Disclaimer: see previous chapter
Notes: And today's game is: spot the Utena reference. ;^
Warnings for some yaoi and Val's mouth.
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
Holiday
by Nightfall Rising
part two
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
The man--mazoku?--who opened the door was smoke in a tuxedo. His hair was the color of thunderheads, his skin the choked black-grey of exhaust fumes. His eyes were the blue-grey that wafts up from pipe bowls, and he was translucent at the edges. You could see the crisp white edges of his starchily ironed shirt disappear into the bones of his wrist, see his collar though his dark jugular. "We weren't expecting any deliveries today," he frowned, and his voice was the lazy rumble of thunder too far away to be concerned about.
"Just as well, I'm not making any. Is there a Val working here? He said to meet him at this address."
Gnarled grey eyebrows bounced in a smooth and symmetrical face. "Ah. You must be Mr. Greyweir. Please follow me. I hope you will excuse my confusion, but Master Valgaav's visitors generally present themselves at the front door."
"Master--? What do you mean, front door?"
"May I take your cloak, sir?"
"No. Who are you?"
It considered, and smiled with a touch of fang. "The badly defined focal point of someone's faith. That's my idol on the door, or perhaps it should more accurately be called a fetish."
He considered fainting, decided against it. "Val lives in this house and his butler's a god?"
"A very small god, sir. Very personal. If my priestess ever manages to convert anyone to my worship, my status may improve."
"Is that likely to happen?"
"No," he admitted. "I'm afraid she isn't the sort to inspire others to total confidence in her sanity. But it's not so bad, working for the Rubyeyes, sir. The Head Tort--er--er, Head Cook is a true genius, and the family is... full of interest."
"That's okay," he said. "I know Val's family are mazoku. I've got some ether in my veins myself. I mean, look at me."
"Ah, but no one knows better than I how deceptive appearances can be, sir. In my last incarnation, I was Lightbearer, Phoenix Prince of Illusion. So full-hearted was my worship that my priests didn't even allow themselves to speak my name or realize that my temple was more than an ordinary place of learning. And who knows? She is mortal. I may be restored to such glory in my next incarnation. I can wait. The tides of the Sea of Chaos wash us where they please."
"Tell me about it. Well good luck. --Wait a minute! The Rubyeyes? As in, Shabranigdo Rubyeye? Those Rubyeyes? Val is one of Those Rubyeyes?" Backing up, he bumped into the bronze statue of a sinister looking chicken at the foot of the stairs, and started forward again, rubbing his injured posterior.
The butler's lips smoothly repressed a smile. "I'm afraid so, sir."
Zel considered. His final, impressed conclusion was, "Damn."
The butler was leading him to the highly impressive staircase when the equally impressive front door swung open. The ash-blonde woman who staggered through would have been blindingly beautiful if she hadn't been lurching, hung over, and bleeding profusely from the face. She swayed to a stop more or less in front of the butler, and took a long drag from her ebony-handled cigarette holder. It didn't have a cigarette in it. "Zoemelguster," she declared, white smoke seeping from between smeared, pearly-lavender lips. She winced minutely, as though her voice hurt her head, but she wasn't going to show weakness in front of the servants. "Why is there a wolf in the library?"
"You rode it in there, Miss Zelas."
"Oh." She scowled in thought, and touched a long, tapering, scarlet fingernail to one of the six slashes on her cheeks. "Is that what happened to my face?"
"I'm afraid so, Miss."
"Oh." The moment of thought repeated itself, painfully. "Is it morning?"
"I'm afraid so, Miss."
"I'd better change for church, then. Have Anne send up a headache glass and my grey suit."
"It seems a terrible waste of a headache, Miss Zelas."
"No one asked you," she snapped half-heartedly, and lurched off parallel to the staircase. "I'll want a drink in my room after church."
"Did she miss?" Zel asked, fascinated.
"Miss what, sir?"
"The stairs."
"Oh, no, sir. Miss Zelas has merely opted to take the elevator."
"Elevator?!"
Just then, his long, sensitive ears caught a swish from behind him, and two bare heels clocked him with cheerful abandon on the back of his head. "It's my bitch!" Val sang happily and, as he turned around, descended on him and swallowed his tongue.
"Glph!" was Zel's first reaction, but he had learned to expect this sort of thing from his love, and as soon as his adrenaline subsided, he was more than happy to cooperate.
By the time Val acknowledged his regrettable human need for oxygen, they were on a black leather loveseat in a rather brothel-like sitting room on the second floor.
"I'm not your bitch," Zel said, calmly and reasonably, as soon as he had his breath back.
"Either way," Val shrugged.
"As long as that's understood."
A few minutes later, they had separated again, mostly because Zel needed to express the extent to which he was overwhelmed. "Val?"
"N?"
"You didn't tell me you lived in a vampire's mansion."
"You mean Renfield? The wolf groomer? Yeah, I guess he lives here."
"I mean this house."
Val craned his long neck up. "Oh. Yeah, it is kind of a mausoleum, isn't it." He looked eminently himself, wearing sweatpants and an unfastened red silk vest that went perfectly with the gilt-traced walls but warred with his spiky teal hair in an abysmal fashion that Zel found endearing.
"It's very big." Zel relied on Val's knowing his tendency to profoundly understatement matters.
"Yup. It's no big deal, is it? I mean, I live here. It's just where I live."
"Your butler is a minor deity."
"He irons the newspaper just like Daddy likes it, and Sis says he makes a good alligator-egg-in-Worcestershire-sauce."
"You have statues from Old Sairaag in your front hall."
"Good, aren't they? We used to have one from Zephilia, but Sis broke it."
"Val, you're related to Shabranigdo Rubyeye."
"Oh, Grandad?"
"Yes!"
"Well, technically," he pointed out with casual reasonability, "so are you. I mean your grandfather was one of his Shards. It's practically the same thing."
"Okay," he said slowly, trying to reconcile himself to the situation.
"Oh, stop sulking!" Val exclaimed, and kissed him enthusiastically . The importance of setting receded until he could have been on stage in a brightly-lit strip joint and wouldn't have cared. Much.
"Okay," Zel said when he was flushed and dazed and trying to regain some control over the situation, "it's not that I give a damn about what your last name is or where your family lives. It's just that you misrepresented yourself on Mipross."
"We only had a week," Val explained, leaning back. "I was kind of rushed for time. Would you have asked me to marry you in six days if you'd known that my family's the primary source of dark power in this world?"
"No," he confessed, and grinned. "I would have asked you in two."
Val laughed, and descended on him yet again. "You're peculiar," he said, separating. "It's funny to hear it talked about."
"What, power? Why, is it sacred?"
"Well... I just get the feeling you aren't pleased."
Zel scoffed. "Wasn't I pleased when I found out you could put your feet behind your neck while standing on your forehead?"
"Oh," Val leered, "weren't you just. So power's a personal quirk, is it?"
"And a very nice one, at that."
"It'll be yours, too, you know." They had found out days ago that the horn was useful for sweeping wire hair away.
"No," Zel said, this time not being swept. "No, thank you. I'm still mostly human, and that's not likely to change."
"So was that guy over the fire," he said, jerking a thumb to a portrait over the mantle. "That's Grandfather Shabranigdo--Lei Magnus, in mortal life. He started out as a mere black sorcerer."
"I'm a shamanist."
Val bit his nose. Around it, rather indistinctly, he growled, "What mortal has done, mortal can do." Letting go, he slid off Zel's lap, and drew him up by the hands. "Now, I've got to go to church."
"I just got here," Zel pointed out. "And why is a mazoku going to church?"
"It's my half-brother's congregation. He's not really one of the family, but we always go to support him for Mother's sake, may-she-rest-in-peace."
"May-she-rest-in-peace."
"Or not. She was pretty lively. Anyway, I have to go because I'll be telling my father then. You can take a tour of the island; Zoemelguster will give you insect repellant and wolfsbane."
Zel's nonexistent eyebrows drew closer together, or at least the rocks around his eyes did. "In church?"
"He can't talk then," Val explained as though it were meant to be obvious.
The corner of Zel's blue lips twitched. "Scared?"
"Nah, Daddy's a pussycat. This is the best way, that's all. Just make sure you're back by one; Daddy hates people to be late, and your first impression is very important. And for mayhem's sake, do something about getting a sword. And that hair..."
Daddy? Zel thought. Instead, he asked, "When I make my appearance at one o'clock sharp-exactly-on-the-dot, should it be on my hands and knees?" Val scowled at him, and flexed his chest possibly without meaning to, and told him not to joke. "Why not?" he asked. "Why should we let the fun go out of it?"
Val shot him a withering amber-eyed sneer. "It's not like it's going to."
"True," Zel conceded, trying to tame his inappropriate, although doubtlessly intended, reaction to that look. "But why tell him so soon?"
This next glare was more confused than anything else. "Well, I have to tell Daddy, Zel. He'd never forgive me if I didn't."
"Sure, eventually." This line didn't seem to be helping his case any, so he conceded, "All right. If that's what you want. But wouldn't it be satisfying to just keep it to ourselves a while?
Now one glorious golden eye was wider than the other, and the teal brow above it was soaring high on bewildered skepticism. "I don't see what fun that'd be."
"Don't you?" Zel asked, a little wistfully.
"No," Val said definitely, turned on his heal, and stepped into the elevator. Zel joined him, and they stood there disconsolately for a minute. Zel's arms were crossed, flinty thumbs tucked under his elbows, and Val's own thumbs had been shoved spitefully into his belt, eight shapely fingers dangling free.
Neither of them made a move for the panel with the buttons. Finally, Zel loosened his scowl enough to speak. "It's getting complicated," he growled, almost under his breath.
"You didn't think it'd be easy, did you?" Val muttered sullenly. Zel's mouth twisted agreement, which Val may or may not have caught, because a moment later, he seethed, "What's the matter with you, anyway?"
[end part three]
Important Notes: This story is not only based but riveted into the cement of an absolutely marvelous movie called 'Holiday,' starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, played respectively in this fic by Xel and Zel. If you haven't seen it (and most of you probably haven't; it's not even as well known as 'Philadelphia Story, gloom), please, please, make an effort to! This is a black and white movie! It's from the time when movies were about the acting and the scripts, and not about disguising the lack of either with splashy special effects! Go see it, go! You'll also better appreciate my artistry if you do (wink).
Notes: And today's game is: spot the Utena reference. ;^
Warnings for some yaoi and Val's mouth.
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
Holiday
by Nightfall Rising
part two
^w^ ^w^ ^w^ ^w^
The man--mazoku?--who opened the door was smoke in a tuxedo. His hair was the color of thunderheads, his skin the choked black-grey of exhaust fumes. His eyes were the blue-grey that wafts up from pipe bowls, and he was translucent at the edges. You could see the crisp white edges of his starchily ironed shirt disappear into the bones of his wrist, see his collar though his dark jugular. "We weren't expecting any deliveries today," he frowned, and his voice was the lazy rumble of thunder too far away to be concerned about.
"Just as well, I'm not making any. Is there a Val working here? He said to meet him at this address."
Gnarled grey eyebrows bounced in a smooth and symmetrical face. "Ah. You must be Mr. Greyweir. Please follow me. I hope you will excuse my confusion, but Master Valgaav's visitors generally present themselves at the front door."
"Master--? What do you mean, front door?"
"May I take your cloak, sir?"
"No. Who are you?"
It considered, and smiled with a touch of fang. "The badly defined focal point of someone's faith. That's my idol on the door, or perhaps it should more accurately be called a fetish."
He considered fainting, decided against it. "Val lives in this house and his butler's a god?"
"A very small god, sir. Very personal. If my priestess ever manages to convert anyone to my worship, my status may improve."
"Is that likely to happen?"
"No," he admitted. "I'm afraid she isn't the sort to inspire others to total confidence in her sanity. But it's not so bad, working for the Rubyeyes, sir. The Head Tort--er--er, Head Cook is a true genius, and the family is... full of interest."
"That's okay," he said. "I know Val's family are mazoku. I've got some ether in my veins myself. I mean, look at me."
"Ah, but no one knows better than I how deceptive appearances can be, sir. In my last incarnation, I was Lightbearer, Phoenix Prince of Illusion. So full-hearted was my worship that my priests didn't even allow themselves to speak my name or realize that my temple was more than an ordinary place of learning. And who knows? She is mortal. I may be restored to such glory in my next incarnation. I can wait. The tides of the Sea of Chaos wash us where they please."
"Tell me about it. Well good luck. --Wait a minute! The Rubyeyes? As in, Shabranigdo Rubyeye? Those Rubyeyes? Val is one of Those Rubyeyes?" Backing up, he bumped into the bronze statue of a sinister looking chicken at the foot of the stairs, and started forward again, rubbing his injured posterior.
The butler's lips smoothly repressed a smile. "I'm afraid so, sir."
Zel considered. His final, impressed conclusion was, "Damn."
The butler was leading him to the highly impressive staircase when the equally impressive front door swung open. The ash-blonde woman who staggered through would have been blindingly beautiful if she hadn't been lurching, hung over, and bleeding profusely from the face. She swayed to a stop more or less in front of the butler, and took a long drag from her ebony-handled cigarette holder. It didn't have a cigarette in it. "Zoemelguster," she declared, white smoke seeping from between smeared, pearly-lavender lips. She winced minutely, as though her voice hurt her head, but she wasn't going to show weakness in front of the servants. "Why is there a wolf in the library?"
"You rode it in there, Miss Zelas."
"Oh." She scowled in thought, and touched a long, tapering, scarlet fingernail to one of the six slashes on her cheeks. "Is that what happened to my face?"
"I'm afraid so, Miss."
"Oh." The moment of thought repeated itself, painfully. "Is it morning?"
"I'm afraid so, Miss."
"I'd better change for church, then. Have Anne send up a headache glass and my grey suit."
"It seems a terrible waste of a headache, Miss Zelas."
"No one asked you," she snapped half-heartedly, and lurched off parallel to the staircase. "I'll want a drink in my room after church."
"Did she miss?" Zel asked, fascinated.
"Miss what, sir?"
"The stairs."
"Oh, no, sir. Miss Zelas has merely opted to take the elevator."
"Elevator?!"
Just then, his long, sensitive ears caught a swish from behind him, and two bare heels clocked him with cheerful abandon on the back of his head. "It's my bitch!" Val sang happily and, as he turned around, descended on him and swallowed his tongue.
"Glph!" was Zel's first reaction, but he had learned to expect this sort of thing from his love, and as soon as his adrenaline subsided, he was more than happy to cooperate.
By the time Val acknowledged his regrettable human need for oxygen, they were on a black leather loveseat in a rather brothel-like sitting room on the second floor.
"I'm not your bitch," Zel said, calmly and reasonably, as soon as he had his breath back.
"Either way," Val shrugged.
"As long as that's understood."
A few minutes later, they had separated again, mostly because Zel needed to express the extent to which he was overwhelmed. "Val?"
"N?"
"You didn't tell me you lived in a vampire's mansion."
"You mean Renfield? The wolf groomer? Yeah, I guess he lives here."
"I mean this house."
Val craned his long neck up. "Oh. Yeah, it is kind of a mausoleum, isn't it." He looked eminently himself, wearing sweatpants and an unfastened red silk vest that went perfectly with the gilt-traced walls but warred with his spiky teal hair in an abysmal fashion that Zel found endearing.
"It's very big." Zel relied on Val's knowing his tendency to profoundly understatement matters.
"Yup. It's no big deal, is it? I mean, I live here. It's just where I live."
"Your butler is a minor deity."
"He irons the newspaper just like Daddy likes it, and Sis says he makes a good alligator-egg-in-Worcestershire-sauce."
"You have statues from Old Sairaag in your front hall."
"Good, aren't they? We used to have one from Zephilia, but Sis broke it."
"Val, you're related to Shabranigdo Rubyeye."
"Oh, Grandad?"
"Yes!"
"Well, technically," he pointed out with casual reasonability, "so are you. I mean your grandfather was one of his Shards. It's practically the same thing."
"Okay," he said slowly, trying to reconcile himself to the situation.
"Oh, stop sulking!" Val exclaimed, and kissed him enthusiastically . The importance of setting receded until he could have been on stage in a brightly-lit strip joint and wouldn't have cared. Much.
"Okay," Zel said when he was flushed and dazed and trying to regain some control over the situation, "it's not that I give a damn about what your last name is or where your family lives. It's just that you misrepresented yourself on Mipross."
"We only had a week," Val explained, leaning back. "I was kind of rushed for time. Would you have asked me to marry you in six days if you'd known that my family's the primary source of dark power in this world?"
"No," he confessed, and grinned. "I would have asked you in two."
Val laughed, and descended on him yet again. "You're peculiar," he said, separating. "It's funny to hear it talked about."
"What, power? Why, is it sacred?"
"Well... I just get the feeling you aren't pleased."
Zel scoffed. "Wasn't I pleased when I found out you could put your feet behind your neck while standing on your forehead?"
"Oh," Val leered, "weren't you just. So power's a personal quirk, is it?"
"And a very nice one, at that."
"It'll be yours, too, you know." They had found out days ago that the horn was useful for sweeping wire hair away.
"No," Zel said, this time not being swept. "No, thank you. I'm still mostly human, and that's not likely to change."
"So was that guy over the fire," he said, jerking a thumb to a portrait over the mantle. "That's Grandfather Shabranigdo--Lei Magnus, in mortal life. He started out as a mere black sorcerer."
"I'm a shamanist."
Val bit his nose. Around it, rather indistinctly, he growled, "What mortal has done, mortal can do." Letting go, he slid off Zel's lap, and drew him up by the hands. "Now, I've got to go to church."
"I just got here," Zel pointed out. "And why is a mazoku going to church?"
"It's my half-brother's congregation. He's not really one of the family, but we always go to support him for Mother's sake, may-she-rest-in-peace."
"May-she-rest-in-peace."
"Or not. She was pretty lively. Anyway, I have to go because I'll be telling my father then. You can take a tour of the island; Zoemelguster will give you insect repellant and wolfsbane."
Zel's nonexistent eyebrows drew closer together, or at least the rocks around his eyes did. "In church?"
"He can't talk then," Val explained as though it were meant to be obvious.
The corner of Zel's blue lips twitched. "Scared?"
"Nah, Daddy's a pussycat. This is the best way, that's all. Just make sure you're back by one; Daddy hates people to be late, and your first impression is very important. And for mayhem's sake, do something about getting a sword. And that hair..."
Daddy? Zel thought. Instead, he asked, "When I make my appearance at one o'clock sharp-exactly-on-the-dot, should it be on my hands and knees?" Val scowled at him, and flexed his chest possibly without meaning to, and told him not to joke. "Why not?" he asked. "Why should we let the fun go out of it?"
Val shot him a withering amber-eyed sneer. "It's not like it's going to."
"True," Zel conceded, trying to tame his inappropriate, although doubtlessly intended, reaction to that look. "But why tell him so soon?"
This next glare was more confused than anything else. "Well, I have to tell Daddy, Zel. He'd never forgive me if I didn't."
"Sure, eventually." This line didn't seem to be helping his case any, so he conceded, "All right. If that's what you want. But wouldn't it be satisfying to just keep it to ourselves a while?
Now one glorious golden eye was wider than the other, and the teal brow above it was soaring high on bewildered skepticism. "I don't see what fun that'd be."
"Don't you?" Zel asked, a little wistfully.
"No," Val said definitely, turned on his heal, and stepped into the elevator. Zel joined him, and they stood there disconsolately for a minute. Zel's arms were crossed, flinty thumbs tucked under his elbows, and Val's own thumbs had been shoved spitefully into his belt, eight shapely fingers dangling free.
Neither of them made a move for the panel with the buttons. Finally, Zel loosened his scowl enough to speak. "It's getting complicated," he growled, almost under his breath.
"You didn't think it'd be easy, did you?" Val muttered sullenly. Zel's mouth twisted agreement, which Val may or may not have caught, because a moment later, he seethed, "What's the matter with you, anyway?"
[end part three]
Important Notes: This story is not only based but riveted into the cement of an absolutely marvelous movie called 'Holiday,' starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, played respectively in this fic by Xel and Zel. If you haven't seen it (and most of you probably haven't; it's not even as well known as 'Philadelphia Story, gloom), please, please, make an effort to! This is a black and white movie! It's from the time when movies were about the acting and the scripts, and not about disguising the lack of either with splashy special effects! Go see it, go! You'll also better appreciate my artistry if you do (wink).