“How’d you like to get married?”
Nadine eyeballed the cheerful blonde suspiciously, currently sprawled naked beside her on their blanket on the floor. Nadine liked the way that Billy sprawled, liked the way that her body settled itself, liked trying to count her freckles when she wasn’t looking.
“To who?”
“To me, dumbass.”
“Part of a con?”
“Not really, no.” Nadine was now confused. Billy had never much seemed the marrying type – had most definitely never seemed the monogomous type. But she trusted Billy, and so she waited for Billy to say something that would make this notion make sense. “There’s this cult, downtown – Cult of Lilut. Some kind of apocalypse thing – you know how cults are. And everyone in it, every damn one, is fucking gorgeous. Like, not gorgeous the way supermodels are gorgeous, but they’ve all got this… unf. And the thing with Lilut is, their big thing is orgies. Just… all these people, all different kinds of people, fuckin’. Orgasms are supposed to be sacred. And there’s all kinds of ways to join, but one of ’em’s to get married in one of their big orgy ceremonies. So all these couples go – or triangles, or stars, or whatever, because they give no fucks about monogamy – and they get married, and then they consummate the marriage by fucking everyone. Or, like – whoever you want to have sex with. Because they’ve got all these rules about consent and safety and shit, and if you break them you’re out of the club. So it’s like a swinger’s club that isn’t all full of creepy old assholes. And I know it’s got to be good, because the other day I heard some shithead in a fedora complaining about how they kicked him out, and I was like, I have found my people.”
“Billy – Billy, seriously.” Nadine sat up, took Billy’s hands in her own and gazed deeply into her lover’s eyes. “You had me at orgy.”
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
“I don’t like this cult shit.”
“Yes, Jeff, you said that already,” Nadine sighed, braiding Billy’s hair into something that would work better with the flowing white robes they were both wearing. Flowing white robes were not mandatory orgy attire, but both girls agreed that they liked the ambience. And the easy access.
Jeff, meanwhile, was pacing back and forth across the floor of the bar, stroking his salt-and-pepper beard anxiously. “What if it’s – what if it’s some kind of rape gang? If they’re lettin’ in teenagers-”
“Age of consent is sixteen here, Jeff,” Billy pointed out, but this did not seem to help.
“Goddammit, Billy Dean, I’m not joking! Ain’t no grown man gonna fuck a sixteen year-old that ain’t a pedophile.”
“We sure do know a lot of pedophiles,” Nadine observed dryly.
“Don’t I know it,” Jeff muttered, brows furrowed and face dark. Jeff chose to take a very fatherly role with his little gang, and it was rare that he approved of the girls’ antics.
“If it turns out to be a rape gang, we’ll let you know so you can burn the whole place down,” Billy assured him, but this did not stop his scowling.
“Ain’t even legal, marryin’ sixteen year-olds.”
“We don’t really need it to be legal,” Nadine began.
“Since we don’t exactly pay taxes or have health insurance,” Billy finished.
“Don’t you go drinkin’ anything, neither. If I hear you went and killed yourselves in some mass suicide bullshit, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“Yes, Jeff,” the girls intoned simultaneously, with simultaneous eyerolls.
“We oughta be celebratin’,” came a voice from the door, and Jeff froze as Maria strolled into the bar with a cherry red grin to match her bottle red hair. “Our girls are gettin’ married.” She gave each girl a pat on the head in blessing as she passed, leaned against the counter with a saucy wiggle.
“You know what we should do,” Nadine began.
“Take you with us,” Billy continued.
“Then y’all can get married, too.” Nadine finished.
Maria blushed prettily, looked at Jeff through the fake eyelashes on the eye not covered with a patch. Jeff blushed much less prettily, stammered and crossed his arms. “I ain’t gettin’ involved in no cult bullshit,” he said finally, sidestepping the issue of his longstanding infatuation with his occasional second-in-command.
“That’s all right,” Billy comforted.
“You wouldn’t know what to do at an orgy anyhow.”
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
The priest, or priestess, or perhaps shaman, was speaking in what might have been a language and might have been gibberish. Perhaps xe was speaking in tongues. Billy and Nadine were holding each other in a sea of color, of whites and reds and blues and pinks and greens. Some of it was robes, which everyone seemed to have agreed was appropriate without any prior planning. Some of it was skin, in colors as varied as the earth and the sky. Nadine thought she saw an orc, and she wondered who he was marrying.
“I brought this,” Billy whispered in her ear, and Nadine was surprised when she slipped a ring onto her finger. She brought it close to her face to examine it, having left her glasses behind for fear of losing them. A Claddagh ring, in silver; Nadine smiled despite herself.
“A for real ring?”
“No reason we can’t be for real married.”
“How monogomous of you.”
“Didn’t say nothing about monogomous – just married.”
Nadine mulled this over as the androgynous voice droned on, considered the thought of her being a wife. Of having a wife. Of being Mrs. Billy Dean. It didn’t chafe, the way she thought it would, didn’t feel too small or too tight. But then again, they were already Billy Dean. One name – a unit. It wasn’t as if they could get more married than that, ring aside.
“I wish I had a ring for you,” Nadine said finally, and she felt Billy smile against her skin.
“I got my own,” she said as she slipped it into Nadine’s hand, and there was a pleasing finality to it when she slid the matching gold onto Billy’s finger.
A cheer rose up through the multicolored crowd, and it took a moment to realize that it was not for them alone. With a giggle they fell into each other’s arms, kissed like they were each other’s only source of oxygen. Somehow it was surprising when they realized that they’d fallen to the ground, that they were sliding each other’s clothes off in an ocean of people sliding each other’s clothes off.
“I love you,” Nadine murmured into her wife’s mouth.
“I love you,” Billy murmured into her wife’s mouth.
Nadine Pascal-Said 