Title: An Awful Thing Chapter 10: A Vile Seducer of Women
By: Jedishampoo (Jedishampoo at aol dot com)
Rating: PG-13 overall, averaged out I think
Summary: Howl and Sophie get mixed up in magical and dimensional doings, and Sophie is just mixed up. Humor/Adventure/Romance thingie. Crossover between Howl's Moving Castle and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
Author's Notes: This is movieverse!Howl and company. I've read the books by Diana Wynne Jones, and so a little bookishness may creep in here and there, but the movie is what made me fall in love with the characters. Comments, constructive criticism eagerly welcomed.
Back from Worldcon. And I warned you this chapter was gooey. Hey, this is humor/adventure/romance, after all. I think we're still in PG-13 land here, however.
xxx
Chapter 10: A Vile Seducer of Women
Sophie re-wet a damp cloth in the basin of cold water she'd begged off of the wizards, and then kneeled on the floor next to the couch where Howl was stretched out. He still hadn't awoken. Sophie clucked her tongue as she felt the knot forming under his damp hair. She bunched up the cool towel beneath it, hoping it might help reduce the swelling. Those wizards had assured her Howl would be all right; if he wasn't, they were going to answer for it.
She decided to try something new. She dribbled a little of the icy water over his forehead, and was rewarded with a small, pathetic moan. So she splashed him with a little more. He probably deserved it. Della in London, indeed. The purse had been a curse after all, although what kind, she still did not know. Howl never would take actual blame for anything. But it was still partially Sophie's fault for buying it in the first place. She wiped most of the water from his face.
"Pteh," Howl sputtered. It was a pathetic little sputter, but at least he was sputtering.
"Hello, Howl," she said, smiling down at him.
"Sophie," he whispered, and opened his eyes a crack. "Are we home?"
"No," she had to tell him. "We're still at Unseen University, unfortunately."
"Bleh." He opened his eyes a little more. Tiny red lines spiraled out from the blue of his irises, and dark smudges lurked under his eyes. He must have one nasty headache, thought Sophie, with a twinge of pity building behind her ribcage. He looked pale, awful. It was the worst she'd ever seen him look, when he wasn't covered in green slime, that was. Yet he still managed to look pretty darn good.
"Poor Howl," she said, adjusting the wet towel beneath his head and then brushing the black hair from his forehead with gentle fingers, and untangling it from his jeweled earring. "It's probably not often that you get hit, is it?"
"No." Howl said, then tried to sit up too quickly. His face turned a shade of pale green and he dropped back to the couch. "Who did it?"
"It was the Special Constable, though they just call him the Librarian here. It's what he does."
"That, and hit people when their backs are turned," Howl said with weak scorn.
"He was very sorry about it," she told him.
"What did he say to you? Ook?"
"Well, yes," Sophie had to admit. "But it was an ook that said, he regretted having to do that but he is adjunct to the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, after all, and was only doing his job. I think he actually likes you."
"No, he likes you. Everyone likes you, Sophie." Howl looked so despondent as he said it that it almost wasn't a compliment. But Sophie was feeling so tenderly towards him at the moment, she took it as one anyway and kissed him on the cheek. Her stomach growled and she felt her cheeks grow warm. She hadn't eaten all day.
Howl gave a dramatic sigh, then waved a hand about the room. "I don't suppose I can use magic in here, can I? Nope. What a mess." With a little more caution the second time, he raised himself to a sitting position and stared around a bit. "Couldn't they have given us a little more furniture, at least?"
Sophie looked around with her own sigh. Pretty much she, Howl, the couch, a lantern, and a few ugly old paintings were the only things in the room. "I don't think they actually expected to ever put anyone in here," she told him.
Howl's reddened eyes widened. "Hey, and I'm taking up the whole couch. Let me move over." He shoved himself against the other end, taking the towel with him, and patted the damp spot where his head had lain.
Sophie didn't object, just picked herself up from the floor and sat.
Howl looked around some more, wincing with every movement of his head. "How long will we be here, I wonder? Would they let me have a bath, do you think? And where are we supposed to sleep, anyway? And I can't believe they put you in here, too." Then his eyes filled with a coy look, one that seemed to realize, hey, we're alone at last. He looked like he was trying to decide whether or not to give up his pathetic air to pursue it.
Sophie rolled her eyes back at him. Howl thought he was so sly. After the giant tantrum Sophie had thrown, convincing those fusty old wizards to let her in here. "I insisted," she said. Then she added, "for a city with a Guild of Seamstresses they're awfully old-fashioned."
A fzzzting sound from the other side of the room cut off any reply Howl might have made. Tiny bolts of lightning formed around the door, causing its outline to glow for a moment. Then it opened.
A young wizard, one of the teenagers with the wispy little beards, stuck a tentative head around the door. His pointy, star-patterned hat drooped over his spotty forehead. "Uh. Hello, Miss Sophie. Are you two hungry?"
"No," said Howl.
"Yes," said Sophie. Her stomach growled again.
"Oh. Okay," the boy said, then turned to speak to someone outside the door. "You can come in, Mizz Smith."
A largish woman in a maidservant's clothing carried in a tray with mounds of food on it. She ogled Howl, smiled at Sophie, and deposited the tray on the floor. "Ere you goes," she said, winked at Howl for good measure, then waddled out. The door fzzzted shut.
Howl tested the room for magic-blocking spells again, found them in place, then sighed and collapsed once more, head drooping in Sophie's lap. "I can't possibly eat," he said.
"I can," Sophie told him, and removed his head from her thigh so she could sit on the floor with the food. It looked and smelled delicious. It was no surprise, really-- the wizards here certainly looked like they ate well. And Sophie had eaten no breakfast or lunch. She devoured some potatoes and chicken and vegetables while Howl moaned on the couch. There were also two slices of a lovely apple pie. Sophie ate every crumb of one of them.
"Are you going to eat this? It's very good," she told Howl, holding up the other slice of pie.
"Eh," said Howl.
"Fine," said Sophie, and proceeded to eat the second piece of pie as well. She guzzled an entire glass of ale to wash it down.
When she was finished her dress was too tight to sit comfortably on the floor. So she lifted Howl's head from the now-dry side of the couch, sat down, and deposited his head back onto her lap. Her eyes drooped shut and she relaxed with a full, happy sigh.
At some point in her half-doze Howl must have gotten bored with being injured, for she felt his head leave her lap, and felt also his eyes upon her. Sophie glanced over to see what he was doing. He had his head propped on one palm, and was giving her one of those stares, the ones that made her stomach feel all fluttery.
"It's too bad we're in all this trouble, but I'm glad you're here," he told her. His gaze caressed her face, her chin, her shoulders.
The old Sophie would have blushed and stammered. But this Sophie was full of food, relaxed by the ale, and content with being in love with such a handsome wretch. "I'm glad too," she said and stretched out a hand to him. "Imagine poor Howl, here all by himself."
"I know." He used her grip to pull himself next to her, and slipped his other hand around the tight waist of her gown. It said something for Sophie's mood that she didn't even object to that. Content, relaxed Sophie sort of just melted onto him, and wasn't the least shy about how much she wanted to be kissed.
It was very nice, too. One of those slow, searching kisses she'd learned from him. "You taste like apples," Howl told her after a while, with a grin in his voice.
"You really should have had some pie," she said, winding her fingers in his soft hair, and being careful not to scratch the knot on his skull.
"Mrf rth dis," Howl said, kissing her again, more enthusiastically than before. Sophie threw herself into it at least as enthusiastically. It was wonderful, to just let things happen as they would, to be the focus of all his attention, to enjoy the intimacy of it without any thought of stopping.
She didn't know how long that lasted, only that it was a long time. At some point every part of her that pressed against him was warm and shivery, and she couldn't bear to be so far from him, and at some other point she crawled onto his lap.
There had been kisses, but never before had Sophie let things progress to the point where Howl, or she, was quite this breathless and desperate. It was a revealing experience, coming up for air now and then to feel his lips trailing those lovely paths along her jawline, and the breath in her ear that made her tingle all over with every heave of his lungs. She found she couldn't stop touching him; she let her hands caress his chest through the thin blue fabric of his shirt, and felt the furious thump of his heart. That was for her. It was glorious and gratifying, and Sophie wondered why she'd ever been so worried about being this close. Howl was so very good at it.
"Sophie!" he said after a long while, with such breathless exclamation in his voice. "Please don't ever leave me."
An ache grew in Sophie's chest and expanded; she couldn't imagine why he was asking such a thing. Had he actually thought-- well, she supposed she could see how he could have. Such an indecisive person she must have seemed. Poor Howl. The ache crawled throughout her limbs and pooled in a throbbing mess somewhere below her belly. "I love you," she told him.
"I mean it," he said, grasping her face in his hands, nose touching hers. "Don't ever leave me. I couldn't bear it."
Howl always said things sideways. But Sophie heard what he didn't say aloud. It was irresistible. "I won't," she told him, and went without air for a while longer.
For Sophie had already decided that when they got home to the castle, if they ever got home, she was going to lock him in his bedroom. From the inside.
He was biting her earlobe again. Scratch that, they were locked in here.
"Don't know what spell Ridcully was talking about," Howl mumbled at one point. "I'm fine."
Sophie didn't ask, and things sort of evolved to a really happy level after that. In fact, Howl had just managed to get them both stretched out on the couch, and was doing some very surprising and thrilling things with his clever hands, when the door fzzzted again.
A moment of stillness lapsed, and then Howl sprang up and away to the opposite side of the couch. Sophie sat up just as quickly and tried to straighten her gown.
"Argh!" Howl muttered. "Interruption. That must be it!"
"What?" Sophie asked, still a bit breathless and dazy.
But Howl didn't answer, as the door lit up again around the edges and swung open partway to admit a thin face. It was the teenaged wizard who'd come earlier with Sophie's dinner. He was joined by a few friends, other adolescents wearing pointy hats and spots, poking their heads through the cracked door.
"We're coming in," one of them said.
"Fine!" spat Howl.
The group, four of them, traipsed in on tiptoe and then shut the door quietly behind them. Three of the newcomers shuffled their feet a bit and stared at the floor. The one they'd met before finally spoke up.
"We can get you out of here. But there's a price," he said, voice shaking.
"Fine," Howl said again. He didn't much sound like he wanted to leave, but he may have been warming to the idea. Home sounded like a mostly wonderful thing to Sophie. She just wished somewhat that home had maybe come a little bit later.
"Teach us how to get girls," one of the other young men said.
"You're kidding," Howl said.
But Sophie didn't think they were kidding at all. Wizards here in this world were not the handsomest of specimens. They were the pale, flabby type who rarely went outdoors in daylight. Even Corporal Nobby Nobbs had been surprised to see a wizard accompanied by a female. She could well imagine how desperate they must be. She sympathized with them a lot, in fact.
"No!" one of the others said, sounding a bit offended. "We mean it. Tell us how to get girls," here he nodded at Sophie, "and we'll sneak you out. That, we're really good at."
Howl, changeable in mood as ever, began to grin. Then he laughed. Sophie rolled her eyes at him, but he was apparently too amused to heed her.
"I can do that," he said.
He asked for paper, quill and ink and among the four young wizards, they managed to scavenge those items from their robes. Howl gestured them over into a group, and wrote some strange symbols on the paper with numbers lined up next to them. It looked like some sort of arcane recipe to Sophie. There was a lot of whispering. There was also a lot of male snickering. It was disgusting. When Howl was done, whatever it was he'd written, the young wizards were satisfied. No, they were smug.
"All right men, let's go," their first young man said to the others. He turned to Howl and Sophie. "You'll have to be quiet."
Howl and Sophie nodded, both as silent as the grave. Hand in hand, they followed the group through the door and then through a wall or two-- apparently some of the hallways at old UU were there just for show-- and soon they all stood outside. The wizards led them to a wall at the edge of the courtyard and removed a number of loose bricks.
"We sneak out to go drinking sometimes," one of them told Howl.
Howl gave him one of those man-to-man nods of understanding.
"Once you're through, you can pretty much use any spell you want to go home," one of the others said.
"Thanks," Howl told them. He grinned at Sophie and clasped her fingers to draw her through the hole in the wall.
Sophie didn't feel safe letting Howl use magic until they'd walked a good few blocks from the University. "I guess there are good things about being a vile seducer of women, after all," Sophie told him once they were a decent distance away. Her voice may have been a bit snippy, but she couldn't be sure.
"Hah." Howl had the good sense to look abashed. "I'm not vile. I'm also not much of a seducer, either. Apparently." His laugh was slightly bitter. Interruption spell, a nasty one, he seemed to mumble to himself. "Of course, it's late. Surely everyone will be asleep at home?"
Sophie agreed with the sentiment. She quivered and ached all over at the thought of being alone with Howl at home, and it was a good ache. Love was an awful thing, in so many very different ways. "Can we go home now?" she asked.
"Let's," Howl said, and drew a circle in the air with his finger, and then stepped forward, pulling Sophie along. She stepped through nothing, felt her stomach drop again, and they left Ankh-Morpork where it belonged, behind them.
xxx
End Chapter 10.
Just a couple chapters to go; hopefully I can get it finished soon! Thanks so much for reading and reviewing! Concrit is absolutely welcomed.