Trip to the Mall (A Xibalba and La Muerte Story)

Disclaimer: I don't own the Book of Life or any of it's characters.

"Why did I let you talk me into this?"

"Stop complaining, Xibalba. It won't be that bad."

Said man made a scoffing noise. "I seriously doubt that."

La Muerte sighed and rolled her eyes. She was currently leading her husband by the arm through the crowd of people in the shopping mall.

They both had on different disguises than the ones they wear while working at the museum. La Muerte looked almost like a human version of her goddess form with her long, black hair, red dress and blue eyeshadow on her eyelids. But her skin was a nut brown rather than a sugary white and her eyes were hazel colored instead of gold.

Xibalba chose to look somewhat similar to his true form as well. He was fairly tall middle-aged man with slicked back, short white hair with a matching beard and mustache. His skin tone matched his wife's and he wore a black pinstripe suit. The only thing he hadn't change was his eye color, they were still the same shade of reddish-brown as he used when he was a security guard.

La Muerte turned her head to glance at Xibalba and when she saw the expression on his face that could only be described as pouting, she laughed. "Really, mi vida, this is suppose to be fun. There's no need to make it seem like it's a death sentence."

"I just don't see why we have to do this." he grumbled.

"Because we hardly ever explore the city and I've been wanting to take a look at this 'mall' for a while now." Suddenly a store up ahead caught her attention. "Oh, let's go in here!"

The god had no choice but to follow her as she dragged him into what appeared to be a clothing store. The goddess released his arm and moved to the shelves to examine different arrangement of clothes folded on it.

"The humans certainly wear some interesting clothes nowadays. she remarked as she picked up a pretty, yellow shirt.

Xibalba merely grunted in response. He could honestly care less about human fashion.

La Muerte chose to ignore her husband's lack of interest and moved to rifle through the dresses hanging on the racks. She grabbed one of the dresses and said, " Hold my purse. I'm going to go try this one on." She handed him her purse before taking off to the dressing rooms.

Xibalba said nothing and crossed his arms over his chest. 'This is so boring.' He never should have let her convince him to come here in the first place.

"Balby, look at this!"

Reluctantly, he turned his head in the direction of his wife's voice...and what he saw made his eyes widen and his jaw drop.

La Muerte was wearing a beautiful, red and strapless dress. The hem was short and only came to about mid-thigh, showing off her long, tan and slender legs while the low-cut bodice revealed a generous amount of cleavage.

"How do I look?" She asked as she gave him a twirl. "I like it, but I think it's a little too short. What do you think?"

"N-No, it's-uh...you look..." Xibalba was having trouble finding any sort of brain function in that moment as he was practically hypnotized by how gorgeous his beloved looked. "You look..." he cleared his throat loudly. "You look beautiful, mi amor."

The queen blushed and smiled. "Thank you, love. I think I'm going to get it." She smoothed out some of the wrinkles in the dress. "I'm going to try on some more. Is that okay?"

She glanced up back at him and noticed he wasn't looking at her face, but rather her...she snapped her fingers in front of his face. "My eyes are up here, Xibalba."

"W-What? Oh, yes of course." he let out a sheepish laugh.

La Muerte just shook her head and turned back to head back to the dressing room. From there she tried on a few more clothes, including another red dress, similar to the first one, but this one wasn't strapless and had a longer hem, a dressy blouse with a pretty skirt and just for fun, a red t-shirt with the words 'Yolo' on the front and dark, blue skinny jeans. She managed to even get Xibalba to try a few things on after much persuasion and ended up getting him a nice, formal suit along with the two dresses she had tried on.

With the bags in hand, they left the store and ventured towards the food court to get lunch. After they got something to eat, they wandered around a little bit more until something else caught La Muerte's interest. A young couple were exiting out from behind a small curtain in a tall, rectangular structure. A photo booth, she believed it was called. Watching them gave her an idea.

"Let's get our picture taken." she said, already pulling Xibalba towards the booth.

He cocked one, bushy, white brow at her. "Why?"

"So we can have something to remember our first trip to the mall by."

She pushed the curtain back and they both entered the booth and sat down on the seat inside of it, placing their shopping bags on the floor. La Muerte fished some quarters out of her purse and placed them into the machine.

They looked at the small camera that was embedded into the wall and waited a few seconds...but nothing happened.

"That's strange." La Muerte commented and she leaned in a bit to get a closer look. Maybe they did something wrong?

Xibalba scoffed. "Leave it to the mortals to have something that doesn't even-"

"Smile!" came this cherry, robotic voice.

There was a bright, flash of light and once they cleared the spots from their eyes, they saw on the computer screen next to the camera the picture that had just been taken. La Muerte was peering into the camera with a curious look on her face while Xibalba had his head turned to the side with his mouth slightly open in mid-sentence.

It didn't take her long to figure out what they did wrong. "Oh, I see. You need to pose when the voice tells you to."

"Get ready." the voice said.

"Let's try this again." La Muerte said as she adjusted herself a little.

"Smile!" the voice said again.

A second flash appeared and when it was done, the goddess looked eagerly at the screen to see how the picture turned out.

She frowned.

In this picture, she was looking right at the camera with a smile on her face, but Xibalba...

"Balby, you didn't even look at the camera and you weren't smiling!"

"What's the point? I didn't even what to do this in the first place." he murmured.

"Get ready." the voice said once more.

La Muerte glared at her husband, who stubbornly refused to look at her. Just then a sneaky plan formed in her head...

"Smile!" And right when the voice said that, she quickly reached out and placed a hand on his jaw and turned his face towards her before planting a kiss on his cheek. She smirked against his skin as she heard him gasp right as the camera flash went off.

La Murte pulled away to look at the screen and laughed when the picture showed up on it to reveal her smug look and Xibalba's dumbfounded one.

"Last one!" the voice chirped.

She turned her head back towards him. "Come on, Balby. This is the last picture and I want it to be a nice one. So would you please smile?"

He mulled it over for a moment before he sighed. "Fine."

"Get ready!" the voice warned.

La Muerte looped her arm around Xibalba's and rested her head on his shoulder while looking at the camera.

"Smile!'

Another flash and when she looked at the picture on the screen, she beamed to see that they were both smiling and facing the camera.

"Aww, that one is cute." She kissed his cheek again. "Thank you, Xibalba."

Xibalba grinned. He suppose it had been worth it, seeing how happy she was. "You're welcome, my dear."

The machine spat out the small strip of all four pictures. La Muerte grabbed it and placed it carefully in her purse. They grabbed their bags and existed the booth.

"See? This didn't turn to be so bad after all now did it?" questioned La Muerte,

After a short pause, the god begrudgingly admitted, "Yeah, I suppose it wasn't too terrible."

"Good to hear." she tugged on his arm. "Come on, there's still so much to see!"

With that they two went off to explore the mall some more and enjoy the rest of their day

Author's Notes: Sorry it's been a while since I last posted a story. I've just been really busy with work and getting ready for Christmas lately. So I was inspired to do this story after seeing these posts by Flaframur. It's also where my description for their human disguises came from.

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post/104867348232/somebody-asked-for-it-and-my-hand-slipped

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Be sure to check them out! And rest assured I will continue to write more Gravepainters in the future.