1-July-2002
Pet Shop of Horrors: Earthsong
by bonnejeanne and cassiopeia
Title: Earthsong
Author: bonnejeanne (bonnejeanne@yahoo.com) and Cassiopeia (cassiopeia@gundamwing.net)
Archive: http://www.no-assumptions.com/gundamwing/
Category: yaoi, AU
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Series
WARNINGS: Lemon/Limey stuff, AU
Disclaimer: Pet Shop of Horrors characters and universe are the property of the copyright owners. Our stuff is ours. No money being made here. As with all our fics, while our goal is to stay as in character as possible, any discrepancies are our mistakes.
Feedback: Any and all comments welcome, be they short or long.
NOTES: This is a sequel to our first fic, "Blood". See Part One for full Notes.
Earthsong: Part Three
The blow knocked Chang off his feet and a bit of distance into the air, sending him to collide with the front of the car. Instead of sprawling there in shock, he was back on his feet in a crouch, hands up and leveled at odd angles in a martial arts fighting stance before Leon could blink, his face transforming into a mask, a set 'warrior's face'. To Leon it looked to be a killer's face.
Then, with a visible effort, the youth stood up slowly. He bowed, a very slight, not quite insulting inclination. "I'll fight with you when I have assurance that it will not harm my mission if I damage the Great One's consort."
Leon's eyes narrowed into bare slits, and then opened fully again. Chang seemed to him now like a carbon copy of his uncle, and his brain began to shortwire in a series of events that Leon recognized but did not resist. He had not been this angry, and with a perfect target in front of him, in a long time.
"The only thing you should be worried about," Leon said, in a loud, unrestrained voice, "is keeping that pretty white coat of yours from getting dirty." Then he took up a stance of his own, nothing too fancy, and waited to see if the boy was going to fight him, or if he was going to have to go over there and drag him.
Chang's dark eyes flashed. "Fine," he said, his voice leaching of all emotion and losing the correct/polite formal tone. He resumed his stance with the quickness of a cat. "Show me how the big American police kicks the ass of the yellow skinned lowlife hoodlum scum."
Leon began to move closer to the boy, not slowly, but not quickly, either. He did not like the way Chang had chosen his words, but the ass kicking part was right. It was true, he viewed all the Chinese with suspicion. Really too bad that his suspicions were seldom proved wrong. "I can show you lots of things," he barked, and slid forward into striking distance, watching the boy with quick, well-accustomed eyes. The punch he threw this time was aimed lower, towards Chang's midsection.
Instead of dodging the blow, it was met with a forearm, parried, and followed with a circular kick coming almost too fast to see.
The kick connected, knocking Leon to the hard sidewalk, though he didn't feel any of it, his sense of pain the only one of his senses dulled at the moment. He stayed there for a moment, on the ground, and looked up at the boy, smiling. Now he was really pissed.
Standing, Leon immediately hurled himself towards Chang, aiming low, hoping to knock the boy off balance.
He managed to get a hand on Chang, though not quite as square as he'd been trying for. There ensued a rapid-fire series of blows, parries, kicks, connects and misses. At some point a crowd started to gather.
Pulling himself up from the pavement, the side of his face starting to discolor and swell slightly, Chang focused on one of the watching faces and quipped, "It's ok, don't worry - he's a police."
By now, Leon was actually starting to notice a few things around him. For one, the crowd gathering seemed to be developing a little too rapidly. For another, they seemed to be developing specific leanings in their loyalties, and none of them were for 'the police'. And lastly, his sense of pain was starting to come back. With a swipe at the blood now traveling down his face from his mouth, Leon regarded Chang.
He was surprised - no, shocked was the better word - to find that his anger had abated. His desire to smash various parts of the boy's body was still very much present, but their fighting had turned into something Leon could almost admit was... fun. He did not like Chang at all. But for some reason, he *liked* disliking the boy.
Coming to stand near where Chang was getting up, Leon looked down at his watch, noting that it was getting well into the afternoon. He met the boy's eyes, something passing between them, and said, "I need to get back to the station."
Dusting himself off and straightening his tunic, Chang allowed the visible hint of a smile to pull at his mouth. "Another time then," he said politely. Then louder, "Thank you Mister Detective for demonstrating to me, a visiting foreign national, the correct method for subduing a wrong doer on American soil."
Leon didn't smile at the comments so much as he moved his mouth into two or three different looks, all of them amused. The boy was cocky, something he'd been called himself, and he couldn't help feeling that maybe, if he just learned to respect his elders (Leon), then they might get along. Maybe.
With a brief glance around the now stirring crowd, Leon checked to see if D had come out of the shop with the commotion, but didn't see the man anywhere. Sighing a little, he made his way to the waiting car and winced at the pain in his shoulder that popped up when he tried to open the car door.
Chang slid into the car easily, as if he hung out there a lot. He fished the bills out of the seat crack and stuck them in his pocket. "Well you aren't *bad* in a fight," stressing the word as if slightly surprised, "And you have to be smarter than you look. You brought an offering to the Great One. You know what you are doing. I wouldn't have believed it." He sighed, mock-grudgingly.
Leon pulled the car into traffic, focusing on the unmoving vehicles in front of him. He wasn't about to comment on the boy's fairly impressive fighting style, the several bruises and abrasions on his body making it unnecessary anyway. "Why," he asked, unable to keep the sincere curiosity out of his voice, "do you call him, 'the Great One'?"
Chang flickered a look to the side, evidently still trying to figure Leon out. "You don't... know..." He shook his head. Then he gazed out the window, a slight smile tugging at his mouth. "You know, but you don't know. I never expected to meet one of Them," he said obscurely. "I didn't think there were any left."
Just as he was about ready to abandon the car and try walking back to the station, the line of cars in front of them moved, and Leon inched the vehicle forward slowly. Leon replied, even as he was still contemplating Chang's words, "I know he has a lot of crazy ideas. I know a lot of weird things seem to happen around him." In his mind, he kept the train of thought going. He knew there were hundreds of unexplainable things surrounding the Count, kind of like a mysterious cloak the man kept wrapped around himself, but with every explanation that Leon had ever been offered, the price had been too high to fully accept. He'd have to have let go of everything. And Leon did not like to let go of things. "So he's one of 'Them'," Leon added, shaking his head a little. "You make him sound like a Martian or something."
Chang turned in the seat for the first time to face Leon a little more directly. He watched the man for a moment or two before speaking. "I can understand your attitude, actually," he said after a few minutes. "I was educated in American schools. There's no place in your world view for something like... him. Not much in mine either, if you want to know the truth. But it doesn't matter if you believe in mountains, when you run up on one."
Leon did not appreciate the suggestion that there was no place for D in his life. There was a place, a very big place. A spot made empty a long time ago that the man seemed to fill perfectly. But the way in which the boy spoke about the Count was what disturbed him most. It was almost as if he thought D were a god. "Now he's a mountain. I think that's more believable than the stuff you're getting at." Leon decided to change the subject a little. "What is your business here? Really? You came all this way just to get some lizard? What, is he your pet?"
Chang let a smile tug at his mouth. He considered brushing it off, reaching one hand up absently to finger his jaw where Leon had given him the first good hit. Then he shrugged slightly.
"I told you I was educated here... partway. The rest of the time back home. Studying to be a scholar, an educator or historian. Specialized in folklore, ancestral myths and legends, stuff like that. Fascinating. I was even gonna have a sideline writing movie scripts," he said with a slight twinkle of self-amusement. "Shit happened. I had to take over the... family business instead. Very different," he said, letting his gaze wander from Leon back out the car window. "But when push came to shove, I was the only one they could fall back on. One day I got a summons. Ended up in a council of the eldest of elders..." He grinned slightly. "You don't have anything like that here - you put your old people in cheap hospitals. Back there, they run a lot of shit. Much power. So I went."
Easing himself back to a front sitting posture, he continued the story, his tone casual. "I was told some stuff, shown some stuff. I don't think I would have believed any of it if I hadn't already known a lot of the legends to begin with. Turns out they don't all have to be lies... You heard what I told the Great One. I know you don't believe in that shit, Mister Detective, but that lizard ain't just a lizard. It's a powerful creature, one that normally lives for... probably centuries. The Earth Dragons stay in the areas where they are born. They seem to be connected to the prosperity and wealth of the region. Something happens to them, the region suffers. Like I say, I know you don't believe, but you asked me. I'm here to take it home. If I can't..." he shrugged. "Well, watch CNN in the next few years. When you see Hong Kong circling the economic and political drain, remember my words, oh Skeptic Police."
Lowering his head a little, Leon checked the car's odometer. They had moved approximately one quarter of a mile away from the pet shop, the heavy afternoon traffic still refusing to move any faster. He listened to Chang's words with a frown on his face. "People like to make up stories. I hear a few really good ones once in a while. They always swear up and down that every word they've said is true, but really, they'd tell you their own Mother was a drug lord, if they thought you'd believe it, and it would get them out of trouble." Turning his head towards the boy to meet the other's eyes, he went on. "People lie. For a bunch of different reasons." Leon turned his head back to the slow-moving vehicles on the road through the front windshield. "Maybe sometimes they don't even know they're doing it. They think that what they're saying is the truth. I don't know. But if I believed everything anyone had ever said to me... If I believed every sob story I'd ever heard, always said with tears in their eyes..." Leon snorted before finishing the thought. "Then I'd never get anything done. All right, let's play it your way. You're here to get your... Earth Dragon... back. And if you don't, Hong Kong's going to go down the tubes. Does everyone back in your... what, I guess you live in a village or something. Does everyone back home believe this? And," He paused for a minute, recalling the way in which D always held the little lizard, how the Count seemed genuinely concerned for all of the animals he cared for. "Does the 'dragon' get any say in all of this?"
A sardonic smile curved Chang's mouth at the 'village' remark. It was wiped away by Leon's last sentence. With a look of sudden, intense surprise, he turned again in his seat.
"You've seen it," he stated. His eyebrows pulled together in an expression that was not quite a scowl or a frown. Nostrils flaring slightly, he examined the question carefully, looking for hidden traps. After a moment, Leon could almost hear high-tech turbines, as opposed to rusty gears, whirring behind the kid's eyes. Turning away from Leon to look back out the front windshield, he said slowly, "I guess I assumed it would... want to come home." He took a deep breath. "My uncle, like you, did not believe the legend, of course. To him it was just a rare, poisonous animal he could use as a weapon. You could even call it a... a 'lizard-napping'," he said, with deadpan humor. "I couldn't imagine it would want to stay here... this country has its own guardian spirits..." But his tone contained some newly emerging doubts.
An expression not unlike his fighting face slipped across his features almost unconsciously. "If the Great One... wishes to keep it..." He didn't finish the thought out loud but admitted to a feeling of sinking apprehension. Would the dragon want to leave the pet shop keeper? More of the story he'd been told ran through his mind. "You said... he was bitten...?" Chang ransacked his orderly and well-stocked memory for an elusive hint of something he couldn't quite recall.
Though he knew the whole thing was insane, Leon tried to adopt a practical approach to the conversation. He could almost sympathize with the boy, if he let himself. Leon knew what it was like trying to deal with difficult relatives. "Bitten... yeah, D was bitten on the wrist," Leon said, remembering how delicious that skin had tasted before the bitter venom had entered his mouth. "If your dragon doesn't want to come home with you," Leon began, sighting the police station through the next intersection, "then what do you do? Find another one? Or try to take it by force?" On the word 'try', the detective made it clear that, as far as he was concerned, any attempt would fail. That he might even make sure of the fact.
Chang glanced at Leon and then turned again to face him more squarely. "What do I do?" he repeated the question he'd been asking himself. "To my knowledge, there isn't another one to find. It must be the dragon born on that soil. Take it by force?" A hint of a smile pulled at Chang's lips. "Whatever you think, Mister Detective, I am not my uncle. Such an act would only bring even more misfortune to my family and the region." Which, he admitted silently, was not something everyone 'back home' would have necessarily agreed with him about. "I guess it's a good thing they drafted me after all." The sentiment wasn't entirely genuine. Good for who? Since this whole thing had started, Chang realized he had only the slimmest of chances of finishing the game in the black, so to speak. "Ain't Ancestors great?" he muttered, staring out the side window.
At the boy's last comment, Leon laughed, then shook his head. "Yeah, they're a real peach. This is what happens when people don't die like they're supposed to." He glanced over at Chang with his eyes, and it occurred to him, not that his opinion about the boy kept changing, but that he had almost gotten used to that fact. "Your uncle was a piece of garbage. I don't think you two are very much alike." As he spoke, Leon pulled the car in front of the police station and shut off the engine.
A slow smile pulled across Chang's face for a moment. Without looking over, he said, "Well, I still think you are a mighty big asshole, but I'm starting to have some respect for certain assholes for some weird reason." He opened the door and got out, closing it behind him. Waiting for Leon to emerge he said, "I'm gonna split, I know that breaks you up. I understand better what the Great One meant. I'm to come back and make my pitch." Straightening, he returned to the more formal demeanor of earlier in the day. "I'm asking if you will honor me by coming along when I visit tomorrow."
After exiting the car as well, Leon put his hands in his pockets along with his keys, and looked back toward the precinct building. "Why?" he asked, even though he had no intention of letting the boy near the Count alone.
"To avoid any misunderstandings," Chang answered blandly, his dark clever eyes seeming to twinkle. "And because you have a good head on that thick neck, Mister Detective." He shrugged.
With the barest hint of a 'humph', Leon headed inside the station. "We'll go around 'tea time'. That usually works out pretty good. And," he added, a look that was half discontent, half fond, on his face, "you'd better bring something with you. He's very fond of sweets."
Chang smiled. "As you say." He hadn't followed Leon toward the door of the precinct. "Tomorrow, Mister Detective." With that and a slight bow, he turned and disappeared into the street's busy foot traffic.
Leon spent the rest of the day in distraction. He never did get to ask if he could bump his vacation up a few weeks. Every time he tried to ask, it seemed, some little bit of something would come up and pull his attention elsewhere. Of all the different thoughts that kept marching through his head, steadily pulled along like film through a camera, one kept getting stuck. But it wasn't even really a single idea or desire. It was just the group of things he had associated with seeing the Count that night.
So it was with great relief and enthusiasm, things he seldom felt on leaving the station for the day, that Leon sat in his car, making the trip to the pet shop in less than five minutes. He was not very particular about where he parked, and as he left the street, coming inside, he sighed quietly to himself, the relative soothing atmosphere of the familiar shop quite welcome.
In the late afternoon, the animals in the outer shop were fairly active. Without the distraction of Chang's presence this time, he began to realize he was hearing little teasing bits of communications, not directed at him, just almost idle chatter, semi-private musings and the like, each with a very distinct voice. The 'volume' was very low and he had to focus to hear any single comment. A couple he *did* distinguish mentioned something about the return of the master's mate.
Though the volume of noise was not so loud as to prevent it from being relocated to the background, Leon found his own curiosity too great to do so. He could not help wanting to hear what they were saying, even though he knew he could not really be hearing what he thought he was hearing. Leon had never passed up the opportunity to eavesdrop in his life, and he well knew the practice could often yield unpleasant results. Like when he was a child, and would listen to his parents argue... he never liked what he heard, but something inside him always made him listen.
So now he was the master's mate. He thought that sounded like an upgrade from what they'd been calling him before. Leon did not comment on the statement, though he had the urge to ask one of the animals where D was. At the moment, finding the shopkeeper was at the top of his list of priorities.
"D?" he called, his voice no louder than he would have made it had the man been standing right in front of him, and he headed further into the shop, taking off his jacket as he went.
When he opened the door to the inner room, he was greeted with a collection of wonderfully appetizing smells. The long low table was entirely covered with beautiful porcelain dishes filled with food. Stemmed glassware with sparkling wine, aromatic tea in a gilded pot shaped like a bird of paradise, gold trimmed silverware and beautiful enameled chop sticks... And behind the table stood D, as if waiting upon his entry. He'd changed to yet another beautiful cheongsam, its surface covered with a flight of exotic butterflies of many colors.
"Are you hungry?" he said, his voice rich with welcome. "Everything is ready for you."
"Yes," Leon replied to the question, staring at D rather than the food. He felt a need rise up within himself. Not to hold the other man, but to be held. Leon had no way of voicing this, no way really to act on it, so he moved his regard to the feast laid out on the table. It was flawless, as always, and as he sat down at the table, he realized how good it felt to have someone cook for him. No one except his mother had ever done that, and he was surprised to find it important at all.
D smiled when Leon sat down, moving around the table to sit on the couch beside him, instead of in his usual chair. There were two plates, two place settings side by side. He waited until Leon filled his plate from the array of dishes and then took small portions of each thing from Leon's plate instead of the serving dishes. There were things that looked and smelled as savory as meat, but Leon did not realize it was a vegetarian cuisine, cleverly prepared to stint nothing in taste or aroma.
Leon made a show of slight disapproval at the Count's actions, though truthfully, he was glad to have the other man closer than the chair would have afforded. With a movement that brought his body a little closer to D's - incidentally, of course - he leaned forward to replace the food the Count had taken from his plate, spooning from several different dishes, unconscious that the annoyed frown he wore on his face was slipping.
"You must have cooked all afternoon. There's a lot of stuff here." It was the closest Leon was going to get to 'how was your day'.
"I wanted to make sure you were satisfied," D said smoothly, his tone affectionate. He hadn't cooked all the food himself but there was no reason to tell Leon that. It wasn't "take out" either. He just had some helpful souls ready to fill his requests at the slightest hint.
Using his chopsticks, he began eating delicately, surreptitiously watching Leon and eating a dish only after the blond had tried it.
The food was good, filling, and Leon even slowed down a bit every now and then to savor a bite or two. He couldn't quite place what most of it was, but he figured he'd notice if D tried to sneak anything weird in on him. His concentration wandered off and on, from the meal and then back to it, and finally, Leon gave up the pretense that he was at all interested in eating right then. He laid his mostly empty plate down on the table and took a large gulp out of one of the wine glasses. "I'm bringing him back tomorrow," Leon began, letting the alcohol warm him as he leaned back into the sofa a bit, "Are you going to let him have his lizard back?"
D picked up a linen napkin and dabbed delicately at his mouth, which didn't have a spec of food on it. Dropping it over the abandoned plate, he lifted his own wine glass to his lips, taking a tiny sip.
"The simplest answer to that question is that the 'lizard' is not mine to give or withhold," D said. "He is not truly a pet." His expression remained placid but Leon could almost sense that the Count was.... well troubled might be taking it too far. Weighing the situation.
Leon didn't reply to D's answer for a while, thinking. Then, in what he hoped sounded like a neutral tone, he said, "He's an arrogant jackass. But maybe not so bad as his uncle. He thinks he needs that thing." Finishing off his wine, Leon replaced the glass to the table and stood. "If it's not a pet, then why is it here?" The statement sounded as if it could have been applied not just to the lizard/dragon, but also to Leon himself.
D sighed. "It is here because it is here," D answered calmly. "Because someone removed it from its rightful place. However now that it *is* here, I've chosen to give it protection."
Though he did not think that was all there was to the situation, Leon chose to drop the subject. He really did want to help the boy, Chang, but there was little anyone could do when up against the Count. He silently reconciled himself to the fact that Chang would probably have to return to Hong Kong empty handed, then pushed the thought out of his head in favor of another.
All day long... he'd been wanting to get D alone all day long, and now that he was here, he could only make idle chit chat. Things had been so easy this morning, but he did not know how to recreate that same atmosphere now. That atmosphere that he had been craving, of something warm that seemed almost to hold him from all sides. Leon looked down at the still seated Count, letting their eyes meet, and then did something unexpected, surprising himself. He held out a hand to D, a voiceless invitation.
The Count's eye crinkled at the corners, becoming for a moment happy crescents. He placed his hand in Leon's and leaned close. Lifting his face, he simply closed his eyes and waited to be kissed.
Leon did not make him wait long, the desire to be close to the other, enveloped in unique scents and touches, overriding everything else that his active mind was able to present. He brought their lips together and stayed that way for a moment, without moving further, then began to devour the other man hungrily. He held D tightly against his chest, unwilling to loosen his grip by even a single notch, and he felt their hearts beating against each other. With a bit of a jolt, which only caused him to increase the depth of his kiss, Leon held up a thought in his mind. A thought that was traitorous against all he had seen, against all of the things that Chang had said today in the car. 'He's a man, just like me. He has a heart beat, he bleeds red, he eats real food. There is nothing to keep us apart.' All things he believed, had to believe, would argue for if the need arose.
D's arms moved around his neck, his body molding pliantly against Leon as he accepted the heated kiss. From accepting to mingling to returning, he danced around Leon's senses with skillful abandon. When the blond finally lifted his mouth, D leaned against the sofa back as if overwhelmed, his eyelids fluttering and a slightly swollen smile curving his lips. "I'm glad you are... home," he murmured softly.
There seemed something strange about the word, as if it could be used to refer to not just a place, but a person. Leon moved down to the floor, to one knee before the Count, putting his head about level with the other man's. "Am I?" he asked, then immediately felt stupid for saying it aloud. To cover his embarrassment, he leaned forward, pressing D further into the sofa back. Covering the Count's mouth with his own, Leon's kiss was one not just of want, but of need.
The Count snuggled against him, feeding that need with his lips, tongue, fingers raking along Leon's neck and shoulders, body gently undulating against Leon's solid form. When Leon finally released his mouth and began nuzzling his neck, he whispered soothingly, "Yes, you are, my Leon."
The words made his heart jump, though he tried not to show it, and his kisses at D's neck became a little more gentle, for a moment or two. Then he could hold back no longer, and pulled away from the Count to stand, bringing the other man with him. "I seem to remember you saying this sofa was too narrow," he said, already starting to take a few steps in a direction that lead away from this room and towards D's bedroom.
A slender hand clasped around his as D managed to appear as if he were simply strolling at Leon's side. "I believe I pointed out that it *was* narrow," he said thoughtfully. "I don't remember saying anything about *too* narrow...." There was a little drop in his voice that was a clear tease, although his steps kept pace with Leon's, apparently without effort.
Leon filed the information about the couch away, thinking it was a theory that needed testing. But right now he wanted room to stretch out and, he admitted in the back of his mind, the bedroom was further away from the front of the shop, where D's pets were apparently paying awful close attention to what Leon and D did. The detective almost felt like he had to go through quite a bit of effort to ever get D truly alone.
TBC