Perfume, 2/6
Title: Perfume
Series: KHR. Technically.
Part: 2/6
Warnings: rampant profanity, sporadic abuse of the capslock key and italics tag, and liberties taken with damn near everything including, eventually, Squalo's person but not in the fun way and Lussuria's he, at least, thought it was fun.
Perfumes inspired the story, and the perfumes, like last time, are taken from BPAL
Part 1: The Merovingian Come
The Princess goes to Varia
November
He woke up because something smelled good. Like cologne... he picked out cedar, leather, sandalwood, smoke... something sharp and smooth and not quite sweet, and the clean, blank tang of good steel. He inhaled, deeply, and woke up enough to realize that nowhere he habitually slept should smell anything like perfume.
"VOOOOOOOOOI! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"
The woman did not, literally, jump out of her skin (although it was close), nor did she die on the spot from a heart attack, which was disappointing, but meant he could still kill her.
"WELL?"
Fright slowly changed to amusement and she smiled to his face, cementing the conclusion that she was insane. "Putting perfume in your hair."
He knew that. That much was obvious. "...WHY."
"Because it seemed like a good idea! You've certainly got enough hair for it." Very few sane people were that chipper about dying bloodily any second now. He would know. "People always know where you are and where you're going," why was left unsaid, "but now they'll know where you've been, after you've left... nobody will be able to smell it unless they're UNDER your damn hair, or until after you've gone past. Perfume in hair lingers like a dying ghost, rarely clear enough to recognize unless somebody's right up in your space. And it's distracting to other people." Another smile. "It's why I like it. If you hate it so much just wash your damn hair."
"You're an idiot." He sniffed a fistful of hair, snatched the bottle, and peered at it. It was better different in his hair than it was in the bottle, complete, and he scowled at how it demonstrated every evidence of clinging to him for several hours. It was perfume oil. It even clung (however faintly, but STILL FUCKING THERE) to his fucking bed now just by association. He'd have to kill her. At least she had the half a braincell to apply perfume properly instead of fucking dousing him in it and at least the shit didn't smell girly and wasn't named anything girly. 'The Bow and Crown of Conquest' read the label on the little bottle in plain, bold text.
"Maybe you'd like this one better?" she dangled another glass vial. He caught the word "sword" on the label as she wagged it and squinted to read it better. 'The Great Sword of War.' He snatched that one too... but that one was darker, grittier, spicier, less like control and more like violence and not like anything clean. It was closer to the calmer, girlier crap the insane woman kept in her own hair than it was to the shit she'd dared smear in HIS, and clearly not befitting the Rain. Not that perfume befitted- well. Anything.
...he was trying not to complete the niggling thought that it'd go well on Xanxus.
~*~
The next day he found the crazy woman in the kitchen gnawing her way through the contents of the fruit bowl.
"VOOOI! Those aren't ripe, you moron! Pears aren't supposed to be goddamn crunchy."
She shrugged. "I know. Still taste good, though."
Squalo scoffed. "I bet you'd eat the damn garnish."
She grinned at him like a challenge. "You'd win that bet. I love kale, parsley, and oranges cut to look like flowers." She finished her crunchy pear and reached for a banana still green at the corners. Squalo snatched it away from her. He wasn't her damn babysitter, he had things to do, Goddammit, but no one else seemed to be stepping up to the bar. And where the hell were the eight men who were supposed to be watching her? He hoped to God they were chasing her damn personal guard instead of wandering around with their thumbs up their asses or Squalo would introduce them to God. She was a damn kept woman from a piddling fucking family and they were the Varia, she should not have been able to get into his bedroom to put perfume in his damn hair; she should not have been able to ditch them in the kitchen!
Squalo, not always but sometimes, when deprived of the appropriate target, sometimes went with what was available.
"Stop eating the damn fruit! It's not ripe!"
She scowled at him. "But I like unripe bananas! Those are just the right color!"
"No!" And, since she clearly had no sense of what was right in the world, added "you'll get sick!"
She frowned. "One, no, I won't. I've been eating like this my entire life. Two," she swapped the frown for a grin, "if you're not careful people will think you care."
"VOOOOOI! I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU, I CARE ABOUT THE FUCKING NATURAL ORDER!"
She tensed when he yelled, forced herself to relaxed, and shrugged. "So don't look."
"I CAN HEAR YOU FUCKING CRUNCHING."
"So leave."
"I'LL STILL KNOW."
She shrugged again and bit, very deliberately, into another pear. One that crunched like an apple it was so green. "Sucks to be you, then," she said, chewing. "Now give me the damn bananas or I'll follow you around and eat fruit at you."
Squalo glowered. "That should not be a valid threat."
"Yet it is," she said placidly, and took another, very loud, crunch. He cringed, only just barely, but she caught it and smiled.
"AGAINST. THE NATURAL. ORDER."
"Natural order's got nothing in the face of hunger." Crunch. "Bananas. At least they won't crunch."
Squalo snarled and continued to withhold the bananas. "I will fucking cook for you, bitch, put down the goddamned pear."
"Okay," she said, and smiled. "I'm allergic to wheat."
"GOOD. THEN MAYBE YOU WILL DROP DEAD AND STOP EATING GREEN FRUIT."
"Nah, it just makes me very gassy, pretty spacey, and kinda cranky."
"AND EATING GREEN FRUIT DOES NOT MAKE YOU GASSY."
"No," she said, all honest innocence.
"...GREAT."
She smiled, and put down the pear. Squalo made eggplant parmesan, breaded in cornmeal, and it hurt his soul to do it but at least it didn't fucking crunch. She liked it, but of course he wasn't expecting much from someone who'd eat crunchy pears.
He consoled himself with this when he woke up later and his hair smelled like stone and vetiver and ozone, exactly like a filthy city after a hard rain, and he had to pretend he didn't like it.
'The Stormhold,' read the little bottle on his nightstand. Squalo got up and put it away next to 'The Bow and Crown of Conquest,' in the drawer were he kept his gloves.
~*~
He lasted four days before tracking down the damn Serpent and having it out in a side garden. It was a record in restraint. The woman draped against a tree like she wasn't fucking cold and she was posing for a portrait of Eden in winter. “I don't know why you're fucking with us. I mean, shit. Bel's having the best fucking time of his life he's ever had without killing someone in the process, and I don't give a shit about Levi, but Lussuria is fruiting more than normal and I wasn't sure that was possible, Fran may never recover and if Levi doesn't stop skulking around corners with that more-stupid-than-usual expression on his face I'll kill him myself.”
She grinned. “They're dangerous to her, a bit... Levi would fall in love, Fran would remove complications, and Bel would break her accidentally-on-purpose. She's too precious to me.”
“If she's that obsessively precious to you you're doing a shit job leaving her with me all the damn time.”
The Serpent smirked at him. “Trees thrive in the Rain.”
~*~
In the middle of screaming with Xanxus he realized what was different.
Xanxus smelled suspiciously like the contents of a little glass bottle.
"FUCKING HELL, YOU'RE WEARING PERFUME!" he blurted out, and this, predictably, did not go well.
"YOU!" Squalo spat out when he finally found the culprit, the only one who could be the culprit. "PERFUMED THE BOSS."
"Yes," she said, fucking smiling like she hadn't done anything WEIRD. She acted like Squalo having blood streaking his face and hair was normal and rational, which was fine, because it was normal for Squalo but that was COMPLETELY BESIDE THE POINT.
Squalo began and discarded several expletives, being unable to pronounce klasjdiowwwfkjhdf. "......HOW."
Now she smirked. "Mixed it with alcohol in a mister and nailed his laundry." Squalo did not have to admit this was clever. He also did not have to point out that he now needed go blast the manor security detail about this as a potential poison delivery system. Y'know, in case. "And his chair." Or that. "And the coon tails." Or that. She smirked harder. "While he wore them."
"YOU LIE."
She smiled at him and didn't say anything.
"...FUCK."
"Smells good on him, doesn't it? All dark and cranky and hot with spices and smoke." Squalo did not have to admit that it did, it smelled abso-fucking-delicious and was incredibly distracting when he was trying to argue with the bastard, because Squalo did not have to admit to anything, ever.
Not even when, hours later, Lussuria smelled like lightning in a whorehouse without actually having left the house, and another innocuous little bottle perched between the spindles on the staircase.
Squalo threw this one out the window--or, more accurately, through the window, and for hours afterward the parapet reeked of 'Lurid.'
~*~
December
It should not be this fucking hard to find a damn civilian. He'd been gone two fucking weeks on assignment and the bastards didn't even know she was still at the manor, let alone where she was. 'Oh, I thought she'd gone back, tee hee tee hee.' Die. Oh, the men he'd assigned to her had known she was still there. Apparently she wished them good morning from time to time, or was seen in the library, or the gardens, all frozen and dead.... the gardens, not the woman, much as Squalo would like otherwise. What they didn't know, and what had just cost them their jobs, was where she fucking was. He wasn't even going to think about her damn shadow yet, not until he'd found her. She wasn't in the kitchen. Wasn't in any of the parlors. Not playing games with Bel. Was not in her room. Was not in his room, was not in Levi's room, was not in Fran's room. She was not in Lussuria's room, God only knew why she'd be there, but no, not there. Not in the goddamn library either. Fuck, she'd better not be in Xanxus's study, but that and the roof were the only places he hadn't checked yet. Well... shit. He threw open a window and leaned out to scan the roofline. She was...
“Are you looking for me?”
Right fucking behind him. “VOOOOOOOOOOOI!” He whirled, banged his head on the fucking window frame. She leapt a fucking mile... small compensation for being snuck up on. “Don't do that,” he hissed.
She stared out of adrenaline-wild eyes. “Right.”
“HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE.”
She flinched. “Since the library?”
Fucking bitch had been following him through three rooms and two hallways.
“WHY DIDN'T YOU DAMN WELL SAY SOMETHING EARLIER?” Why hadn't he heard her following him?
“Squalo?” Yamamoto's head poked around the corner. It was beaming and shortly followed by the rest of Yamamoto. Squalo could fix that. He wanted to. It was Yamamoto's fault. Yamamoto had roped him into this. Yamamoto and Sawada-fucking-Tsunayoshi. He really wanted to, and squelched the desire after only one decapitation fantasy. “Squalo! There you are! I followed the yelling.” He looked so fucking proud of himself too, moron.
Squalo whirled on the Princess and stabbed his finger at the ground. “You don't move.” He turned on Yamamoto. “You. What the fuck are you doing here?”
Yamamoto beamed. “I came to make you sushi.”
“LIKE I WANT TO EAT RAW FISH.”
“I love sushi!” Her face lit up, and she clapped her hands quietly. Like a little fucking kid.
“NOBODY ASKED YOU.”
“See, Squalo? Canadians like sushi. That means it's good.”
“What does sushi have to do with being Canadian?”
“SHE EATS CRUNCHY PEARS. HER OPINION DOES NOT AND WILL NEVER COUNT.”
Yamamoto laughed.
The Princess giggled. Giggled. “You're adorable. Are you always this cute? I hadn't noticed when I met you... we were wearing our business faces then, yes?”
“NO, NO HE IS NOT. HE IS NOT CUTE, AND YOU ARE NOT CUTE, AND WE ARE NOT GODDAMN FRIENDS, WHY DO YOU KEEP COMING HERE?”
“Ara... well, I'm not doing anything different...”
“You are!” She beamed. “You're adorable.”
Yamamoto scratched the back of his head self-consciously, laughing. “Ha ha... well, thanks.”
“VOOOOOOOOI! ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING TO ME?”
“He's pretty cute too,” she said, eyes twinkling.
“Yes! Ha ha ha ha, I've thought so myself!”
“VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOI!” Maybe he should move to fucking Canada. All the idiots were already over here.
~*~
She saw Yamamoto off at the door like this was her fucking house. Squalo, who had refused to either let her out of his sight or closely examine the reason why, scowled. "I still don't know how you fucking manage to sneak up on a group trained fucking assassins all the fucking time without getting killed for it."
She shrugged. "I know how. But if I tell you, it'll spoil your fun."
"VOOOOOI! YOU THINK I'M HAVING FUCKING FUN WAKING UP TO YOU SMEARING PERFUME IN MY HAIR?"
She smiled. "Yes."
"How the fuck do you figure that?"
She smiled until her eyes slid shut. "Because you haven't killed me yet."
He ignored that. It was better for his blood pressure.
~*~
Squalo did not see the Princess again until Saturday afternoon, two days later. He had not locked himself in his office to avoid her. It had nothing to do with her, or Levi's stupid stares, now more paranoid than lovesick after God-knows-how-many times she'd come up behind him, and nothing and no one would ever convince Squalo the bitch had done it “innocently.” In no way did this have anything to do with the fucking Princess, though Squalo was prepared to allow that locking the doors and trapping the windows might have had something to do with Mammon and his comments about the budget. He had been doing work because some people around this fucking place had to. When he did see her, she smiled at him and said, in lieu of “hello,” “I lied about the coon tails.”
Thank God. "Of course you fucking did. Nobody sneaks up on Xanxus."
She shrugged. "That's not true. Somebody's got to. But not me. Xanxus always sees me."
Of course he did. Squalo snorted. "Like I said, nobody sneaks up on the boss."
Another shrug, and she looked at him, shrewdly, out of the corner of her eyes. "You know, I'm not actually trying to hide. But I'll give you a hint. If you can figure out why I can keep coming up on you, and Lussuria, and Levi, and Fran, without any of you ever noticing, then you'll have figured out why I can't do that to Xanxus."
"You left out Bel."
"Bel's pretty hit-or-miss." That had to be one of the most understated summaries of Bel he'd ever heard. He tried to change the subject.
"Where's the Serpent? Isn't she your fucking babysitter or something?"
"No," she shrugged, "I'm hers, kind of. And she's on the roof on that big eastern gable."
"How do you know?"
"Where's Xanxus?"
"Don't change the subject."
"I'm not. Where is he?"
"In his study," Squalo replied instantly.
"How do you know?"
Squalo did not admit she had a point because Squalo did not have to admit to anything, but he let it drop and changed the subject again. "I hid all the fucking fruit," he scowled at her, and she smiled.
"That's all right. Lussuria made me lunch."
".....WHAT."
"I think it's because he's been banging the Serpent."
"..." If silence could be screamed at the top of one's lungs then Squalo was the man who could do it.
The Princess ignored him. "Or she him. Or they haven't gotten far enough in foreplay yet to stop trying to kill each other and screw-or maybe that's vice-versa and they haven't gotten far enough in screwing yet to kill each other." Given that it was Lussuria it made a sick sort of sense. "Whatever, they're having a good time." She smiled. "So Lussuria's been nice to me. I think he likes me." She giggled. She fucking giggled. A woman of her age should not giggle. Or eat unripe fruit or put perfume in other people's damn hair or sneak up on the Varia. "And he thinks there's some magic trick that lets me come up behind him all the time, so he's trying to spy and-or charm it out of me."
"..." Squalo gave up on coming up with words for this and just screamed. Eventually, when he was fucking ready, he ended with "AND ISN'T THERE A FUCKING MAGIC TRICK?"
She took a tangerine out of her pocket and began to peel it, SMIRKING. "No."
Well, at least it was fucking RIPE.
~*~
January
Hockey. The shitty woman was having Bel watch hockey.
“You'd probably like the American league better,” she said brightly, seated on the floor like a couple of kids. A shadow just outside of seeing leant nonchalantly against the wall. It was probably the Serpent, not just because the Princess was in the same room as Bel but because nothing else would be so fucking aggravating as to lean nonchalantly and mostly-unseen at the same damn time. “They're shit players and the crowd is noisy and the music is atrocious, but they get into more fights. Sometimes the blood freezes against the crowd guard.”
“Shishishi...”
“The Canadians, though,” she said, leaning forward as if imparting great wisdom, “get into better fights. Because this is hockey.”
“Right.”
Squalo kept walking. At least it wasn't the damn New Years' Day parade.
~*~
February
“VOOOOOOI!” He kicked down the door and, for once, the shitty woman didn't leap a mile. Squalo was disappointed; he'd come to see giving the Princess a heart attack as improving his day. She was reading, he thought, but when he came close enough to see her hands there was no book, just a vase, some rock the decorator had stuck in here to “tie the room together” or some shit that decorators did. It was an antique, of course, and genuine, because they were the Varia for fuck's sake, but it was still just a rock. He stomped over to her shoulder and sucked in the air to yell again.
“Sometimes,” she said lightly enough to fool most people, but Squalo was Superbi fucking Squalo and he could hear the damn thread of iron-clad anger, thin and bright, inside her tone, and held his tongue, “I want to tame your boss. And by 'tame,' I mean 'beat him like a dog who's dared to deliberately piss on the rug.' Quick, and sharp, and so thoroughly he can't ever conceive of doing that ever again.”
Doing the hell what? “You can't.”
“I know. And that stops me from having it.” She turned her head and looked him in the eye. Squalo would later swear (to himself, dammit, he wasn't telling a damn soul about this) that the flow of blood in his veins changed fucking direction at what he saw there. “It doesn't stop me from wanting it.” She looked away.
He tucked his shivers inside himself where they could keep themselves private. “What the hell brought this on?”
She shrugged slightly, not meeting his eyes (for which he absolutely was not thankful and he was sticking to that). “An observed difference in goal achievement and applied management styles.”
His eyes narrowed. “I'll take care of it.”
“Don't bother. It isn't your Xanxus I'm angry with.” She smirked a little. “This time, anyway.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
She looked at him for a long moment. “That kid, Lambo. Vongola's Lightning. He has a bazooka. Do you know anything about it?”
“Some. Fucks with time for five minutes.”
“What would happen, do you think,” she said idly, fingers tracing the pattern on the vase, “if it 'fucked with time' for more than five minutes?” They stared at one another. “For days, maybe? Months? On one end you're changing the future... but on the other end you're changing the past. What happens?”
He glared. She smiled without humor.
“You think about it.”
Silence. Squalo heaved a sigh. “FINE. Then what is this shit about Xanxus if you're in here communing with pottery?”
“Nothing. Nothing that will ever be here.”
He snorted. Crazy bitch was being creepy. “Be that way, then. I'll yell at him anyway, he's been bored. Just don't burn the fucking place down.”
She blinked. “How would I burn the house down?”
“VOOOOOI, don't give me that shit! You'll blink your damn eyes or some shit and someone will say something to Levi and then the butcher will close early because some idiot ran over a kitten and before I know it Bel's set the damn house on fire AND SOMEHOW IT WILL ALL BE YOUR FAULT.”
Her eyebrows raised. “I think you're confusing my powers of influence with Rube Goldberg.” Squalo scowled, and she smiled. “But thanks.” He scowled more darkly.
“What the fuck FOR?”
She leaned in (he could smell her perfume) and kissed the air next to his cheek. “For being ridiculous.”
“VOOOOOOI!!”
~*~
March
He had admitted (to himself) that talking with the Merovingian Princess, while often an aggravating exercise, was complicated enough to be interesting, and things that were interesting without being violent were novel. He still had not figured out how the fuck she kept sneaking up on him, she still did it every fucking time he met her, he still did not like it, but by now he'd incorporated it into his training. He still did not like her, and she still put perfume in his fucking hair if he didn't pay attention (he had gotten good enough to catch her by scent and prevent it almost half the time... okay, a third, but that was more than Levi could have fucking managed), but he liked the challenge of conversation with her and that was good enough. He didn't have to like her to be able admit she was a charming, charming companion, relaxing (when she wasn't deliberately driving him to aneurism, anyway) and entertaining and flattering when she wanted to be and smart enough to sting, just the sort of woman a man in the Families would treasure as a mistress despite her lack of looks. Yamamoto and the small portion of the staff not outright avoiding her with the fear of Squalo put into them ate out of her damn hand. He respected that. He didn't like it, but it was a fucking skill to turn experienced Mafia servants against their masters' opinions despite all consequences known and unknown, and he respected it. Sawada had been wise to put her here, damn his eyes. Had he left her in the Vongola seat she'd probably have had the entire damn house eating out of her palm, and likely all the guardians except that Cloud-brat. Cavallone too, because that's just how it fucking figured. Bunch of fucking pansies.
There was a window seat the Princess often sat in near her rooms, overlooking the kitchen entrance and part of the grounds. Today she sat in it watching the sky decide whether or not it was going to rain, and today Squalo sat with her.
He never remembered later what they had been talking about.
The Serpent slunk in, so fresh from the shower she smelled like soap and her hair soaked the shirt she wore, plastering it to her like cellophane and making it abundantly clear that the shirt was all she wore. She curled up in the Princess's lap and purred. The Princess blinked and settled her hands into the Serpent's long black hair. Her movements were slow, almost hypnotic.
“I think you should go check on Lussuria.” There was no hesitancy or give in that quiet voice.
“What?” Squalo blinked, looking away from her hands and the wet, sated woman they petted.
“Lussuria. You should go check on him. Take someone with you.”
“VOOOOOOI, I'm not the pervert's fucking babysitter!”
She looked up at him. Squalo's blood did that uncomfortable thing again for the second time since meeting her, and he made himself accept that he was going to have to figure out what the fuck a “Tree” was, because obviously it wasn't a fake title like “Princess.” “And bring a bucket.”
Squalo went.
~*~
Hours later he stomped back into her room and collapsed into the chair next to the bed. He was pale, and drunk, and he glared at her as best he was able. It wasn't very much, and that didn't have very much to do with the alcohol, but at least this way everyone could pretend. The Princess on the bed. The Serpent sprawled out over her lap looking pleased with herself. She also looked sleepy, but Squalo knew better than to trust that.
“I have never,” he said, with tired venom, “wanted to know that much about Lussuria's sex life. Thanks for the tip about the bucket. Levi needed it to puke in.” So had he, but nobody needed to discuss that. Two of the men had left and not come back. He'd deal with them tomorrow. He switched the weak glare to the thing lolling in the Princess's lap. “I don't know how you can stand to touch her.”
The Princess shrugged. “She'd showered first, and brushed her teeth. Everything else I already knew about.”
“The statement stands. Coming from me, if you can fucking get what I'm saying to you.”
“I understand.” The Serpent rolled and the Princess didn't stop stroking, fingers moving over her throat and breasts like she was petting a cat. “Do you know why she's so dangerous? What makes her the Serpent? I'll give you a hint: it has very little to do with knives and poisons.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Temptation.”
Silence. He thought he got it, but he needed to hear it. “Spell it out for me.”
“She gives you what you want, and watches you destroy yourself with it.” She smiled, briefly. “The Serpent doesn't keep forbidden knowledge safe by keeping it away from people. She gives it to whomever will misuse it in such a way as to make themselves into a terrible warning, usually destroying themselves in the process.” She looked at him again, and smiled. “This is Italy. You're Catholic, if only by association. I know you've heard about Original Sin.”
“You're telling me this bitch is that Serpent.” The Serpent smirked sleepily. The Princess raised a calm eyebrow. Squalo thought about how he'd found Lussuria-who would, and much sooner than first impressions would have you think, make a complete recovery. It had just been traumatic to see a man's testicles turned inside-not thinking about that. Even while he was directing a frightened maid staff into scrubbing blood and semen and things he didn't want to fucking know about off of all the available surfaces (the ceiling? Seriously?) he hadn't been able to shake the fucking irony of this happening to Lussuria.
Particularly when the man, not even fucking conscious, had had a grin on his face. And he was resolutely ignoring the niggling in the back of his brain that both math and simple biology were arguing for more than just two people in that room. He was going off of the reasoning that if there wasn't enough of a body to be immediately obvious that there was a body then there wasn't a fucking body, SO THERE.
“She never does anything you don't want,” said the Princess. “That's the problem, most of the time. It doesn't go the way you wanted and when the reckoning comes it's still all your fault and none of hers, because it's like a computer. She did only what you asked of her. She gave you what you wanted.” She looked at him. “I've been keeping her away from Xanxus, if that makes you feel any better.”
“Xanxus can handle himself.”
She looked at him. Her eyes were very green, but they were also brown. “And in this sort of situation isn't that the problem? She's not an assassin any more than Yamamoto is a baseball player. Can you honestly tell yourself that when presented with the tools to achieve everything he's ever wanted, he'll step aside and not take them?” Squalo swore with great feeling. The Princess smiled like an old, old woman. “That's the trick, you see... she doesn't lure you in and not deliver. You get what you want. You hold it in your hands and taste it, but somehow, some way, it's also your undoing. The biggest will will cause the biggest boom, Squalo, and with his kind of drive when Xanxus self-destructs he'll take out all of Vongola and most of Italy with him in just the first wave.”
“IF Xanxus self-destructs.” Squalo glared. “And he won't.”
“He'll never meet her, if I can help it... and why would he want to? She's just some shitty assassin, some woman who plays with poisons and knives, and he's already got the best of that, hasn't he? Why would he need some woman he can't even fuck, because damn if he's going to take Lussuria's leavings.” Her voice was light, teasing. Tempting him to agree. Squalo scowled. The Princess smiled. “I won't let her play for real with Belphegor, either. But that's just because Bel can't kill her no matter how many pieces he cuts her into, and she won't drop it because he won't drop it-because he won't want her to. I'd hate to see your Prince dead over what's just a game of assassin's-tag. He's pretty cute.”
“Like a puppy,” the Serpent put in, and her grin was hazy and kind of sappy-looking. Fucking figured that she'd get all woobly over Bel. “All tiny sharp teeth and floppy paws... He thinks he's so fierce and he's really just adorable and fluffy while he's trying to gnaw your face off.”
“Yeah, a puppy,” Squalo said acidly. “Right. A jackal puppy.”
“Still a puppy.”
“Shut the fuck up and bask in your disgusting afterglow. I have to go punch Lussuria.”
The Tree, because if that was the damn Serpent of Eden then she was the damn Tree, looked concerned. “Why?”
“For having shit taste in women,” he snapped, and slammed the door behind him.
~*~
She left him alone for a day and a night and, on the second day, knocked on his door and held out a little glass bottle.
He took a sniff and, COMPLETELY AGAINST HIS WILL, his lips started to curve.
"You're smiling."
And he couldn't stop. "IT'S AN INVOLUNTARY REACTION. THIS SHIT SMELLS LIKE GOLD BOND AND OLD LADIES."
"I know." She giggled under her breath, grinning. "It does that to everyone. We don't know why."
~*~
The Serpent sat at the table, smirking at people over a teacup she probably only had so she could smirk over it. It was unusual for her to join them at breakfast and it set Squalo's teeth on edge.
Of course, the nervous way Levi kept fussing with the damn flatware could have had something to do with that instead. It was like a fucking Pavlovian response; she'd glance at him, and he'd straighten his damn fork. She'd smirk a bit harder, and he'd adjust Bel's. (Bel would make a good-faith attempt now and then to stab Levi's hand with one of the knives he was eating with, but as a deterrent it was fucking ineffective.)
“VOOOOOI! USE THE DAMN FORK AND FORGET IT ALREADY, DUMBASS!”
“Look, you piece of shit-!”
The Serpent smirked at Levi. Levi bit off mid-curse and adjusted his damn fork. Squalo sat down, the better to beat his head against the tabletop. “Fucking. Stop. With the flatware. Just eat your damn food. BOTH OF YOU.” He glared at the Serpent (she laughed, and Squalo pretended he didn't see Levi straightening the fucking teaspoon). “What the fuck are you doing down here?”
“Good morning~!” Lussuria trilled, limping into the kitchen for the first time in days. Aside from walking like a man who'd pulled his groin he looked remarkably healthy. The Serpent smiled at him, smiled, not smirked, and kicked out a chair next to her. He beamed and sank into it. What. The fuck. “Ah, thank you, love.” Squalo stared. Levi stared. Bel snickered. Lussuria ruffled Bel's hair, avoided the affectionate attempt to take his hand off at the wrist, and smiled at Squalo. “Pass me some of that tea? Thanks, love. Levi, love, is there something wrong with your fork?”
The Serpent snickered. Surveyors could have used the position of Levi's knife relative to his coffee as a reference. Lussuria pouted at her. “Mou, why are you laughing? I've missed your company at night, love. So cruel of you to stay away. You've quite ruined me for other men, you know.”
Levi left so quickly Squalo didn't actually see him leave. Squalo... blinked. And wondered, with detachment, if his jaw was slack. He stared at Lussuria. Lussuria blinked innocently over his sunglasses.
“What?”
Squalo, with great care, set his plate to one side and proceeded to bang his forehead against the table.
Bel giggled.
~*~
“I don't know, love” Lussuria said quietly at sunset, when they had sought each other out to talk. “What do you do after you've gotten what you want?”
Squalo manfully resisted the urge to smack him in the head. “Moron.”
An eyebrow rose over the sunglass horizon. “Do tell.”
“You find something else to fucking want, that's what you do.” He glared. Briefly, because too much ire wasn't worth the effort. “I wanted to be the Sword Emperor. I got it. I found something else to want.”
Lussuria nodded.
Squalo scoffed. “I can't believe-no, scratch that, I don't want to believe your fucking life's ambition revolved around sex, you fruity pervert.”
“And that would be your answer there,” Lussuria retorted, dry. “Though to be fair, love, I never expected to get it, and when I did, I certainly didn't expect to survive it.”
A soft snort from right behind them. They turned. Turned, because highly skilled assassins do not jump at the eleventh fucking time something like this happens. “That would be her price, then,” said the Tree. The Princess, who was the Tree, because of the Serpent, who he really did now believe was that Serpent, because if Lussuria would fuck a damn woman then it would have to be that woman.
“VOOOOOOOOI!” The Princess, though, did jump. “Stop fucking doing that!”
She glared. It was a very wussy glare. “I don't do it on purpose, you know.”
“Come here, love,” cooed Lussuria. Squalo knew from long experience that he was rolling his eyes behind those sunglasses. “Come sit by me.”
She gave him a considering look so long as to be insulting, then sat down next to the pervert anyway.
“What price, now?”
She sighed through her nose, smiling. “You pay a price for everything. When the Serpent clears the way, to get you what you want, you pay a price for that, and you pay the price for what you wanted.” She tipped her head, studying him. “I had wondered why you lived, and in such intact condition. Not having expected to explains it.”
Lussuria put his hand on her knee and leered almost politely. “I wouldn't call it 'intact,' love.”
“You're baiting me, aren't you?”
“Give the woman a prize,” Squalo snorted. “Took you long enough. And YOU. You can still fucking pee standing up, that's 'intact,' I don't care if you only have one fucking testicle.”
Series: KHR. Technically.
Part: 2/6
Warnings: rampant profanity, sporadic abuse of the capslock key and italics tag, and liberties taken with damn near everything including, eventually, Squalo's person but not in the fun way and Lussuria's he, at least, thought it was fun.
Perfumes inspired the story, and the perfumes, like last time, are taken from BPAL
Part 1: The Merovingian Come
The Princess goes to Varia
November
He woke up because something smelled good. Like cologne... he picked out cedar, leather, sandalwood, smoke... something sharp and smooth and not quite sweet, and the clean, blank tang of good steel. He inhaled, deeply, and woke up enough to realize that nowhere he habitually slept should smell anything like perfume.
"VOOOOOOOOOI! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"
The woman did not, literally, jump out of her skin (although it was close), nor did she die on the spot from a heart attack, which was disappointing, but meant he could still kill her.
"WELL?"
Fright slowly changed to amusement and she smiled to his face, cementing the conclusion that she was insane. "Putting perfume in your hair."
He knew that. That much was obvious. "...WHY."
"Because it seemed like a good idea! You've certainly got enough hair for it." Very few sane people were that chipper about dying bloodily any second now. He would know. "People always know where you are and where you're going," why was left unsaid, "but now they'll know where you've been, after you've left... nobody will be able to smell it unless they're UNDER your damn hair, or until after you've gone past. Perfume in hair lingers like a dying ghost, rarely clear enough to recognize unless somebody's right up in your space. And it's distracting to other people." Another smile. "It's why I like it. If you hate it so much just wash your damn hair."
"You're an idiot." He sniffed a fistful of hair, snatched the bottle, and peered at it. It was better different in his hair than it was in the bottle, complete, and he scowled at how it demonstrated every evidence of clinging to him for several hours. It was perfume oil. It even clung (however faintly, but STILL FUCKING THERE) to his fucking bed now just by association. He'd have to kill her. At least she had the half a braincell to apply perfume properly instead of fucking dousing him in it and at least the shit didn't smell girly and wasn't named anything girly. 'The Bow and Crown of Conquest' read the label on the little bottle in plain, bold text.
"Maybe you'd like this one better?" she dangled another glass vial. He caught the word "sword" on the label as she wagged it and squinted to read it better. 'The Great Sword of War.' He snatched that one too... but that one was darker, grittier, spicier, less like control and more like violence and not like anything clean. It was closer to the calmer, girlier crap the insane woman kept in her own hair than it was to the shit she'd dared smear in HIS, and clearly not befitting the Rain. Not that perfume befitted- well. Anything.
...he was trying not to complete the niggling thought that it'd go well on Xanxus.
~*~
The next day he found the crazy woman in the kitchen gnawing her way through the contents of the fruit bowl.
"VOOOI! Those aren't ripe, you moron! Pears aren't supposed to be goddamn crunchy."
She shrugged. "I know. Still taste good, though."
Squalo scoffed. "I bet you'd eat the damn garnish."
She grinned at him like a challenge. "You'd win that bet. I love kale, parsley, and oranges cut to look like flowers." She finished her crunchy pear and reached for a banana still green at the corners. Squalo snatched it away from her. He wasn't her damn babysitter, he had things to do, Goddammit, but no one else seemed to be stepping up to the bar. And where the hell were the eight men who were supposed to be watching her? He hoped to God they were chasing her damn personal guard instead of wandering around with their thumbs up their asses or Squalo would introduce them to God. She was a damn kept woman from a piddling fucking family and they were the Varia, she should not have been able to get into his bedroom to put perfume in his damn hair; she should not have been able to ditch them in the kitchen!
Squalo, not always but sometimes, when deprived of the appropriate target, sometimes went with what was available.
"Stop eating the damn fruit! It's not ripe!"
She scowled at him. "But I like unripe bananas! Those are just the right color!"
"No!" And, since she clearly had no sense of what was right in the world, added "you'll get sick!"
She frowned. "One, no, I won't. I've been eating like this my entire life. Two," she swapped the frown for a grin, "if you're not careful people will think you care."
"VOOOOOI! I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU, I CARE ABOUT THE FUCKING NATURAL ORDER!"
She tensed when he yelled, forced herself to relaxed, and shrugged. "So don't look."
"I CAN HEAR YOU FUCKING CRUNCHING."
"So leave."
"I'LL STILL KNOW."
She shrugged again and bit, very deliberately, into another pear. One that crunched like an apple it was so green. "Sucks to be you, then," she said, chewing. "Now give me the damn bananas or I'll follow you around and eat fruit at you."
Squalo glowered. "That should not be a valid threat."
"Yet it is," she said placidly, and took another, very loud, crunch. He cringed, only just barely, but she caught it and smiled.
"AGAINST. THE NATURAL. ORDER."
"Natural order's got nothing in the face of hunger." Crunch. "Bananas. At least they won't crunch."
Squalo snarled and continued to withhold the bananas. "I will fucking cook for you, bitch, put down the goddamned pear."
"Okay," she said, and smiled. "I'm allergic to wheat."
"GOOD. THEN MAYBE YOU WILL DROP DEAD AND STOP EATING GREEN FRUIT."
"Nah, it just makes me very gassy, pretty spacey, and kinda cranky."
"AND EATING GREEN FRUIT DOES NOT MAKE YOU GASSY."
"No," she said, all honest innocence.
"...GREAT."
She smiled, and put down the pear. Squalo made eggplant parmesan, breaded in cornmeal, and it hurt his soul to do it but at least it didn't fucking crunch. She liked it, but of course he wasn't expecting much from someone who'd eat crunchy pears.
He consoled himself with this when he woke up later and his hair smelled like stone and vetiver and ozone, exactly like a filthy city after a hard rain, and he had to pretend he didn't like it.
'The Stormhold,' read the little bottle on his nightstand. Squalo got up and put it away next to 'The Bow and Crown of Conquest,' in the drawer were he kept his gloves.
~*~
He lasted four days before tracking down the damn Serpent and having it out in a side garden. It was a record in restraint. The woman draped against a tree like she wasn't fucking cold and she was posing for a portrait of Eden in winter. “I don't know why you're fucking with us. I mean, shit. Bel's having the best fucking time of his life he's ever had without killing someone in the process, and I don't give a shit about Levi, but Lussuria is fruiting more than normal and I wasn't sure that was possible, Fran may never recover and if Levi doesn't stop skulking around corners with that more-stupid-than-usual expression on his face I'll kill him myself.”
She grinned. “They're dangerous to her, a bit... Levi would fall in love, Fran would remove complications, and Bel would break her accidentally-on-purpose. She's too precious to me.”
“If she's that obsessively precious to you you're doing a shit job leaving her with me all the damn time.”
The Serpent smirked at him. “Trees thrive in the Rain.”
~*~
In the middle of screaming with Xanxus he realized what was different.
Xanxus smelled suspiciously like the contents of a little glass bottle.
"FUCKING HELL, YOU'RE WEARING PERFUME!" he blurted out, and this, predictably, did not go well.
"YOU!" Squalo spat out when he finally found the culprit, the only one who could be the culprit. "PERFUMED THE BOSS."
"Yes," she said, fucking smiling like she hadn't done anything WEIRD. She acted like Squalo having blood streaking his face and hair was normal and rational, which was fine, because it was normal for Squalo but that was COMPLETELY BESIDE THE POINT.
Squalo began and discarded several expletives, being unable to pronounce klasjdiowwwfkjhdf. "......HOW."
Now she smirked. "Mixed it with alcohol in a mister and nailed his laundry." Squalo did not have to admit this was clever. He also did not have to point out that he now needed go blast the manor security detail about this as a potential poison delivery system. Y'know, in case. "And his chair." Or that. "And the coon tails." Or that. She smirked harder. "While he wore them."
"YOU LIE."
She smiled at him and didn't say anything.
"...FUCK."
"Smells good on him, doesn't it? All dark and cranky and hot with spices and smoke." Squalo did not have to admit that it did, it smelled abso-fucking-delicious and was incredibly distracting when he was trying to argue with the bastard, because Squalo did not have to admit to anything, ever.
Not even when, hours later, Lussuria smelled like lightning in a whorehouse without actually having left the house, and another innocuous little bottle perched between the spindles on the staircase.
Squalo threw this one out the window--or, more accurately, through the window, and for hours afterward the parapet reeked of 'Lurid.'
~*~
December
It should not be this fucking hard to find a damn civilian. He'd been gone two fucking weeks on assignment and the bastards didn't even know she was still at the manor, let alone where she was. 'Oh, I thought she'd gone back, tee hee tee hee.' Die. Oh, the men he'd assigned to her had known she was still there. Apparently she wished them good morning from time to time, or was seen in the library, or the gardens, all frozen and dead.... the gardens, not the woman, much as Squalo would like otherwise. What they didn't know, and what had just cost them their jobs, was where she fucking was. He wasn't even going to think about her damn shadow yet, not until he'd found her. She wasn't in the kitchen. Wasn't in any of the parlors. Not playing games with Bel. Was not in her room. Was not in his room, was not in Levi's room, was not in Fran's room. She was not in Lussuria's room, God only knew why she'd be there, but no, not there. Not in the goddamn library either. Fuck, she'd better not be in Xanxus's study, but that and the roof were the only places he hadn't checked yet. Well... shit. He threw open a window and leaned out to scan the roofline. She was...
“Are you looking for me?”
Right fucking behind him. “VOOOOOOOOOOOI!” He whirled, banged his head on the fucking window frame. She leapt a fucking mile... small compensation for being snuck up on. “Don't do that,” he hissed.
She stared out of adrenaline-wild eyes. “Right.”
“HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE.”
She flinched. “Since the library?”
Fucking bitch had been following him through three rooms and two hallways.
“WHY DIDN'T YOU DAMN WELL SAY SOMETHING EARLIER?” Why hadn't he heard her following him?
“Squalo?” Yamamoto's head poked around the corner. It was beaming and shortly followed by the rest of Yamamoto. Squalo could fix that. He wanted to. It was Yamamoto's fault. Yamamoto had roped him into this. Yamamoto and Sawada-fucking-Tsunayoshi. He really wanted to, and squelched the desire after only one decapitation fantasy. “Squalo! There you are! I followed the yelling.” He looked so fucking proud of himself too, moron.
Squalo whirled on the Princess and stabbed his finger at the ground. “You don't move.” He turned on Yamamoto. “You. What the fuck are you doing here?”
Yamamoto beamed. “I came to make you sushi.”
“LIKE I WANT TO EAT RAW FISH.”
“I love sushi!” Her face lit up, and she clapped her hands quietly. Like a little fucking kid.
“NOBODY ASKED YOU.”
“See, Squalo? Canadians like sushi. That means it's good.”
“What does sushi have to do with being Canadian?”
“SHE EATS CRUNCHY PEARS. HER OPINION DOES NOT AND WILL NEVER COUNT.”
Yamamoto laughed.
The Princess giggled. Giggled. “You're adorable. Are you always this cute? I hadn't noticed when I met you... we were wearing our business faces then, yes?”
“NO, NO HE IS NOT. HE IS NOT CUTE, AND YOU ARE NOT CUTE, AND WE ARE NOT GODDAMN FRIENDS, WHY DO YOU KEEP COMING HERE?”
“Ara... well, I'm not doing anything different...”
“You are!” She beamed. “You're adorable.”
Yamamoto scratched the back of his head self-consciously, laughing. “Ha ha... well, thanks.”
“VOOOOOOOOI! ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING TO ME?”
“He's pretty cute too,” she said, eyes twinkling.
“Yes! Ha ha ha ha, I've thought so myself!”
“VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOI!” Maybe he should move to fucking Canada. All the idiots were already over here.
~*~
She saw Yamamoto off at the door like this was her fucking house. Squalo, who had refused to either let her out of his sight or closely examine the reason why, scowled. "I still don't know how you fucking manage to sneak up on a group trained fucking assassins all the fucking time without getting killed for it."
She shrugged. "I know how. But if I tell you, it'll spoil your fun."
"VOOOOOI! YOU THINK I'M HAVING FUCKING FUN WAKING UP TO YOU SMEARING PERFUME IN MY HAIR?"
She smiled. "Yes."
"How the fuck do you figure that?"
She smiled until her eyes slid shut. "Because you haven't killed me yet."
He ignored that. It was better for his blood pressure.
~*~
Squalo did not see the Princess again until Saturday afternoon, two days later. He had not locked himself in his office to avoid her. It had nothing to do with her, or Levi's stupid stares, now more paranoid than lovesick after God-knows-how-many times she'd come up behind him, and nothing and no one would ever convince Squalo the bitch had done it “innocently.” In no way did this have anything to do with the fucking Princess, though Squalo was prepared to allow that locking the doors and trapping the windows might have had something to do with Mammon and his comments about the budget. He had been doing work because some people around this fucking place had to. When he did see her, she smiled at him and said, in lieu of “hello,” “I lied about the coon tails.”
Thank God. "Of course you fucking did. Nobody sneaks up on Xanxus."
She shrugged. "That's not true. Somebody's got to. But not me. Xanxus always sees me."
Of course he did. Squalo snorted. "Like I said, nobody sneaks up on the boss."
Another shrug, and she looked at him, shrewdly, out of the corner of her eyes. "You know, I'm not actually trying to hide. But I'll give you a hint. If you can figure out why I can keep coming up on you, and Lussuria, and Levi, and Fran, without any of you ever noticing, then you'll have figured out why I can't do that to Xanxus."
"You left out Bel."
"Bel's pretty hit-or-miss." That had to be one of the most understated summaries of Bel he'd ever heard. He tried to change the subject.
"Where's the Serpent? Isn't she your fucking babysitter or something?"
"No," she shrugged, "I'm hers, kind of. And she's on the roof on that big eastern gable."
"How do you know?"
"Where's Xanxus?"
"Don't change the subject."
"I'm not. Where is he?"
"In his study," Squalo replied instantly.
"How do you know?"
Squalo did not admit she had a point because Squalo did not have to admit to anything, but he let it drop and changed the subject again. "I hid all the fucking fruit," he scowled at her, and she smiled.
"That's all right. Lussuria made me lunch."
".....WHAT."
"I think it's because he's been banging the Serpent."
"..." If silence could be screamed at the top of one's lungs then Squalo was the man who could do it.
The Princess ignored him. "Or she him. Or they haven't gotten far enough in foreplay yet to stop trying to kill each other and screw-or maybe that's vice-versa and they haven't gotten far enough in screwing yet to kill each other." Given that it was Lussuria it made a sick sort of sense. "Whatever, they're having a good time." She smiled. "So Lussuria's been nice to me. I think he likes me." She giggled. She fucking giggled. A woman of her age should not giggle. Or eat unripe fruit or put perfume in other people's damn hair or sneak up on the Varia. "And he thinks there's some magic trick that lets me come up behind him all the time, so he's trying to spy and-or charm it out of me."
"..." Squalo gave up on coming up with words for this and just screamed. Eventually, when he was fucking ready, he ended with "AND ISN'T THERE A FUCKING MAGIC TRICK?"
She took a tangerine out of her pocket and began to peel it, SMIRKING. "No."
Well, at least it was fucking RIPE.
~*~
January
Hockey. The shitty woman was having Bel watch hockey.
“You'd probably like the American league better,” she said brightly, seated on the floor like a couple of kids. A shadow just outside of seeing leant nonchalantly against the wall. It was probably the Serpent, not just because the Princess was in the same room as Bel but because nothing else would be so fucking aggravating as to lean nonchalantly and mostly-unseen at the same damn time. “They're shit players and the crowd is noisy and the music is atrocious, but they get into more fights. Sometimes the blood freezes against the crowd guard.”
“Shishishi...”
“The Canadians, though,” she said, leaning forward as if imparting great wisdom, “get into better fights. Because this is hockey.”
“Right.”
Squalo kept walking. At least it wasn't the damn New Years' Day parade.
~*~
February
“VOOOOOOI!” He kicked down the door and, for once, the shitty woman didn't leap a mile. Squalo was disappointed; he'd come to see giving the Princess a heart attack as improving his day. She was reading, he thought, but when he came close enough to see her hands there was no book, just a vase, some rock the decorator had stuck in here to “tie the room together” or some shit that decorators did. It was an antique, of course, and genuine, because they were the Varia for fuck's sake, but it was still just a rock. He stomped over to her shoulder and sucked in the air to yell again.
“Sometimes,” she said lightly enough to fool most people, but Squalo was Superbi fucking Squalo and he could hear the damn thread of iron-clad anger, thin and bright, inside her tone, and held his tongue, “I want to tame your boss. And by 'tame,' I mean 'beat him like a dog who's dared to deliberately piss on the rug.' Quick, and sharp, and so thoroughly he can't ever conceive of doing that ever again.”
Doing the hell what? “You can't.”
“I know. And that stops me from having it.” She turned her head and looked him in the eye. Squalo would later swear (to himself, dammit, he wasn't telling a damn soul about this) that the flow of blood in his veins changed fucking direction at what he saw there. “It doesn't stop me from wanting it.” She looked away.
He tucked his shivers inside himself where they could keep themselves private. “What the hell brought this on?”
She shrugged slightly, not meeting his eyes (for which he absolutely was not thankful and he was sticking to that). “An observed difference in goal achievement and applied management styles.”
His eyes narrowed. “I'll take care of it.”
“Don't bother. It isn't your Xanxus I'm angry with.” She smirked a little. “This time, anyway.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
She looked at him for a long moment. “That kid, Lambo. Vongola's Lightning. He has a bazooka. Do you know anything about it?”
“Some. Fucks with time for five minutes.”
“What would happen, do you think,” she said idly, fingers tracing the pattern on the vase, “if it 'fucked with time' for more than five minutes?” They stared at one another. “For days, maybe? Months? On one end you're changing the future... but on the other end you're changing the past. What happens?”
He glared. She smiled without humor.
“You think about it.”
Silence. Squalo heaved a sigh. “FINE. Then what is this shit about Xanxus if you're in here communing with pottery?”
“Nothing. Nothing that will ever be here.”
He snorted. Crazy bitch was being creepy. “Be that way, then. I'll yell at him anyway, he's been bored. Just don't burn the fucking place down.”
She blinked. “How would I burn the house down?”
“VOOOOOI, don't give me that shit! You'll blink your damn eyes or some shit and someone will say something to Levi and then the butcher will close early because some idiot ran over a kitten and before I know it Bel's set the damn house on fire AND SOMEHOW IT WILL ALL BE YOUR FAULT.”
Her eyebrows raised. “I think you're confusing my powers of influence with Rube Goldberg.” Squalo scowled, and she smiled. “But thanks.” He scowled more darkly.
“What the fuck FOR?”
She leaned in (he could smell her perfume) and kissed the air next to his cheek. “For being ridiculous.”
“VOOOOOOI!!”
~*~
March
He had admitted (to himself) that talking with the Merovingian Princess, while often an aggravating exercise, was complicated enough to be interesting, and things that were interesting without being violent were novel. He still had not figured out how the fuck she kept sneaking up on him, she still did it every fucking time he met her, he still did not like it, but by now he'd incorporated it into his training. He still did not like her, and she still put perfume in his fucking hair if he didn't pay attention (he had gotten good enough to catch her by scent and prevent it almost half the time... okay, a third, but that was more than Levi could have fucking managed), but he liked the challenge of conversation with her and that was good enough. He didn't have to like her to be able admit she was a charming, charming companion, relaxing (when she wasn't deliberately driving him to aneurism, anyway) and entertaining and flattering when she wanted to be and smart enough to sting, just the sort of woman a man in the Families would treasure as a mistress despite her lack of looks. Yamamoto and the small portion of the staff not outright avoiding her with the fear of Squalo put into them ate out of her damn hand. He respected that. He didn't like it, but it was a fucking skill to turn experienced Mafia servants against their masters' opinions despite all consequences known and unknown, and he respected it. Sawada had been wise to put her here, damn his eyes. Had he left her in the Vongola seat she'd probably have had the entire damn house eating out of her palm, and likely all the guardians except that Cloud-brat. Cavallone too, because that's just how it fucking figured. Bunch of fucking pansies.
There was a window seat the Princess often sat in near her rooms, overlooking the kitchen entrance and part of the grounds. Today she sat in it watching the sky decide whether or not it was going to rain, and today Squalo sat with her.
He never remembered later what they had been talking about.
The Serpent slunk in, so fresh from the shower she smelled like soap and her hair soaked the shirt she wore, plastering it to her like cellophane and making it abundantly clear that the shirt was all she wore. She curled up in the Princess's lap and purred. The Princess blinked and settled her hands into the Serpent's long black hair. Her movements were slow, almost hypnotic.
“I think you should go check on Lussuria.” There was no hesitancy or give in that quiet voice.
“What?” Squalo blinked, looking away from her hands and the wet, sated woman they petted.
“Lussuria. You should go check on him. Take someone with you.”
“VOOOOOOI, I'm not the pervert's fucking babysitter!”
She looked up at him. Squalo's blood did that uncomfortable thing again for the second time since meeting her, and he made himself accept that he was going to have to figure out what the fuck a “Tree” was, because obviously it wasn't a fake title like “Princess.” “And bring a bucket.”
Squalo went.
~*~
Hours later he stomped back into her room and collapsed into the chair next to the bed. He was pale, and drunk, and he glared at her as best he was able. It wasn't very much, and that didn't have very much to do with the alcohol, but at least this way everyone could pretend. The Princess on the bed. The Serpent sprawled out over her lap looking pleased with herself. She also looked sleepy, but Squalo knew better than to trust that.
“I have never,” he said, with tired venom, “wanted to know that much about Lussuria's sex life. Thanks for the tip about the bucket. Levi needed it to puke in.” So had he, but nobody needed to discuss that. Two of the men had left and not come back. He'd deal with them tomorrow. He switched the weak glare to the thing lolling in the Princess's lap. “I don't know how you can stand to touch her.”
The Princess shrugged. “She'd showered first, and brushed her teeth. Everything else I already knew about.”
“The statement stands. Coming from me, if you can fucking get what I'm saying to you.”
“I understand.” The Serpent rolled and the Princess didn't stop stroking, fingers moving over her throat and breasts like she was petting a cat. “Do you know why she's so dangerous? What makes her the Serpent? I'll give you a hint: it has very little to do with knives and poisons.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Temptation.”
Silence. He thought he got it, but he needed to hear it. “Spell it out for me.”
“She gives you what you want, and watches you destroy yourself with it.” She smiled, briefly. “The Serpent doesn't keep forbidden knowledge safe by keeping it away from people. She gives it to whomever will misuse it in such a way as to make themselves into a terrible warning, usually destroying themselves in the process.” She looked at him again, and smiled. “This is Italy. You're Catholic, if only by association. I know you've heard about Original Sin.”
“You're telling me this bitch is that Serpent.” The Serpent smirked sleepily. The Princess raised a calm eyebrow. Squalo thought about how he'd found Lussuria-who would, and much sooner than first impressions would have you think, make a complete recovery. It had just been traumatic to see a man's testicles turned inside-not thinking about that. Even while he was directing a frightened maid staff into scrubbing blood and semen and things he didn't want to fucking know about off of all the available surfaces (the ceiling? Seriously?) he hadn't been able to shake the fucking irony of this happening to Lussuria.
Particularly when the man, not even fucking conscious, had had a grin on his face. And he was resolutely ignoring the niggling in the back of his brain that both math and simple biology were arguing for more than just two people in that room. He was going off of the reasoning that if there wasn't enough of a body to be immediately obvious that there was a body then there wasn't a fucking body, SO THERE.
“She never does anything you don't want,” said the Princess. “That's the problem, most of the time. It doesn't go the way you wanted and when the reckoning comes it's still all your fault and none of hers, because it's like a computer. She did only what you asked of her. She gave you what you wanted.” She looked at him. “I've been keeping her away from Xanxus, if that makes you feel any better.”
“Xanxus can handle himself.”
She looked at him. Her eyes were very green, but they were also brown. “And in this sort of situation isn't that the problem? She's not an assassin any more than Yamamoto is a baseball player. Can you honestly tell yourself that when presented with the tools to achieve everything he's ever wanted, he'll step aside and not take them?” Squalo swore with great feeling. The Princess smiled like an old, old woman. “That's the trick, you see... she doesn't lure you in and not deliver. You get what you want. You hold it in your hands and taste it, but somehow, some way, it's also your undoing. The biggest will will cause the biggest boom, Squalo, and with his kind of drive when Xanxus self-destructs he'll take out all of Vongola and most of Italy with him in just the first wave.”
“IF Xanxus self-destructs.” Squalo glared. “And he won't.”
“He'll never meet her, if I can help it... and why would he want to? She's just some shitty assassin, some woman who plays with poisons and knives, and he's already got the best of that, hasn't he? Why would he need some woman he can't even fuck, because damn if he's going to take Lussuria's leavings.” Her voice was light, teasing. Tempting him to agree. Squalo scowled. The Princess smiled. “I won't let her play for real with Belphegor, either. But that's just because Bel can't kill her no matter how many pieces he cuts her into, and she won't drop it because he won't drop it-because he won't want her to. I'd hate to see your Prince dead over what's just a game of assassin's-tag. He's pretty cute.”
“Like a puppy,” the Serpent put in, and her grin was hazy and kind of sappy-looking. Fucking figured that she'd get all woobly over Bel. “All tiny sharp teeth and floppy paws... He thinks he's so fierce and he's really just adorable and fluffy while he's trying to gnaw your face off.”
“Yeah, a puppy,” Squalo said acidly. “Right. A jackal puppy.”
“Still a puppy.”
“Shut the fuck up and bask in your disgusting afterglow. I have to go punch Lussuria.”
The Tree, because if that was the damn Serpent of Eden then she was the damn Tree, looked concerned. “Why?”
“For having shit taste in women,” he snapped, and slammed the door behind him.
~*~
She left him alone for a day and a night and, on the second day, knocked on his door and held out a little glass bottle.
He took a sniff and, COMPLETELY AGAINST HIS WILL, his lips started to curve.
"You're smiling."
And he couldn't stop. "IT'S AN INVOLUNTARY REACTION. THIS SHIT SMELLS LIKE GOLD BOND AND OLD LADIES."
"I know." She giggled under her breath, grinning. "It does that to everyone. We don't know why."
~*~
The Serpent sat at the table, smirking at people over a teacup she probably only had so she could smirk over it. It was unusual for her to join them at breakfast and it set Squalo's teeth on edge.
Of course, the nervous way Levi kept fussing with the damn flatware could have had something to do with that instead. It was like a fucking Pavlovian response; she'd glance at him, and he'd straighten his damn fork. She'd smirk a bit harder, and he'd adjust Bel's. (Bel would make a good-faith attempt now and then to stab Levi's hand with one of the knives he was eating with, but as a deterrent it was fucking ineffective.)
“VOOOOOI! USE THE DAMN FORK AND FORGET IT ALREADY, DUMBASS!”
“Look, you piece of shit-!”
The Serpent smirked at Levi. Levi bit off mid-curse and adjusted his damn fork. Squalo sat down, the better to beat his head against the tabletop. “Fucking. Stop. With the flatware. Just eat your damn food. BOTH OF YOU.” He glared at the Serpent (she laughed, and Squalo pretended he didn't see Levi straightening the fucking teaspoon). “What the fuck are you doing down here?”
“Good morning~!” Lussuria trilled, limping into the kitchen for the first time in days. Aside from walking like a man who'd pulled his groin he looked remarkably healthy. The Serpent smiled at him, smiled, not smirked, and kicked out a chair next to her. He beamed and sank into it. What. The fuck. “Ah, thank you, love.” Squalo stared. Levi stared. Bel snickered. Lussuria ruffled Bel's hair, avoided the affectionate attempt to take his hand off at the wrist, and smiled at Squalo. “Pass me some of that tea? Thanks, love. Levi, love, is there something wrong with your fork?”
The Serpent snickered. Surveyors could have used the position of Levi's knife relative to his coffee as a reference. Lussuria pouted at her. “Mou, why are you laughing? I've missed your company at night, love. So cruel of you to stay away. You've quite ruined me for other men, you know.”
Levi left so quickly Squalo didn't actually see him leave. Squalo... blinked. And wondered, with detachment, if his jaw was slack. He stared at Lussuria. Lussuria blinked innocently over his sunglasses.
“What?”
Squalo, with great care, set his plate to one side and proceeded to bang his forehead against the table.
Bel giggled.
~*~
“I don't know, love” Lussuria said quietly at sunset, when they had sought each other out to talk. “What do you do after you've gotten what you want?”
Squalo manfully resisted the urge to smack him in the head. “Moron.”
An eyebrow rose over the sunglass horizon. “Do tell.”
“You find something else to fucking want, that's what you do.” He glared. Briefly, because too much ire wasn't worth the effort. “I wanted to be the Sword Emperor. I got it. I found something else to want.”
Lussuria nodded.
Squalo scoffed. “I can't believe-no, scratch that, I don't want to believe your fucking life's ambition revolved around sex, you fruity pervert.”
“And that would be your answer there,” Lussuria retorted, dry. “Though to be fair, love, I never expected to get it, and when I did, I certainly didn't expect to survive it.”
A soft snort from right behind them. They turned. Turned, because highly skilled assassins do not jump at the eleventh fucking time something like this happens. “That would be her price, then,” said the Tree. The Princess, who was the Tree, because of the Serpent, who he really did now believe was that Serpent, because if Lussuria would fuck a damn woman then it would have to be that woman.
“VOOOOOOOOI!” The Princess, though, did jump. “Stop fucking doing that!”
She glared. It was a very wussy glare. “I don't do it on purpose, you know.”
“Come here, love,” cooed Lussuria. Squalo knew from long experience that he was rolling his eyes behind those sunglasses. “Come sit by me.”
She gave him a considering look so long as to be insulting, then sat down next to the pervert anyway.
“What price, now?”
She sighed through her nose, smiling. “You pay a price for everything. When the Serpent clears the way, to get you what you want, you pay a price for that, and you pay the price for what you wanted.” She tipped her head, studying him. “I had wondered why you lived, and in such intact condition. Not having expected to explains it.”
Lussuria put his hand on her knee and leered almost politely. “I wouldn't call it 'intact,' love.”
“You're baiting me, aren't you?”
“Give the woman a prize,” Squalo snorted. “Took you long enough. And YOU. You can still fucking pee standing up, that's 'intact,' I don't care if you only have one fucking testicle.”