Chapter 9 #3
“Not enough,” I say, stepping in to fuss the lapel, tug the tee hem, palm the belt line like I’m checking a weapon. “One size down in the tee, jacket is good. Jeans—the black ones. Turn around.”
He turns. The denim does obscene work. I exhale like the Holy Spirit just pinched me. “Keep walking,” I say faintly. He smirks but obeys, because he loves it when I ask for what I want.
Marrow waits his turn like a gentleman at a guillotine.
He’s already holding silk: smoke-blue, bone-white, a red so rich it hums. I grab more—inky navy, pale gray with the faintest sheen, a midnight stripe that only appears if you sin at the right angle.
Then I pluck a suit off the rack—not rigid banker armor; something soft-shouldered and modern, fitted in all the right places.
“Collar open,” I remind him. “Top two buttons—no arguments.”
He undresses with quiet hands, then slips into silk like he was poured into it on a dare.
The smoke-blue makes his mouth unfair. The buttons stop where I told them to stop, leaving a polite triangle of sin.
When I slide the relaxed jacket over his shoulders, he lets out a breath like someone just unlocked the key to his soul.
“How does it feel?” I ask.
“Like a rule broken gently,” he says, fingers touching his open throat. “Like comfort, which I did not know could be purchased.”
“Today it can,” I say. “Spin.”
He does, slowly, the fabric moving like water over bone. He won’t look in the mirror. He looks only at me, waiting. I nod. He glows in that private, dangerous way that makes me think of late-night churches and locked gardens.
We make piles. Shameless, tottering piles. I treat purchase limit placards like personal threats and stack ten. The saleswoman appears and vanishes like a helpful ghost, ferrying hangers and folding tissue; I pay her in smiles sharp enough to skin every time her eyes wander to one of my monsters.
Between fittings, I keep them talking, because shopping is just an excuse to hear what their mouths do when their hands are busy.
“Favorite fabric so far,” I demand, tugging a sweater hem into obedience.
“Cash…mere,” Bonehead says carefully, like he’s naming a saint. He rubs his cheek against his own shoulder again. “Soft like October voice.”
I nearly combust. “Correct.”
Skully rests a hip against the mirror frame, jacket hanging open, green eyes eating me for breakfast. “This-” he tugs the tee at his collarbone “-because it feels like I shouldn’t like it, and I do.”
“Congratulations, you have taste,” I say, and he rolls his eyes so hard I can hear it, then stands a little taller anyway.
Marrow strokes a cuff where the silk breaks light. “This,” he says, “because it is not armor pretending to be kindness. It is kindness pretending to be armor.”
I pat his open collar. “And we love to pretend.”
We do rounds. Bonehead tries a henley and declares the buttons toys.
“Buttons later,” I promise and he brightens like I invented sunlight.
I slide a plush beanie over his hair—charcoal, ribbed, criminally soft.
He preens. “Warm,” he says, tugging it down to his ears.
I add five more—one of every color—to the pile.
Skully tests three more washes of denim and ends up keeping all of them because compromise is for the living. He lifts two belts; I ditch both and loop a plain black strip through his jeans, then lean in to settle the tongue. He forgets to breathe for a beat, which is adorable for an undead guy.
Marrow finds a knit tie and looks like it’s a snake; I pry it from his hands and hang a slim silver chain at his throat instead, where the collar opens like a small, tasteful sin. He touches it, surprised. “That’s…comfortable,” he admits, as if the word has teeth that might bite him.
“It’s supposed to be,” I say. “You don’t suffer for beauty unless I’m there to narrate it.”
We detour through shoes because feet are foreplay for outfits.
Bonehead chooses black boots with thick soles; he stomps experimentally and the floor forgives him.
“Good,” he pronounces, delighted by the thud.
Skully picks Chelsea boots, black as confession, and tests the heel like he intends to step on somebody’s throat.
I clap. Marrow slips into sleek loafers that whisper, not shout; when he walks, the leather murmurs secrets.
We overflow hangers. The clerk tries to be helpful with a limit sign; I smile and hand her my bat-wallet. “We’re building a wardrobe, not a weekend,” I say, and she senses the religious fervor, bows out, and brings more bags.
“Tell me a thing you never got to have,” I say, because I am greedy for their pieces. I shove another sweater at Bonehead; he catches it like a firefighter saves a kitten.
Skully answers without thinking. “A shirt that wasn’t someone else’s first.” He pets the cashmere like it might flee. “Always had hand-me-downs. Always someone’s before mine.”
I add three more sweaters, five flannels, and another leather jacket—feeling weirdly violent about it. “Yours, yours, yours,” I chant, stacking them. “No ghosts in these but me.”
Skully’s mouth curves. “A jacket I didn’t have to steal back,” he says lightly, and then, softer, “A place to leave it where it’ll still be there in the morning.”
“You’re hung up in my closet,” I tell him, scandalously sincere. He ducks his head, ears pink, and pretends to examine a seam.
Marrow is quiet a long moment. He sets a pale silk shirt on the counter with reverence. “Permission to be undone,” he says finally, almost too soft to catch. His fingers brush his open collar. “If I asked, they would fasten it tighter.”
I run a finger down his sternum, stopping at the second undone button like I’m laying a claim. “I’ll never fasten it tighter than you want,” I say, and he unspools a little in my palm like silk personified.
“Didn’t get to have stuff,” Bonehead finally says, oddly soft. “I work. They yell. I work more hard.”
I stop moving. For a second, the whole world does too.
Then something in me rips—softly, like lace tearing.
I start shoving more into his arms. Flannel, denim, leather. Another pair of boots. A belt he’ll definitely lose.
“Then you get stuff now,” I snarl, half-laughing, half-shaking. “You get everything. All of it. You’ll drown in it.”
He blinks one slow blink but I’m already piling more, voice rising like I’m warding off ghosts.
“You don’t work. You smash. I spoil. That’s the deal.”
I throw another sweater at his chest hard enough to make him grunt. Then he’s smiling at me like the sun is shining out of my ass. But it still doesn’t feel good enough.
“Mine now,” I say. “You. The shirt. The smashing. All of it.”
By the time the register sings, we have an entire store's supply of clothes. Piles and piles. I’m drunk on stacks.
We do another lap because I’m a monster with a card.
Bonehead finds a blanket-soft cardigan; I say yes before he finishes the question.
Skully pretends he doesn’t want the threadbare black hoodie in the lounge section, then lets me put it in the stack with a put-upon sigh that fools no one.
Marrow lifts a lightweight overcoat the color of smoke at midnight; I nod, and he slips into it like nightfall itself.
Whenever someone dares to look too long, the boys get this wicked satisfaction, like wolves watching me bare teeth at thieves trying to poach what’s mine.
Skully’s hand finds my belt loop like he’s holding me back.
Bonehead drapes an arm along my shoulders, casual as a barricade.
Marrow laces our fingers, thumb absent-minded on my pulse as if syncing our metronomes.
At the counter, the clerk asks, “Receipt with you or in the bag?” with the doomed hope of a woman who suspects I’m Santa for bad ideas.
“Neither,” I say, scandalized. “They’re keeping everything.”
Bonehead hugs the largest bag like a pillow. “Soft,” he informs it, and the bag agrees in paper crinkles.
We hit another store for pajamas, socks, and indecently nice underwear because I’m a completionist. Bonehead chooses thick, cushy socks in charcoal and black; I add one pair with tiny bones because I’m me.
Skully scowls at the price of boxer-briefs and then blushes when I throw in six.
Marrow touches a drawer of silk boxers like he’s about to apologize to them; I pick one in every color.
I decide to take them to one last store for more festive gear—because it’d be a crime to not have any Halloween pieces in rotation if they’re going to be seen with me in public.
This one isn’t a pop-up with plastic tombstones; it’s the fancy place that does limited seasonal edit collections and pretends they invented bats.
The sign in the window says AUTUMN NOCTURNE in serif letters so smug I could lick them off.
Inside: soft lighting like candlelit pews, a rack of knit things the color of midnight, a table of accessories that twinkle like witch rings.
“Restraint,” I tell myself aloud, then immediately grab three things.
Bonehead’s hand is already buried wrist-deep in a pumpkin-colored cashmere scarf, expression transported. “Soft,” he groans, rubbing his face in it like a mastiff who found a sofa. He turns to me, hopeful. “October color.”
“Put it around your neck,” I order. I loop it once, twice—thick and generous—and tuck the end down his chest. The orange makes his hazel eyes burn like bonfires.
He stands there with his enormous hands folded on the scarf ends like a Victorian portrait of A Good Boyfriend.
I add a second one in a deep moss, because fall, and a black one with tiny knitted bats so subtle you only see them when he moves.
He doesn’t question the pile; he just keeps petting it like it purrs.
Skully tries to look above it all and be unimpressed by seasonal anything, which is hilarious because he’s drifting toward a table display like a cat pretending not to care about the laser pointer.
There’s a rack of heavyweight tees with barely-there, tone-on-tone prints: a bat whose wingspan appears only when the fabric catches light; a jack-o’-lantern face so ghosted it’s more suggestion than graphic.
I hold up the bat tee. “This is your personality but legal to wear at brunch.”
He huffs. “I don’t do brunch.”
“You’ve just never been to an October Halloway brunch, you’ll change your mind.
” I shove it at him, along with a midnight long-sleeve with stitched elbow patches like little black coffins.
He pretends to sneer—then drags the bat tee over his head in the aisle.
When it settles, the shadow-wings bloom across his chest as he breathes.
He looks down at it, expression betraying him for a split second, then glances up at me to gauge my damage.
“Oh,” I say faintly. “Oh, that’s illegal.”
He tries not to preen, but fails. “It’s…fine.”
“Get two,” I tell the nearest mortal with a barcode gun. “No—three. He sweats sin.”
Marrow isn’t touching anything at first; he’s staring at a set of cufflinks shaped like tiny antique keys, the metal so dark it could’ve been dug from a crypt.
Beside them: narrow silk pocket squares with discreet onyx skulls in the weave, visible only if you’re rude enough to stare.
I put the skull square into his palm and the keys on top. His lashes lift, slow.
“You think I am a man who wears decoration,” he says, almost a question.
“I think you are a man who deserves to be decorated,” I say, placing a hand at his open collar, still two buttons loosened like we agreed. “And I’m the one who gets to do it.”
“If October wishes,” he murmurs.
“I do.” I drape a soft-black scarf across his shoulders—not wool; a slick, weightless silk-wool blend that falls like night. He touches the edge, thoughtful. Content.
At a small jewelry tray, I find a slim matte-black ring.
Skully eyes it like a trap. “Not my thing,” he starts, and then I slide it onto his middle finger, feel his knuckles flex under my touch, and he forgets the end of the sentence.
He flips me the bird with it, which is his love language, and I beam.
Bonehead finds a beanie with a tiny stitched crescent moon and pulls it on immediately, ears swallowed, face transformed into the kind of cozy menace you only see in ads for winter crimes.
“Warm,” he announces. I pat his chest, hands lingering far past public levels of appropriate, and he rumbles like a truck idling in my driveway.
I throw themed sweater after themed sweater into their arms as we keep talking, because that’s the point. The clothes are just knives I hand them while I ask where they bleed. I want to own my monsters. Heart and soul.
“Tell me a Halloween memory,” I demand, tossing an assortment of Halloween themed purses at a salesman to add to our collection; spider, coffin, skull, a jack-o’-lantern. “One that didn’t hurt.”
Bonehead thinks, eyes tipping up as if he’s checking a sky he once knew. “Children,” he says finally. “Laughing. Running. I carry a barrel of apples. Boss say, ‘Stand there, look big.’ I look big. Children laugh harder.”
“You were a decoration,” Skully snorts, not unkind.
Bonehead swells. “Yes.”
I want to hug the history out of him. “We’re bobbing apples this week,” I tell him. “I’ll make it indecent.”
Skully scratches the back of his neck beneath the new leather.
“I smoked behind a church after a show,” he says.
“Halloween night, youth group kids in dollar-store capes dared each other to ask for a light.
I gave them one and stole their shit and left ‘em with a pack of gum instead. They thought I was the devil.” He looks sideways at me. “Felt right.”
“Sounds like you taught them a good life lesson,” I say, and he looks like he is accepting my words as scripture.
Marrow speaks last, as always, a soft ribbon unspooling.
“At the harvest ball,” he says, “they put carved gourds in the windows, candles guttering inside like dying hearts. I was told not to dance. I danced alone in the side room with the shutters half-open, and a bat came to watch.” He smiles, shy and feral. “It stayed the whole song.”
I put a hand to his cheek and kiss him once, just once, in a way that makes the salesgirl behind the counter almost drop her pen. “Of course it did,” I whisper. “You were the prettiest thing on the property.”
We pay. The register rings and rings, a little ghoul of a sound.
Mission completed.