Traditional style tattoo of two clasped hands with red roses, green leaves and a dagger on a person's lower abdomen, above a grey waistband.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Handshake with roses and a dagger on the stomach

Traditional · Other · Mixed · Photo

A traditional style tattoo shows two hands clasped in a handshake, with ornate cuffs at each wrist, framed by red roses and dark green leaves. A dagger and small red drops sit at the lower edges, and the hands are shaded in soft greys and skin tones. The tattoo fills the lower abdomen, with the navel visible above it and a grey waistband below.

Traditional Other Hand Rose Dagger Leaves Cuff Blood drop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at the Rosebank Ballroom trusted a handshake that lasted longer than a foxtrot, so when Eddie Marr kept hold of Joe Sinclair's hand through the whole of the second number, the floor went quiet as a chapel. I was behind the cloakroom hatch with a tray of raffle tickets, and I saw what Joe had in his other hand: a stiletto with a bone grip, the one he swore he'd dropped off Alexandra Dock. Eddie's knuckles went white. A bead of red slid off the blade and landed on the parquet, bright as a petal.

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Neither man let go. They spoke low, the way men do when they have been rehearsing an argument for years and have finally run out of words for it. I heard the words pier, tallies and Tuesdays, and then Joe said Eddie's mother's name, and something in Eddie's face gave way. Their shirt cuffs had been starched that morning, and both were ruined now, stiff and spotted, but they kept their arms raised between them like two men holding up a bridge.

The tenor saxophone tore a note in half and the spell broke. Joe let go first and pressed a folded handkerchief into his own palm. Eddie did not look at the blood. He looked at the door, then at me, and I understood I was being asked to forget the whole thing.

I didn't. I swept up the petals the girls had thrown from their bouquets, and I kept the dagger when I found it in the bin with the bloody linen. Next Saturday they came in together, Joe with a plaster across his palm and Eddie with a red rose pinned to his lapel, and they took the same table by the stage. Neither would say whose blood had been spilt, and the band played on.