I just thought that I should probably put a disclaimer here because I never do that, so… Yeah :P :

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any characters apart from Avarice, Dimitri, Oved (who I haven't used much), The Unfriendly Man and Terry D (I won't say his surname. I hate his surname).

Yeah.

Ok.

ENJOY! :D

Chapter 7: The Eyes and the Lips

Valkyrie's POV

Billy-Ray Sanguine was probably the warmest guy I had ever met.

He was ridiculously warm. It was incredibly cold in that cell, so, awkward though it was, sleeping on top of him every night, I slept so much better.

I woke up to his heat and his soft breath on my head. It was ever-so-slightly comforting, in a strange way. And whenever I slept on top of him, I felt threatened, but safe at the same time. It confused me greatly, but I learnt to live with it.

The door opened, and Dimitri's huge frame lumbered in. He came over to me and pulled me to my feet. He spun me round and pushed me in the direction of the corridor ahead. I glanced back quickly; Sanguine had woken and sat up, and was currently staring at me. I turned to the corridor again, and walked on, Dimitri closing the door and following behind me.

When we got to the Room, Miser was there. He was studying the half-full hourglass, and smiled as I walked in. I ignored him, also starting to focus on the hourglass. That was my magic in there, those black grains. My power, my strength, now belonged to Avarice Miser.

I scowled as I was thrust into the wooden chair.

I was very familiar with this room and everything in it. There was a stain on the ceiling that was technically unrecognisable as a substance, but was brown and looked slightly like coffee. The strong mahogany table the hourglass stood on was slightly chipped on the front right leg and had graffiti on the front left leg.

"I see you and our Texan friend appear to be getting… close." Miser's smooth voice interrupted me.

"What, 'cos I was sleeping on him? No, he just warm. Like, really warm."

"We could hear you laughing last night, as well as night before that and the night before that. And a few other nights, as well."

"Oh, we were just playing a game. The Famous Person Game."

"Every single night for a week?"

"Yup," I said, popping the 'p'. "It 's fun and takes our minds off things. It's actually quite entertaining; somebody thinks of a celebrity and answers a load of 'yes' or 'no' questions to help the other person guess."

"Hm. Ok, then," Miser said, smiling brightly at Dimitri, "Dimitri, if you will."

The bodyguard went through the usual routine of plugging the chair in, a process I still don't get, and I let myself be enveloped by the pain.

o.O.o

I was chucked back into my cell again a few hours later. It was still light, and Sanguine was polishing his razor with his jacket sleeve.

"How bad was it this time?" He asked, tilting his head up slightly to show he was looking at me. His sunglasses were off and on his lap. His shirt arms were rolled up, revealing quite muscular forearms. I frowned when he spoke. He sounded tired, not like his usual self.

I didn't answer at first, I was feeling particularly weak today. But, eventually, I shrugged. "Same as always."

"The screams weren't as loud this time," he said.

I nodded. "Suppose that's a good thing,"

"Pretty much." He held his razor up to the small gap of light through that window. It gave off a brilliant light, and I shielded my eyes.

"I think I've done a pretty good job. You?" He asked.

"Decent." I replied, grinning. He narrowed his eyelids at me. I laughed, looking down at my crossed legs.

"You want to play the usual game, or…?" He said after a small silence.

"Can you tell me a story?"

He raised his eyebrows at me. "Uh, what?"

"A story. You're like, two hundred, I'm sure you have a few interesting stories you can tell me. How did you lose your eyes?"

"Long story." He answered, smirking as he started to clean his sunglasses. He looked up at me, and when he realised I didn't care, he sighed and dropped the glasses.

"I think I told you once that I had a go at bein' a detective, right?"

"Right."

"And how I would often get bored and kill my clients, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Well, one of my client's relatives figured out I had killed them and hunted me down. I don't know what type of magic he had, but he could curse people."

"Curse people?"

"Yup. So he cursed me to lose my eyes. Don't know why he chose for me to lose my eyes, but, yeah. That was his decision. Next day, I woke up, realised I had even better vision than before but, after lookin' in a mirror, no eyes."

"I see."

"I had originally thought it was a loada bull when he started cursin' me and everythin', but I guess I learnt my lessons or somethin' after that."

"… Is that it?"

"That's it."

"Oh. It wasn't very long."

"Yeah, I just couldn't be bothered to tell you at first."

"Right," I smiled, chuckling slightly. "It wasn't that dramatic either."

"It was pretty dramatic, you just weren't there. There was this big fight between me and this guy, and just as I had my razor at his throat, he cursed me. He had lungs, that man. Nearly deafened me with all his yellin'."

There was another slightly-more-comfortable silence. I started to think about Skulduggery, and about when he'd get there. I missed him, and Mum, Dad and Alice, that was for sure, but a strange feeling inside me was telling me that I didn't want to go home. It was odd, but it was like I wanted to stay here, with the routine I had here. Wake up on Sanguine, get tortured, return to the cell and play games with Sanguine and then fall asleep on Sanguine.

There was something in my routine that wasn't right, that I didn't like. Was it Sanguine? No, it was something small, and Sanguine was pretty big on my schedule. The only thing that wasn't Sanguine was the torture. Well, that made sense. It's pretty horrible, the pain, and then the knowledge that your magic is slowly being drained and before long you'll just be… Normal.

Everything else on my Schedule was fine though. I liked it. I'm prepared to admit that I like all of the Sanguine parts.

And then, with a twist of my gut, I realise that, excluding the torture, all of the parts of my routine were Sanguine.

Well, that's… Unsettling.

I looked up at Sanguine. Half in light, half in dark. I frowned.

"Do you get to wash here?"

He looked up quickly, surprised. "What?"

"Do you get to wash?"

"Oh, yeah. Every three days. Normally you're off in that room, screamin' your head off."

I nodded. "When the sunlight falls on your hair, it shines. It just occurred to me that you should probably have greasy hair."

"They are actually apparently civilised enough to let you wash every so often, which is… Nice."

I smirked, and he returned to polishing his sunglasses, which he still hadn't finished yet. As I looked him over, I actually found myself appreciating his appearance. I had noted once or twice before that he was reasonable attractive, but through my hate for him, I had overlooked all of his handsome features.

My hate. Where had that gone? I almost observe Sanguine in a friendly light now. I suppose he's all I've got for company, and, as cellmates go, he's not bad. He can make me laugh and, even though at the beginning he annoyed me to no end, he's now calmed down a bit and knows when to stop talking. The fact that I now talk to him more has probably cooled his need to interact with human beings.

"You're starin' at me."

I blinked, and snapped out of my thoughts. He was frowning at me, with a mixture of confusion and amusement.

"Sorry," I muttered. "I do that sometimes."

"Stare at me?"

"Stare at people when I think."

"Ah."

I coughed awkwardly. "You're being strangely quiet," I said after a while. Looking out of the window, I realised it was night. Time had passed quickly.

"I'm thinkin'."

"Good. You should get in the habit."

He shot me a playful scowl.

"About me?" I asked jokily.

"Yes." He replied.

Well, that was unexpected.

"What type of things?"

He looked away. "Just… things."

I shuffled closer to him. "Please tell me?"

He took a deep-ish breath. "Valk"-

I moved into him, pressing my lips to his. He froze, before sinking into the kiss. I placed a hand on his shoulder and he wrapped an arm around my waist.

I didn't really know what I was doing, but it felt right. I hoped Skulduggery would never find out, and I wondered what would happen in the morning- well, when I returned to the cell after all the torture stuff.

He pulled me closer so I was practically on his lap, and his other arm moved to my hair. I broke for air after about a minute, and stared into his eye sockets. I could tell he was in shock, yet he had enjoyed it. I thought for a brief moment about whether he liked me back, or whether he had just liked the kiss.

I mentally shrugged and sank down beside him curling up, my head resting on his lap. He continued to look straight ahead, and I smiled. "Goodnight, Sanguine." I murmur.

He didn't reply.

o.O.o

YAY! NEW CHAPTER! TWO CHAPTERS IN ONE NIGHT!

I'm amazing, am I not?

I'm joking, but I hope you enjoyed it. You may think I sped it up a bit too much, but I got the feeling you might want one of them to make a move, so that's what I did :D

And I wanted to write some actual Valguine romance, not just them playing games or squabbling. There will probably be a bit more squabbling, but it will be squabbling, not arguing.

YAY FOR VALGUINE ROMANCE!

NEXT TIME ON Tastes Like The Sun…

Valkyrie and Sanguine talk about their kiss.

Yeah. That's pretty much it.

I think this will probably be quite short as well when you read it. On Word it's 6 pages, but here... I don't know.

Anyway, if you feel like it, you can always... Review?

Perhaps?

Falling x :)