Loki Laufeyson - Saviour {2}

Chapter Twenty One - Dress Shopping

"Hey Emily?" Pepper's voice broke through my spiralling thoughts. "Are you okay? You look like you're panicking."

I roughly shook the thoughts out of my head as I jolted myself back into the present, looking up at Pepper to see her waving her hand in front of my face to bring me out of my mindless staring.

"Sorry." I tried to keep my voice as steady as I could. "I just... I think you should pick the fabric, it is your dress after all."

"Well, I have a couple I have narrowed down." She turned away, thankfully dropping the whole 'panicking about dress fabric' thing as she walked over to a wall of different fabrics. "I did like this silver lace last year, but I also just spotted the gold one."

She led me over to the wall of laces and pulled out the two she was thinking of, and bit my lip nervously, looking at them both as I tried to imagine which one would look best on her.

"I think silver would look nice." I said eventually and she pulled it off the wall.

"Silver it is." She grinned at me. "Thank you Emily."

I let out a heavy sigh as she wandered over to the other two girls and tried to readjust myself, cursing myself for getting flustered over dress fabrics.

After a couple more minutes, just after Nat had settled on her fabric, the smiling lady from before came back in with four other people trailing behind her, three women in black suits and white shirts and a man, also in a black suit but with a purple shirt underneath it.

"Ladies," the smiling lady said to all of us, "these are our best dress designers. You will be in great hands."

That seemed to be some sort of signal because the four dressmakers suddenly moved towards us and I was a little thrown off by their sudden movement. They must have been preassigned to us, because the three women went straight to Pepper, Wanda and Nat and started to strike up conversations with them like they were old friends.

"Oh well aren't you a beauty, newbie?" The man suddenly spoke, his words of a higher pitch than I was expecting as I turned to him, startled to find him standing so close. "Oh, I love your hair, is it natural?"

I was frozen in place as he suddenly reached out to swirl a lock of my hair in his fingers, there was nothing malicious about him, and I somehow felt comfortable in his presence, smiling softly.

"Yes it is." I spoke nervously. "I like your hair too."

It was true, his black hair was in tight curls, but it had sudden streaks of all different colour through his hair, which somehow suited his personality even though I had never met him before.

"Oh bless." He fanned his face and I couldn't help but smile more at his antics. "Come on honey, lets get you to a room."

He put a gentle hand on my back and guided me towards what had looked like one of the change rooms on the back wall, but instead was another big room with mannequins scattered around dressed in all different styles of dresses and suits.

"Now," he drew my attention back to him, "before we get started, what is your name, honey?"

"Emily. " I smiled faintly again. "You?"

"Oh I'm Marselle." He held out his hand for me to shake. "Emily is a beautiful, a strong yet gentle name."

"Thank you." I smiled softly as he darted around the room, gathering up measuring tapes.

"Oh please darling, don't thank me." He stood in front of me. "Now, why don't you take everything off so we can get started?"

I immediately froze and swallowed nervously as I fiddled with the hem of the shirt I was wearing as Marselle turned around to grab a couple more things. As he turned back around and saw me still dressed, one of his charming smiles immediately lit up his face.

"Oh don't worry about me looking." He said. "I'm gay sweetie. I'll only start looking if you bring in some of your other Avenger friends."

He winked and began to set out all of the equipment on a bench in front of us. My eyes quickly darted to the door of the room that was now shut and very hesitantly, I slowly peeled off only my shirt. He came over, not making a single comment about the ribs poking through my skin, the scars shining in the light or the swollen red scars littering the upper half of me. He whistled a tune under his breath as he measured my arms, chest, waist, hips.

I slowly felt more comfortable under his gaze and he occasionally asked me questions about myself, nothing related to my ugly body thankfully, but more about my powers, what I did with the Avengers, he even jokingly asked at one point if any of the Avengers were single, and then laughed it off as I turned bright red.

Once he had taken measurements of my whole body and I was dressed back in my clothes, he started to share designs with me. I wasn't really... knowledgeable on the topic of dresses, so I heavily relied on Marselle to tell me what he thought would look best on me.

In the end, we decided on something simple, since I said I wanted nothing revealing. We settled on a gentle but deep curving neckline that stopped just before it could reveal anything I didn't want others to see. I wasn't completely happy with it, but Marselle assured me that a nice necklace would 'complement me well'. I didn't even tell him that I didn't own such jewellery.

The rest of the dress was a combination of a tight fitting and loose fitting design, it kind of was tight around my chest, not completely though, before it flowed straight down on the rest of my body. Marselle had managed to convince me to add in a leg slit to add in extra interest in the dress, and when I was squirming around nervously, he said that I could always cover anything up with makeup.

Once he had finalized the designs, he sent me home with a gift bag of chocolates which he was apparently meant to give every customer, but he gave me enough for probably three customers. Just before I went into the waiting room to wait for the others, Marselle promised me that he was going to come visit when he delivered the dress to help me on, saying that I would look stunning and told me not to worry. He hugged me once more before and letting me go.