The Path of Love

~fantacination

A/N: This was so much fun to write. I really liked writing Reo's dry bookish common sense and Eliot's love-fail. Crack humor ahoy.

Elliot was having a very painful day.

"Well, why don't you go visit?" Reo prompted. He turned a page in yet another book, back pressed up against the foot of Elliot's dormitory bed and not particularly concerned about the fact that in ten more minutes, either the suddenly threadbare path in the carpet would run out or Elliot's shoes would.

"I can't just walk into the enemy's stronghold like that! I'm not him!" Elliot stopped pacing, throwing his hands up in the air in agitation.

"No, but he probably wouldn't mind. He likes you."

"He doesn't like me! He… he.. just likes to throw people off with his sunflower act!"

Not that the image of the stupid face of Vessalius' next in line against a backdrop of sunflowers really did anything to help. But it was better than the other more interesting images his imagination had supplied him with every night. For two months. Up until he finally confessed to Reo that someone might've hit him too hard and now he was having nightly hallucinations.

Ever practical, Reo had only said "Isn't it lucky that Vincent likes girls?"

Elliot hadn't bothered to point out that in the nine years the Nightray brothers had been together, Vincent had slept in Gilbert's bed for eight. (After that, Gilbert had had the tiniest, glimmering little speck of a feeling that maybe, just maybe, grown men did not sleep together in the same bed, even if and particularly when they are brothers. Personally, Elliot thought the Groping Incident had a lot to do with this stunning revelation.)

Reo hmmed and turned the page. "Well, you like him," Reo said primly.

"That's the whole problem!" Elliot groaned. "I'm not supposed to like him! I'm a Nightray! We- we eat Vessalius for breakfast!"

Reo said something mild about nutritional content and certain body parts. Elliot flushed.

"N-not in bed!"

Reo nodded, still absorbed in his book.

"I don't even know what I'd do if I got there," Elliot muttered, deflating slightly.

"Well, if that's all…" Reo started, closing his book. "I might have an idea."

---

Elliot was never, ever, EVER going to listen to Reo's ideas (usually filched from rather trashy romance novels) ever again.

Oz Vessalius stared blankly at the bouquet of roses in Elliot's right hand and the enormous box of chocolates clutched in his left.

Moments passed by and Elliot was just about ready to chuck everything in his arms in the nearest garbage bin before he could get any more embarrassed when…

Oz smiled.

Elliot had a very brief and familiar heart attack. ("That," Reo had said sagely when Elliot demanded he call the Nightrays' doctor, "is what you call 'skipping a beat'." Elliot told him that it had nothing to do with a dance instructor. Reo mentioned broadening his reading.)

"I-it's not like, it's not like it's special! I was just walking around town and I picked these up! Normal people do it all the time!"

Oz blinked at him. "Do you usually pick up sweet things, Elliot?"

'Does that include you?' Elliot's mind, sounding a lot like aforementioned trashy romance novel, offered helpfully.

Elliot glanced at Reo, a few steps behind him, pleading.

"Ah, Reo!" Oz waved.

Reo waved back, then he mouthed to Elliot 'give them to him'.

"Oz, what's going on?" Someone asked from inside.

"Hm? Oh, it's Elliot and Reo-"

Elliot made a snap decision. Looking off to the side, he thrust the flowers and chocolates in front of him. "I…I don't like sweets anyway. Take it!"

"Oh… thank you, Elliot!" Ada Vessalius said happily.

"Huh?" Elliot said blankly, looking up.

"You've got GUTS, Elliot, asking my sister out right in front of me…"

And it all went downhill from there.

---

"Well, I said that, but thinking about it, I guess it won't be so bad!" Oz declared cheerfully. He was sitting on the sofa, liberating pieces of chocolate from the box on Ada's lap. "Better you than some other creep."

Reo jabbed Elliot's side with slightly less force than a horse's kick. A bookish horse. With glasses. "Proper young gentlemen can initiate conversation," he said blandly.

Scowling, Elliot took a deep breath."You still read that series, right?" he demanded.

"Hm? Holy Knight? Yeah, I'm catching up! I'm on volume ten now!"

"Who else do you like?"

"Well… since Edgar is dead, I guess it's Ivan!"

"Hah? That guy's just as useless as Edgar was!"

"Is not! He's cool- he fought off an entire siege!"

"He just charges in without thinking about anyone else!"

"Do you even like anyone?"

"You- el-Yael!"

"…Elliot?"

"What?"

"Yael's the creepy pedophile with the scythe who gets beaten up by Bart after he hits on Edgar, right?"

"…"

"Actually, Elliot likes characters like Luce- the really-"

"Reo!"

"Isn't that great, Ada, you and Elliot have the same type!"

---

Several embarrassing minutes after Elliot and Ada stared at the table while Oz kept up a running monologue on how Elliot's really kind of like Luce and Ada had always liked Luce since she was eight and…

"I-I'm going for a walk. You can come with me, since you look so weak from lack of exercise," Elliot declared.

"What?! I'm not weak! My body just hasn't caught up yet!" Oz thumped his chest lightly.

Elliot looked away. It was a very nice body. A little on the thin side, but it made Oz's wrist seem delicate, for a guy's, and those very interesting movies in his head were doing reruns right about now—

Gilbert's brain, hard-wired to detect Bad Thoughts in his master's general direction (having had a lot of first hand experience), instantly set alarm bells ringing. "I'll go with you!" Gilbert stood quickly.

"You can't-" Elliot started.

"If seaweed head's going, I am, too!" Alice yelled between mouthfuls of chicken drumstick.

"Why not!" Oz grinned.

Three half-chewed chrysanthemums, a Gil up an orange tree, and one very big splash in the garden fountain later, Elliot found himself alone and holding a sopping wet kitten while Oz comforted a frozen Gil.

"It's gone now! You won't have to worry about it again until you go to sleep and it starts scratching at your window. In the middle of the night. When nobody else is around."

"Oooz," Gil half-sobbed, getting paler with every word.

Elliot's temper had twenty-three detention slips to its name. "You're pathetic! I can't believe you dare carry the name of Nightray!"

He let the kitten spring into the air, yowling.

Unfortunately, he hadn't realized exactly how scared Gil was of them.

Or that they were still next to the fountain.

Three wet shirts and a nosebleed (Reo offered Elliot his handkerchief) later, they decided that tea was in order.

---

"Elliot? Are you okay? You've been making weird faces ever since we had tea." Oz frowned, concerned.

"I'm fine!" Elliot wasn't sure what had been worse- the fact that Oz had insisted on seating him and Ada on a loveseat half covered in mewling kittens or that he had then proceeded to noisily lick whipped cream off of his dessert fork.

And that wasn't even counting Reo's latest advice.

Elliot 'surreptitiously' covered the paper he was writing on. By slamming his arms down on top of it.

"What's that?"

"N-nothing!" He coughed. "It's nothing." There, cool, collected, and thoroughly in command of his… scrap of paper?

"Eh… I don't know, Elliot, I don't think Ada thinks her eyes are like a fresh pickled toad." Oz mused aloud, reading the scrap of paper he'd slipped from under Elliot's arms.

Frozen into metaphorical stone, Elliot stared as Oz snatched the pen from his fingers and proceeded to write on the paper, tongue sticking out slightly, just begging to be--- No, Elliot, no lusting after blonde boys technically almost a decade older than you who have fanatical manservants up in arms to protect their virtues. Save it for later. Hmm, later...

"Over here you should use 'emeralds' or 'spring grass'—you have to treat a lady like a queen!" Oz paused, thoughtfully tapping the end of the pen on his chin as he read.

"Geeze, you suck at this. So much for artistic talent, huh? But that's okay! I'm an expert with girls- I'll train you up in no time!"

---

"What else is there?" Elliot was at the end of his rope.

Reo thought about it.

"Serenades are pretty popular."

---

"…Elliot?" Oz asked, leaning his chin on his folded arms on top of the piano.

"Y-yeah?" Elliot kept his eyes on the black and white keys, his fingers still playing the final bars of the melody.

"The song is nice but….Are the lyrics supposed to go 'uhm hmm hmm krk grrg'?"

"…"

"Ada likes songs about princesses," Oz declared brightly. "Maybe you should try something like that."

---

"Reo!" Elliot grabbed his manservant by the shoulders. "Nothing's working!"

Reo calmly blinked up at him. "What's wrong?"

"What isn't? I try to write him a poem but he writes them for me! I try to take him for a walk but my bro- Gilbert keeps thinking I'm about to rape him in the shrubbery! I help him find a book and that black haired girl follows us around inhaling a steak!" Elliot took a deep breath. "And he still. Thinks. I. Want. His. SISTER."

"Maybe you aren't being clear enough."

"How?" Then he glimpsed the front cover of Reo's book. " ... And I'm not going to grope the front of his pants!"

"That's crude, Elliot. I understand forbidden romance etiquette says you should wait until the second date." Reo said primly, tucking the offensive bodice ripper away. "Why don't you try to get him alone?"

"I would but he keeps running away to some corner with my- with Gilbert and telling me to sit with his sister!" A sudden horrible thought struck him. "You don't think… With Gilbert.."

Reo tilted his head to the side. "Hmm. Mr. Oz has a lot of suitors, doesn't he?"

"I CAN'T ACCEPT THIS!"

There was only one thing left to do.

---

The setting was perfect- the warm sun that was just beginning to sink into the horizon, the green grass springy beneath his feet, and the fragrant smell of flowers in the air. There were even cooing birds in the trees.

Elliot marched up to the Vessalius heir like a man condemned.

"O-Oz, I like…y-"

"Hm?"

"yams!"

Oz beamed. "Great, so does Ada!" She likes them when our cook used to bake them in leaves…"

Sheer desperation does strange things to your thought processes. For Elliot, it meant grabbing Oz's collar and crushing their mouths together. Unfortunately, he hadn't realized that the books had maybe not really meant it to be literally crushing, since they both fell down onto the grass painfully, Elliot on top.

"Uhh, Elliot?" Oz said, catching his breath.

"W-what?"

"I'm Oz."

"I-I know that!" Wasn't that the entire point, after all?

Oz sighed, shaking his head at Elliot's apparent stupidity. Slowly, like one speaking to a small, not particularly bright child, he said," Ada's the one with the skirt. The flowy thing around her waist?"

"Oz!" Gilbert yelled suddenly, careening to a stop beside the two.

"Ah, hi, Gil!" Oz zaid brightly from underneath Elliot, sprawled comfortably on the ground with his hair a mess and his shirt half-open (his own doing, of course, Elliot had been too busy just working up the courage to smash their lips together in a vaguely kiss-like way.)

Gilbert was distinctly unimpressed. More like ashen and horrified.

"Y-you- E-Elliot, you didn't…"

"I-I didn't do anything!" Elliot said defensively.

"That's right," Oz agreed sunnily. "Elliot's practicing. He kind of needs work in the kissing department."

Splat! was the sound of Elliot's much-abused ego ending its miserable life on the pavement.

Enough was enough!

"I'm going back!" Elliot announced, standing up and wondering why he couldn't just get swallowed up by a convenient hole in the earth.

"Oh, okay," Oz said. He got up, brushing is clothes off. "Before you go, though…" the blonde continued. He reached up, grabbing the cravat around Elliot's neck, and pulled him down.

He smiled at him."This is what a real kiss should be like."

After that, all Elliot remembered was fainting.

[And so did Gil. ]

Please review if this made you laugh even a little. ;)