Jumping the Fence

[Jory Addison]

Jory nodded, though it took him a minute or so to speak. "Yeah, but it'd have been really weird to get one there with mum watching. So it's on my shoulder." He glanced over at Lyric again, trying to keep his eyes away from the dark star. "Did that one hurt very bad?" he asked before he let himself swing down again, ankles locking to keep the tension up enough to stay attached to the branch.

[Trent Frey]

Lyric was already beginning to feel the effects of hanging like this, but he didn't try to pull back up yet. "Yeah," he admitted. "Did your mom really go with you?" He didn't mean it in a derogatory way and hoped that Jory didn't take it that way, but it was impossible for Lyric to imagine something like that.

[Jory Addison]

"Yeah," Jory said, nodding before he grabbed the branch again to pull himself up to sit. "I didn't have a choice, too young to get one legally, technically." Even now he was, considering most people said not to trust the artists that would do younger people. But his mum had trusted his friend's uncle, she had grown up with the man, and so he had gotten it. "I mean, it'd have been nice to not have her there, then I could have gotten it wherever I wanted, but I didn't want to wait another two years or whatever."

[Trent Frey]

"My mom doesn't know," Lyric confessed. He hung for a moment longer, then reached up for the branch to duplicate what Jory had done. It was more difficult than it looked, when his hands didn't want to hold against the bark of the tree, but he managed, hopefully without looking too stupid or incompetent. The rush he got from being suddenly upright was something he thought he could get addicted to. It reminded him so much of other things...

[Jory Addison]

"Really?" Jory asked, surprised. "How'd you manage that?" Well, he supposed there was always a way to get it done, a friend of a friend or something. He swung his feet beneath the branch, gripping to make sure he didn't fall with his hands. He looked over at Lyric, an eyebrow raised as he tried to guess how it had happened before Lyric said.

[Trent Frey]

"They didn't ask for I.D.," Lyric said simply. It was hard to find a place that didn't, and most of them were pretty bad and desperate for business, but at the time it hadn't mattered to him. He'd wanted a tattoo, they'd found a place, and he'd gotten it. "I'm lucky it turned out so well." Lyric pulled up his shirt a bit to look at the five-pointed star with its double outlines, all straight and even against his skin.

[Jory Addison]

Jory nodded and took that as an invitation to look closer at it. "Yeah, it would have sucked if it hadn't turned out as good as it did." It was hard work to pull his eyes away from the star and up to Lyric's eyes again. "How long have you had it?" he asked, his eyes flicking almost constantly back to the star on Lyric's hip.

[Trent Frey]

"About a year," Lyric answered. "I want another one, but I'm going to wait til I'm old enough this time. I'll be seventeen in November, so I figure I'll look for a wizarding place." He didn't know how he'd find one, since he wasn't in contact with anyone he'd hung around before, but he'd done well enough over the summer that he had started to get a taste of real independence. "What about you? Do you want more?"

[Jory Addison]

Jory shrugged, then shook his head and looked down at his knees. "I like piercings better. I mean, I love my tattoo and everything, but I've got so many piercings I want I don't think I'll have time for any more," he said, a light chuckle coming out at the end as he glanced up at Lyric. He had heard that tattoos were addicting, but he thought piercings were so much worse, probably because they were so much cheaper.

[Trent Frey]

Lyric reflexively smiled at Jory's chuckle, and his eyes were caught again so that he couldn't immediately think of what to say. He thought that it should be illegal to have eyes like that, and he thought that he should stop staring, and stop thinking about when he'd noticed Jory looking at his tattoo. He pulled his shirt lightly back into place. "I've only got a couple piercings," he volunteered after a moment of reining himself in. "This one," he said, gesturing lightly to a hoop in his right eyebrow, "and this one." Lyric shifted his tongue to catch the ball of his piercing between his teeth, then let it go. "What do you want?" he asked.

[Jory Addison]

Jory couldn't help it; his eyes hovered on Lyric's lips even after the ball disappeared behind them. He licked his lips and ignored the heat that came to his ears. "Um," he said when he pulled his eyes away and looked down at his knees. "Well I just got this one done," he said, gesturing to the curve of his ear. "Wouldn't mind another one of those maybe. I want my eyebrow done, I've thought about my tongue." His eyes flickered back up to Lyric and down again. "Belly button....hips...." Would it be too much to tell Lyric he wanted his nipples pierced? That was one that he had never even told Layne.

[Trent Frey]

Lyric's mind refused to imagine those piercings, though he was familiar with all of them. It simply put up a blockade, and he suddenly wondered how much body modification he could get away with before his mother noticed and said something. She'd seen his eyebrow, since that one was impossible to miss, and she hadn't liked it at all, but there had been no getting him to take it out.

"I know a lot of people that gave up on the tongue piercing after like a week," he said, latching onto that as safe enough. "They wouldn't take care of it, then they'd take it out when it got infected or something."

[Jory Addison]

Jory nodded and shrugged. "Well I took this one," he said, gesturing at his new ear piercing, "Out way too early, but I've never had a problem with infections so..." He shrugged again and looked away. He knew it would be a pain in the beginning, but he loved how they looked and he didn't see himself not liking it. Especially if he had Lyric and Layne with him.

[Trent Frey]

Lyric nodded, thinking that Jory was luckier than most. Lyric hadn't had problems with his, except his tongue piercing at first, but that was normal. He'd taken care of it and it had turned out fine. "It looks good," he managed, though he couldn't do any more than glance at it before he dropped his gaze. He shouldn't be saying things like that.

[Jory Addison]

Jory looked over, heat racing up his cheeks at even that little compliment. "Thanks," he said, then looked down. "So...are you going to keep your hair down, now?" he asked, searching for something to continue the conversation so they didn't fall into an uncomfortable silence like they had done so often back at MI. He didn't want to get quiet, he wanted to keep up the easy conversation they had had so far.