[Fic] [Round 042] 'Hello, My Name Is" No warnings
Author: tigersilver
Title: "Hello, My Name Is"
Word Count: 2, 227
Characters/Pairing: Yuuri, Wolfram, Elizabeth, Cheri, Yuuram
Prompt/Theme: 'Birthday'
Rating: G; No warnings
Hello, My Name Is…
“Hello, my name is Shibuya Yuuri, and I’m the 27th Maou of Shin Makoku. Thank you for coming; it’s a pleasure to have you here.”
Shimmy like an octopus, arms waving sideways. Don’t bow!
“Hello, my name is Shibuya Yuuri, and I’m the 27th Maou of Shin Makoku. Thank you for being here for Wolf-chan’s party; I’m really glad you could come.”
Prance, with a gorilla-like motion, ending with a kiss to the palm. Do not bow!!
“Hello, my name is Shibuya Yuuri, and I welcome you to Shin Makoku. I’m the Maou here - I mean the King - well, Shinou said so, so I guess…yeah. Well, um, thanks for coming.”
Lean head till it’s resting entirely on the left shoulder -absolutely not the right shoulder or this guy in the red pantaloons will think I’ve insulted his grandmother and then it’ll be pistols at dawn. Smile sweetly and wink. Don’t, under any circumstances, bow!
“Hi, my name’s Shibuya Yuuri. Nice to meet you - welcome to my kingdom, Shin Makoku. I hope you like it here. The food’s over there.”
Beside me, Wolf is doing his own version: the Consort Dance, I call it. His ways of greeting people are different than mine cause he’s the Fiancé and I’m the Maou - or so Gunter has said, at length. I kinda like his better, actually, but anyway it’s fun to watch him in between all this ‘official greeting’ hoohah. Wolf-chan can shimmy like nobody’s business!
“Hi, there. My name’s Yuuri and I’m the Maou here. Please enjoy yourself - there’s lots of snacks and there’s supposed to be music later-“
“Yuuri!”
Wolfram always yells at me when I’m not actually slacking off. I guess that’s his right, but still. This is awfully boring, standing here, and I’m tired, and there’s still seventy-five more people to get through before we can get off this damn dais and go find a drink.
“Hello, my name is Shibuya Yuuri, and I’m the 27th Maou of Shin Makoku. Thank you for coming; it’s a pleasure to have you at my Fiancé’s party. Please have a good time.”
Touch middle finger to nose and roll eyeballs - man, that smarts! - and then nod verrrry slowly. Remember not to bow, ‘cause Gunter says the Maou doesn’t bow, although when I bow at the Human guests (and there are some, amazingly enough!) they don’t mind.
“Eyes straight, wimp! Here comes the next one!”
“Hello, my name is…” Well, I know my own name, so anyway, here we are at Wolfram’s 85th birthday party and as usual, I’m kind of miserable. I don’t like these formal clothes - they’re scratchy and the cape slips every other second and the crown is a pain to keep from tipping off. I don’t like big crowds, either, though I should be used them by now, I guess. I also don’t appreciate looking like a ninny when I’m just trying to say hello, but hey, what can I do?
This is my job.
“...glad you could make it. Have a good time!”
Hands on hips; knees tucked in - just a jump to the left and then-
The guy in the really interesting national costume does the same thing back; we knock heads twice, sharply, and then he moves off to greet Wolf-chan. I admire the size of his ruff as he goes. And those pom-poms! Wow!
I wonder if they’re like beltbuckles? Oh-wait! Didn’t mean it like that!
Ooops! Pay attention! There’s a girl in front of me and she looks oddly familiar.
“Elizabeth-san! How are you?”
I do what I’m supposed to do when greeting female Mazoku nobility; inclining my head very slightly forward at about a fifteen degree angle (but I’m not actually bowing!) while I grab her extended hand and brush my lips swiftly across the air above it. Gunter says this is the height of elegance and proper behavior, but all the while I’m kissing air I’m also trying to figure why Elizabeth-san’s over here in the receiving line instead of over there hobnobbing with Cheri-sama; but whatever, it’s still nice to see a face I know.
“Your Majesty.”
Somehow, she doesn’t look like she’s as happy to see me as I am to see her.
“Did you get him a present?” Elizabeth-san demands this immediately and right on cue, Wolf-chan’s ears are up like little radar antennae, tuning in. He sidles sideways to listen and I lean closer to Elizabeth-san, ‘cause I’m not sure I just heard what I thought I heard.
“Because you didn’t last year, or the year before that, so-“
Whaaat?
“OfcourseIdid!” I’m blushing; I can feel it. Wolf is now hovering curiously just off my left shoulder, pretending like he doesn’t care. And yes, I was right: she is mad at me. But why?
“Oh, yes?” the pretty girl asks in a tone of sugared acid. Her eyes narrow in a way that sounds an eerie chord in my head.
“And did you choose your gift personally, Heika? With love and with care? I bet you didn’t; not one bit of it! I’d stake my fortune it was Wolfram-sama’s Mama - or even Lord von Kleist - who did your shopping for you!”
Now this girl - Wolfram’s ex-girlfriend, right? - well, she’s practically shaking her finger under my nose and tapping one slippered foot furiously, just like Mom does when she’s mad at me for not doing my chores. But Elizabeth-san seems to be really angry, which Mom never quite achieves convincingly, no matter how much her eyes sparkle or she tosses her head.
Nope, this lady has Mom beat, hands down, on the ‘suddenly making Shibuya Yuuri feel inadequate and unprepared’ thing. Must be a talent.
“Now, waitaminute!,” I gabble back at her, flinching under the searing green searchlights Wolf-chan has trained on me from where he’s standing, right by my side. For once, though, I don’t have to feel like the ass Elizabeth-san’s apparently trying to make me out to be.
I really did get one. A present, I mean.
“Am I not correct?” she prods, in a dangerous nasty voice that perfectly matches the look she’s giving me, just like her hair ribbons match her shoes. “Your Majesty, even if you say you went to the trouble of selecting some small trifle, how could you possibly have any real knowledge of Lord von Bielefeld’s likes and dislikes when you’ve only been acquainted for a mere three years? It would be highly unlikely that you’d ever understand him as well as his old friends do, Heika,” she sneered, lifting her pert little nose ever higher in an effort to look down at me.
“Especially if someone else is still taking up your slack, Yuuri Heika.”
Well, this is certainly not the first time somebody’s tried to cut me down with words. What a hard ass! Still, this lovely girl is nowhere near my fiancé’s level of Olympic put-downs, so I gamely attempt to stare her down.
Behind Elizabeth-san the rest of the waiting guests are getting restless and starting to hem and haw. I realize with foreboding that now’s not the time for school kid squabbles, much as I’d like to take this girl down a peg or two. Wolfram is my fiancé, and I damned well did pick out his present personally - this year.
Well, geez. She has a point.
So, I lean in close, real close, so that her bouffed-up hair tickles my nose when I whisper. I can feel Wolf-chan getting all prickly, but I’m trying to keep this low-key and all, so I’m gonna have to ignore him for a second and get this over with.
“I did get Wolfram a present, Elizabeth-san, and he will like it,” I murmur right into her very pretty ear, nice and soft so that Wolf-chan can’t possibly hear me. “It’s something he’s always been wanting and you’re totally right, Cheri-sama did help me pick it out.”
Lady Elizabeth snorts and tries to jerk her head away, but I catch at her bared shoulder gingerly and grip it, so I can make sure she’s listening. Nobody’s ever going say I don’t care about my fiancé - or even imply it - and get it away with it, not anymore.
“It’s special, really precious,” I tell her very seriously. “It’s something that only a lover can give his lover.”
Now she’s dead quiet and utterly still beside me. I feel the embarrassed flush run across her pale skin under my hand, but I’m blushing too, now, so I just keep on going, ‘cause I’m finally shutting her up. For that matter, so’s everybody else - shutting up, that is.
I risk a glance around me and then wish I hadn’t.
The imposing gentleman in the purple kilt behind my blonde opponent has practically climbed into her non-existent lap, he’s so damned near. There’s a whole gaggle of court ladies pushing and shoving around us, their make-up’d faces intent and hungry, like cougars eyeing prey. Conrad’s here, too, all the sudden, in that poof-like-magic way he has, spreading ‘calmness’ and ‘reason’. Only Wolf-chan is standing back, annoyance written in every angled line of his perfect body, acting like he’s so totally above all this. My very soul withers when I catch his ‘Hmph!” of severe pique.
Well, yeah. I am kind of embarrassing, and I never do stop and think, when maybe I should. But Elizabeth-san pissed me off last time, and I didn’t even realize it then ‘cause I was still waffling about Wolf-chan, and now she’s definitely looking to rile my Maou again.
Nope. Not putting up with it. Not at Wolf-chan’s birthday party - there will be no whispers about us, and none about him.
I grin and I can feel her quick shiver at the blue sparks that are suddenly arcing faintly around us. I smile some more and show lots of teeth.
“Want me to tell you what it is?” I say, all casual, but she shakes her head very quickly and finally manages to jerk away from my hand.
I have to give it to her; Elizabeth-san’s got courage. Buckets and gobs - but then she’d need it, if she had her sights set on my Wolfram. He doesn’t suffer cowards lightly - I should know.
“No!” She practically shrieks her answer, and the blue sparks are fading away immediately, like they were never there.
She bows - she bows! - and that’s really unusual, ‘cause most people n Shin Makoku don’t understand why I do that, so I’m like, all aghast.
“E-Elizabeth-san?!” I stutter, and now I can feel Wolf-chan up against my back, hot and strong. Maybe he’s been there all along and I just never noticed.
I shake my head and my hair goes back to normal - all mussy and fly-away, like I didn’t spend twenty minutes combing it beforehand, which I did, ‘cause Wolf-chan insisted.
When she bobs up from the bow, her face is all red.
“No, Heika. That’s private-“ and here everybody in the immediate vicinity ‘cept me and Wolf-chan gets to make acquaintance with Lady Elizabeth’s glare, which, let me say, is killer-deadly-evil-mean- “so I don’t want you to tell me, or anyone else but Wolfram-sama! That’s his!”
“Good girl!” Boy, everybody’s on the dais now, even Cheri-sama, who’s purring with delight over my latest public faux pas. She giggles and it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, right up my all-black back.
“Since it’s Wolfie’s private present, that’s exactly right! Isn’t it, Heika dear?”
I get elbowed, so I nod. Wolfram is laughing quietly in my ear.
“Well, since it looks like everyone who’s going to meet you has met you, Yuuri Heika, shall we get on with the dancing?”
Her ex-Royal Highness the 26th Maou looks around her, all supercilious, and everybody nods and smiles and acts like they just happened to be right here, I guess ‘cause she’s commanding them to, although without saying anything out loud. That’s real royalty for you - not like me.
“Come on, Yuuri,” Wolf-chan swings around me and grabs my arm, hauling me out of the midst of all these people and into a whole crowd of other people.
“Let’s dance.”
And I sigh, kind of happy because the receiving line hell is finally over, and kind of resigned, because while I love to dance with my Wolf-cub, I’d really rather we were doing it alone.
I don’t need an audience right in my face when I give him my ‘extra-special, yes, he will love me for it forever!’ birthday gift, the one that I slaved for hours and days over, till I made absolutely sure I got it right.
And I don’t need a bunch of people hanging around us when I tell him I love him.
Sometimes it's worth it just to wait.
END
.
Title: "Hello, My Name Is"
Word Count: 2, 227
Characters/Pairing: Yuuri, Wolfram, Elizabeth, Cheri, Yuuram
Prompt/Theme: 'Birthday'
Rating: G; No warnings
Hello, My Name Is…
“Hello, my name is Shibuya Yuuri, and I’m the 27th Maou of Shin Makoku. Thank you for coming; it’s a pleasure to have you here.”
Shimmy like an octopus, arms waving sideways. Don’t bow!
“Hello, my name is Shibuya Yuuri, and I’m the 27th Maou of Shin Makoku. Thank you for being here for Wolf-chan’s party; I’m really glad you could come.”
Prance, with a gorilla-like motion, ending with a kiss to the palm. Do not bow!!
“Hello, my name is Shibuya Yuuri, and I welcome you to Shin Makoku. I’m the Maou here - I mean the King - well, Shinou said so, so I guess…yeah. Well, um, thanks for coming.”
Lean head till it’s resting entirely on the left shoulder -absolutely not the right shoulder or this guy in the red pantaloons will think I’ve insulted his grandmother and then it’ll be pistols at dawn. Smile sweetly and wink. Don’t, under any circumstances, bow!
“Hi, my name’s Shibuya Yuuri. Nice to meet you - welcome to my kingdom, Shin Makoku. I hope you like it here. The food’s over there.”
Beside me, Wolf is doing his own version: the Consort Dance, I call it. His ways of greeting people are different than mine cause he’s the Fiancé and I’m the Maou - or so Gunter has said, at length. I kinda like his better, actually, but anyway it’s fun to watch him in between all this ‘official greeting’ hoohah. Wolf-chan can shimmy like nobody’s business!
“Hi, there. My name’s Yuuri and I’m the Maou here. Please enjoy yourself - there’s lots of snacks and there’s supposed to be music later-“
“Yuuri!”
Wolfram always yells at me when I’m not actually slacking off. I guess that’s his right, but still. This is awfully boring, standing here, and I’m tired, and there’s still seventy-five more people to get through before we can get off this damn dais and go find a drink.
“Hello, my name is Shibuya Yuuri, and I’m the 27th Maou of Shin Makoku. Thank you for coming; it’s a pleasure to have you at my Fiancé’s party. Please have a good time.”
Touch middle finger to nose and roll eyeballs - man, that smarts! - and then nod verrrry slowly. Remember not to bow, ‘cause Gunter says the Maou doesn’t bow, although when I bow at the Human guests (and there are some, amazingly enough!) they don’t mind.
“Eyes straight, wimp! Here comes the next one!”
“Hello, my name is…” Well, I know my own name, so anyway, here we are at Wolfram’s 85th birthday party and as usual, I’m kind of miserable. I don’t like these formal clothes - they’re scratchy and the cape slips every other second and the crown is a pain to keep from tipping off. I don’t like big crowds, either, though I should be used them by now, I guess. I also don’t appreciate looking like a ninny when I’m just trying to say hello, but hey, what can I do?
This is my job.
“...glad you could make it. Have a good time!”
Hands on hips; knees tucked in - just a jump to the left and then-
The guy in the really interesting national costume does the same thing back; we knock heads twice, sharply, and then he moves off to greet Wolf-chan. I admire the size of his ruff as he goes. And those pom-poms! Wow!
I wonder if they’re like beltbuckles? Oh-wait! Didn’t mean it like that!
Ooops! Pay attention! There’s a girl in front of me and she looks oddly familiar.
“Elizabeth-san! How are you?”
I do what I’m supposed to do when greeting female Mazoku nobility; inclining my head very slightly forward at about a fifteen degree angle (but I’m not actually bowing!) while I grab her extended hand and brush my lips swiftly across the air above it. Gunter says this is the height of elegance and proper behavior, but all the while I’m kissing air I’m also trying to figure why Elizabeth-san’s over here in the receiving line instead of over there hobnobbing with Cheri-sama; but whatever, it’s still nice to see a face I know.
“Your Majesty.”
Somehow, she doesn’t look like she’s as happy to see me as I am to see her.
“Did you get him a present?” Elizabeth-san demands this immediately and right on cue, Wolf-chan’s ears are up like little radar antennae, tuning in. He sidles sideways to listen and I lean closer to Elizabeth-san, ‘cause I’m not sure I just heard what I thought I heard.
“Because you didn’t last year, or the year before that, so-“
Whaaat?
“OfcourseIdid!” I’m blushing; I can feel it. Wolf is now hovering curiously just off my left shoulder, pretending like he doesn’t care. And yes, I was right: she is mad at me. But why?
“Oh, yes?” the pretty girl asks in a tone of sugared acid. Her eyes narrow in a way that sounds an eerie chord in my head.
“And did you choose your gift personally, Heika? With love and with care? I bet you didn’t; not one bit of it! I’d stake my fortune it was Wolfram-sama’s Mama - or even Lord von Kleist - who did your shopping for you!”
Now this girl - Wolfram’s ex-girlfriend, right? - well, she’s practically shaking her finger under my nose and tapping one slippered foot furiously, just like Mom does when she’s mad at me for not doing my chores. But Elizabeth-san seems to be really angry, which Mom never quite achieves convincingly, no matter how much her eyes sparkle or she tosses her head.
Nope, this lady has Mom beat, hands down, on the ‘suddenly making Shibuya Yuuri feel inadequate and unprepared’ thing. Must be a talent.
“Now, waitaminute!,” I gabble back at her, flinching under the searing green searchlights Wolf-chan has trained on me from where he’s standing, right by my side. For once, though, I don’t have to feel like the ass Elizabeth-san’s apparently trying to make me out to be.
I really did get one. A present, I mean.
“Am I not correct?” she prods, in a dangerous nasty voice that perfectly matches the look she’s giving me, just like her hair ribbons match her shoes. “Your Majesty, even if you say you went to the trouble of selecting some small trifle, how could you possibly have any real knowledge of Lord von Bielefeld’s likes and dislikes when you’ve only been acquainted for a mere three years? It would be highly unlikely that you’d ever understand him as well as his old friends do, Heika,” she sneered, lifting her pert little nose ever higher in an effort to look down at me.
“Especially if someone else is still taking up your slack, Yuuri Heika.”
Well, this is certainly not the first time somebody’s tried to cut me down with words. What a hard ass! Still, this lovely girl is nowhere near my fiancé’s level of Olympic put-downs, so I gamely attempt to stare her down.
Behind Elizabeth-san the rest of the waiting guests are getting restless and starting to hem and haw. I realize with foreboding that now’s not the time for school kid squabbles, much as I’d like to take this girl down a peg or two. Wolfram is my fiancé, and I damned well did pick out his present personally - this year.
Well, geez. She has a point.
So, I lean in close, real close, so that her bouffed-up hair tickles my nose when I whisper. I can feel Wolf-chan getting all prickly, but I’m trying to keep this low-key and all, so I’m gonna have to ignore him for a second and get this over with.
“I did get Wolfram a present, Elizabeth-san, and he will like it,” I murmur right into her very pretty ear, nice and soft so that Wolf-chan can’t possibly hear me. “It’s something he’s always been wanting and you’re totally right, Cheri-sama did help me pick it out.”
Lady Elizabeth snorts and tries to jerk her head away, but I catch at her bared shoulder gingerly and grip it, so I can make sure she’s listening. Nobody’s ever going say I don’t care about my fiancé - or even imply it - and get it away with it, not anymore.
“It’s special, really precious,” I tell her very seriously. “It’s something that only a lover can give his lover.”
Now she’s dead quiet and utterly still beside me. I feel the embarrassed flush run across her pale skin under my hand, but I’m blushing too, now, so I just keep on going, ‘cause I’m finally shutting her up. For that matter, so’s everybody else - shutting up, that is.
I risk a glance around me and then wish I hadn’t.
The imposing gentleman in the purple kilt behind my blonde opponent has practically climbed into her non-existent lap, he’s so damned near. There’s a whole gaggle of court ladies pushing and shoving around us, their make-up’d faces intent and hungry, like cougars eyeing prey. Conrad’s here, too, all the sudden, in that poof-like-magic way he has, spreading ‘calmness’ and ‘reason’. Only Wolf-chan is standing back, annoyance written in every angled line of his perfect body, acting like he’s so totally above all this. My very soul withers when I catch his ‘Hmph!” of severe pique.
Well, yeah. I am kind of embarrassing, and I never do stop and think, when maybe I should. But Elizabeth-san pissed me off last time, and I didn’t even realize it then ‘cause I was still waffling about Wolf-chan, and now she’s definitely looking to rile my Maou again.
Nope. Not putting up with it. Not at Wolf-chan’s birthday party - there will be no whispers about us, and none about him.
I grin and I can feel her quick shiver at the blue sparks that are suddenly arcing faintly around us. I smile some more and show lots of teeth.
“Want me to tell you what it is?” I say, all casual, but she shakes her head very quickly and finally manages to jerk away from my hand.
I have to give it to her; Elizabeth-san’s got courage. Buckets and gobs - but then she’d need it, if she had her sights set on my Wolfram. He doesn’t suffer cowards lightly - I should know.
“No!” She practically shrieks her answer, and the blue sparks are fading away immediately, like they were never there.
She bows - she bows! - and that’s really unusual, ‘cause most people n Shin Makoku don’t understand why I do that, so I’m like, all aghast.
“E-Elizabeth-san?!” I stutter, and now I can feel Wolf-chan up against my back, hot and strong. Maybe he’s been there all along and I just never noticed.
I shake my head and my hair goes back to normal - all mussy and fly-away, like I didn’t spend twenty minutes combing it beforehand, which I did, ‘cause Wolf-chan insisted.
When she bobs up from the bow, her face is all red.
“No, Heika. That’s private-“ and here everybody in the immediate vicinity ‘cept me and Wolf-chan gets to make acquaintance with Lady Elizabeth’s glare, which, let me say, is killer-deadly-evil-mean- “so I don’t want you to tell me, or anyone else but Wolfram-sama! That’s his!”
“Good girl!” Boy, everybody’s on the dais now, even Cheri-sama, who’s purring with delight over my latest public faux pas. She giggles and it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, right up my all-black back.
“Since it’s Wolfie’s private present, that’s exactly right! Isn’t it, Heika dear?”
I get elbowed, so I nod. Wolfram is laughing quietly in my ear.
“Well, since it looks like everyone who’s going to meet you has met you, Yuuri Heika, shall we get on with the dancing?”
Her ex-Royal Highness the 26th Maou looks around her, all supercilious, and everybody nods and smiles and acts like they just happened to be right here, I guess ‘cause she’s commanding them to, although without saying anything out loud. That’s real royalty for you - not like me.
“Come on, Yuuri,” Wolf-chan swings around me and grabs my arm, hauling me out of the midst of all these people and into a whole crowd of other people.
“Let’s dance.”
And I sigh, kind of happy because the receiving line hell is finally over, and kind of resigned, because while I love to dance with my Wolf-cub, I’d really rather we were doing it alone.
I don’t need an audience right in my face when I give him my ‘extra-special, yes, he will love me for it forever!’ birthday gift, the one that I slaved for hours and days over, till I made absolutely sure I got it right.
And I don’t need a bunch of people hanging around us when I tell him I love him.
Sometimes it's worth it just to wait.
END
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