Embarrassment was a beautiful thing, in a way. Most people didn't think so, but Philip Pirrup, as his his best friend, Damien, had realized, was not normal. It took a certain type of person to find beauty in a negative feeling, especially one as negative as embarrassment, but Philip was the rare type of human who could find it—and he had. It was hard to see past his initial embarrassment when he started to cry in front of Christophe—surely the boy was going to tell the others; he didn't care if Christophe himself thought lowly of him, but he did care about what the other children thought—but then he saw it; he saw the hidden beauty.
Christophe wasn't laughing at him. He was scowling, certainly, but the expression that he was making was similar to the one that Damien made when he cried, and Pip was well adjusted to the look due to years of exposure to it. The point though wasn't the expression that had made its way onto Christophe's face—it was that he wasn't laughing like Pip thought he would be. Pip had found the beauty in the moment, alright—he had found beauty in Christophe.
Oh dear...
Christophe wasn't laughing at him though, and that was a good thing, right? It was certainly unexpected. Perhaps the boy was kinder than he had thought? Perhaps he had misjudged him? Philip Pirrup was not one who enjoyed misjudging people, and his stomach felt sick at the very thought of misjudging someone, especially when that someone could have been a friend; Damien was wonderful, but new friends could never hurt, after all.
Perhaps he had been wrong in misjudging the French? But, no, he wouldn't go that far; not yet, anyway. He would settle for misjudging the boy sitting by him; Christophe's nation as a whole would have to come later, sometime after he could evaluate the French boy better.
Another apology—he had lost count of how many he had made already—slipped from his lips, but this one was different; this one was an apology for something else, for judging the foreign boy. Christophe was, after all, just that—a foreigner who, like Pip, was no longer in his own country. A foreigner who, like Pip, was stuck with Americans who didn't appreciate him, who didn't understand him.
He didn't tell Christophe this though, choosing to let the boy believe that he still thought the same of him as he had the day before. Something had changed though, and they both could feel it; something had shifted, and because it went unspoken, neither knew that the other had accepted him the tiniest bit.
"Terribly sorry, Christophe. It won't happen again, I promise."
And it wouldn't, he promised to himself—and though he had broken a promise to himself just that week, he intended to keep this one.
But Christophe? Christophe couldn't make promises to himself. He was tough—he was a mercenary, so he had to be—so it wasn't an issue of self control; he just didn't want to make any promises in regard to anyone, especially when that person was Philip Pirrup. He didn't want to be tied down. He didn't want to make a promise to himself that he would protect the boy sitting by him. He didn't want to let the boy effect him anymore than he already had.
It was too late though. The way that the Brit said his name, the way that once irritated him, now sent shivers up his spine. The boy's bright blue eyes had become hard not to stare into—and speaking of hard, he was. There had to be something wrong with him. He had to be weak to let something as small as a dream effect him—and Christophe did not like to be weak.
No, he couldn't make a promise to himself to protect Philip Pirrup, to never let the boy get hurt again, to never let the kid cry again. Because Christophe himself was considering harming the boy if it meant that whatever connection forming between them—and he could feel the fucking connection forming—would be broken.
"Stop your pussy crying."
And just like that, whatever had been forming between them was broken. Christophe watched as Pip's blue eyes widened; a new string of tears begin to leak from them. The blond began to rub furiously at his eyes, trying to hide the fact that the fact that he was crying.
Somehow, Christophe didn't think that he would get an apology for the tears this time. Or ever again, for that matter.
He should feel better—if he pushed Pip away, he wouldn't feel as connected to the boy. He wouldn't want to be close to him. He wouldn't want to...
Christ, he wouldn't want to kiss the boy's tears away.
Fuck, he was in trouble. He didn't feel any better; he felt worse. He felt like a prick—though he knew that he was one (he was told by his mother often enough), he never actually felt guilty, so he never felt like one. Until now, that is.
And Christophe didn't like it one bit.
And he couldn't make himself—or Pip, for that matter, though he was unsure if he wanted to—feel any better any time soon because the next thing that he knew, Damien, the Prince from Hell, was shoving him up against the nearest wall. One look at the demon-boy's dark red eyes let him know that he was in trouble—that there was a very real possibility that he might be visiting the prince's old home.
"What the fuck did you do to him?"
The whole class was watching them, teacher included. No one seemed prepared to stop the situation that was quickly unfolding. Their teacher, who was usually so strict, seemed too surprised to even stop what was going on.
Christophe could feel it—he was going to Hell. He had sinned, he knew. That part didn't bother him. What did bother him was that it wasn't his own way of death; he would go out like a pussy, struck down before his time. Damien, he decided, was as bad as God. Not worse, of course, but just as bad.
He could feel something else though; he could feel Pip's eyes on him, watching the scene just like everyone else in the room. The Pirrup boy should have been used to Damien's behaviour—they all should have grown accustomed to it over the years, but you never get used to someone ripping heads off of bodies or students miraculously turning into animals—but Christophe could could see him out of the corner of his eye, and the blond looked just as shocked as everyone else.
But Christophe moved his line of sight so he was focused entirely on the demon that had his hand wrapped firmly around Christophe's neck, nails sinking into the French boy's flesh. He didn't see Philip swallow, tears now running freely down his cheeks, and step forward.
He did, however, hear him.
"Damien," Philip's voice shook, but he didn't stop to catch his breath. "Let him go."