Lust Or Love

Chapter 18: Make Your Choice

Three days. It only took three days for the workers at Club 666 to join his new little social media bubble with the ones from the previous club. Meaning that he could post whatever would make them either wary or unconcerned on his social media while also doing, most of the time, the opposite. However, it had also been three more days of trying to find a new way of settling himself after he serviced clients. Especially since he'd had more than just three in those 72 hours. He'd had a double on Friday, and that had lead to two rounds of nausea, which hadn't been chased away with his attempt using coffee beans. A recommendation from Chardenay. Today, now that his client was gone, he was gulping down water in a futile attempt to keep what was in his stomach there. The soft ding of his message notification caught his attention and he glanced at the text quickly.

"How are you?" The simple text was from the one person in all of Hell he didn't mind bothering him right now. Pentious.

"Honestly? Not great. I'm feeling pretty fucking gross right now." He sent the message and sighed before leaning back against the wall. He couldn't even focus on the time through the nausea, but he did hear the text notification go off through the pounding in his ears. Checking it, he frowned at the response. It was only one word with no other explanation, which perplexed him.

"Mint." Arackniss looked up at the ceiling as he tried to think of what all the snake could mean with just that. Was mint helpful for nausea? Was it a specific form that the mint had to be in? Was this an old victorian remedy? He rarely got nauseous, and when he had before, he'd either just stuck it out, or gone and grabbed some over the counter medication for it.

"Mint? Like... just eating the damned leaf?" He texted back, expecting his lover to say something specific, or possibly even pass by his joke.

"I suppose you could, though I wouldn't recommend it. Greens don't seem like your taste." Arackniss burst into laughter at the response, at the expense of his poor stomach, of course. When he calmed down, he messaged back.

"Alright, if I'm not eating it like a cow, than how do you suggest I go about it? Rub it on my belly?"

"That might work, but I'd normally suggest something a bit more... simple? Some tea, or even some mint gum might help, but the choice is yours." He chuckled at the response and stared at it for, perhaps, a bit longer than he should have.

'Fuck, this is why I love you.' The thought had him pausing. He dropped his hands to his lap and blinked while his heart jumped around his chest. He what? He hadn't even known the man for a year, and with their unending afterlives, there was no way he had the luxury of falling in love so fast, right? Looking back down at the text, he felt the fluttering in his chest and bit his lip. He would definitely have to think about that a bit more, because there was no way this was a good time for that. He focused himself back on the task at hand; testing if mint actually would help.

Mint quickly became his go to solution for the sickness after every client, which sparked a whole new conversation with his lover. Once that derailed from how the serpent had learned the remedy, to what else the snake could show him the next time they were together. While the thought made him feel a bit better, it also had a part of him growing anxious. He had three more weeks left, the end so close he could almost taste it. And yet, those three weeks felt a lot like a lifetime at this point with freedom being just out of is reach. He couldn't give up now, though, no matter how much he wanted to.

A few days passed before he ran into one of his biggest hurdles; a certain guest come to sit in and observe the auction. He'd been doing fairly well, so he knew he shouldn't be nervous, but something told him that the two men seated in Valentino's booth weren't here just to have a good time. "You know you're not supposed to do that, right?" The voice came from behind him, and it had Arackniss whipping around quickly to see who had caught him in the act. It was one of the girls who worked the club regularly. Relaxing a bit, he looked her up and down with mock suspicion.