I guess tonight I wanted to make you this really intense and dark design’ didn’t seem to carry the right tone that she wanted to express.

“I guess you’ll have to believe me now. I mean… look at this!” She leaned in toward the webcam and moved her arm slowly so that the video would capture a panning shot of the tattoo. “So, since this is the second night you’ve changed like this, I guess that means this will keep happening? At least until I actually get my first real tattoo. I’ll see you in the morning, love you!”

Sabrina shut off the recording and sat in her chair. The coloration and detail on her arm kept distracting her, and she couldn’t help but to stare at it, tracing her fingers over the details. Getting tired, she decided to wrap up for the night. She sent the video to Axel’s phone so that he would be able to watch it the moment he woke up, and she took some photos of her new tattoo for the memories.

 ===

Axel took the news that he was nothing more than some tattoo ink every night surprisingly well. “The way I see it, I’m asleep anyway then, so if it helps you out, why not!” So our daily ritual together adjusted. He’d get up slightly earlier, and go to bed similarly early. Meanwhile I’d be sleeping in and staying up late, due to the time constraints of only having the Axel-tat while he was asleep.

Sabrina dialed down the intensity again after the previous night. She focused more on cute animals and flowers, adorning her wrist or her ankle, sometimes on her shoulder. Every night, she diligently took pictures for Axel, as that had been his one stipulation. Still, she wasn’t getting any closer to getting an actual tattoo. It still felt extreme and radical to get one, so she never considered actually doing it.

Trying to solve this problem, Axel one day brought up the idea of posting pictures of her tattoos online onto social media under a new username completely separate from her personal identity. He reasoned that as she built a fan base, they could give suggestions for what tattoos to try next, and over time might help push Sabrina out of her comfort zone and try new things, becoming comfortable with the entire concept overall.

The next night, with the inkform Axel floating eerily above her, she couldn’t get the idea out of her mind. Maybe that was the way forward to ultimately breaking this spell? It certainly didn’t hurt to try. Changing into a tanktop and shorts, Sabrina contemplated what tattoo to get first. The little animals and flowers she had been doing didn’t seem to be that interesting, and she knew if she wanted fans, she would have to do something big and dramatic.

With a nervous gulp, Sabrina reached out and touched the blob of ink in front of her. Like every night, it soaked into her skin and disappeared. She looked over her torso, arms, and legs, but knew she wouldn’t find anything there. Hesitantly, she set up her laptop camera on her desk to record, and she turned around away from it. Slowly, carefully, she peeled off her tanktop and tossed it aside, pulling her arms in toward her front. The result pulled her back taut, and showed off what she had done. She turned her head back to look over her shoulder and gasped, biting her lip.

Her entire back was covered by what looked like wings folded against her skin. They looked so realistic, with proper shading and texturing, that it almost looked as though she could just stretch them out and take flight. Of course, these weren’t normal looking wings, as she had to have her own twist on them. Along the tops of the wings, the feathers were patchy in some spots, revealing what looked like brass machinery as their understructure. The orangish feathers were bright and vibrant near her shoulders, but as they descended down her back - and further away from the base of the wings - they appeared to tarnish, slowly turning the distinctive green of old weathered copper.

It was incredible, and Sabrina couldn’t help but to stare at herself in the video feed on her laptop for several minutes, slightly adjusting her pose this way and that to show off the angles. Eventually, she realized she needed to stop - she’d have to cut the video short as it was so she could upload it, as well as capture still frames from it to use as pictures. Wistfully, she got to work, focusing on the project of making the content presentable. Axel’s phone dinged when she sent a link to the newly created profile, and finally, hours later, Sabrina went to bed.

When she woke up later that afternoon, she checked her phone. Part of Sabrina’s conflicted brain wanted her to be instantly popular for her uploads the night before, while the rest of her wanted to fly under the radar and not be noticed. Apparently, her promise of daily new tattoos that fans could choose was too much for the latter to happen. With a quiet gasp, followed by a large shriek and her phone clattering to the ground, Sabrina discovered that she and Axel had become internet famous literally overnight.

The evening routine became pretty straightforward. Axel would head to bed - a little earlier, each night - and Sabrina would review what her fans had requested. Then, touching the floating ink blob, she would get her tattoos for the night and take her photos for her fans.

Pretty early on, the requests were rather tame. As though her fans were testing the limits of what was or wasn’t possible, she fulfilled requests for simple things. An animal here, a flower there. They dotted over her skin in small patches, almost like a hidden treasure hunt to find them all across her body.

But eventually, those easy requests died off, and Sabrina was left with the more difficult ones… the more risque ones. It took some courage, but within moments, Sabrina was looking in the mirror with sprawling spiderwebs across her chest. The effect was truly three dimensional, looking as though a spider had actually wrapped around the soft curves of her breasts in silken string. Even her nipples were tattooed, both with webbing over them and around their sides, and one looked as though a black widow were crawling up it. After staring and marveling - and touching - the new work of art on her sensitive bits, she donned the smallest and skimpiest bikini she could find, and took her pictures for the night. Sure, her audience wouldn’t get to see the little spider on her, but she knew it was there, and she loved it.

After that night, the floodgates were opened. Extreme and even suggestive tattoos were on the table. One night, Sabrina had her body entirely tattooed, with tigress fur covering most of her, while having ripped sections that showed green lizard scales underneath. A quick check revealed that literally every inch of her was covered, from under her hair, to her eyelids, to even more intimate and sensitive spots. While her fans didn’t get to see everything, what they did see drove them crazy. The pictures from that night showed Sabrina fully covered up, even using a scarf and sunglasses to hide her face. Then, starting with her hands, she slowly removed layers, until in nothing but a thong and some nipple pasties. Multiple poses of herself showing off the extreme work got insane likes and more requests.

Doing full body designs became a short lived trend for her. She spent a night as a cat girl, and another as a dog girl, just to see which her fans would like more. Sabrina tried a night with all silver skin, but at the urging of her fans, she kept making tweaks. Adding gold streaks, what appeared to be lights along her body, artificial looking joints and even covering her eyelids and lips so that, from the right angle, it looked as though they didn’t even exist. After her experimentation with robot-looking body art, she decided to try something similar to one of her first tattoos. Her entire body was tattooed black, with glow in the dark bones on her where her skeleton would be. Her fans didn’t even know it, but in the pictures of her in a dark room, she wasn’t even wearing underwear. Her fans got a bonus video too, of her answering the door like that. With her eyes closed, she looked like just a creepy skeleton standing in front of the door, but just as the pizza guy was about to leave she opened her eyes and let out an undead moan. He nearly dropped the food in fright, and quickly left after complimenting her on the appearance.

Sabrina had to dial things back though. How many different ways could she do full body tattoos, realistically, and still keep it interesting? She changed gears, back to small and exciting pieces. A womb tattoo one day, a tramp stamp the next. Tattooed makeup for one evening, and another evening was gems and sparkles adorning her body. Night after night, she tried new things, until she finally had a great idea.

She’d do everything, all at once; excluding of course the full body designs. So that night, Sabrina felt dozens and dozens of tattoos ink into skin, covering the vast majority of her body. It was extreme and a little chaotic, but she loved it. She took her photos, and went to bed.

When she woke up, she was still tattooed. Granted, Axel had been sleeping longer and longer every day, so she wasn’t too concerned. But that night, when he didn’t reappear, Sabrina was worried. A couple days went by, and he wasn’t reappearing. Sabrina thought to the spell, and sighed. While this had been fun, it was only supposed to help her get her first tattoo, which she hadn’t yet. It seemed as though her boyfriend simply wouldn’t exist until she mustered up the courage to get a real one.

So, after a few more days, she booked an appointment and got into the parlor by the end of the week. Of course, her supernatural tattoos garnered attention from everyone who saw her, and she had to admit she liked the attention. She explained her situation to the artist that would be tattooing her, and together they decided on a cute little butterfly behind her ear. By the time the tattoo was finished, the rest of Sabrina’s body art had faded away, and within moments her phone was ringing. With a grin, she answered it smirking.

“Ya know, I’ve always been curious about getting a piercing… want to help with that sweetie?”