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Gunn Killingworth's eyes cracked open.

The night that he'd slept on the bed with Ursula he'd been out for the count, drugged up, injured. Crushed. Somehow diminished. For the next few days even he'd walked around as though he were a man who'd lost a battle, his mouth grim and his eyes grimmer -- tired and faint, falling asleep in the stupidest places. At his desk. Hillworth Grammar School was out for Christmas holiday now, and only a very few boys stayed to have Christmas with the staff. Killingworth had RSVPed with a "hell no" (thank God for the boys staying behind) on a Hillworth Christmas lunch; he always had. It was like his present to them.

But now there was Ursula, bright head hovering over his as he slowly woke up. She was holding something. It was a box. In Charonite's opinion boxes should never be so brightly coloured: it was like a jungle warning that they were filled with poison or scorpions. "Morning," he said, after a while, thick with sleep. "Merry, ... .... ... christmas."

Obviously he was not used to wishing anyone a merry anything. He yawned, sitting up, running his good hand through his dreadlocks. She was right: singlet and sweatpants. He seemed more than unusually disoriented. Looked at the box. Looked at Ursula. Looked at the box. "Hang on, let me have a goddamned shower first," he said, and scrubbed his face with his hand.

"But -- "

"Shower," he said, and rolled up the blankets neatly before disappearing away -- he was already pulling off his singlet (which only added +10 to what was otherwise disappointment) and disappeared into the bathroom. Ugh. Ugh. He was about as festive as a stoop.

Eventually he reappeared again, not wearing anything particularly more festive than a pair of jeans (he owned a pair of jeans?) and one of his wifebeaters again. He was, however, carrying a small cardboard box, which still had 'ORANGES' printed on it. Her jaw might have dropped. Either he was carting around trash, or that might have been her christmas present.

Well --

"Merry goddamn Christmas."

Beat.

"Does it always happen this early?"

He put the boring box (it DID say oranges: maybe it held oranges) down on the floor in order to take the one that she looked so excited over. Charonite looked at it from angles, surmised it; then he carefully undid the big red ribbon (he was SUCH AN ANNOYING PRESENT RECEIVER, why was he not just ripping at it like a normal person) and even more carefully picked at the sticky tape that held its sides together. Only when he had flawlessly eased open the four layers of wrapping did he carefully remove the box from its festive skin.

It was a laptop.

He looked genuinely surprised. Not even what the ********> surprised, but simply surprised -- stared at it for a little bit as though it was a strange alien that he had come into contact with. "A laptop," he said, a little unnecessarily. He was opening the box -- Audrey Collins was mainly to thank for its suitability -- and pulled out the styrafoam coffin that the sober black laptop was sitting in (no ******** Macbook Air for the General-King) and opened it up, looked at the keys, checked out its weight and its new laptop smell. He looked a little bemused, maybe a little resigned. "I knew this day was going to... probably come," he said. "Goddamnit. Thank you. I know I shouldn't... avoid this s**t." Avoid what, The Google. "I still don't know how this thing ******** works." At least he actually admitted it. "Are you going to make me learn the ******** Internet."

He was still looking at the laptop as though it were a weird alien artefact, and it came with accessories that were more suited to being weird alien artefacts. The mouse. The charger. He put all that away on the side of the couch and generally acted (this was normal) as though she weren't cuddling into his side -- he sat down again, taking her with him, and he put the box on her lap. It wasn't taped too much. She just opened it.

Inside was possibly the most disappointing coterie of presents that ever were.

- A rape whistle. It was yellow. It was a rape whistle. She could teleport. She now had a rape whistle. She suspected that this was going to be common uniform to everyone in the Negaverse. It was a yellow rape whistle. Oh, well. It was in one of those annoying plastic blister paks that you had to have scissors to open.

- Two oranges. They'd just been left in the box.

- An envelope, sealed.

- A cushion. It was purple. It was a cushion. It had pretty silver embroidery on it. He probably had just picked it up at the first cushion outlet that he had come upon. It all smacked of I got this for you two days ago when I realised that something would be needed. For all he was an incredible mastermind, General-King Charonite was not the best present-giver of all time. And he was just looking at her, inscrutable, a fresh bandage over the wound that Kunzite had given him.

He just gestured one hand towards her, leaning back. For some reason, he was tense. Why was he tense? Expectant, maybe, not tense. His arms were folded over his chest. His hair was still a little wet from his shower. He smelled like her soap. It was a plain white envelope with her name on it, and when she opened it there was no card. A slip of a yellow post-it fell out, his terse handwriting on it.



What the ********?

Ursula Johnson was about to find out that this was the shortest treasure hunt that she had ever been on in her life. The bed had been made, neatly. There was no sign of a present on it or in it. The envelope wasn't very lumpy, which meant that there was nothing in it of note (unless she was about to receive a Borders certificate, which would possibly be legal cause for murder). Whatever he'd hidden, he'd managed to be like the Flash, and hidden it in the bedroom before she could even notice -- he'd been all of what, fifteen minutes in the shower? Max? Actually, he'd spent a bit longer in the shower. Probably hiding whatever he was hiding. Out of the envelope fell a ripped piece of paper, that wasn't very mysterious --

His voice drifted back to her, clear: "Let's get something straight," he said, as though they were having a normal room-to-room conversation, "you can take your clothes off, with your ******** buttons and zips and that kind of thing. Or I can take them off, and I don't screw around with buttons. Or zips. Or hooks. Or ties. Or whatever it is that's holding up your ******** nightgown."

This was all said with due weight. No backing down. No hesitation. She could hear the couch squeak as he got up, shifted his weight from it. When he appeared in the doorway he was shirtless himself, leaning in it, wearing jeans and a bandage and what was probably the most serious expression ever worn by anyone who had just asked their fiancee to get naked for them. You were not meant to have the expression of a funeral. But he was there; he'd written the note; he was watching her, spread out as she was over the bed with her toes curled, and he said --

"My name is Khalid."

There was a pause, the first hesitation -- "We lose our names. When we join. My name is Khalid. I was born Khalid."

He was staring at her now, as though she were a mystery to unravel. She was something to unravel, goddamnit.

He kissed her. He lifted her up, her knees immediately squeezing around his hips so that she wouldn't fall, and he walked her to the bed. The bed thankfully denuded of cushions. He'd removed the cushions. Charonite -- Gunn Killingworth -- Khalid was kissing her neck. "Today I let go of who I am," he said, and he was saying it in the cadence of somebody reciting something. "Today I let go of my home and country. Today you are my kingdom."

He was laying her out on the bed, like a painting. "Today I stand at your gate." His fingers were caressing the bones of her ankle, forcing it to rise, sliding his fingers up underneath to the soft skin of her knee. "Tonight I watch by your torchlight."

Khalid raised her leg, and he ducked his head down to kiss where his fingers had just been, underneath her knee. His dreadlocks tickled against her calf. "Today I give my self to your safekeeping." Mouth, lips, tongue. "Not to be kept safe, but in your defence." His hand was wrapped around her ankle. "I swear my fealty to You. I swear my loyalty to You. I will serve no other king. I will raise no other banner."

His mouth was at the divot of her navel now. "I am your sworn body."

Then he raised himself up, resting his weight on his arms, and his mouth was against her own: "I am your sworn heart."

In the end, Ursula probably wouldn't have cared had he chosen to recite the first few pages of the phonebook, not the cavalier oath of binding. But -- that was that, and now was now; and the pact was made, without her having to understand the context of what he was giving. And she had not asked for anything more than that.