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Gunn Killingworth's apartment had not seen music in its entire service as his living quarters.

In fact, in the entire time that it had served as the place where he mainly slept, smoked cigarettes out of the kitchen window and occasionally ate, sitting down only if he had to and then only with the knowledge that doing so was needless self-indulgence.

He always opened the door in complete silence, closing it behind him with the same oil-slick whisperless quiet. It was for this reason that, staring, he became aware of several things.

1. There was music. It was a song wherein the singer had difficulty articulating the word 'poker' without stuttering the p around four to five times, and then bragged to the listener about not showing any physical affection due to the fact that they were 'bluffing with their muffin'. This did not make a hell of a lot of sense. It had the kind of beat you broke somebody's head to.

2. Ursula Johnson was present, -- dancing? -- dancing? -- to the song, her hips on a different physical plane from her shoulders. This would have been more of a distraction had she not been dressed in his clothes, his white singlet knotted up around her ribs and the pants rolled up with cuffs to the calf, which suddenly became the 'main distraction'.

3. His apartment had been invaded, defenseless against the ensuing ambush, and swiftly conquered. There were pieces of cloth on the sofa, serving no practical purpose, also cushions in a variety of colours that a fashion magazine would have described in terms of fruit. You know, like 'blueberry' and 'cranberry'. Maybe even a 'banana', it depended on the magazine.

There was even a plant? In Charonite's usual estimation, plants were something that belonged and were kept outside, whose interest consisted of whether you could eat it or hide behind it. This plant was in a pot. It just sat there, offensively green and leafy, breaking all the barriers of plant social movement.

It was also clean. The apartment smelled less like cigarettes and more like what three other General-Kings might have once gleefully referred to as 'woman smell', though this would have been unwarranted info. Thankfully they were now just ******** rocks.

His Queen -- Captain Nealite -- Ursula -- was eyes-closed, looking as though she were a little bit in the throes of an epileptic fit. A part of his mind noted the possessiveness associated with a woman wearing a man's clothes, and then beat that thought to death in what could only be called 'panic.'

-- was that a television? Television was a country he had, thank God, rarely ******** been to.

The stereo was sitting by itself on the side table, which had previously been empty of everything except bits of paper and now contained, ... stuff. Lady Gaga and her assertions about playing the cards with spades to start ended abruptly.

Leaving him with one finger on the stop button, eyebrows raised, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, which possibly counted for one of the more embarrassing moments Ursula had ever experienced in her life.

Charonite took another long look around, apparently taking everything in -- the extra furniture. The fact that there were now colours other than his previous scheme, which had been 'rhapsody in beige'. His ashtrays had been -- emptied, and were now not in the convenient cluster on the windowsill but sat on a coffee table. There was a coffee table? And then he turned his looks back on the main invader, which was Ursula.

He didn't even appear irritated. He had a p-p-p-poker face on, that was true; but he seemed just more -- bemused, with the same low-level annoyance he apparently saw all of life through with, but nothing out of the ordinary. He took off his sunglasses and looked around.

Then his sights trained straight back on her.

Then, he finally said:

"Cushions?"

He was still looking at the cushions, as though suspicious about their entire existence. They were stuffed with cushion stuffing; they did not present a clear and present danger to the General-King, hopefully. He didn't seem the type to... decorate. He also looked at the magazines as though saying, I'm on to you, duly suspicious of Ursula's reading material. It was Cosmo, an unfortunate choice since the headings were all things like FIVE NEW WAYS TO KNIT YOUR OWN ORGASM!. His eyes trailed over them, but thank God, he said nothing.

"There are four rooms in this apartment," he said. "Bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, ... living area."

Okay?

"I'll be sleeping on the couch."

He was agreeing to this?

Well, he was also agreeing to this with a loud and clear I will not be sleeping in the same bed as you, and his tone brooked no disagreement. In fact, he was already walking to the bedroom, opening the door and looking in with more befuddlement than before -- "Cushions?" he said again, more rhetorically than anything else. Apparently he had no idea why you put decorative pillows on a bed either.

"For ******** sake," he said, but still seemed... baffled by the entire experience. Then he went into the kitchen and washed his hands, and suddenly, just like that, they were roommates. They were living in the same space. They were occupying the same rooms. They were doing domestic.

"I said you didn't have to god damned call me sir," he called out over the running water.

Beat.

"My pants aren't exactly the Gucci s**t you like."

'Boyfriend' was a ball rolled around in a funnel that surfed the edges before slowly... agonizingly... painstakingly dropping through the end of the funnel into somewhere in the General-King's subconscious. He could only take in grocery shopping, which meant she intended to feed him as though he were an invalid, and then somehow took in comfy, and then, finally -- boyfriend.

He turned off the tap and wiped his hands, looking at her as though she had suggested he go and stick his head in a bucket. "Ursula," he said, "I am not a ******** boyfriend. A -- boyfriend." He looked as though 'boyfriend' was a concept he couldn't quite grasp. "Teenagers playing grab-a** have boyfriends. I am -- thirty-five. I am not about to be a god damned 'boyfriend'."

But it seemed that his main beef was with the label. He was already going back to his fridge, maybe looking for the cigarettes he'd kept there (what) and not even finding his expired milk -- this prompted a search of the pantry. "I will be a ******** husband before I am ever somebody's ******** boyfriend."

Well, sure, you could go there too, Charonite --

"I'm a General-King. Kunzite -- all of us -- made a vow that we're married to our goddamned duty, nothing else."

Aw.

"And the Queen does not have a boyfriend. Considering you're, you know, the god damned queen? Start to act like one. Do you know what I am to you? I'm your lead Shitennou at the moment. That is what I am. Your bodyguard. I sleep outside your ******** door, Ursula, for Nemesis' sake." (Well, on the couch, but the sentiment remained.)

Charonite stared at her as though she had suddenly grown another pair of legs and arms and was about to go and dance around to Lady Gaga again around his kitchen. He looked at her with the deep, inbred panic of a man who had never expected to be asked the question that she had suddenly asked him. It was amusingly true that Ursula had seen more panic with the leader of the Negaverse -- well, the old leader of the Negaverse, the leader of her knights -- had ever shown before, ever.

"You," he said, and then words failed him. He said, "********," because words had failed him. He looked down at the slim white hand stroking up his chest, and stepped away from it: the very picture of startled matrimony.

"Ursula," he said, and his voice was very very even as he backed himself (s**t!) into a corner, "I'm base-born. You're a queen." (She didn't have to know that Beryl herself had been born in the arms of a peasant herself.) "I am. Not. ********. Royalty. Neither I or -- I'm not. ********. Nobility. Also, you're not -- this is goddamn Ursula talking, not Beryl."

Except that, as she'd said: she was the Negaverse now. Ursula was Beryl. Beryl was Ursula. He knew it. She knew it. She had him by the balls.

She really was ******** Beryl. Beryl never let an idea go without getting all of her claws into it, worrying it to death in her mouth like a dog with a bird. No wonder she'd chosen Ursula Johnson to inhabit. It was almost nostalgic horror -- the do-or-die orders; the silky, reasonable tone of voice that with Queen Beryl had often hidden terrible cruelty behind it (and Ursula had filled his ******** apartment with cushions); the -- and he was forced to admit -- unrelenting yanking of the hole in his argument. Of taking power, and turning the ******** a moment he wondered if this was what Endymion had faced.

His hands were up in front of him -- god, his hands were ******** thrown up as though he were moving into the defensive? Who had he goddamn become? Nobody had ever gotten this reaction out of him before. Nobody. Not even the Queen back in the days when Queen Beryl had, in fact, been Queen Beryl. He'd never been attracted to anything but his duty -- what the ******** did he look like, Nephrite?

And now he was staring, shoved into the border of yes or disloyalty.

All right, that was disconnecting it too much from the ******** issue: he was staring over onto the border of Ursula Johnson has you over a ******** barrel!

"As my queen commands," he said.

Stab --

"Which means I'm definitely not goddamn dishonouring my maiden fiancée."

Time: bought.

... was he just engaged to be married?

He was looking at his fiancée.

He was looking at his fiancée. His fiancée, who was asking him if he wanted to go and get groceries. It felt a little as though he were walking around in a waking dream, and the kiss she'd laid on his cheek burnt -- for that day, General-King Charonite had been Completely Undone, and somebody else had finally won a battle he'd been pitted against -- and he generally gave grudging or open respect to anyone who bested him at any form of anything, but for now he was still left within two degrees of "gawping."

He was looking at his fiancée. Who had a memo pad. And a sparkly purple ink pen. And who was looking at him expectantly.

There was only one thing to do: he slid his sunglasses back on, and was armoured thusly.

"I'll stay here," he said, a mite gruffly. "I need to get some -- ******** work finished. I'll be in my -- office. When you come -- ... home."

The sunglasses hid how, for the first time, he looked what could only be termed as 'wild around the eyes.'