Reposted for and Beta'd by Wandergirl108, with many thanks, after I ridiculously removed it in a silly fit of pique. :-)

The Honeymoon

Part 1 # The Arrival

Graverobber lay back in his corner of the private jet and watched the city emerge out of the darkness.

He had never seen anything from this height before, never even been off Sanitarium Island. However alike one city looked to another by night, it was incredible, even from up here, how different they could smell. Graverobber was used to feeling with all his senses, and his sense of smell had actually been sharpened by years of squalor rather than deadened; he just didn't necessarily dislike the smells other people thought of as bad.

He shook his head to try and clear away the feelings of strangeness - and the uncomfortable popping in his ears - but it didn't work on either account. The events of the last couple of months had been too bizarre, going by too quickly and surreally for him to even begin to adjust to this altogether alien lifestyle just yet.

There was so much about this whole new world inhabited by the insanely rich that he didn't get; that he was now a part of it being top of the list. He didn't get the publicity, the manners, the attention, the friggin suits. Didn't get restaurants and hotels and the tiny tiny bottles of alcohol of which an empty stash lay all around him. He smirked to himself; he had managed to create a small dumpster for himself in the corner of this ultra stylish private jet. Really, he supposed, Amber was being amazingly tolerant.

He glanced over at his wife. His fucking wife. He didn't get that most of all. He wasn't quite sure whether to be amused or concerned at how he had let himself get married - at all, let alone to her. In the end, he decided to settle on amused.

She had sprawled herself untidily over three seats, and he wondered, not for the first time, how someone so small managed to take up so much space. Like she did in bed as well. Yes, him, in a bed. It had taken some getting used to, and he still ended up sleeping curled up tightly in one corner while the tiny minx sprawled her limbs across three people's worth of space.

He smiled to himself, surprised at the fondness of his reflections as he looked at her. She was half falling out of her chairs, and her hair - a rich chestnut colour today - was all over the place. She looked rather adorable, snoring softly, her skirt riding up to around her knees. He sighed; Zydrate, like alcohol, tripled its effects at high altitude, and she had consequently been pretty much out of it since shortly after the takeoff.

The plane hummed; they were coming in to land.

He reached lazily across the aisle and poked her gently. "Hey!"

No response. He got up with a sigh and knelt down by her head to stroke her cheek. "Hey, Amber?"

Still no response. *Sod *this, he thought; he slapped her gently. "Oi bitch! Wake the fuck up!"

She started suddenly, jolting almost out of her chairs before he caught her.

"Huh? Whassat? Wha' the fuck?" she squealed, looking around wildly before her eyes fixed upon the idiot who had woken her, and she slapped him in the face. At any rate, it helped her to wake up a little bit more.

"Wha's going on?"

"The plane's coming in to land, Amber," he explained patiently. "Got to go meet boring people, say boring things, and look pretty."

"Fagh," she said affectionately, stretching; "you couldn't look pretty if you tried."

"Don't have to, though, do I? *You do, Miss GeneCo-Rep-for-Europe, and right now you look like something the cat dragged in."

"Asshole!" she pouted, straightening her hair, which was threatening to slide off.

"Bitch!"

"Cunt!"

"Woman!"

"Woman? What the fuck kind of insult is that?"

"The worst." He sighed. "Go sort your face out."

She stuck her tongue out at him and flounced off.

~O~

Fifteen minutes later, a radiant Amber Sweet stepped off the plane to shake the hand of the Roman Ambassador. Not dropping the smile for half a minute, she turned fractionally to her husband to hiss,

"Where are my friggin' speech notes?"

He handed her a sheet instantly, patiently, wondering when he had worked out exactly how to so perfectly anticipate her whims. Oh, that was it - ever since the stroppy little brat in black leather had started coming to him regularly and demanding illicit drugs for her own form of payment. How long ago that seemed now, when he was just her dealer and she was just his whore. Correction, he sighed, there had never really been any 'just' about it. Kill him though it did to admit it, he had loved her, however unwillingly, from the very first.

"Ahem," she said, glancing at her notes and putting them away professionally. "On behalf of GeneCo, I would like to express out honour at your welcome and hereby extend our beneficient patronage to your fair city."

Graverobber stifled a snort. She sounded like a school child giving a recitation, stumbling over the long words. She kicked him subtly but painfully in the shin while the ambassador returned her greetings.

"Buorn giorno," she replied, affecting a laugh and a poorer knowledge of Italian than she really had. The man shook her hand again and they exchanged names, less formally:

"Amber Sweet," she beamed, oozing confidence and self assurance that was only half put-on these days, "GeneCo heiress and president. Oh yes," she added less confidently, "and this is my…um…husband." She blushed prettily, propelling him forward to shake hands.

Oh god, Graverobber thought, oh good god have mercy.

And yet the ground stubbornly refused to open up and swallow him.

_x_

I will repost the rest of this soon, I promise and offer further apologies!