The natural light in the studio had begun its slow retreat, thinning into that muted, honeyed pink that only arrives in the final stretch of the day. It pooled along the walls in soft gradients, catching on glass and metal surfaces, turning the room into something quieter than it had any right to be. Outside, the city continued its indifferent movement, but in here time felt deliberately slowed, held in suspension by the hum of a machine and the careful rhythm of breath.

You could feel the weight of stillness more than you could hear it.

Behind you, Sirius worked with a kind of concentration that rarely settled on him in any other context—uncharacteristically precise, almost reverent. The tattoo machine’s buzz threaded through the silence in steady passes, breaking only when he paused to reassess the line, adjusting the angle of his hand with a focus that bordered on tender. Each movement was deliberate, anchored, as though the act itself demanded a version of him the world didn’t often see.

It was strange, you thought, how something permanent could feel so quiet in its making.

And stranger still, how Sirius Black—restless, infamous, always half a step out of place in any room he entered—seemed, in this moment, entirely where he needed to be.