Young Writers Society

Skull shrugged.

"I don't have a lot of options," he said. "I wanted to stay in the area—I have a good apartment."

And good roommates, too, even though Skull wouldn't go as far to call them friends. It also didn't help that Skull's brief stint in customer service was actually several customer service jobs, all right around the same street. It limited the jobs he could get after the last one.

"What about you?" he asked. "How long have you been at Comic Corp?"

Kazimir gave himself a second, finally feeling his stomach start to settle.

Okay. He was alright, for now.

He finished up and got to his feet again, pulling up his pants.

"Just started today actually," he said as he re-buckled his belt and then opened the stall door, finally seeing the guy named Skull - which was a sick name by the way.

He seemed to be a pretty normal guy. He was tall, had dark hair, and looked funny in his all-blue janitor jumpsuit.

Kazimir walked over to the sink and pumped soap into his hands liberally.

"Been a weird day so far," he said. "But I guess weird is better than bad."

"That's true," Skull agreed. He didn't know what he had expected Kaz to look like, but he could see how Kaz had only just started working here—he was on the younger side.

As he watched Kaz go over to the sink, he finally pushed his Bluetooth headphones back. "So what exactly do you do-"

He paused, catching a glimpse of tattoos peeking out now that Kaz had his sleeves rolled back. Skull stared, intrigued. That was different.

"You have tattoos," Skull noted.

Kazimir paused in his hand-washing. He'd pushed up his sleeves a little so he didn't get them wet.

"Huh," he said, looking at the green snake tails peeking out. "Looks like I do."

He walked over to the paper towels, drying his hands.

"Didn't want people to think too many things about me the first day," he said. Even though mostly, he'd done it because his dad told him it'd give people the wrong idea.

Well, he hadn't exactly said it that way. It was full of a lot more insults. But Kazimir knew he meant that, essentially.

"What, you got any ink?"

"No," Skull said, but the question suddenly made him consider getting some. He had brought it up to his roommates, the other day, but Asmira had shut down his idea of getting one of a skull on all of his face with the argument that he was already struggling to get jobs. Nathaniel had just sighed and shaken his head.

But he could get ones elsewhere. He just had to figure out where, and of what.

"Are those..." Skull squinted, only seeing the scales on the tips of what looked like tails. "Snakes? Lizards?"

"You want to see?" Kazimir tossed the paper towel in the bin with a brow raised, but then he realized that showing off the full tattoo would mean taking off his entire shirt.

Maybe that wasn't the best thing to do in the bathroom. Or at work in general. Though... there was apparently a keep-out sign outside the door.

"Er - well," he tried to backpedal. "Part of it at least. They're snakes. One on each arm and they go over the shoulders and land right here." He patted his pecs.

Skull eyed the tattoos.

"I want to see them," he said, not realizing what Kaz had about needing to take off his shirt to see them. "How much did they cost to get?"

Kazimir laughed.

“Dude,” he said, starting to unbutton his shirt. “Sleeves like this cost an arm and a leg. Literally.”

Well, Skull seemed cool with it, and Kazimir didn’t mind showing off.

Skull winced at that.

"Looks like I'll finally have to sell one of my own organs at the black market," Skull said, leaning a little closer and off of the mop so he could get a closer look at them. "It'd take me a lifetime to get those on my janitor's paycheck."

“Well, if you need help selling organs,” Kazimir started to say, but then thought better of it. “Maybe… don’t do that for uh. A tattoo. Like, there are other ways to get money, man. Investing. Sometimes you can get lucky investing.”

Not that Kazimir had a mind for that, but he knew plenty of people who got money that way.

He finished unbottoning and threw his shirt off so it kind of just hung onto him at his wrists, but now the snakes were in full view. He realized only then that he literally could’ve just shown the guy a picture, but it was too late now. With the equivalent of a shrug in his mind, he merely turned to Skull.

“Thought they made me look pretty badass,” he said. “And I was right.”

Skull looked the tattoos over, then glanced down at his own, currently clothed arms. The snakes weren't really his thing, per se, but the idea of tattooed sleeves was growing more and more appealing. Maybe he could wrangle some money out of Nathaniel.

"They do," Skull agreed.



Puck hated hot chocolate.

He actually loved it, but he specifically hated how he could never go longer than a week without getting a stain on one of his jackets. He didn't even know how he kept getting them on his jackets at this point. He'd just be minding his own business, sipping his hot chocolate, and then he'd look down and see a stain on his jacket.

And if he didn't get it out soon, it was going to set. And then he'd have to go back to the flat he shared with Arthur and tell him he ruined yet another jacket, which would make for a very shitty ending to an already meh day.

But, of course, no one on the entire floor seemed to have napkins from their morning Dunkin run. Or a box of conveniently placed tissues. Or anything. Puck was losing his mind.

The bathroom's paper towels were his only option, and even then there was a sign out in front of them.

Puck weighed the pros and cons of ignoring it and popping in to grab a paper towel, then decided to the pros were much higher than the cons.

He entered the bathroom. He knew the janitor was going to see him going over to the paper towel dispenser, but he didn't really care. He wasn't going to lose another hoodie to one of his favorite drinks.

It took Puck a moment to realize he wasn't the only one who had entered the bathroom besides the janitor. He was in the middle of grabbing the paper towel and heading over to the sink when he saw the janitor and another employee. The second employee was shirtless. The janitor was looking him over with a critical eye, his cleaning supplies forgotten.

Puck paused. The faucet of the sink he was at kept running.

"Am I interrupting something?" he asked, bewildered.

Kazimir blinked slowly as the emo dude walked in and grabbed a paper towel, only to slow-mo look up at him and Skull.

“Dude,” he said. “Didn’t you see the sign?”

"Says you," the janitor scoffed, giving the shirtless guy a look.

Puck slowly turned off the faucet. He took a step back, ready to leave, but then he saw the shirtless guy's tattoo sleeves.

"Those are some nice tattoos," Puck said, gesturing at them with a wet paper towel. "Those are way bigger than mine. How much did it cost you to get them?"

“Why is that the first thing everyone asks?” Kazimir asked in a grumble. “I spent a ton of money on them, okay? We’re talking thousands of dollars. I saved it all myself in a very normal way. Anyways.”

He pointed to the emo dude.

“What tats do you have, guy? How much did they cost you?”

Puck rolled up the bottom of his shirt to show a pentacle tattoo on the right side of his abdomen. It was all black ink, with the star in the center and some black curved triangles around the ring.

"I just have this one," he said, pointing at it. "I got it for free from a friend. I want to get more, though, and actually force him to take my money this time. He can be stubborn about it."

The janitor eyed his tattoo.

"That's a cool tattoo," he relented.

"Do you have any?" Puck asked, letting his shirt roll back down.

The janitor shook his head.