Page 5 of Gratification in Gluttony

“You can totally salvage this! The human won’t know what hit him.” Gem pecked Toni’s cheek, and Toni’s chest swelled with confidence.

“A’ight, I got this.” He straightened his shoulders and puffed out his chest.

“You so totally got this!” Gem squealed a moment before his stomach gurgled angrily. His supportive grin dropped as his eyes widened. “It’s starting!”

“No!” Toni shook his head in denial. “Not yet. It can’t be starting already.”

Gem moaned, several hands clutching at his stomach. “We made a mistake, Toni!”

Jumping off the table, Toni pointed at the door. “Go home to shit. I’m not sharing a bathroom with you like this.”

“It’s too late,” Gem whimpered as he stumbled to his feet and started toward the bathroom. “We’ve passed the point of no return.”

“I swear to all the gods that exist,” Toni growled as he chased Gem down, “if you break my pipes again—”

“Stop yelling at me. I can’t relax my asshole when I’m being yelled at.” Gem slammed the bathroom door shut and locked it, making Toni skid to a stop to avoid smashing face-first into the wood.

“Why do you have to say it like that?” Toni whined. “The neighbors, Gem. The neighbors!”

“Oh gods, I regret everything!” Gem wailed, and Toni’s forehead met the bathroom door with a hardthunkas his stomach gave a painful twist.

With a remorseful moan, Toni squeezed his eyes shut and prepared himself for what was sure to be an equally embarrassing and disgusting night ahead. “Oh, fuck me!”

Chapter two

Curling Irons and Llama-Print Button-Ups

The club was alreadybusy with patrons, but the noise of chatter and music was dull backstage. Granted, the cast of dancers and singers were making enough noise amongst themselves as they prepared for the show ahead, but Toni didn’t mind the background buzz as he twisted the curling iron at just the right angle to get the type of curls Zef liked best.

“Like that, right?” He checked in with the Mantodea, and Zef glanced up from their lyric sheet to meet Toni’s gaze in the mirror.

Their milky, compound eyes blinked several times as they shifted their mental focus from memorizing lyrics to Toni’s question. Then they inspected the curls he’d created in the back. Slowly, Zef nodded. “Yes, they look very nice, Toni. Thank you.”

Clicking his tongue, he winked at Zef’s reflection. “No need to thank me. I got you, baby. Toni’s gonna fix you up right.”

Zef’s lips twitched in a minuscule smile, and Toni chuckled. Zef didn’t emote all that much, so when Toni could get a smile out of them, it was kind of a big deal. They’d been workingtogether for years, and he liked to think they were friends, but Zef was hard to read, even after all this time.

They were reserved and quirky, but Toni had liked them immediately. Zef, however, had not taken to Toni quite as quickly. He’d tried not to let it bother him; he hadn’t always succeeded. He was self-aware enough to know he wasn’t everyone’s favorite flavor, but he tended to grow on people, given enough time and effort. And he’d worked hard to wriggle past Zef’s defenses.

Ensuring he didn’t touch anything but Zef’s hair, he gathered another chunk of white silk and gently curled it around the iron. As the only boy growing up surrounded by older sisters, he’d learned all about styling hair, color-matching makeup, and how“notto wear navy blue with black, Toni, oh my gods!”

Of course, his pop hadn’t liked that Toni learned all that “girly shit,” but by the time he found out the extent of it, it had been too late. The knowledge had cemented itself in Toni’s brain, never to be forgotten.

So, when Zef allowed, Toni styled their hair for their performances, ignoring the part of himself—that sounded too much like his father—that screamed at him for being a pathetic wuss, telling him to “be a man,” whatever the fuck that even meant. But he told that voice to go fuck itself. He could be whatever man he wanted, and he just so happened to be a man that enjoyed doing his friend’s hair.

“I’m so sorry I’m late!” Gem wailed as he bustled into Zef’s prep space with the energy of a hurricane. He dropped cases of makeup and clattering brushes on the surface of the vanity and gasped for air. “Please tell me you didn’t start your makeup already.”

Zef shook their head, and Toni followed the movement with the iron so as not to yank out any strands or ruin the integrityof the curl—“Integrity of the curl is key, Toni. Fuck that up, and you might as well get a perm like a common whore!”

“Toni ain’t no common whore, Flo,” Toni muttered under his breath as he released the curl from the iron with a smug grin. “Now that’s a beaut.”

“It’s creepy when you talk to yourself like that,” Gem said, three red eyes scrutinizing Toni as the other five focused on preparing the makeup palette.

Without looking away from Zef’s hair, Toni flipped his best friend off. “It keeps me in the zone, and when I’m in the zone, I create masterpieces. So shut your beautiful mouth and let Toni work.”

Gem snickered as he mixed foundations on the back of his hand until he had the correct green shade for Zef’s complexion. Zef’s ghost of a smile grew to an amused half-grin, and Toni caught their subtle chuckle as they turned to Gem and closed their eyes in preparation. They kept perfectly still as Toni curled another chunk of their wispy hair and Gem started blotting the makeup on their cheeks and forehead.

Toni perfected the last curl as Gem finished contouring their face into a more feminized version of themself. As the Araknis started on the eyeshadow, Toni grabbed the hair spray and shook the can.

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