Page 13 of Monster Married
“I’m blaming you for this,” Vergis ground out at me.
His salesperson, after consulting with Lissir, had made him wear a silvery white onesie that laced up at the back with darker blue swirly designs, wide around his legs but tight around his toned chest and arms, with a low neckline. There had been some commotion when the red-clad seller had suggested Vergis remove the knife holsters strapped to his legs to try on something more formfitting. The wide pant legs were a compromise, apparently.
“How is this my fault?” I asked as the seller in sunflower yellow laced a too-fancy, too-golden, too-shimmery shirt up my back that just made me think how badly I’d stand out if I needed to hide. Then I remembered I wouldn’t need to hide here and took a moment to admire how the color looked against my clavicles.
“Oh, this is all your fault. You decide you want to be happily mated all of a sudden, and now we have to endure this.”
“Well, excuse me.” I tried to keep my tone pleasant. The sunflower-yellow seller made eye contact and gestured to my left wrist, the one with the friendship bracelet around it. I nodded and held up my hand for him to get a good look. “You said I should just date Ink.”
“Date. I said date. But you had to take it a step further, and now they’re making me wear white. You realize that I do not wear white? It’s the Devil’s color.”
“You think I usually dress like a holiday ornament?” A shiny holiday ornament that you put in the place of honor at the very tip of the tree. Hmm. Why did the tip of the tree make me think of my boyfriend’s barbed cock?
The cherry-red seller carefully put a white ribbon around one of Vergis’s horns, and Vergis bit out a complaint to him, but the seller just said something soothing, smiled sweetly, and kept going. Those were some brave salespeople, I had to give them that.
“You’re more into street urchin chic with cat prints,” Vergis grumbled.
“Well, I’m sorry the apocalypse happened and robbed me of my fashion sense. And cats are cute, for your information.”
“The apocalypse did that?” Vergis snorted. “I’m not sure I believe that.”
“Like you’re one to talk. Do you own anything other than combat pants and a hoodie and a bunch of knives to accessorize with?”
Vergis grinned at me. “I always look great when I’m gutting mouthy street twinks.”
Just then Lissir and Nokim walked back in. Both had changed, but no one was fussing quite so much over them, apparently trusting them to manage their own laces and buttons. Lissir was dressed in black again, Nokim in taupe, though what they wore now looked a lot fancier than what they’d been wearing when I’d first met them.
It made me think of them getting shot at again, of their old clothes being ruined by bullets and blood, and I had to stop myself from spiraling into the what-ifs of what might’ve happened if I hadn’t done…whatever I had done.
“Who knew Vergis could be so chatty?” Lissir looked Vergis up and down.
Nokim looked at Vergis too, but his gaze lingered, doing more than just examining how the clothes fit. “And so handsome.”
“Are we done, please?” I sounded like a distressed twink-damsel, because unlike Lissir, my acting skills sucked. I wasn’t really distressed about playing dress-up, but remembering the shootout was upsetting, pretty much strengthening my conviction that magic was bad and I didn’t want to have any part in it and should probably give all of it a wide berth.
“Hmm.” Lissir circled me. Nokim kept stealing glances at Vergis while Vergis oozed murderous intent, something the seller fussing with the ribbons around his horns ignored completely. That bagu had nerves of steel.
The seller in yellow held out a selection of sashes to Lissir, and they all more or less matched the friendship bracelet around my wrist. Lissir easily picked one, and the seller wrapped it around my waist before tying it with a painfully complex knot on my left side.
Lissir put his hands on his hips. “I think this might do it. Nokim?”
Nokim tore his gaze off a frowning Vergis, who’d turned to a mirror now the seller was happy with his horn decorations.
Nokim grinned at me. “I’d want to taste every inch of him.”
“Very good,” Lissir said.
“How’s that good?” I asked.
I was summarily ignored. That was kind of sad. My golden shirt really made me sparkle.
Lissir ended up chatting with the salespeople for a while longer, and he settled the bill by signing and stamping it. Nokim was excused from carrying the bags after all since delivering your purchases was a service this store provided. Apparently they would also deliver our old clothes back to the hotel, which was nice and made it so I could walk out in sparkly gold with Vergis in his Devil’s white.
Once Lissir was done with his chatting, we were finally free. Out on the street, the afternoon was growing long and stretching into early evening, the shadows lengthening, casting much of the narrow street the store was in in semi-darkness. I hadn’t been paying attention to the time at all, but breakfast had run late, and the shopping even later. Most of my first day on a different planet had slipped by me.
When people stared at our group now, they looked at Vergis more than me. I wasn’t an expert in horn decorations, but what the seller had done with his was impressive. The white ribbons wound around the ridges of his ibex horns from base to tip, where the free ends dangled, weighted with silver charms. That seemed to make him more of a looker than I was, even in sparkly gold.
It made me wonder what bagua considered beautiful. Maybe Vergis was sort of an ugly duckling bagu who cleaned up super nice. Objectively, he was pretty damn fit, with slim hips and a nice butt. Only objectively though. Vergis was and would always be an ass, never mind what his ass looked like.
