"Five hundred?" Elek repeats, and he feels the weight of his coin pouch in his hand, frowning at it for a moment as he tries to run the calculations in his head, tries to make numbers work that simply won't -- there are a few goblets in his pack, but they're only bronze, and they won't amount to more than the value of a hundred pieces together, and there's less than two hundred in his pouch.
The shopkeeper, tall and snakeish with frills at the sides of his head, his ears hidden beneath the flares of thick, scaled flesh, looks down at him, and his secondary eyelids flit across his eyes before he says, "I could be convinced to lower my price." His mouth opens, and Elek glances down at the red sliver of his tongue flickers out, tasting the air between them -- tasting Elek, the scent of him on the air, Elek supposes.
"Lower your price," Elek repeats, and he looks at the array of potions on the table, the ingredients neatly organised in their pouch -- he'd used up damn near everything he had on this last expedition, and before they set out again two weeks from now, he's not going to have time to earn more cash, and while he can gather his own ingredients, he's not going to be able to get reagents like these ones.
The shopkeeper examines him thoughtfully, consideringly, his gaze analytical as it passes over Elek's body, over the tight belt that bands in his robes, down to where the slit on one side is baring his actual thigh because his last pair of leggings has been burned to cinders.
"Oh," Elek repeats, and feels the flush rising from his neck and throat, up to his cheeks, to his ears, burning hot. "You mean... you mean sex?"
"Sex, yes," the shopkeeper says. "I've been busy these past two months, haven't been able to make my way into the city. I have a great many eggs to deposit, and no pretty thing to deposit them into. You're a strong young elf, hm? You'll do."
Elek feels hot all over, and he glances behind him to check that no one else is in the apothecary, that the shop is empty but for them. "Do you self-fertilise?"
The ridges on the snake-man's face shift upwards, raising as eyebrows might. "Would you like me to fertilise them?" he asks faintly, seeming pleased at the premise. "You'd have to come back in a month or so -- first I deposit my eggs, suspended in fluid, which they need to absorb to become viable."
"I just needed to know," Elek says, considering it. He's never... He's heard of this sort of thing, heard other people mention it, exchanging sex for value, particularly in towns near dungeons like this one. He's never experienced it before, though, has never been propositioned.
"No pretty thing," he'd said, and called him strong -- Elek isn't pretty, has rather plain features, mousy hair, is thin and lanky. It's nice, this -- it's flattering, even if it isn't intended to be.
"Two hundred," Elek says, "and the sex."
"Three-fifty."
"One-fifty," Elek says, "the goblets in my pack, and the sex."
The shopkeeper laughs, his tongue moving as he does so, a hiss through the sound. "Show me these goblets," he says, and Elek eases his satchel off his shoulder.
* * *
Elek strips off his robe and hangs it up on one of the hooks on the back of Ine's door. His private rooms above the shop are just as neatly arranged and organised as the shelves of the apothecary below -- there's a faint, floral fragrance up here, very different from the mingled alchemical scents downstairs.
Ine's furnishings aren't like another humanoid's, aren't like an elf's or a dwarf's -- most of the furniture is made of stone or metal, and for Elek's benefit, Ine takes out some blankets from a cabinet and spreads them out on the large, stone surface that serves as his bed. Ine's coils shift beneath him as he moves forward -- there are long, comfortably wide corridors in the shop downstairs, and he's made similar space up here in his rooms, the better not to catch his tail.
"Anything I should know?" Ine asks. "Anything you don't like?"
"No," Elek says, "I'm not really picky."
"The voice of experience," muses Ine aloud, sounding aroused at the prospect, and Elek doesn't correct him, doesn't say that in point of fact he's very inexperienced, that he's only had sex twice, years ago. He rumbles out a quiet noise when Elek stands naked before him, and he reaches out and touches him, slides his palms up Elek's chest and squeezes his breasts, pushes his thumbs against Elek's nipples and makes him groan quietly.
His slit has opened, the scaled flesh parting, and Elek stares down at the pale yellow skin as it opens up and reveals the bright wet pinkness inside, sees the movement of Ine's hemipenes -- Alecs has been talking non-stop about reptile monsters and their hemipenes recently, has talked about the ones that fuck with one before they trade off to the other, the ones that stuff both in at once, fuck two holes at once. The man's obsessed with monsterfucking, with fucking creatures, different species.
Ine isn't really a monster -- he's tall, handsome, has good taste, decorates his apartment and his shop very well.
"What is this going to do to my body?" Elek asks, and Ine laughs as he slides the flat of one hand, webbing between his fingers, a mixture of smooth textures, down Elek's belly, down to his cock, and with one of his fingers, he plays over Elek's cock. It feels good, makes him moan in pleasure, his thighs spreading wider, and Ine grips him by the waist with both hands and lifts him. "Fuck!" Elek yells out in surprise, and then laughs giddily at the ease with which Ine does it, how Elek's weight evidently means almost nothing at all to him as he slithers toward the bed.
"You're laughing," Ine says.
"You're strong," Elek says, and puts one of his hands on Ine's shoulder, leaning in and pressing more of his body against Ine's, feeling the pleasant cool of his skin -- he can feel the texture of his skin, the difference in the softer scales on his breast versus the thicker, more textured ones that cover his shoulder, his back, the outer ridges of the flares that carry up his neck.
Experimentally, he nips at the base of Ine's hood on one side, and it's Ine who moans now, presses his fingertips tighter against Elek's waist as he gathers himself up on the bed, twists his body and sits back so that when he lowers Elek down again, he's straddling Ine's middle. He's thick, leaves Elek's thighs spread wide, Elek's cunt spread wide, and he sighs at the texture of scales beneath his open pussy, grinds down against it, wanting for friction and not quite getting as much as he'd like. Ine's slit has opened up further, and the hemipenes that slide out of him are thick and long and slick with frothing wetness -- Elek reaches out and touches one of them, lets out a noise at Ine's lubricating fluid clinging to his palm, how it drips away from him.
"I'm strong," Ine agrees, undulates to press up and into the grip of Elek's hand, groaning. "As for your body... Mmm, the eggs first -- in your cunt, in your womb, and then the fluid. I'll secrete a plug to keep both inside you. The first week, you'll likely feel your temperature rise before you accustom to it -- your skin will be hot to the touch, your blood hotter in your body. You will be prone to arousal, more emotions, you'll have a larger appetite to accommodate the higher temperature -- you'll pull in more magic, too, might want to be careful about what you cast."
The hemipenis Elek is gripping at it is swelling -- now that they've expanded to their full size, Elek can see that the two of them are uneven in their size and shape. The one he's gripping at, shorter and a good deal thicker, is the ovipositor, he thinks -- the other is longer and thinner with a flared end, but at the base at visible ridged glands, and those will secrete what makes up the plug.
The secretions come from the reptile's kidneys, Elek recalls Alecs infodumping earlier in the week, creating a sphragis or seal that shuts the canal -- most reptiles use them to prevent other males from attempting to fertilise the same subject, some of them anaphrodisiac against other males or containing nutrients for the recipient. Elek wonders faintly if it's the fertilising fluid that will heighten his temperature or the seal itself.
