master_troven | (no subject)

And Nick gets up, goes over to the knight, and throws the book at Alexander, aiming for a narrow miss.

It hits him on the shoulder. He turned at the last moment to see what Nick was doing. The book falls to the floor and he stares at it, absently rubbing the shoulder.

"You weren't kidding."

"No, not really. I was trying not to hit you, though."

He's still staring at the book like he's never seen it before. "You know... it's been a VERY long time since someone has dared to throw something at me."

"...sorry?" Nick looks a little guilty.

"The last person who did that," and he bends down to pick up the book, "Was an emperor of a vast kingdom. From sea to sea they said. I ruin his kingdom for that and then I ruined him." He flipped a couple of pages of the book, still not having looked at Nick.

"...I don't have a kingdom."

"No. You don't." He's been eerily calm through this. And he snaps the book shut, staring straight at Nick.

"I'm sorry. Really."

"The strange thing is..." Alexander approaches him now with the book in his hands. "The strange thing is... instead of an over burning desire to... do unpleasent things to you... as should be appropriate in such an instance, I'm feeling mildly ashamed that I forgot your request to pick up after myself so quickly." He's in front of Nick now, tapping his hand with the book. "Strange? Isn't it?"

"Yes. Rather." Relieved that he's not going to get blown to a crisp?

YES!

Alexander shook his head. "It is." More tapping on the book. "I must be in love with you for such a reaction."

"Well, I'm in love with you too, so that works out quite well."

"Yes, since getting burnt flesh out of the carpet is annoyingly difficult." He toes the carpet absently.

"I'm sure."

"It is. I did that to some guy hitting on Mel once, when we were together."

Cue the slow blinking.

"She really liked that carpet... I don't see why, it was ugly. Had the most visually distracting pattern that I ever saw, and the colors clashed terribly."

"You were together?"

"What? Oh yes. Once... torrid affair. We were pretending to be gods on this one world, goddess of creation, god of destruction... lovers, kept the world in balance, blah blah, not very interesting, really. They had no sense of color coordination. Ugly buildings, just very... she liked it though. Said it was quiant."

"I thought you were siblings."

There's a blink of confusion as that train of thought is derailed, "Well... sort of. I mean, I adopted her as my sister. Years ago."

"Oh." Nick looks incredibly relieved. And like the world makes more sense now.

"Why?" He's confused now. "I did mention that, didn't I?"

"No."