Title: For Queen and Country.
Characters: Dino/Bianchi.
Warnings: Mild swearing. Non-descriptive sex.
Notes: written for the write_and_run community at livejournal.

——

"Are you happy?"

• • •

It's never really been a matter of answering correctly, Dino knows, but the question remains hanging, lingering in the air like the sweet toxic scent of the afterglow of acid rain, crawling under his skin like a snake on the prowl, creeping up to the ends of his hair, as though he doesn't quite know what to do with it. It's a question that's been fucking with him for nearly two hours, and the cigarette between her perfectly manicured fingers is burning in his eyes, and still he can't find the urge to answer the question she's posed.

For two hours, Dino is patient, watching her, silent and still. She's unsettled, but she doesn't show it, legs crossed and lips pursed like she's the most beautiful goddamn woman in the world and she knows it, and that's why she's flaunting it. And she is. She is. She is the poison ivy in a garden of paradise, completely out of place but somehow blending in and standing out and everything else that doesn't make sense. A flower blooming in weeds. She defies understanding. For all that Dino believes to be otherworldly and gorgeous, she is perfection to a fault, a matter that he can always identify but never define.

"Your time's almost up."

He smiles. It might or might not be reaching his eyes. "We've still got plenty."

"You do," she points out, eyebrows raised. She's never been the kind to play around with words, and he likes that about her, among other thigs. "Why waste it?"

Another question. She's not smiling. Dino's so fucked. So fucked.

"I like staring at you."

• • •

"You're asking me this now?" He's taking his time by laughing everything off. They both know he is. "We're in the middle of an operation, you know."

"Even better," she decides, her voice a delicate purr. Whether she's amused or confused, he doesn't know, but he takes what he can get. This time, it's a smile, dangerous and cunning and exotic, like the flowers of a cactus, blooming only for one day and one night, then gone like the wind. "You have two and a half hours before shit hits the fan."

• • •

When cherry blossoms bloom during the spring, everyone leaves their houses, their chores, their work, everything, to watch. They drop their guards and kick their walls down to get a taste of the elegance, the delicacy, the beauty. All other shit-tastic descriptions that don't even bring justice to the real thing. A man can paint a tree with stroke of a brush, but he'll never be able to bring it to life. When a shade is off, everything else becomes spectacularly useless. Shell pink will never be cherry blossom pink, matter how much he tries to strike off the difference. Illusions are only useful if they can fool the undeceived.

It takes him 0.3849 seconds to realize that her hair is the color of wine. Rosé wine. The shade all depends to who's looking. To him, it's a vivid near-purple pink, the kind that he usually sees during sunset, when the indigo of the sky and the orange-red of the horizon clash in the middle, creating a celestial palette that's not really harmonious but has never been so perfect. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, and he likes what he sees.

"I like your hair today," he says. He's never seen her curl them, but nowadays, they always come in natural waves.

"My hair is always like this." The compliment passes over her head, something so trivial that she doesn't want to hear it. "You're never going to answer me, are you?"

Dino laughs, easy going and playful. "Why is it so important?"

"Why is it not?" she counters. She's so defensive sometimes, he muses, and it's not quite as amusing as it is adorable. But that's a thought that he keeps to himself. He doesn't want to die just yet. "You're so fucked, Dino. You can't even tell whether you're happy or not. You don't even know what's going on any longer."

I am so fucked, he agrees thoughtlessly. "Maybe I am happy but I just don't know it."

She passes over the chance to make fun of him this time, but for the first time that day, she's looking at him as though he's got something worth the trouble. This is nothing to be triumphant over, he knows.

• • •

He tries to point the question back at her.

"Are you happy?" he asks unsubtly.

He thinks he's being clever, but she's always one step ahead of him. Always forward, never turning back. He likes this about her, too.

"What do you think?"

It all comes back to where it starts, and he's stuck once more. Sticks and stones, they say.

• • •

The one who moves first is her.

It never surprises him, but then again, Dino thinks, as she covering his jaw with feather light kisses, nothing she does brings the element of surprise. She kisses, she touches, she gasps, she moans, she bites — like she's been doing this a hundred times before and the spark is just gone. It's all perfectly planned, seamless in their execution, like a well-practiced speech to a well-behaved audience.

He likes to prove her wrong, though, and he does it with a smile teetering over the edge that it comes out as a confident smirk, not an ounce of insecurity traced as he takes in all of her and given in all of him. In this game, he wins. Nothing about him screams well-behaved once she's on her back and he's on top of her, his hands refusing to stay still as she squirms beneath his touch. Skin to skin and heart to heart. With his hands in her hair and his mouth on his lips, he's never clumsy, because at that moment, he begins to think of her as his, and when he's finally allowed to push himself in, finally able to make her let go, he knows that she's his.

And when she's done, when she so gone and so fucked that it shows, that he hears it and sees and - oh god, does he ever - feel it, he follows, always allowing her to go first. The perfect gentleman.

It's punctuated by an explosion — not the fireworks behind closed eyes, not the flashes of white as they cry out into each other's mouths, not the sudden burst of contentment as they've finished what they've started, sprawled together, clinging into each other's arms. A sudden loud boom, and Dino imagines shards of wood and glass and metal flying all over the place, a downpour of blood, and fire rising in the air.

Beautiful.

Not long after, he hears the sirens of fire trucks and police cars, and a whole lot of red flashing through the open window.

His phone rings. Right on time.

• • •

"After all of this," he says, his hand waving at a general direction, "Tsuna says that you will have to go underground. They will probably be looking for you, after they're done trying to get their hands on me."

"He didn't want me to come in the first place," she says indifferently. "But we have to keep up with our usual schedule. We're here to talk about business. They can't know that we knew all along."

"He's just trying to protect you," he reasons. "He loves you like a sister."

"And you love him like a brother," she quips. "What does that make us?"

He knows better than to answer that one, even when he's tempted, and yet again, he lets her take another win. She adds more salt to the wound.

"Don't mix business with pleasure," she instructs him. "You're not the type."

Or so they say.

• • •

"Yes, it's over," he says, his voice uncharacteristically soft. He sees no reason to move away from her, and only when his eyes lock with hers does she stop trying to push him off. "I'll be home soon."

"For queen and country," She teases, after the conversation is done. He puts his phone back inside his pocket, his expression unreadable. She doesn't falter at that. "You shouldn't have married a nice girl like her. She will never belong in this world. You will always have to protect her."

"Should I have married you, then?" he asks casually, but his chest is being pulled from side to side, a torrent of vague nothings flashing in his mind. She doesn't answer, and he smiles, sinister but soft, and he knows it doesn't suit him. "I could call it off. Declare you my wife instead."

"Are you going to kill her?" She whispers, her head rising, her lips closing in. He can feel her breath, in and out and in, like a ghost trailing on his pale skin. He's reminded of her cruelty, hidden in veils laced with her tenderness. She's a diamond: soft to the heart, hard to touch. Perfection to a fault — he's said that before. "Are you going to break of the alliance just so you can be with me, the love of your life? Are you going to do it all for me?"

"Is that what you want?"

She laughs, and drops her head, sprawling all over the sheets like a lazy cat bathing in the afternoon sun. Her smile is a smack to his face, and it will bruise. "You will never do it. You can never kill someone so pure. You can't even touch her to truly make her your own."

She grabs his chin, her nails digging, long and slender, the weight of her words bringing him to reality like it's the only thing that can keep him grounded.

He tries to remind himself of someone's smile, long arms, flowing hair, and kind eyes. Too kind, too naive, too much like a porcelain something that's valuable and fragile, something expensive that he bought but is never going to touch anyway, left to the dusts of the forgotten attic where it will belong for all eternity. The only thing that he remembers about the woman he married is the smear of lipstick on her lips.

Rosé wine.

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Bianchi says, calm throughout the storm that he knows has flitted across his face. "You already have plenty of those."

"I wouldn't have married her," he presses on further. He feels like he's said this a thousand times before. "Things have been so fucked. It's so full of shit, but I couldn't get out. Don't take it out on me, Bianchi. Don't think I don't know what you're doing."

She hums, eyes closed.

• • •

"You have an hour left," she says point-blankly, inhaling smoke. She's fierce and deadly, like the taste of tar between in her mouth. "Are you sure you want to keep this up?"

• • •

"Am I happy?"

He whispers to the open air, the smoke in his lungs and fire in his eyes. She turns to him, halfway through dressing up. The light of the afternoon sun bounces on her skin, and he stares unabashedly. He can see the glow of her skin, the curve of her hips, the length of her legs, slender and smooth, and he remembers how they feel wrapped around his waist. A goddess of love, and a connoisseur of death — he's running out of adjectives to describe her.

"That should be my question to you," her voice lilts, amused.

"You're right, you know," he says, as she approaches him. "I'm so fucked."

"You are," she agrees, not missing a beat. She turns around, and he pulls the zipper behind her back, his fingers trailing up her spine as the dresses closes in on her figure, fitting elegant. Rosé wine, matching her hair, complimenting her eyes. The perfect shade to make him fall in and out of love, and endless cycle. She turns around to look at him, her hands resting on his bare chest. "You asked me, earlier, if I was happy."

He looks at her, waiting.

"You should know better than to ask that question."

Again and again, he smiles. He kisses the corner of her lips, hovering over her jaw. "So should you," he murmurs, dark and saccharine like milk chocolate. "Keep safe. I will find you."

"So romantic," she says sarcastically, and she raises her eyes to look at him. She's smiling, sickeningly sweet, and he knows what's coming next. It's the smile she gives him whenever he's trying to map out her skin, pin down the places he wants to visit as he explores her throughout, a country he'll conquer with kisses and soft touches. "I'll be home soon."

So, so fucked, he knows, but he won't have it any another way.