“I fuckin’ told you, I can’t wear anything tight at the cuffs.” Marlo tossed their hand at Phee dismissively and turned their back in the same motion, hardly bothering to give zir proffered pair of trousers a second glance. Fitted, and well at that, in Adonis’ humble opinion. “It’s like that big damn scar on your shoulders: but I ought’ve guessed, you like to cause me pain.”

Phee made an frustrated noise, equally polite. “It is that you were dropped as a little one? Or perhaps, it is thrown?” — but turned on zir heel and strode into the storeroom.

Adonis glanced back from the empty door frame and to his sister. Absently, Marlo had rested a hand on the spear of their hairpin, letting their fingers trail over and twist the takoyaki-shaped ornament. He’d never seen it before; he hadn’t seen them tie up their tentacles in years.

“What the hell are you looking at?” Marlo bit out.

“What the hell is your problem?” Adonis matched their tone evenly. “I don’t understand why it is you insist on keeping this one around. There are a dozen different—fluent—tailors I could find for you.” Though misery did love company: Marlo was never one to get it right the first time, either.

They glared up at him, sidelong, firmly on their good side. “I only have one at all because you insist.”

“If you had your way, you would be buying off Mako Mart’s shelves,” Adonis answered, derisive.

“Fuck off.” Marlo abruptly pinched their fingers against the hairpin and dropped their gaze to the worn wood floor. “I happen to think Phee could use the business.”

“Ah, yeah. Remind me: how did you learn of this minuscule one-man craftshop half a mile out of town?”

Marlo ground their teeth, but the click of the storeroom door closing beat them to their retort. Phee stepped toward them both, pink brows creased and zir asymmetrical tentacles—just the one, actually—writhing on over itself, but with a new pair of slacks draped over zir forearm.

“This one you will have instead, during the meantime.” Phee handed them off: olive green, and flared at the hem. “I have not had to trim it yet, so you will need to wear tall boots.”

Marlo twisted their hairpin once more and muttered something in response, and something Adonis dimly recognized to be Octarian. They braced one hand on a side-table, gripped Phee’s chin with the other, both pulling zir down and leaning in on their tiptoes to plant a kiss on zir cheek.

Adonis kept his face carefully blank.

He couldn’t disagree with their taste in women, even if ze was a decade older than Marlo.

Phee was quicker to shove them off, with zir tentacle and hand against their bicep, but Marlo held there: held the gaze of this obscure seamstress they just so happened to know, an Octoling, whose left eye was stained milky blue, who treated everything Marlo asked for like a personal challenge.

Interesting. That’s all.

Marlo said something else, and let zir go.

Phee only sighed, and worked zir mouth, with a glare set firmly on the back of Marlo’s head as they took back their place at his side. “Pay will be later. And that,” — a jab of zir tentacle toward his sister — “You make sure stays on their feet,” ze told him, brusquely.

“Well, no guarantees.” Adonis grinned. “Ma was too nice to ever drop her, but she did fall down a cliff a few times.”

(With the door shut behind them and the brisk winter wind in their faces, he has to ask, “Are you trying to get your heart broken?”

Marlo laughs. He hasn’t heard that in weeks. “Darling, you don’t know the half of it.”)