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 Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 3:40 am
Gunn Killingworth had been used to the word home significantly less than he was to the concept of coming home. Life before Ursula had previously been a blank of Women Do Something -- or, more specifically Women Are Queens Or Mothers. Or more deeply, women are the matriarchal Lunar force -- that had been a good one, that had been as good as a battle cry, a rallying flag -- but not this.
It was sordidly embarrassing that women with Ursula had become soldiers, as he had always told himself he saw no difference between the sexes. He'd never prided himself on goddamned ignorance. Or complacency. And then Ursula had somehow bridged the gap as Queen and from there just about your ******** wife, which involved cushions. Or maybe it was just Ursula for whom it involved cushions. He couldn't imagine it involving cushions with Lieutenant Tanzanite.
(He also couldn't imagine protomarriage to Lieutenant Tanzanite either, as she was a Negaverse soldier in the classic old model: 'psychotic'. Actually, it was irritating that he could only imagine one person who was going to be his wife, and that was Ursula Johnson.)
Which was why it was god damned baffling coming into his house and finding it back to normal.
Stark. Couch. No cushions. No TV. No magazines with contortionists on the cover. Nothing. Only an idiot would let his anger get the better of him and shou... "Ursula." No response. "URSULA."
There was some noise emanating from the bedroom. He made his way there in caution, opened the closed door and --
-- blinked.
Ursula was there, on the bed, watching the TV she'd moved to a corner of the room. Every single cushion previously in other parts of the house had been moved to the bedroom, where they now lay on top of each other as though they'd reproduced there and were napping. Most of the furniture was crammed in there as well. There was also a chair shaped as a shoe which he swore to Nemesis hadn't ******** been anywhere in the house yesterday.
Charonite was completely taken aback.
"What?"
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Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 4:20 am
Swallowed up by what could possibly be the least flattering oversized green flannel shirt on earth, Ursula sat at the head of the bed, eyes glued to the tv as she continued to watch yet another noisy rerun of Daisy of Love. She'd heard him come in. She'd heard him call her name. She'd even heard the door opening to the bedroom, the entry now filled with what appeared to be the large presence of a confused, slightly irritated General-King. Did she jump to attention? Did she offer him dinner, ask him how his day was, rush over to force a hug, perhaps even a kiss on him?
Hell no.
She'd been sitting atop the covers of the bed, her back resting against the headboard as her knees pressed against her chest. Her small body was completely surrounded by numerous cushions that once littered the apartment, an array of rainbow on top of beige. Her hair was pulled back in a careless ponytail, her makeup nowhere in sight. This was a first for the General-King to see; Ursula had always worn some form of makeup in his presence, but now only fair skin shined back at him, cheeks and eyes clean of any hint of color. She wasn't ugly by any means without it, but the lack of powder, mascara, lipstick and eyeshadow almost made her look like an entirely different person. Even her toenails, of all things, lacked their usual polish as they sat there, bare, on top of the plain comforter.
Her head turned slowly to stare over at the intruder, pulling away from the antics of Big Rig and 12 Pac. No hand moved to turn down the volume on the television. No effort was made for her to turn around to face him, save for her head. Her eyes said go on, ask me what the hell all of this is about but her voice, ever so casual, refused to give him the pleasure of an explanation.
"Oh. Hello, Gunn."
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Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 4:50 am
She wasn't disappointed.
"What the hell," he said, barely evenly, "is going on?"
The room had taken on the tired, slightly loved look of 'the room everyone shoves their s**t in when the carpets in the rest of the house are being cleaned', and Ursula herself had taken on the look of someone who really could not be damned wearing anything that was remotely tight, flattering or sexy. That shade of green turned her pale redhead's skin into something a little sickly. She had not used hairstyling treatments. It was actually slightly more embarrassingly intimate than seeing her in her underwear -- she was starkly naked.
It was unfair: she got "what the hell" for cushions and now she got "what the hell" for an apartment denuded of cushions. He could make up his ******** mind.
Even Charonite could tell when a woman was seriously pissed off. It wasn't hard. There should have been big neon signs flashing DANGER! DANGER!.
"All right, what the ******** did I do?"
Progress!
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Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2009 5:06 am
Eyebrows rose and surprisingly enough, her hand reached over and turned off the loud television. Her body shifted, her legs dropping off the side of the bed, several cushions tumbling down as they went. Charonite was briefly exposed to what were either extremely short-shorts or black panties, but her swinging legs didn't allow enough time for a closer peak (not that the prude would have looked, of course).
"Do, Gunn?"
Her eyes were staring him down, taking in the full size of her husband-to-be as he took in the new arrangement of what was formerly once his room. Bare feet touched the soft carpet and she lifted herself up off the bed, slowly making her way towards him. Her shirt, as baggy as it was, still exposed quite a bit of midriff and quite a bit of chest. It was only as she neared him that he realized it was not due to the shirt's size, but the fact all but two buttons had been left undone on her hideous excuse for a shirt.
Standing before him, she was forced to look up to keep eye contact. "Oh, you didn't do anything, darling. Not a <********> thing."
Instead of continuing to stare at him with the eyes of an angry woman, she shoved past him and made her way into the small kitchen, ignoring the fact she was leaving him behind, still awaiting answers.
"As for the apartment, I redecorated. I knew you didn't care for it, so I fixed it. Moved everything into the bedroom, since, y'know, you never go in there anyways. I hope you're happy." Curt and to the point, she shrugged her shoulders as she stood up on her toes to reach into one of the cabinets, her shirt rising just enough to further expose the lacy trim around what were obviously not shorts, but terribly girly underwear. "Because, of course, I'm only happy if you're happy, lover."
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Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 1:54 am
Charonite was a man who did not take things at face value. Nobody should have ever taken anything at face value. It was a stupid practice. But the language of Ursula Johnson was a codex he'd always thought he'd known and was now realising that he'd never even ******** breached the Rosetta Stone of what she wanted, especially now -- well, s**t, he'd never known she wanted him, being self-congratulatory about knowing Ursula was a little beside the ******** point now.
He'd wondered if it had been Beryl's influence, but he'd always understood the Queen. She never bothered to make him second-guess. He was boring to play word puzzles on, and she'd tired of him early; to her he had simply been a tool, like a sword or a spade. He was not Kunzite. He wasn't even ******** Zoisite.
In his shitty Ursula -> English dictionary, he managed to translate --
I AM REALLY ******** ANNOYED WITH YOU RIGHT NOW. SEE ME SLAP YOU IN THE FACE WITH CALLING YOU BY YOUR FIRST NAME. I AM USING SARCASM. I AM NOT ACTUALLY OKAY WITH YOU. I DON'T REMOTELY HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY. I ACTUALLY HOPE THE OPPOSITE. I HOPE VULTURES EAT YOUR LIVER.
Was that her underwear --
"I don't do sarcasm," he bellowed back at her. "You can't actually ******** do this to me." (Actually, she 1. could and 2. had.) "I'm not buying into this ******** s**t! You may be my ******** queen, but if you're going to be my goddamned wife maybe you should act less goddamned stroppy!"
God, he sounded ******** retarded, what the ******** was he even doing?
It was time for that hallowed act:
The lover's tiff.
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Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2009 2:18 am
Her fingers, which had been clutching onto the box of microwave popcorn, froze. She hesitated for a moment, as if considering his words, and then the box slid back into the cabinet, the wooden door closing soon afterwards, her hands empty.
"Stroppy?"
Her voice was icy, as cold as the December weather outside. Her head had turned and her arms slid up to cross over her chest, inadvertently pressing her breasts up, further exposing her cleavage. "Stroppy?"
Silence filled in the air, the calm before the storm. World War Three was on the horizon, and neither side appeared to be willing to back down from this particular battle.
She didn't know what was encouraging this behavior. She no longer cared to try to figure it out. Maybe it was Beryl, slowly influencing her thoughts and confidence. Maybe Ursula herself had just grown tired and fed up. Whatever it was, it had taken over, and it was ready for the fight.
Her first reaction was to scream back at him, to meet his volume with her own shrill voice in return. Amazingly enough, her tongue managed to control itself as she mentally reminded herself to be cool, be cool, just rela--"Maybe I'd be less ******** stroppy if you actually acted like a ******** husband for once!"
Well, there went that attempt at maturity.
"You can't make up your damn mind what you want, can you? Cushions or no cushions, Charonite? Wife or no wife? You sure as hell don't seem to want me for more than my Queenliness and I'm getting just a little ******** tired of all of these mixed signals. Stroppy? ******** stroppy my a**, Gunn Killingworth."
To add to the effect, she moved her hand back and gave her a** an audible slap.
"My a**, I'm stroppy about this. Try <******** pissed the hell off."
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 12:20 am
No a**-slapping or amount of cleavage could solve this problem now. This was a fight. There was a sullen tension in the room, an airing of all the pus in their wounds, their voices rising from 'reasonable' to 'notably unreasonable'. There was no calmly addressing this. It was time to get shouty instead. "I don't even know what you want and what it ******** entails," he shouted back. "Do you realise how much you don't even ******** know me? Do you even fathom or ******** know who you're even marrying? No, you ******** don't!"
He slammed the bedroom door behind him with an audible, satisfying THWONK as he marched into the living area of the apartment. "You think I have mixed signals?" he demanded. (To be fair, he really did.) "I am acting like a goddamned husband. I'm acting like me. I'm not going to turn into anyone ******** different, Ursula. Get over that. ******** accept it. I don't even think you ******** want me, you just have -- do you know what you have, you have an ABANDONMENT COMPLEX."
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 3:03 am
"Abandonment complex?!
She was storming after him, adrenaline rushing through her, her anger reaching an all-time high. Her naked feet barely registered any vibration on the ground, nowhere near as commanding as his heavy footsteps had been as he traveled across the living room.
"Don't you ******** patronize me, don't you goddamn patronize me. I may be younger but I'm not stupid. I'm well ******** aware of who you are, as I tend to pay attention to things standing right in front of me. Did you forget the fact that I was ready to lay down my own life to get you the Beryl you were having a hard-on for? That I would stand there during so many of those meetings, watching you lust after her dead corpse while I was there the whole time, wishing I could be that rotting skeleton and actually have you pay a second of attention towards me?"
Both hands had fallen to her hips, her knuckles growing white as she pressed into her own skin. It was a good thing the cushions were stashed away in the bedroom, else the General-King would have found himself subjected to the worst cushion smacking a girl Ursula's size could manage.
"You've got a lot of ******** nerve, a lot of ******** nerve, do you know that? I know who you goddamn are; I've served under you for over a year now, being the coffee b***h and the go-to girl. I've let you pull me around by my hair, I've stood there and let you tell me how ******** worthless I am that even goddamn Linarite could do better than I could. Don't you dare tell me I don't know who you are, because I know damn well who you are, and God so help me, I want that man in my life. That's the ******** b*****d I fell in love with."
She was breathing heavy at this point, her cheeks flushed from screaming. Ursula hadn't meant to say that last line, she hadn't meant for it to slip out as it had. Charonite wasn't ready for the L-word, but it was sure as hell out on the table now. Not that he'd ******** pick up on it, he didn't pick up on a goddamn thing when it came to relationships.
"I didn't ask you to change a ******** thing. You can keep being a douche all you want to. Hell, you're a master at it, by this point. But yanking my chain and teasing me, that's just cruel. Either you want me or you don't want me; playing with my feelings is low, even for you."
That was harsh. It was too harsh, in fact, as Ursula knew all too well that Charonite had changed, and he'd changed to accommodate her. She'd stormed her way into his life, breaking up all sense of normalcy with her presence, her demands, her everything. No longer was his world the simple black and white, cut and dry world of Gunn Killingworth, but she'd come in with guns blazing and turned it upside down. And he'd done it for her, he'd done it for... no. He'd done it for the Queen. Always the ******** Queen.
She stared at him through narrowed eyes, her temper still flaring. She was furious with him. He'd hurt her. He'd toyed with her, teased and left her (********, abandoned her, she'd admit it), and made her question herself. Made her question the confidence she'd had in herself, the confidence that had stood firm, unshaken, like a rock. But he'd shaken that confidence, he'd made her question things she'd never have doubted before. Was there really anything besides tolerance on his end? Why was he even bothering with her if he thought she was going into this marriage business without full knowledge of what she was getting into? And the Queen... oh, that ******** Queen. She'd had his attention before, but had Ursula herself even caught his attention? Or was it Beryl, still, always Beryl that captivated him? Was any of this real?
Defeated, she finally caved in, her voice significantly dropping from her screaming pitch down to simply flat and quiet. Eerily quiet. Deadly quiet.
"We could go around with this all night, but first, I have to know something."
Her right hand moved towards the left, and nimble fingers gently tugged off the silver band that she'd stared at so often, that he'd catch her admiring and smiling at nearly every day since she'd obtained it. The same band that symbolized their partnership, their eventual marriage.
And she was taking it off?
The ring rose up, almost as if it was being offered by the two fingers that held on to it. Her eyes continued to meet his, but the confidence in them was gone. They looked...uncertain. Wary.
"Look. I know you weren't given a choice about this," she started flatly, her tongue gently darting out to swipe across her lips, moistening what had become a desert. Her mouth was dry, her voice lacked the spark she'd had when screaming. "I know you really didn't get to decide. That I forced it on you. And I've been thinking."
Those infamous words that no man wanted to hear come out of a woman's mouth. I've been thinking.
A few moments passed, Ursula's eyes having closed as she thought over her words carefully, the swelling anger within her beginning to lose its heat as she broached a subject that had been bothering her for as long as they'd been together. The ring was noticeably moving... were her hands trembling? "I don't want to be a part of something where we both aren't invested. This isn't an obligation. This is a choice. I'm... I'm giving you that choice. And you better ******** make it, because I'm tired of ******** everything."
One step closer and she began closing in the gap between them, the ring still poised, midair.
"Forget Beryl. We can deal with Beryl when we get to that point. This is between you and me, between Ursula and Gunn. I'm not going to commit to a relationship that only I want. I need to know if you want this. I need to hear you say it, that you want to marry me, that you want to be my husband, for better or for ******** worse. I don't give a s**t about our age, or how long we've known each other or any trivial bullshit. Because it's just that. Bullshit. I know what I want, I know who I want to marry, but I don't know what you want."
The ring was inches away now, the center diamond still as bright and shiny as the day it had been purchased. Was this it? Was she really offering him an escape out of all of this, a back door to run away out of, after all the pressure she'd forced on him from the start?
"I can't go another day of wondering if you're just tolerating this, just playing along because your stupid Queen demanded it of you. I can't fool myself for a lifetime thinking that both of us are happy when I know I forced all of this on you."
Another pause, another deep breath, and the ring was finally extended out and offered to him.
"So I need for you to decide, right now, what you want. I've made my ******** decision, I've made my bed and I know who I want sleeping in it for the rest of my life. You, though, you have your own life, you have your own decision to make. I'm a big girl, I can handle rejection, despite the abandonment issues you seem to think I have."
Her voice hinted of bitterness, his last remark having stung fairly deep. "I accept you for who you are, Gunn, I always have. I just can't deal with the hot and cold attitudes you keep giving me. Can you accept me for who I am, though? Are you ready to make the commitment, or is all of this some sort of ******** charade to you, some sort of obligation as guard to keep your Queen pleased?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 7:24 pm
He hadn't said a word throughout her speech; just listened, eyes on her, expression as unreadable as though it had been written in Greek. He just looked. The General-King was a great one for just looking. He waited and watched, looked at her as though he were absorbing every word flung his way. He said nothing when offered the escape, along with the ring, along with the ultimatum. Eventually he reached out and took the silvery circle of metal from her, the diamond plugged into the center setting. His fingers curled over it.
Eventually, Charonite spoke:
"I don't lie," he ground out. "I don't dissemble. I don't ******** say yes when I mean no, or no when I mean yes. I don't bullshit. Nobody forces <********> on me, Ursula. Nobody can make me do anything."
He took her hand and unlaced her fingers, and slid the ring back on her own. Unhesitatingly. Without pause.
"Learn that about me," he said. "******** learn that about me. Nobody forces me. Not even you. My life is yours, but not my goddamned decisionmaking. Nobody ever had that. Not you, not the Queen, not the other Shitennou. Not Kunzite. Not anyone."
But he still hadn't said the words --
"Yes."
Yes?
"I goddamned want you. I'm not going to repeat it every day."
Gruffly: "It'll lose its meaning."
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 10:50 pm
And, just like that, the titanic clash of angry, stubborn wills was over.
Her hand drew back and out of his, the cool band once again completing her finger, the brief empty feeling gone. She'd remained quiet as he spoke, orange eyes watching him, watching his expression, his reaction, his response. As he finished, a small smile broke across her face, despite the seriousness the moment called for.
Her hand moved up, and she gently kissed the tip of her ring, her left hand cradled against her chest.
"Thank you."
It was whispered, barely audible. The sarcasm was gone, the flatness had long since disappeared from her voice. Just Ursula, eyes closed, clutching her hand against her chest as she stood there before him. Before the man who wanted to marry her, who wanted her for his own. While he was no Romeo, his words were far more than enough to send her heart soaring. She loved him, in all of his cranky tenderness, all of his gruffness, all of his ******** and goddamns.
When she opened her eyes again, the frumpy Ursula was gone, replaced by the sleek and fine Nealite. Her makeup was still missing, but the smile on her face was a significant improvement over the scowl that had been there earlier. She moved closer, her body nearly pressing against his at this point. One gloved hand moved up and gently pressed itself against his cheek, and she leaned up to kiss him.
She stopped midway, however, as if a sudden thought had occurred to her, and slowly she lowered herself, purple boots replanting themselves entirely on the ground.
"Though I think it's goddamn time, darling," the smile grew coy as her hand fell from his cheek, "That you start working for it. I tried my best, so now I think it's your turn to do some wooing. That is, if you really do want me..."
And with that, her body began to dissolve, the Negaverse Captain teleporting herself out of the room and out of his presence, leaving the General-King alone with his thoughts in a cushion-free living room.
It was Ursula's turn, this time, to run away.
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Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2009 11:14 pm
And that left the General-King alone with the breakthrough that your significant other gets happy if you talk about your ******** was only one thing to do now. And he'd been avoiding it for quite some time. Avoiding it assiduously, in fact. He'd never done it before. Ursula knew that. He hadn't even ******** thought about doing it. It hadn't been an option. The idea had been goddamn uncomfortable, actually, his mind had slid away from it dismissively every time that it had cropped up.
He had to do it.
... he had to talk to Khaldun.
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