Note: Serving the Lord of the Vampaneze is hard even when he's in a good mood. But serving his Lord when he has the flu? Poor Gannen. Spoilers up to book 9.

Soup

For Love Psychedelico, because she's sick and this should cheer her up a bit.


"Gannen," a low moan from the bedroom. Now in usual circumstances, Gannen didn't mind low moans of his name, especially not from a bedroom. But today, he wasn't amused. And it wasn't because he was nowhere near the bedroom at the moment. It wasn't because he was almost done with cooking this soup and he didn't want to leave it. Well, alright, maybe that was a little bit of the problem. But mostly it was because his lord, the Lord of the Vampaneze, was sick.

And when Steve was sick, he was a pain in the arse.

"Ganneeeen."

Putting the gas low and setting the ladle down, he went to check on his master. Steve was curled up in his chair with a big warm blanket wrapped around him. He looked downright miserable, eyes watery and tired, nose running, shivering all over the place. Gannen almost felt sorry for the man. "Yes?"

"Where did I leave that document about Mahler?" the voice croaked halfway the sentence. Gannen sighed. The man was obviously too sick to work, but Steve was such a stubborn-

"It's right there on the table," the vampaneze pulled the files out of Steve's hands and the books out of Steve's lap. "You need rest," he said at the almost whiney noises. "Get into bed." When the man didn't obey, he growled and pulled Steve up by his arm. "Bed!" The man didn't think twice this time, and shuffled to the bed as fast as he could. Gannen nodded, pulling the covers up around Steve, who pulled them to his chin and sniffled.

His soup was done, if not a bit under-stirred. He poured it in a bowl and went back to his Lord's room, grabbing a bottle of blood as he went along. Steve was curled up, back against the headboard and sneezing into a piece of cloth. Gannen waited until he was done before putting the soup on his lap and uncorking the bottle. Steve messed around a bit with the spoon and yelped. The vampaneze took a deep breath, before looking over to see what was wrong.

The hot soup had fallen off the spoon and onto the man's bare chest. Gannen sighed and pulled the blanket open a bit, getting the bowl of soup off Steve's lap. Steve pouted and sniffled, but didn't comment. He huffed a bit at the spoon held in front of his mouth, but opened anyway. Gannen smiled and began feeding the grey-haired man.

It was probably a bit embarrassing, the vampaneze mused. Lord of the Vampaneze, and he had to be spoon-fed because he was too ill. Gannen decided to take it easy on the man the next few days. Steve got sick a lot, Gannen knew. Something to do with that spider. The details were vague; Steve never trusted him enough to tell him, or anyone, the full story of what happened.

When the soup and the blood were gone (and hopefully gone for longer than ten minutes, Gannen though as he remembered the puking incident of last night), Steve insisted on a status report before getting rest. As Gannen began filling him in on the several tasks the man wanted to know about, he felt a weight on his shoulder. Steve.

He sighed and helped the sleeping man back into a comfortable position, cradling Steve's head to his chest so it wouldn't fall back in an awkward position. When the man was tucked in, curled up like a cat, Steve cracked open an eye. "Don't go," he whispered. Blinking, Gannen nodded and set a chair by the bed.

He was in one of those moods again. Every now and again, Steve would have a shift in his personality, it seemed. Sometimes he'd get violent, or extremely happy, and sometimes... sometimes he'd be like this. Like the little boy he had stopped being long ago. He smiled at his lord, pulling the blankets up for him. "Get some rest."

Steve nodded and drifted off to sleep. "G'night."

" 'Night."

Fin

Now stop pushing Paris down the toilet, Deli!