Author's Note: First off, I want to say that this is my first shot at an From Eroica With Love fic, and secondly I want to thank Annelim, a fantastic writer, for encouraging me to give writing this a shot. Feel free to read on.
"-stupid, idiotic, degenerate thief! Why do I even-!"
Dorian Red, the Earl of Gloria, came awake to the pleasant sound of his darling Major cursing him loudly, which certainly did not help the pounding headache that had accompanied the action. He must have made some sound, because Klaus abruptly stopped cursing, and for the next blessed few moments of silence Dorian attempted to figure out what he'd done recently to so anger the major. The pain in his head wasn't helping his attempts at recollection, nor were the various other aches he was beginning to notice over his body. He was, however, relieved to find that the pains were mostly consistent with bruises and scrapes like from a simple fall to the ground.
He carefully took stock of his body, noting that he was sitting against a cold, hard surface, and his arms were chained above his head. A small shift brought the knowledge that whoever had searched him had been thorough - all his lock-picks were gone, as was the small throwing knife in his boot. That...would certainly put a damper on a great many of his escape plans, he admitted to himself, but first things first. Slowly and cautiously, Dorian opened his eyes just a crack, to gauge the current situation.
The first thing he saw was Major Klaus von dem Eberbach, chained in a mirror of his own position to the wall across from him. The second thing he saw was that the major wasn't wearing any trousers - or underwear, for that matter. The master thief stared, drinking in the fabulous view, partially obstructed as it was by the bottom of Klaus's shirt. Escaping could wait a moment, he had to commit this particular sight to memory. In running his gaze up and down the major's body, he stopped for a long moment to look at Klaus's face; the German frowned, a furrow on his brow, and the thief had known the major long enough to be able to equate that look with concern.
He did his best to ignore the warm sensation in his chest at that moment, and almost against his will his blue eyes drifted back down to Klaus's bare legs...He was quickly jolted out of his admiration by a loud German curse, the major having noticed that the thief's eyes were open, and crossed legs quickly joined the shirt in obstructing the gorgeous view. He restrained the urge to sigh, because really, a few more inches of the shirt riding up and he would have seen a very private part of his major's body...
Oh well, there would be more opportunities (he hoped) to get a look at that region of his favorite German's body, and he consoled himself with the knowledge of what the major's smooth, pale legs looked like. It took him a moment to turn his mind back to figuring out how he had wound up chained to a wall, and in the end it was Klaus himself who jogged his memory.
"Well, I suppose it is good to know that that blow to the head has not affected your personality..." Klaus growled, and at the mention of a blow to the head, Dorian abruptly became aware of a warm stickiness on the side of his head. He immediately realized that it was most likely blood from the head wound his darling had mentioned, and he grimaced at the thought of how hard it would be to wash the sticky redness out of his hair. His leonine mane of curly blond hair was both a blessing and a curse, he ruminated, but he reluctantly acknowledged that grooming worries could come later.
More importantly, noticing the blood and injury also brought to mind how he'd gotten them, and his eyes narrowed as he asked quietly, "Agent Z?" The youngest of Klaus's Alphabet had been the one actually holding the files that NATO had hired him to retrieve, Klaus accompanying him for security, once the theft had been complete. Unfortunately, the safe house hadn't been as safe as it should have been. There had been a surprise attack that had certainly lived up to its' name, and then...he'd blacked out, evidently because of the blow to his head that had given him his splitting headache.
His worries were somewhat eased when Klaus answered, "Still out there, as far as I know, which is about the only good news in this situation." He rattled his chains for emphasis, subsiding with a soft huff before saying, "LaGrange is likely plotting how to make us reveal who has the files now."
Ah yes, the one who'd originally stolen the files containing the names of dozens of undercover NATO agents and their locations, one Joseph LaGrange, Frenchman and small-time crook with delusions of grandeur. Sadly, LaGrange had hired some dangerous security men who weren't so easily dismissed, and so he'd been able to capture Eroica the master thief and Iron Klaus of NATO. Dorian fervently hoped that it never got out that he'd been caught by a Frenchman of all people, even if LaGrange was a crook with fairly decent skills.
Now he simply nodded, sighing as he said, "That is good to hear, darling -"
"Don't call me that!" The snapped interruption had lacked the major's usual fire, as if made out of mere habit.
Dorian forged on, "Darling, I'm afraid that whoever searched me found all of my lock-picks."
Klaus snorted, jerking his head towards Dorian's left, where the thief now noticed the iron-barred door, and said matter-of-factly, "We won't need them. The idiots got your lock-picks, but left the keys hanging on the wall out there, and there's no security cameras. All we need to do is get them."
Which Dorian thought might be easier said than done, since although the gaps between the bars were large, big enough for the aristocrat to stick his head through with room to spare, there was a great deal of space between the door and the wall opposite it.
Klaus saw the thief's skeptical look and met it seriously, asking bluntly, "Can I trust you?"
Taken aback, the blond nonetheless answer immediately, "Of course, darling!"
A sharp nod, and Klaus closed his sharp green eyes, a look of concentration on his face. As Dorian watched, the major's breathing became more deep and even, as though Klaus was forcefully calming himself down.
Nothing happened for a long moment, and just as Dorian was opening his mouth to ask Klaus what he was trying to do, Klaus changed, and his mouth was left gaping open as he watched with disbelieving eyes.
He felt like the world had just been jerked out from underneath his feet, watching the abrupt transformation happening to the man across from him. Was it a hallucination? he wondered wildly, jerking instinctively backwards out of shock, had whoever had tossed them in the cell given him some kind of drug while he'd been unconscious? Or was his head injury more severe than he had thought and was making him see things? His heart rate picked up, pulse beating like a drum in his ears, and he truly thought that he might have lost his mind as he watched the love of his life's legs fuse together.
Dorian felt chilled all the way down to his bones, yet he was sweating, felt the clamminess of his hands, and he just knew that his eyes were much wider than was attractive. He didn't care; his breathing was becoming shorter and faster, it felt like his lungs couldn't get enough air, like there something heavy sitting on his chest. He abruptly became aware that he had started shaking when he heard the chains holding him start jangling, but all his focus was occupied by the combined sensations of vertigo and being spun around rapidly. He felt like everything he had ever known had gotten chucked out the proverbial sixth story window and everything began spinning as his vision blurred. Unbidden, his eyes moved up to look into Klaus's, and then...
If someone presented the Earl with the Mona Lisa and told him he could have Her Ladyship if he only told them what happened after he'd looked into Major von dem Eberbach's eyes at that moment, he wouldn't have been able to describe it. Or even come up with a convincing lie. At the moment their eyes met, Dorian had felt everything just fade away, becoming just blurs in the background. The aches in his body, the stickiness of the blood on his head, the shock at what he had witness, even time itself, it all just dissolved into nothingness, became inconsequential in the face of what he saw in Klaus's eyes, which was...He couldn't have told anyone if he wanted to, didn't even know what it was himself, all he knew was that it demanded his total attention, which he gave.
He couldn't even describe what hue Klaus's eyes were, which was something he always paid attention to. All he knew was that he felt calm and at peace as he looked into his darling major's eyes.
The sound of jingling keys snapped him out of the trance he had fallen into, and he blinked rapidly, eyes once more becoming focused. He saw the keys to his shackles dangling in front of his face, the key-ring held suspended from the tip of...Klaus's tail, a massive scaled appendage with pitch black scales on top and wider, whiter scales on the bottom. Almost - no, exactly like a snake's tail. He registered the oddness of the sight, yet the shock was somehow muted, and he didn't know how that was possible but he told himself that it didn't matter, he would have time to freak out later.
When the keys were swiftly passed to Dorian, he numbly accepted them and yet couldn't stop himself from brushing his fingertips over Klaus's scales, feeling a vague sense of shame as he did so. It was like he was touching the most beautiful work of art in the world, that feeling of being unworthy to touch or even gaze upon such a priceless treasure, such a mythical creature, and yet he did it anyway. His throat was tight, and his lungs burned for more air than the quick gasps he was making were providing, but those concerns came in second to what was happening right at that moment. His pulse had started pounding again, he noted dazedly, but this time it was because of excitement - the kind of excitement that he had previously only felt while pulling off the most dangerous and spectacular of heists.
Klaus's scales, Dorian thought with wonder and maybe a bit of hysteria even as he rapidly unlocked his shackles, were as smooth as polished crystal and doubtlessly as hard as they looked. There was no way Iron Klaus would have decorative scales.
Within a minute Dorian was free, and Klaus had gone back to the NATO Major that he was used to, no tail and two perfectly human legs. The thief would have thought it all a hallucination brought on by the blow he'd taken to the head except that the keys were reassuringly solid in his hand, and he was definitely standing up and walking over to the major. Seconds later, Klaus was free and standing up, his shirt falling low enough to cover the area of his body that Dorian had earlier been admiring.
Trying to work up enough saliva to moisten his throat, Dorian swallowed several times, taking deeper breaths to relieve the pressure in his lungs. Opening his mouth to speak, Dorian was stopped when Klaus raised one hand, the German looking at the Brit firmly as he said in a tone brooking no arguments, "Don't. Just don't. Not now." And for once Dorian obeyed, keeping quiet as Klaus set to work on freeing them.
Still, he mentally vowed to get the whole story out of Klaus later.
As it so happens, 'later' turned out to be three months later.
The mission had been successfully completed, Z had delivered the files while they had been escaping, LaGrange had been arrested, and Dorian's head wound had turned out to be nothing serious - it had just bled a lot as head injuries tend to do. The thief had planned to catch Klaus while the man was still in a good mood from finishing the mission successfully, but the sneaky German had gotten on the next flight to Germany while he was still getting the blood out of his hair.
One thing had led to another, things had happened, and Mr. James had insisted that they pull back to back jobs in order to recoup the losses caused by that incident in Bolivia. So Dorian was kept too busy to go to Schloss Eberbach to corner Klaus, and whenever he had managed to find a free moment in those three months Klaus had been away on various missions. Now, however, Dorian had put his foot down, declared that month a no-job month to James, and made his way to the home of his darling major, where he was now sneaking into the aforementioned Schloss Eberbach.
His target, unlike during his previous attempts, was not "The Man In Purple" in the vault, but the master of the house, currently sleeping in his bedroom. The security had definitely been improved, he would later admit, but currently he affected a nonchalant expression as he picked the lock to Klaus's bedroom door, slipping inside with nary a whisper of cloth and gently closing the door behind him. He was wearing his all-black burglary outfit, and he moved quietly and comfortably in it. His target was in sight.
Klaus was sleeping peacefully, covers pulled up almost to his chin, and Dorian had no doubt that the black-haired man was wearing conservative sweatpants, an undershirt, and a regular shirt as his pajamas. It would suit his darling's modesty to a T, he mused, smiling gently as he approached the bed. He wondered if Klaus had used a lullaby to put himself to sleep - and if he could get away with stealing a kiss from this particular sleeping beauty. Somehow he doubted it, but the fantasy made him let out a quiet, wistful sigh.
That sound, quiet as it was, was enough to wake the object of his affection and admiration, and the green eyes that he found so beautiful snapped open. For a moment, Dorian could have sworn he was looking into the eyes of a snake - bright, vibrant green orbs with a slit pupil, and the famed thief Eroica found himself mesmerized, feeling like he was falling into the impossibly bright color of those eyes. He wanted to move closer, yet he couldn't bring himself to actually move, everything around him fading away until all he saw was that pair of poisonous green eyes - and oh, how he would willingly take that poison if it meant he could just get a bit closer!
And then Klaus blinked.
Being jolted out of his sound sleep by someone sighing a very familiar sigh close to him wasn't Klaus von dem Eberbach's idea of starting a day - or very early morning, as it was - on a high note. He realized immediately after opening his eyes and locking gazes with Eroica that his eyes were still that of his true form, and he barely bit back a curse. The dazed, complacent expression on the blond thief's face was one that he quickly recognized, having seen it on that same man's face three months before.
He quickly blinked, shutting his eyes firmly and willing his eyes back to their usual green ('Mosel green!' a voice that sounded suspiciously like Eroica's chimed up inside his mind) color, scowling at his loss of control when he re-opened his eyes and saw the dazed look fading from Eroica's features.
Klaus was rather upset with himself, as he hadn't accidentally hypnotized anyone since he'd been twelve years-old and unintentionally stranded a classmate in the forest behind the boarding school after telling the boy to get lost. While the boy had been found by some teachers after barely an hour of searching, Klaus had still felt guilty about it for several days afterwards, acutely aware that things could have gone a lot worse and that the other boy could have been hurt.
Still, he reassured himself, it was the thief's own fault for breaking into his house and sneaking into his room - the bloody limey was lucky all he'd done was hypnotize him for a minute. Although if he was perfectly honest with himself, he was surprised it had taken the Earl so long to track him down for answers, even with all the missions he had been taking. Even now, three months later, he was still wondering if partially showing his true form to Eroica had been the right thing to do, but it had been the only thing he could think of at the time.
He had been impatient, slightly concerned even, by the sight of the blood on Eroica's head and in his curly blond hair, he could admit to himself. The thief had been seriously injured and he hadn't had time to figure out any other way to get them out of the cell. To allow a NATO contractor to die on his watch would look bad on his record, he'd reasoned with himself. So he'd thought of the quickest method of escape he could and then used it, because he had been concerned that his - no, the thief's injury had been more serious than it had appeared. He'd also wanted to find some pants as soon as possible, though that had been more of an afterthought reason than anything.
"What...was that?"
The question was little more than a threadbare whisper, but Klaus still heard it loud and clear, pulled out of his thoughts by the confused and uncertain look on the Brit's face. Inwardly sighing, he sat up, shoving the covers aside (and unknowingly proving Dorian's guess about his sleeping attire correct) and swinging his legs over the side of the mattress so he was facing Eroica.
Iron Klaus was many things, but one thing he was not was a coward, and so he simply bit the bullet and told Eroica bluntly, "Hypnotism. My kind have a talent for it, I suppose you could say."
And just like Klaus had known he would, the Earl of Gloria went for the bait, hook line and sinker, "And what kind is that, my love?" The uncertain expression had fled, leaving only an attentive expression and sharp blue eyes that looked at him closely, searching and analyzing as though looking for any trace of his true form. It was all Klaus could do not to snort in amusement - as if he would ever show such a thing if he didn't absolutely have to!
"A Naga, you bloody thief." And he wasn't naive enough to think that the thief hadn't done at least some research upon seeing his tail.
He watched a variety of expressions flash across Eroica's face: surprise and confusion chief among them (maybe the thief hadn't done as much research as he'd thought...), along with uncertainty, amazement, and many others. "Wait," Eroica spoke, confusion now the dominant expression on his face, "Aren't Nagas from the Orient? China and such?" the Brit waited until Klaus nodded before asking, "Then what are you doing in Germany?" and the only word Klaus could think of to describe the thief's face was perplexed.
Klaus took a moment to appreciate the blond man's clueless expression, as it was so rare for the infamous Eroica to be completely in the dark about something, before answering, "I was born here, idiot," and he had to restrain his urge to laugh at the frustrated look that briefly eclipsed the confusion. A moment later, he sighed, his good mood dying as he forced himself to become serious once again. His enjoyment over taunting Eroica aside, there was a time and a place for everything, and now was a time for explanations. Hopefully the thief would hear him out and not decide to go around telling everyone and their aunt that Iron Klaus was literally cold-blooded...
"Hiding in the last place anyone would expect to look is one of the oldest tricks in the book," Klaus began.
"And who would suspect a half-snake of living in country with such a cold climate?" Eroica finished, looking impressed, and Klaus actually smiled a bit at the respectful tone; it was rare for the master thief to admire anything other than a work of art.
Klaus continued, "That's exactly what my ancestors thought - the Naga species originated from China, but over the centuries my family adapted to the colder climate of Germany. The von dem Eberbach family has high status among Nagas and other part-snake species like the Lamias because of our ability to function normally in chilly temperatures." He shrugged after he finished speaking, because to him that wasn't anything to get excited about.
Dorian - no, Eroica damnit! - apparently didn't quite understand something, judging by the frown on his beautiful face, and he did not just think that about another man's face. Klaus gave himself a firm mental slap, just as Eroica asked, "Can you do anything other than grow a large tail and hypnotize people? And how come you have always looked completely human?" There was a speculative gleam in those blue eyes that reminded Klaus sharply of when the man had stolen his belt right from around his waist, and so he did his best to nip that in the bud while he could.
"Yes." He said, perfectly deadpan, "I'm very venomous when I want to be." And he was promptly given the satisfaction of seeing Eroica's eyes widen and the man take a small step back. He snorted, amused at the thief's second question, and he chuckled quietly before he answered, a note of pride in his voice, "Nagas are very good at blending in, my family especially, and I wasn't about to let myself slip by letting a few scales show."
And then his green eyes hardened, and Eroica found himself looking at Iron Klaus. "I hope you realize, you bloody thief, that I am only telling you these things because you said I could trust you." and deep, deep down inside, Klaus was hoping that for once he'd be able to take the Brit at his word.
"And you actually do?" There was undisguised hope and reverence in the man's voice, and Klaus actually found himself shaken by the depth of the emotions in the man's eyes.
Maybe, it finally occurred to him, he shouldn't have been so quick to dismiss Eroica's proclamations of love...but there would hopefully be time to think about that later. Right now, he repaid honesty with honesty, finally admitting out loud, "I want to."
And then he abruptly had an armful of happy Brit as the thief tackled him, knocking him back onto the bed and smothering his face in kisses. Klaus's resulting protests were admittedly half-hearted at best, and he never used his greater physical strength to push the other man off of him. After a few minutes though, he had to draw the line and push the thief back enough so that the man would stop kissing him, and he frowned mock-seriously (not that many could tell the difference between his mock-serious frown and his actual serious frown) as he said, "I take this to mean that you aren't going to be telling anyone about this?" and by 'this', he of course meant about his actual species, and it seemed that Eroica understood that, judging by the blond thief's bright smile.
"Of course I won't tell anyone, my darling! I would never tell your secret to anyone unless you said that it was okay! I don't care if you sometimes have a tail or a forked tongue or whatever! You are still my love!" Eroica - oh, screw it - Dorian gushed.
A genuine smile tugging at the corners of his lips, Klaus couldn't resist commenting, "Naga don't have forked tongues, just really flexible ones."
He grinned at the look on his thief's face.
The Major decided not to mention certain other physical traits of a Naga's true form. Let the blond figure it out for himself.
Author's Note: Okay, I know it isn't the best, but since it's my first time writing for Dorian and Klaus I didn't think I did too bad. What do you guys think? As always, constructive criticism is welcome!