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Deuce Gorgon really liked Cleo de Nile.
It helped that she didn’t mind his snakes. After he profusely apologized for one of them (Gluttony) snapping at her scarabs, she laughed and said it was okay. “My little beetle babies are always getting wrapped up in trouble,” she explained, stroking one of them with a perfectly manicured finger. “Aren’t you, sweetie? Aren’t you?” she cooed. It chittered in response.
If anything, it seemed like she was fascinated by them. “I’ve been considering getting a pet snake for, like, a millennium,” she told him at lunch one day. “I definitely want one with scales as shiny and smooth as yours.” (Unsurprisingly, Pride liked Cleo the most out of all his snakes.)
Deuce wasn’t sure if he considered the snakes on his head pets. Companions definitely, brothers maybe, the ancestors of a curse placed on his ancestors a long time ago and all. Though he did feed them, clean them, and overall take care of them, and in return they gave him advice.
He never mentioned Cleo to his mom in their daily phone calls. After all, winning is what gorgons do, and he’s pretty sure that included winning at love. It’s embarrassing enough that his mom wanted to fly across the globe to help him with a bake sale, he didn’t need her to meddle with his crush too. Hopefully, the first time his mom hears about Cleo will be when he introduces her as his ghoulfriend.
Deuce really liked Cleo, and wondered what it would take for her to feel the same way about him.
Cleo was proud of her scareitage, and why wouldn’t she be? According to her Hisstory presentation, the de Niles were recorded in both human and monster textbooks as one of the most influential royal families of ancient Egypt. Though, of course, the humans didn’t know that their mummies weren’t lost to time. Instead, they were spending unlife among their people – their new people, monsters, where they belonged.
He couldn’t think of a single monster who wanted their presence known to humans except Cleo, and all in the name of popularity. At first, it didn’t make sense to him how little followers Cleo had on EekTok (even Deuce had more than her, and all he did was post baking videos), but then he thought about her unabashed interest in humans and human culture. She was also really open about her collection of amulets, and her ability to summon curses with them, and Deuce knew that those things came with the mummy territory but he was also pretty sure that they were magic, and magic was heavily, heavily frowned upon in monster society. Sometimes, when Cleo seemed frustrated with her follower count, he would wonder if she ever missed her old life.
Deuce’s scareitage was much less glamorous, its origins stained with anger and loneliness. He loved his family, but they had a bad rap in both worlds. Human opinions were negative but ultimately mattered little, as gorgons (like all other monsters) were myths to them. However, even monsters feared gorgons – specifically, feared what they could do with their eyes. Times were changing, sure, but he was still considered an outsider. And despite their differences, as he was beginning to see, so was Cleo.
And if they were both outsiders, then maybe they could be lonely together.