Blackberry 13, Rhubarb 6
Title: Inadvisable
Story Continuity: The Lethean Glamour
Flavors: Blackberry 13: circumstantial evidence, Rhubarb 6: did I ever tell you about the time...
Topping/Extra: Whipped Cream (Valentio is 17 and Cygnelius is 14 throughout most of it), Malt (birthday: C: "because it's not enough to be in love" - Suzanne Vega, Frank and Ava)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1799
Summary: Valentio is peripherally aware that his friendship with Cygnelius is vaguely troubling, but he's even more aware that he really, really doesn't care.
Note: Counting towards the Summer Challenge. Written in a single sitting, with apologies for the quality. It's been a while.
The kingdom of Volacoeur had a long and storied history of royal tragedies; of affairs, betrayals, the hubris that almost inevitably triggered great and terrible falls, feuds between vital branches and the capture and poisoning of beloved monarchs. Before he'd even suspected himself of having royal blood, before his mother let loose the first bomb of her sibling being Queen Empyrea, Valentio had been of the opinion that all the incest must have scrambled the royal line's common sense. When he found out that he was actually the result of King Leodane cheating on his wife with his sister-in-law, the opinion had only been steel reinforced, and had pretty much stayed that way, although Lysandro had proven himself to be pretty awesome under the layers upon layers of affectation - or "I have been bred and refined so I may become worthy of the burden of the crown," as Lysandro had phrased it, voice edged with scuffed pride and annoyance, but really, whatever.
For the most part, the people he was forced to mingle with were the sorts he would, under normal circumstances, gladly call out on their utter reprehensibility. Unfortunately, he was required to attend the Alliance of Nations gatherings that were called into session far too often, and the Lord of the Fourth Great and Righteous Empire of Lorfines - which he insisted a bit forcefully everyone name in its silly entirety, and apparently eye-rolling was discouraged - was the kind of guy who would totally call holy war on the home nation of anyone who asked which deity, exactly, had died and made him God Reincarnate - for surely the god-who-was had had a name - so Valentio more often than not spent the meet-and-greets of the Alliance of Horribly Inbred Douchenozzles walking on eggshells to the corner with the booze and drinking himself interested on whatever fruity alcohol they were serving this time. Which, by the by, was likely not advisable to serve at so important a function, unless it was a clever plot to trick the Alliance into cementing their bond in drunken gay marriage. Lord Lorfines and Emperor Deschain were generally seconds away from abandoning their passive-aggressive bitching and finding themselves a broom closet half the time, anyway.
"You're right here," Valentio said to Cygnelius one day, half marveling and half relieved, in the middle of an argument about which allegorical tale history would have benefited from their being burned by their creators more, Belowstairs or Darkness Waits. Because the boy was right there with him, just as annoyed by the books in question as him, and understanding perfectly the reasons why Darkness Waits was a travesty and Belowstairs was a stale rewrite of Jane Curtiss's My Mind is Full of Fuck. Cygnelius knew who Valentio was, all the little parts that held him together from the inside, and that wasn't so because it made it that much easier to deconstruct him in case Cyg needed him dead.
And whenever Valentio made mention of how he was looking forward to discovering just how many layers of fucking amazing Cygnelius had, people looked at him like he was way out of line and probably dropped babies for fun in his spare time or something, and he'd be just a little more inclined to snapping at stupid things every time it happened.
Cygnelius regarded him intently for a few moments, his head canting slightly as if a different view might give him a better understanding of the potency of the herbal cigarette his friend had clearly recently enjoyed. When he spoke, it was with an even curiosity. "Until Shikana Sawashi can prove we're all secretly butterflies dreaming about the lives of men, I'm not a particularly ridiculous effect of psychotropic medicine, no."
The way Cygnelius looked at him, fond and annoyed and amused and curious and so many others things there for him to see if he cared to seek them out, complex and familiar, was the truest thing Valentio had seen directed at him in weeks and made him feel much less like he was drifting between corporeality and ghostliness. He had to talk himself out of kissing Cygnelius, because one: Valentio was quite happily in mint condition and wanted to stay that way indefinitely, and two: squick of squicks, Cygnelius was fourteen. And male. This was the Capital, not the boondocks, and if he kissed Cygnelius, even on the cheek as he wanted to, it probably wouldn't be acknowledged as the evidence of platonic affection as it would in Dannareth.
A month and a half later, after a suspicious rise in symptoms of battle fatigue in a fourth of his team, Cygnelius and Dr. Roland Valarial presented King Leodane with a fully functional subdimensional remote storage pin, and the Alliance was asking for a demonstration and explanation, and below their words was the implication that they were going to enjoy tearing Cygnelius into tiny little shreds they could have their people weave into a rug for their gold-plated bathrooms.
They didn't even bother pretending to take Cygnelius seriously. Mistake the first, because Cygnelius just stared at Lord Lorfines like he knew exactly what kind of holly didn't pledge its allegiance to his continued good health and was unafraid to spear him with it, and said, "Who here is a certified genius with multiple degrees in magical theory and physics, raise your hands?" Cygnelius waited a moment with a raised eyebrow, then raised his right hand. "No one else, really? Well, then I'd say I'm the only person in this room allowed to make judgments about whether this is a sack of sleek, shiny crap or not. The university I graduated summa cum laude at even gave me the title of doctor, wasn't that nice? Apparently, I earned it. Funny how that works. Now, as I didn't need to actually be told that you're all without degrees and also not geniuses, let me lay this out for you in simple, tiny words: god pin good. God pin pick the lock that keeps the multiverse heterogeneous and stores items of any size and weight in a lifeless alternate universe, whereupon the item will be stored in stasis for as long as needed. Upon the resealing of the storage verse, the molecular level of the items put in stasis are completely rewritten to fit the laws of the storage verse, but are keyed so that they may be rematerialized in this universe with no devaluation whatsoever. Metals stay sharp and durable, foods stay fresh. People, unfortunately, are completely destroyed, and so here die any plots to make Trojan horses of your armies. All of this is functional, absolute science, no matter what your infantile-minded scientists may say. They may be intelligent, but they aren't me."
Valentio, who had been restraining himself from kicking Lorfines at the sound of each of the divine dictator's indelicate, derisive snorts and thus starting a totally unnecessary war, relaxed a little when suddenly the room lost a great deal of its oppressive atmosphere.
Interest in Cygnelius increased after that to the point where even non-scientists and non-mages knew his name and position, and before Valentio knew how or why it happened, seven tenths of Castle Volacoeur was utterly convinced that Valentio was sleeping with Cygnelius. Nobody was saying anything to either of them, but Valentio heard things in passing in corridors, recognized the looks people gave them when they were together - just hanging out like normal, and their friendship was more normal than King Wilford's hobby of breeding dogs of war, which Valentio had the creeping suspicion included a side project of trying to cross-breed them with Wilford himself the way the man carried on half the time.
Then again, perhaps that was the most damning sign of all in this strange world.
"What the hell is wrong with people?" Cygnelius said, scowling at one of his mystics. "You show up, and all of a sudden you're the most interesting thing here."
"I like to think I'm just as interesting as the possibility of eventual evidence of the existence of time paradoxes," Valentio said. Cygnelius looked briefly as thought he might argue, but then an unreadable expression came and went before he turned his head away. "You are, yeah. More, actually, because I'd worked out the existence of time paradoxes when I was ten. You're...not something I ever saw coming."
"I think that's a first. You say that almost like it's a good thing," Valentio said, trying to memorize the easing of every muscle at the touch of the unexpected contentment that washed over him.
"I like to think so," Cygnelius said, with completely unflattering uncertainty. "But I'm glad we met. I'm glad we're...friends. We are friends, right?"
Valentio felt himself smile as if by a foreign compulsion, completely unable to stop it from curving his lips, and gave Cyg's hair a proper ruffling. "Never doubt it, kiddo."
And friendship was all it was, all it needed to be.
Years went by, and Cygnelius only found himself more layers and more renown, and by the time he reached eighteen he was the most highly-regarded mystic in the Eastern Hemisphere. By eighteen, he also achieved the dubious honor of the first man Prince Valentio had ever spent a night in bed spooning with. It had taken a night that may have better been called a series of drunken blackouts, but in the end he'd woken up to Cygnelius with a truly stunning lack of surprise and dismay, and his emergence from the other man's quarters had halted a nearby conversation - gossip session, Valentio thought darkly - between a gaggle of maids and some of Cyg's scientists just long enough for them to stare as one consciousness at Valentio, clearly communicating their thoughts: "We knew it was only a matter of time, and now so shall all of this Castle." Valentio had a righteous denial on his tongue, and an honest moment of irritation - and then he recalled the solid warmth of Cygnelius's hip under his hand, the way he'd been noticing and becoming unreasonably fond of Cyg's smallest physical and vocal tics, and his heart beat guiltily before dropping into his feet. Valentio settled for walking away - he had nothing to justify, nothing to say. Theirs would be the most boring affair in the history of royal fuckups. Volacoeur breathed in royal tragedies and took great joy in destroying everything the Melman line loved, but Valentio refused to let that shit touch Cygnelius. It wasn't right.
Story Continuity: The Lethean Glamour
Flavors: Blackberry 13: circumstantial evidence, Rhubarb 6: did I ever tell you about the time...
Topping/Extra: Whipped Cream (Valentio is 17 and Cygnelius is 14 throughout most of it), Malt (birthday: C: "because it's not enough to be in love" - Suzanne Vega, Frank and Ava)
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1799
Summary: Valentio is peripherally aware that his friendship with Cygnelius is vaguely troubling, but he's even more aware that he really, really doesn't care.
Note: Counting towards the Summer Challenge. Written in a single sitting, with apologies for the quality. It's been a while.
The kingdom of Volacoeur had a long and storied history of royal tragedies; of affairs, betrayals, the hubris that almost inevitably triggered great and terrible falls, feuds between vital branches and the capture and poisoning of beloved monarchs. Before he'd even suspected himself of having royal blood, before his mother let loose the first bomb of her sibling being Queen Empyrea, Valentio had been of the opinion that all the incest must have scrambled the royal line's common sense. When he found out that he was actually the result of King Leodane cheating on his wife with his sister-in-law, the opinion had only been steel reinforced, and had pretty much stayed that way, although Lysandro had proven himself to be pretty awesome under the layers upon layers of affectation - or "I have been bred and refined so I may become worthy of the burden of the crown," as Lysandro had phrased it, voice edged with scuffed pride and annoyance, but really, whatever.
For the most part, the people he was forced to mingle with were the sorts he would, under normal circumstances, gladly call out on their utter reprehensibility. Unfortunately, he was required to attend the Alliance of Nations gatherings that were called into session far too often, and the Lord of the Fourth Great and Righteous Empire of Lorfines - which he insisted a bit forcefully everyone name in its silly entirety, and apparently eye-rolling was discouraged - was the kind of guy who would totally call holy war on the home nation of anyone who asked which deity, exactly, had died and made him God Reincarnate - for surely the god-who-was had had a name - so Valentio more often than not spent the meet-and-greets of the Alliance of Horribly Inbred Douchenozzles walking on eggshells to the corner with the booze and drinking himself interested on whatever fruity alcohol they were serving this time. Which, by the by, was likely not advisable to serve at so important a function, unless it was a clever plot to trick the Alliance into cementing their bond in drunken gay marriage. Lord Lorfines and Emperor Deschain were generally seconds away from abandoning their passive-aggressive bitching and finding themselves a broom closet half the time, anyway.
"You're right here," Valentio said to Cygnelius one day, half marveling and half relieved, in the middle of an argument about which allegorical tale history would have benefited from their being burned by their creators more, Belowstairs or Darkness Waits. Because the boy was right there with him, just as annoyed by the books in question as him, and understanding perfectly the reasons why Darkness Waits was a travesty and Belowstairs was a stale rewrite of Jane Curtiss's My Mind is Full of Fuck. Cygnelius knew who Valentio was, all the little parts that held him together from the inside, and that wasn't so because it made it that much easier to deconstruct him in case Cyg needed him dead.
And whenever Valentio made mention of how he was looking forward to discovering just how many layers of fucking amazing Cygnelius had, people looked at him like he was way out of line and probably dropped babies for fun in his spare time or something, and he'd be just a little more inclined to snapping at stupid things every time it happened.
Cygnelius regarded him intently for a few moments, his head canting slightly as if a different view might give him a better understanding of the potency of the herbal cigarette his friend had clearly recently enjoyed. When he spoke, it was with an even curiosity. "Until Shikana Sawashi can prove we're all secretly butterflies dreaming about the lives of men, I'm not a particularly ridiculous effect of psychotropic medicine, no."
The way Cygnelius looked at him, fond and annoyed and amused and curious and so many others things there for him to see if he cared to seek them out, complex and familiar, was the truest thing Valentio had seen directed at him in weeks and made him feel much less like he was drifting between corporeality and ghostliness. He had to talk himself out of kissing Cygnelius, because one: Valentio was quite happily in mint condition and wanted to stay that way indefinitely, and two: squick of squicks, Cygnelius was fourteen. And male. This was the Capital, not the boondocks, and if he kissed Cygnelius, even on the cheek as he wanted to, it probably wouldn't be acknowledged as the evidence of platonic affection as it would in Dannareth.
A month and a half later, after a suspicious rise in symptoms of battle fatigue in a fourth of his team, Cygnelius and Dr. Roland Valarial presented King Leodane with a fully functional subdimensional remote storage pin, and the Alliance was asking for a demonstration and explanation, and below their words was the implication that they were going to enjoy tearing Cygnelius into tiny little shreds they could have their people weave into a rug for their gold-plated bathrooms.
They didn't even bother pretending to take Cygnelius seriously. Mistake the first, because Cygnelius just stared at Lord Lorfines like he knew exactly what kind of holly didn't pledge its allegiance to his continued good health and was unafraid to spear him with it, and said, "Who here is a certified genius with multiple degrees in magical theory and physics, raise your hands?" Cygnelius waited a moment with a raised eyebrow, then raised his right hand. "No one else, really? Well, then I'd say I'm the only person in this room allowed to make judgments about whether this is a sack of sleek, shiny crap or not. The university I graduated summa cum laude at even gave me the title of doctor, wasn't that nice? Apparently, I earned it. Funny how that works. Now, as I didn't need to actually be told that you're all without degrees and also not geniuses, let me lay this out for you in simple, tiny words: god pin good. God pin pick the lock that keeps the multiverse heterogeneous and stores items of any size and weight in a lifeless alternate universe, whereupon the item will be stored in stasis for as long as needed. Upon the resealing of the storage verse, the molecular level of the items put in stasis are completely rewritten to fit the laws of the storage verse, but are keyed so that they may be rematerialized in this universe with no devaluation whatsoever. Metals stay sharp and durable, foods stay fresh. People, unfortunately, are completely destroyed, and so here die any plots to make Trojan horses of your armies. All of this is functional, absolute science, no matter what your infantile-minded scientists may say. They may be intelligent, but they aren't me."
Valentio, who had been restraining himself from kicking Lorfines at the sound of each of the divine dictator's indelicate, derisive snorts and thus starting a totally unnecessary war, relaxed a little when suddenly the room lost a great deal of its oppressive atmosphere.
Interest in Cygnelius increased after that to the point where even non-scientists and non-mages knew his name and position, and before Valentio knew how or why it happened, seven tenths of Castle Volacoeur was utterly convinced that Valentio was sleeping with Cygnelius. Nobody was saying anything to either of them, but Valentio heard things in passing in corridors, recognized the looks people gave them when they were together - just hanging out like normal, and their friendship was more normal than King Wilford's hobby of breeding dogs of war, which Valentio had the creeping suspicion included a side project of trying to cross-breed them with Wilford himself the way the man carried on half the time.
Then again, perhaps that was the most damning sign of all in this strange world.
"What the hell is wrong with people?" Cygnelius said, scowling at one of his mystics. "You show up, and all of a sudden you're the most interesting thing here."
"I like to think I'm just as interesting as the possibility of eventual evidence of the existence of time paradoxes," Valentio said. Cygnelius looked briefly as thought he might argue, but then an unreadable expression came and went before he turned his head away. "You are, yeah. More, actually, because I'd worked out the existence of time paradoxes when I was ten. You're...not something I ever saw coming."
"I think that's a first. You say that almost like it's a good thing," Valentio said, trying to memorize the easing of every muscle at the touch of the unexpected contentment that washed over him.
"I like to think so," Cygnelius said, with completely unflattering uncertainty. "But I'm glad we met. I'm glad we're...friends. We are friends, right?"
Valentio felt himself smile as if by a foreign compulsion, completely unable to stop it from curving his lips, and gave Cyg's hair a proper ruffling. "Never doubt it, kiddo."
And friendship was all it was, all it needed to be.
Years went by, and Cygnelius only found himself more layers and more renown, and by the time he reached eighteen he was the most highly-regarded mystic in the Eastern Hemisphere. By eighteen, he also achieved the dubious honor of the first man Prince Valentio had ever spent a night in bed spooning with. It had taken a night that may have better been called a series of drunken blackouts, but in the end he'd woken up to Cygnelius with a truly stunning lack of surprise and dismay, and his emergence from the other man's quarters had halted a nearby conversation - gossip session, Valentio thought darkly - between a gaggle of maids and some of Cyg's scientists just long enough for them to stare as one consciousness at Valentio, clearly communicating their thoughts: "We knew it was only a matter of time, and now so shall all of this Castle." Valentio had a righteous denial on his tongue, and an honest moment of irritation - and then he recalled the solid warmth of Cygnelius's hip under his hand, the way he'd been noticing and becoming unreasonably fond of Cyg's smallest physical and vocal tics, and his heart beat guiltily before dropping into his feet. Valentio settled for walking away - he had nothing to justify, nothing to say. Theirs would be the most boring affair in the history of royal fuckups. Volacoeur breathed in royal tragedies and took great joy in destroying everything the Melman line loved, but Valentio refused to let that shit touch Cygnelius. It wasn't right.