Title: Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
Author: Nina/TechnicolorNina
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh!: GX
Genre: Angst/Romance
Pairing/Characters: Dark Haou, Johan
Word Count: 1 935
Spoilers: Mid-S3.
Story Rating: PG-13
Story Summary: Haou doesn't want to remember and can't quite forget. The night Super Fusion is created, he'll have a little help with both from a bottle of wine.
Notes: N/A
Feedback: There may be something out there that's better than a review containing concrit, but if there is, I haven't found it yet. So if you have two minutes and you wouldn't mind? Please? Arigatou. (And concrit is cool. Flames are not.)
Special Thanks/Dedications: This story is for Higuchimon, who inspired the muse.
When I was a young man and never been kissed
I got to thinking over what I'd missed
I got me a girl, I kissed her, and then
Oh lord, I kissed her again.
Oh, kisses sweeter than wine
Oh, kisses sweeter than wine
-- "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," Peter Paul and Mary
Red, red wine, stay close to me
Don't let me be alone
It's tearin' apart
My blue, blue heart.
-- "Red Red Wine," Neil Diamond
It is cause to celebrate.
He does not celebrate often, or ever, truly. There is no reason for him to do so. There is nothing about it that he finds becoming or appealing.
Still, with Super Fusion in his hand, it seems foolish to refrain. Even Haou is permitted to indulge on an occasion this momentous.
But Jyuudai, is it really—
There is an inner voice, but it is easily quieted—silenced as easily as the cries from the villagers whose sacrifice created this ultimate tool. There is no Jyuudai, not now and never again. Instead of listening to that weak inner voice he nods curtly to a servant.
"Prepare a feast."
There is no question in response, not so much as a query about a menu. The servant simply bows and scuttles off. The reason is simple: if they value their lives, they will serve exactly what will please him. If they choose to do shoddy work, he can always add more power to his new weapon.
Those in the kitchens will know precisely how much time they have: he will bathe and change his clothing to private wear, and then he will expect to be served. If they are late, he has plenty of more loyal subjects who are more than willing to give any stragglers a taste of a duel disk.
He goes to change, thinking over this most recent victory. With Super Fusion in his deck, nobody will dare to stand against him. At last, finally and forever, he can ensure that a travesty such as that created by that becurst, damned and shriveled worm Brron will never come to be again. He can avenge—
a pair of gleeful green eyes guiding a pair of skilled piano-player hands unerringly through a pile of dark jeans to cool glass
the people who were forced to duel to their deaths for the sordid, pointless purpose of entertaining the mad false king.
He shakes out his hair and clips his deck holder to the black belt holding up a pair of equally black trousers beneath a black shirt. Then he makes for the room he has claimed as his to dine in. His food will be there, or heads will roll and souls will be sacrificed.
Even he is unable to complain about the state of the meal; it is hot, the meat tender and well-cooked, the greens—a rare delicacy in Dark World—crisp and perfect. There is new egg-bread and good butter, and if anyone finds it odd that their pale, silent boy-king is served with a goblet of fresh milk, they have sense enough at least to hold their tongues.
He finishes his milk, and a girl who might once have been pretty to her mother if her mother was half-blind appears at his side.
"I have something that might please thee better yet, gracious Haou," she says, and he turns his dead golden stare on her long enough to decide she is too unimportant to warrant the interruption of a meal just so he can kill her. To her credit—or perhaps it speaks more to her stupidity—she does not flinch. "Would a cup o'wine suit, my king?"
Haou ponders this idea. He is not given to drink; it dulls the mind and body, dimming what should be bright and blunting wits that should be sharp, lest he be destroyed by—
hey Jyuudai you can try it if you like
the unavoidable fact of his own humanity. But after the power he showed today, he doubts anyone will try their hand at his deck or his life. Not immediately, anyway. They will be too cowed by the idea of having their guts spilled over his boots by the newest addition to his deck.
Super Fusion.
Glorious name. Glorious victory. Glorious weapon and tool.
Then why does it feel—
It doesn't. There is no reason to feel anything toward it but a kind of pleasure that no other person or spirit in all the twelve dimensions can or will hold this card. He considers just long enough to let the girl start twitching, taking a dim and idle hollow pleasure in seeing her wonder whether or not she should flee. If she does, he decides, she'll get no farther than the far door.
"Bring it."
"Is there a flavour that would suit the mighty Haou best?" she asks, and he decides that she will die before the night is out for plaguing him with all these thrice-damned questions about wine and
cold and sweet in his mouth and warm in his belly when it touches and tasting of strawberries
he lets her stand again long enough to squirm before he speaks. "The best."
She makes a rather deformed curtsey and hurries off, almost stumbling in her desire to get away from him, perhaps regretting having spoken to him. In the first week after his coronation someone very like her—whether male or female he no longer remembers—offered first to soothe his body after a long day of work, and then to warm his bed, perhaps hoping for some kind of favour or promotion of rank. It was a great mistake, and one that no person in this land, human or spirit, has made since; the body that lay in front of him on the floor after that foolish offer was warning enough.
The girl returns with two bottles, plain glass, unmarked—but in this forsaken world where nothing matters after
Kenzan Manjyome Asuka Fubuki Sho Johan Johan Johan and who else is still out there or dead
his ascension to his true power, his real destiny, glass all by itself is a sign of quality. She pours for him and offers a glassless toast that does not tremble as much as he expected: "Your good health and power, my king."
He nods curtly and raises his goblet, sending a look crosswise over the edge of it to Baou. He gets the barest of nods in reply and speaks a toast of his own.
"Dark World."
The creatures ranged around the room pick it up and murmur it: Dark World . . . Dark World . . . He drinks from the cup, tossing back half of it in a single long drink that burns in his throat, and
not that fast Jyuudai I'm not carrying you back to the dorm
his lips thin out for just a moment before he nods to someone to refill the glass.
It is halfway through his third cup that he realizes there is a sense of some kind in his body, a lightness, a dizziness, that does not normally exist. There is no reason to mind, other than its being an annoyance because he did not specifically desire that the sensation should exist. He ponders the cup next to his empty plate and stands up, realising as he does that perhaps he's had too much. If so, he has committed an error that will give every spirit in this room a way to best him, and he is and will be damned if he allows it. And so he takes the bottle—he may imbibe, but he cannot be bested at table, and they will all know it—and heads for the door, letting his own slow gait hide his slight unsteadiness.
The staircases are no obstacle; there are railings, and when he reaches his own, where there is none, he simply turns to look at the two guards who have followed him.
"You're dismissed."
They bow at once and are gone, and he allows himself the luxury of a hand on the wall once he is beyond where the curve will allow even the sharpest eyes to see.
He closes his door and shuts it, then looks down at the half-empty bottle as he crosses the room. It's not large—in Dark World, there is no such thing as a large bottle made of glass. Its weight is still heavy in his hand in spite of its size; the glass here is hand-blown, and thicker than it is on earth.
He raises the bottle to his lips, and as he does, an image that metastasizes into a memory beyond his desire or control appears behind his eyes, and
"What is that?" "Wine." Johan grins at him, pawing his small stack of jeans out of the way. "Pegasus gave it to me for my birthday. I keep looking for an excuse to open it and I haven't found one yet." He drops the jeans back onto the bottle. "We could make some sandwiches and go down to the lighthouse, if you want. Everybody I've talked to says wine is better with company." They go to the lighthouse with their sandwiches, and it's halfway through Jyuudai's second one that Johan lets out an almost casual "oh, damn." "Hmm?" "I forgot cups." He looks at the bottle and considers it, then back up, eyes sparkling with a kind of mischief it's rare for anyone else to see. Then he upends the bottle against his lips and swallows, holding it out to be taken, tiny sparkles of midafternoon sunshine caught on the bottle's curve and in the liquid inside and on Johan's mouth where there is still just a little wine clinging, and Jyuudai wonders for just a moment as he takes the bottle what it would be like to take his first taste of it not from the bottle but from Johan's lips—
Haou hisses, an inhuman sound of rage and hurt, and throws the bottle at the small mirror on the wall, furious with himself for even that single moment of weakness. The force of the toss and his own excess topple him backward onto the bed as the mirror shatters. Somewhere deep in a place inside himself he refuses to enter he thinks he almost hears some kind of sharp, grieving cry as the bottle itself smashes on the floor amid the sparkling remains of the mirror, leaving not shards but chunks, lying in the wine like cinders amid so much blood.
He rolls over, not wanting to be found in the morning having slithered right off the bed from drunkenness; he has that much sense left in his head. Getting beneath the covers is out of the question, but getting the rest of the way onto the bed he can manage. Tomorrow someone will clean up the mess and he will claim there was an intruder to explain away the extravagant waste of bottle and looking-glass both. The guards and his Death Duelists will scurry to fix the breach, and watching them will, he hopes, amuse him enough to make him forget the last two minutes of this night ever happened.
He rolls onto his back with a sigh and turns his head to the right. Tomorrow there will be another raid, of course; Super Fusion can still gain power. But the urgency is over, and tonight he may sleep past dawn—maybe even without the images coursing freely through his head that he denies during the day.
He turns his head to the right, wanting to make himself comfortable without appearing vulnerable—not nearly so easy as it sounds to most people, he suspects. Then he hisses again and tosses his head back, feeling the room rock and sway around him. No matter.
He would rather fall out of the room than see the picture, the one he himself put on the floor.
The one that looks like Johan's face traced in blood and broken glass.