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Aranea Serket had a big, fat crush on Cronus Ampora.
He was everything she was not; cool, namely (despite Meenah’s fervent assertions to the contrary, ‘aw SHELL no Serket, you chill as muhhfuckin krill up in dis bitch!’…whatever that meant). He was handsome, having grown into his good looks by the grace of genetics and hair grease and tight denim and shiny leather. He talked like a young royalite who’d been shanghaied sweeps ago and had adopted the dialect of swashbucklers. She secretly liked the way he called everybody sport and chief and cat. She’d never heard of a “cigarette”, and she wasn’t sure what a “1950’s human-style greaser” was, but she thought Cronus Ampora was one good-looking, cool motherfucker, and thus, she’d maintained a flush crush on him for several sweeps. The only troll who knew was the only other seadweller inhabiting their afterlife.
Aranea had, on many occasions, attempted to pacify Meenah’s ravings regarding the amorous seatroll’s numerous advances.
“He’s just lonely, is all,” Aranea would say, aware of Meenah’s disgusted tchh. “Maybe he’s not so bad, if you would simply take the time to get to know him. After all, you can’t judge a book by its cover, and an uncovered book may very well be a great story undiscovered!”
“Yo, Serks,” Meenah replied, her tone caustic. “I know you was off all gettin your lil info booth all set up or whatevah, so I take it you didn’t see that seadwellin slimeball totes snap ‘Tuna’s skateboard in half. That sound like the kinda guy you wanna go gettin a flush crush on?” She raised an eyebrow, waiting, daring Aranea to object in the face of that sound knowledge.
Admittedly, Aranea had not known of that occurrence. “I…well, maybe-”
“Listen, Serks, Ampora’s a total d-bag. Fo sho. He’s a greasy human-wannabe sleazeball who’ll hit on anyfin with a glubbin hole and a heartbeat. The guy’s straight-up trippin.” She slung an arm around Aranea. “Cod knows I wouldn’t wanna nice girl like you gettin’ mixed up in some shit wit Amwhore-a.”
Aranea blushed deep cerulean. “Wow, Meenah, I don’t think that was really necessary.” She squirmed out from under Meenah’s arm, and the seatroll grinned wide and toothy.
“Ain’t no thang, Serket. I’m just lookin out.” She stepped back and turned to leave, then cast a pupil-less glance over her shoulder. “But sea-riously, don’t be messin’ wit Ampora, hear?” Her smile faltered, and her eyes crinkled up. “He’ll just stomp all over your cold dead heart with them fake leather boots a his.”
--
Aranea slumped against her booth (it’s an exposition booth, Meenah, not an ‘info booth’) and sighed. Her claws tapped against the chipped plywood board, leaving little nicks in the darker grain. The wind rustled the cherry blossom leaves in the tree canopy overhead, and a few petals drifted down in the breeze, twirling in little circles before landing softly atop her booth and her arm. She stopped tapping and reached out to gently pick one up, turning it to admire it from all angles.
“Pretty impressivwe setup you got goin’ on here, kitten.”
She inhaled sharply, jerking her head up to see Cronus Ampora standing there, hands in pockets, offering her a sideways smile that was only a little bit lecherous. Tingly warmth surged through her. Her fingertips gripped the petal tightly, crushing it with nerves. “Oh, hello, Cronus,” she stuttered.
He sauntered closer and leaned over, all but draping himself across the booth, propping up an elbow and resting his chin in his palm. “So, wvhat’s a stunnin’ figure a feminine beauty like yourself doin’ out here all alone?” He stared down at her, ghost-milky eyes haunting in their dead whiteness, still managing to radiate his lascivious intentions. Even in death, Cronus Ampora was nothing but transparent.
Aranea pressed her lips together. Her mouth was suddenly very dry. “I…Well. This is my…information booth,” she settled for the lesser term, aware that her chosen term for the structure sounded stupid and pretentious all of a sudden. “I’m…providing information to those who wish to know more about the...quest to defeat whichever invincible foe has been causing the explosions in the sky recently.” Her dead heart pounded with excitement and nerves, Cronus is standing right here, talking to me and not Meenah! and the sensation felt strange in a chest used to feeling hollow and empty.
“Oh really nowv?” He raised an eyebrow, and his whole countenance shifted from leering to curious. “And howv’s that goin’ for you, doll?” He settled into a more comfortable position, and Aranea’s breath hitched in her chest because he looked like he was planning on staying here for a while. “Hope you’re havwin’ more luck than Meenah and her wvhole ‘ghost army’ campaign.” He smiled again, all charm and slicked-back hair and devilish good looks. Aranea resisted the urge to sigh contentedly, swooning like a cartoon character with little red hearts popping above her head.
“Admittedly, I haven’t had any willing volunteers,” she confessed, pouting slightly (she’d seen Porrim utilize the power of the pout before, and many had fallen in her wrathful wake. Normally, Aranea wouldn’t sink so low as to employ feminine wiles to manipulate the chosen object of her affections, but this was Cronus Ampora and he was notorious for falling for this sort of thing; she figured it was worth a shot). “So I’ve also begun offering my counseling services to those who are in need of an ear to listen.”
At that, Cronus’s eyes widened. “Really?” He asked, straightening up. “You’d…listen to somebody vwith some problems vweighin’ on his mind?”
Aranea’s heart skipped a beat. Was he about to pour his heart out to her, bare his soul and inner turmoil and expect her to fix him up? Kiss him all better? She thought, and stifled a giggle, smothering girlish fantasies with the professionalism of duty. “Certainly,” she said, and his earfins spread wider, fluffed with happiness. Aranea guessed he wasn’t used to expecting a positive response to that question, or any of his questions, for that matter. Not for the first time, her heart ached for him. She almost pitied him, but pale wasn’t the quadrant she was looking to fill with Cronus, no sir. “What’s on your mind, Cronus?”
“Evwerything,” he sighed, looking down at the grain pattern in the wood. “Lovwe is a fickle beast.”
“I have heard that, yes.” She sympathized with him; really, she did. “Care to elaborate?”
He tapped his nails on the booth, seatroll claws that were finer and sharper than landdwellers’. “Vwell, let me just say that by nowv I’m obvwiously used to cats turnin’ me down wvhenever I offer em a proposition, but the constant rejection eats awvay at a guy, you knowv?” He cast his gaze downward, and she swore his lower lip trembled, unlit cigarette twitching slightly in his mouth. “I guess gals these days just ain’t into sensitivwe and artistic types.”
Aranea felt like she was fuzzy inside, floating on a cloud of contentment. Cronus was spilling his guts just for her. “Well, Cronus, it seems like you just haven’t found the right person yet, that’s all.” She gave him an earnest smile. “Everything will work out in the end. I’m sure there’s somebody in this afterlife in your same predicament, wishing for a sensitive, artistic guy like you to come along and sweep them off their feet.”
Cronus glanced up at her, and his mouth was set firmly in a scowl, but she saw a little hope dancing in his white eyes. “Don’t jerk me around, kitten. I’vwe been the vwictim of the cruel and capricious game of lovwe for epochs. I knowv wvhen I’m being fed bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit,” she insisted, and gave in to the urge to place a hand over one of his (sweet troll jegus that was exciting), heart fluttering at the skin-on-skin contact. His own eyes widened, and he looked down at her hand atop his, and she figured he was used to girls touching him much more violently than she had. “I’m nothing if not a storyteller, but I wouldn’t take advantage of the vulnerabilities of somebody trusting enough to be willing to confide in me.”
He looked up at her, purple color rising in his face. “You callin me vwulnerable, Serket?”
She didn’t speak. They stared at each other, gazes unwavering. Aranea felt her face grow hot, and her heart pounded fast and strong, and without thinking she moved forward and pressed her lips to his. He tasted faintly of tobacco and he smelled like expensive douchebag cologne and scented hair grease. Cronus’s eyes bulged, and the cigarette fell from the corner of his mouth. His hand flew up to the back of her head, pulling her deeper into the kiss, eliciting a small squeal from her throat. Tingling heat surged through her whole body, endorphins flooding her system. She felt alive for the first time in sweeps.
Cronus broke the kiss first. Gone was all of his bravado and fake image, left behind wide eyes and an expression of awe and disbelief so raw it made Aranea’s still-pounding heart ache even more. “…you do this to all a your customers?” He asked, and Aranea was pleased to hear he sounded as breathless as she felt.
Aranea reached a hand up to tentatively brush the wavy pompadour atop his head, something she’d been waiting eons to do, and unsurprisingly found it stiff and hard from too much product, but she didn’t care because her heart was about to explode out of her chest and she was breathlessly happy and her head was spinning she had just made out with Cronus Ampora her flush crush. “No,” she told him honestly. “My other customers demand that I pay them five boonbucks to listen to me.”
He furrowed his brow, and then smirked. “Vwell, kitten, you havwe my undivwided attention. And since I’m such a nice guy, I ain’t gonna charge you nofin for it.”
Aranea’s heart swelled in her chest, and her toes curled inside her blue Mary Janes. “That’s certainly nice to hear,” she said, and a genuine smile broke out across his face as she leaned forward to kiss him again.