Redheaded Distractions Pt. 2

"Me!" Annisina stared at him, "What about me? I know your uncle doesn't like me much, but…"

Now that he'd remembered, though, Gwendel was having a private fit all in his own mind. He was, he decided, going to do something very nasty to his uncle. And if he could get Yuuri to agree to banish the man, so much the better…

"All about you," Gwendel said thoughtfully, "I wanted his permission to propose and he flat-out refused, and then when I stormed off and refused to back down he hit me with some kind of spell…"

"You wanted his permission to…what?" Annisina felt her knees go out from under her and suddenly she was sitting on the floor staring up at Gwendel sitting in the chair.

Only he wasn't sitting in the chair anymore, since she'd let go of Control-kun in her shock and now he was kneeling next to her looking all worried. She decided she liked that expression on his face. Even if it did make wrinkles on his forehead.

"I wanted his permission to propose to you," Gwendel said softly, picking her up and sitting back down in the chair with her in his lap. "Is that really so much of a shock? Do you not remember how close we were for a time when we were younger? I know I do."

"We were close, I suppose, yes, but…but then all of a sudden you hated me and I thought I'd done something wrong," Annisina looked away, "I never thought…"

"…That my dear uncle might have been behind it? Well he was, and I apologize for what he made me do." Gwendel pulled her closer into his arms and tucked her head under his chin, "Even if it was just as childhood friends I would never have been as harsh with you as I have been."

"It's not your fault," Annisina shook her head, "You know I know perfectly well what he thinks of me, it doesn't surprise me in the least that he would throw a fit about my "common" blood being brought into the "noble House von Walter" and especially by the heir."

"Don't you dare refer to yourself as common, or I'll have to spank you," Gwendel warned her, "You know I don't like to hear people suggest that. Just because your family is from the boarder and was awarded their nobility later than the rest of the landed families that does NOT make you common any more than I am."

Annisina could feel his hands clench against her, and his arms pull her a little closer, and she almost didn't know what to do with the sensation. She'd given up the idea of being courted decades ago, making herself and everyone else believe that she wasn't interested in anything other than her inventions, to the point that any courtship would have been nothing but a bother, but being held like this… It felt awfully good, she had to admit.

Now that he could fully remember what had happened, Gwendel was feeling very torn. All of a sudden he wanted to start back exactly where he had unwillingly left things off, but at the same time…it had been many years and much water under the bridge between them since then, and he knew that their circumstances were different. Neither of them were foolish lovestruck adolescents anymore, and both of them had busy lives. Lives which already included each other in now long-defined patterns and ways. Part of his mind wanted to just slap her across the cheek right now, kiss her into insensibility, and then spend the next month or so locked away with her in a room making up for lost time, but his more logical side realized that this wouldn't work. Unfortunately. For one thing, neither of them could get away for an entire month, and for another…well, this was what he wanted, he had no idea at all of how Annisina felt about the idea. She might not want to change their relationship at all, and might want to just forget this admission of his former intentions had ever been made. That thought hurt, but he had to acknowledge the truth of it. After all, who was to say what might have happened had he managed to propose all those years ago.

"Um, Gwendel, are you okay?" Annisina interrupted him, poking his cheek, "You look like you're brooding."

"Thinking," he corrected her.

"Okay, so you're thinking," she arched an eyebrow, back in more familiar territory now, despite still being a bit weirded out that he was holding her so close he was almost enveloping her. "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about what the next step here should be," he said, one hand almost unconsciously stroking her back.

"Next step? I should think it would be obvious. Go after your uncle and explain to him that you won't be controlled anymore," she pointed out.

"Oh, that is definitely on the list," Gwendel agreed, "but I meant what the next step should be for us. If you want to forget this admission ever happened and go on with your life I guess I can understand..." he started, making sure to provide her the easy way out.

Annisina pulled back in shock to stare at him. "You can't be suggesting... You are! Gwendel von Walter, you are a silly, noble fool, aren't you? What good would forgetting about this do anyone? Do you think it would make me any happier? Would it make you any happier?" Her eyes widened. "Wait, would it make you happier to just forget that all of this ever happened?" she gasped, suddenly feeling unreasonably hurt and betrayed.

Gwendel shook his head firmly. "No, it wouldn't, but... I know you're a busy, fulfilled woman with your own life, and..."

Well that was just too much! Where did he get off trying to play the pitiable lovesick swain? Annisina pulled back and slapped him hard across the cheek. "You just think a little, you idiotic man!" she screeched, trying to pull herself out of his grip.

He wasn't having any of that, though. Trained fighter though she might be, pulling yourself out of the grip of a bigger person when you were on their lap was not an easy thing, and besides...

"I really hope you meant that," he purred, swooping in and kissing her thoroughly.

Annisina's eyes widened, then she decided to stop fighting it and just go with this. It felt...incredible. Far too wonderful to stop. Instead, she shifted around in the chair until she was kneeling straddling his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck and shoulders and her body pressed tightly against his as she kissed him back, quickly moving from clumsy to adept.

After a long battle for dominance (which Annisina ended up winning out of pure stubbornness combined with judicious use of her feminine wiles) Gwendel pulled back with a grin on his face.

"You hit hard," he chuckled, panting slightly, "I'm going to be wearing a bruise from that slap for a couple of days at least."

"Good," Annisina said firmly, "that way you won't forget."

"You think I would forget?" he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Well, you forgot before, didn't you?"

"Hey!" he objected. "That wasn't my fault!"

"I know, I know, blame your uncle," she rolled her eyes at him playfully, sitting down comfortably on his knees, "I just want to be sure that when you leave this dampening field you won't forget again."

Gwendel frowned. "You do have a point, but you know, I can't just sit here until someone has gone to confront my uncle and made him remove the interdiction."

"I know. And both our strongest curse-breakers are away right now..."

"...and they may be on their way home, but I'm not going to sit here in this chair waiting for them either," Gwendel said firmly.

"No? If you wait here in the room I could make it worth your while," she grinned, "I'd just expand the dampening field to cover the entire suite, and then you can stay here until they get back. You could have the palace functionaries bring your paperwork in, if you're so insistent on doing it, and I have crochet materials here, as you've seen..."

"And you'd be here, of course," Gwendel nodded, "The idea does have merit…as long as you promise not to make me work on your experiments the whole time."

"Don't be silly, most of them won't work inside the dampening field anyway," Annisina stuck her tongue out at him. "It would be a different sort of experiment, to see how things work between us without your uncle's interference."

"Yes, that's definitely an important thing to consider," Gwendel agreed. "Alright; if you can set up a dampening field around the suite then I'll stay here until either Gunter or Gisela gets back and can remove the curse."

"I was hoping you'd say that," Annisina said, pulling herself back up along his body to press her lips lightly against his. "I've already discovered that I quite like kissing you, who knows what else I might discover!"

"Do you know," Gwendel said, a little breathlessly, "the thing I most wanted to do when I first remembered what happened was to kiss you into insensibility and then spend the next month together making up for lost time. Do you think the kingdom could do without us for that long?"

"I'm sure everyone would manage," Annisina whispered against his lips.

"Good," he whispered back, then closed his mouth over hers and pulled her tight against him, "We've got a lot of wasted time to make up for."

"We certainly do," she breathed as he moved his kissed down her neck, nipping at the alabaster column and then soothing the small marks with his lips and tongue. If he was going to wear a mark from her, he was determined that she was going to wear some marks of his too.

"Last report put them about two days out, didn't it?" he asked conversationally as he continued nibbling.

"About that…" she moaned softly, "Aren't I supposed to be expanding the field so you can move out of this chair?"

"In a minute," he said lazily, licking up her neck to suck at the pulse point just beneath her chin, "I'm busy just now and I'd be most upset if you got up and left."

"Gwendel…" she said, half-moaning and half-exasperated.

He just chuckled and nipped at her jaw.

"Gwendel!"

"Okay fine, I'll let you go for now. But only because you deserve something more comfortable than this chair for everything I have on my mind. Even if we don't do everything I have on my mind," he said with a lopsided smile, kissing her forehead and then lifting her off his lap to set her down on her feet, holding her around the waist until he was sure she was steady and not going to have her knees give out from under her again. That had frightened him just a little bit.

"Thank you!" she rolled her eyes, but she giggled as well, "Now, to expand this dampening field…"

The next two days were quite...educational for the new couple. There were a few bickering arguments, one or two knock-down, drag-out fights, and Control-kun came into play quite a few times for...various reasons, but overall things were going well. It was halfway through their third day together when a guard came to the door of the suite with the news that Yuuri and the rest had returned.

"Just wait here," Annisina kissed Gwendel's cheek (which was still showing a lovely yellowing bruise; he was lucky she hadn't punched him instead, it probably would have broken his zygomatic arch), "I'll go greet them for you and bring someone here to break this curse."

"Thank you Darling, I appreciate that," he smiled ironically. "It would be kindof pointless for me to spend all this time in the dampening field only to leave it now that there's a solution at hand." He pulled her down for a kiss. "Hurry back, though!"

"I will!" she winked over her shoulder at him as she closed the door behind her.

It was only another five minutes that he spent lounging on the retiring chair Annisina kept in her rather lavish bedroom before the door opened again, admitting Annisina and a whole crowd more people than Gwendel had been expecting.

Annisina smiled apologetically when she saw his rather stunned expression at the crowd that had followed her in. "Sorry, but when I was so insistent on bringing Gisela up to see you right away they got worried, and..."

Cheri pushed past Annisina, rushing to Gwendel's side and pulled him into a "motherly" hug. "Poor Gwennie! Where are you hurt? Tell Momma what's wrong!"

"...I couldn't persuade them you weren't hurt," Annisina sighed.

Gwendel sighed as well, pulling his face out of his mother's abundant cleavage to frown at her. "Hahaue, I'm fine, I haven't been injured, and I'm not sick, I just need a curse removed. That's why I'm in here with a dampening field up and we need Gisela's skills."

Only half listening, Cheri checked her son over for wounds, and then her eyes widened as she took in the bruise on his left cheek. "Oh! My baby went and got himself engaged when I was away! How could you do that to your poor mother? I would have wanted to be here to congratulate you right away!" she complained, hugging him again.

The rest of the crowd that had followed Annisina into the room (this consisting of Yuuri, Wolfram, Konrad, Yozak and Gisela) all reacted with predictable amounts of shock to this announcement, Wolfram, as usual, being the loudest.

"Engaged? But to who?" he protested. "Surely not..." He stared at Gwendel and then at Annisina, taking in the small bruises covering her neck as well as the large bruise on his brother's cheek.

"And why not?" Annisina frowned, going over and sitting next to Gwendel, who wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in to lean against him.

"But...but you two..." Yuuri looked entirely confused

"Hate each other?" Annisina raised an eyebrow.

"Well, not hate, but... Gwendel was always avoiding you," Yuuri pointed out.

"That wasn't exactly my choice," Gwendel explained to his confused-looking young king, "thus why I'm sitting in here behind a dampening field. My dear beloved uncle on my father's side decided he was against the idea of us being together and put what's called an interdiction curse on me so that I forgot anything connected to the idea that I wanted to marry Annisina."

"I always wondered what happened to change your mind," Cheri said thoughtfully, "Especially since I'd already given you carte blanche. I just assumed she'd refused so I was a nice, polite woman and didn't mention it. I should have known something else was going on. That Bertram is a menace and always has been."

"He sounds awful!" Yuuri nodded, "Who would do that to their own nephew? Just because he wanted to get married? That's not fair!"

"No, it's not," Konrad agreed, "But that sort of thing happens more often than you'd think."

"Well that's not right," Yuuri protested, "Remind me we have to do something about that."

Wolfram rolled his eyes. Yuuri and his justice again. Just so long as he didn't try to go Maou here in the room…

"Well, regardless of where it came from, this curse obviously needs to be removed," Gisela said, all business now, "Annisina if I could prevail upon you to turn the dampening field off so I can get to work?"

"Of course," Annisina nodded, heading for the coil placed near the door. She looked unusually nervous, but everyone watching silently agreed that she probably had every reason to be very concerned that this work right.

She waited until Cheri had moved out of the way and Gisela had taken up a position next to Gwendel.

"I hadn't expected so much of an audience for this," he grumbled as everyone's eyes riveted on him. Then Annisina flicked the switch on the dampening field and his expression immidiately started to blank out. "Need to crochet," he muttered, starting to try to stand up to go searching for his crochet materials, but Gisela pushed him firmly back down.

"Not just yet, your Excellency, let me do something first," she said gently, patting his shoulder. Then she concentrated and brought her power to bear, her hands glowing and reacting with something that seemed to be a sort of shield around Gwendel's head.

"There!" she said as the bubble/shield thing popped and Gwendel's eyes became bright again.

"Is it gone?" he asked quickly.

"If you know to ask then you shouldn't need to," Gisela rolled her eyes, "Yes, it's gone."

"Good," he said, "Now thank you very much for your help, but it's time for everyone to leave, if you don't mind."

"You want to celebrate, of course!" Cheri giggled, immidiately starting to scoot the others out of the room, "By all means! Take all the time you need, we'll take care of things here for you. Don't even think of coming out of this room until you've decided on a date or I'm going to be a grandma or both!"

"Hahaue!" Gwendel turned bright red.

"You know, I don't think I've ever seen him that colour before," Yozak observed to Konrad with a grin as Cheri pushed them out the door.

"Her too," Gisela agreed with a giggle at Annisina, who was standing next to the door quite ready to shut it as soon as everyone had left.

"Have fun you two! Don't worry about Bertram, we'll deal with his punishment!" Cheri called back once she'd gotten everyone out (even Yozak, who'd tried to stay behind to tease Gwendel some more, not having had many opportunities to do so and relishing every one). She winked at them, waving and closing the door behind her.

"Say, Annisina," Gwendel said thoughtfully once the door was closed, "How high up is your room? Are the windows large enough to get through?"

"I think so, why do you ask?" she frowned at him.

"Because I have a feeling we might want to elope," he sighed, "before my mother gets any ideas into her head."

Annisina's eyes widened. "Oh dear gods…" she shuddered, "I think you're right…let's go check the size of those windows. I'm sure I have something here we could climb down on."

With one quick, worried glance between the two of them they both rushed into the bedroom with only one thought on their minds:

ESCAPE!

Wheee! Well that was a fun ride! Hope to write more with those two another time, gotta play with them some more.