latino_menace | OOM: Haven. Post-wedding (both of 'em :D)

'Mmmm, we can talk. You're normally asleep by now though - although I suppose it hasn't been that long since you woke up.' He thinks for a moment. 'I don't know baby, the nicest thing I can think of right now is your face when you're desperate. I do love it. What sort of things do you want to hear?'

He laughs, softly, and rests back against him.

"Too early in the morning to sleep so soon."

To be groggy as hell, yes. Sleep? No.

"Where'd you go to school? Favourite kind of cake, favourite holiday and first car and do you have any cats or dogs or birds or dunno."

Yawn.

'Can you twist food? Just out of curiousity - I'm not letting you out of this bed.' Ever. 'But if you can, I'd appreciate it. m'hungry.'

He also reaches for a cigarette, can't find his lighter and holds it out to Random to be lit. '...please baby?'

And then thinks. 'School, you know. Boarding school in Bogota. Favouite cake...ummm, I don't know. Cheesecake I think, but I don't have that much of a sweet tooth anyway. Favouite holiday - before I met you, I presume you mean?' He has to think a long time about that.

'I never really went on holiday much. Moved around South America so much, it wasn't really necessary - and besides, I had to be careful where I went. Criminal record and all, a lot of places would cause trouble if I tried to visit.' He smokes casually. 'First car - stole one when I was fourteen. Bought a truck when I was sixteen. And...heaps of dogs. Working ones, for the ranches. Never any pets though I wouldn't mind having one.'

He kisses the back of his shoulder and then offers him the cigarette. 'Your turn. Although I'm expecting 'chocolate' to be the answer to the cake one, I should tell you.'

"Here..."

Omelette. No tomatoes. Cheese, and healthy basil.

"My car... a volkswagon type thing, on another world. School, no where except the castle, really. Tutors. And then the occasional internship here or there."

He rolls aside, so Ramon can eat comfortably. And yelps.

"Found the fruit plate. Favourite holiday is christmas, obviously, and cake is indeed chocolate, though I quite like Black Forrest. The same but with cherries. I've had all sorts of pets, predominantly cats and owls... no criminal record, but lots of criminal ventures."

The plate is pulled off the bed and set onto the floor.

Ramon stares at the omelette. 'It's a week before Christmas Random. Why are you trying to make me healthy all of a sudden?' When he seems to have stopped fidgeting about, Ramon suddenly - and hopefully disarmingly - puts his head on his stomach and looks up at him. 'Pancakes?' Said in a hopeful voice.

Then he laughs and smokes some more. 'What was it like having tutors. Wasn't it boring?'

"Be good now and I'll eat chocolate oranges off your body next week."

It's a purr, though he's too tired, happy and sated to actually do anything remotely sexual at the moment.

"But trust me. The egg is good. Anyhow, you ask a question. Just the one, mind. We can trade answers. Doesn't even have to be about sex this time. Just whatever."

'MmmmmOK.' He does like omlettes. Just likes pancakes better. And he does briefly think about the words 'be good' - but fuck it, he'll do whatever Random wants pretty much and this isn't such a big thing.

'Christmas Eve Random. In front of the fire, when it's just us. All the lights off except the ones on the tree - that's my price for eating this lovely healthy omlette that you created for me out of the goodness of your heart.'

*smirk* Yes, he can take the piss out of his own demanding-ness at times. He stabs a bit with a fork. 'I did just ask you a question. Was it boring having tutors? Because there must be fairly large age gaps between you and your siblings so there couldn't have been that many other kids your own age around. At the castle I mean. So what was it like?'

"It was quiet. Very quiet, punctuated by small periods of intense amounts of terror. People had very little patience for a small child with a tendancy to shriek in amusement at the smallest thing."

He takes a bite of the omelette, somewhat sobre.

"So the tutors... I tended to ignore, or attend, depending how interested I was at the moment. Oberon didn't care either way."

He then pauses to consider the proposition-

"Am I allowed to tie you up? Or will you be trusted to remain still?"

He's about to make appropriate sympathetic noises - and then can't help laughing. Still, it's maybe a slighty quieter, slightly less devilish laugh than it would normally have been. And he completely bites back the obvious question about it mother, although those cracks in his soul now spring unpleasantly to mind.

He pretends to consider for a moment, as a cover. 'Hmmmm. Is 'remain still' the same as 'not touch you'? If so, restraints might be needed, yes. It's very hard for me not to touch you.'

"Damn."

He's a little relieved, and somehow, a little dissappointed that Ramon isn't pushing it.

"Well, then I'll definitely have to find something to tie you to. Or maybe just accept the consequences... the tree isn't that steady. Yeah, never mind. The fire and tree are just too good to pass up."

He looks up at him, considering for a moment. Then shrugs.

"What about you? Where were you when you were really small. Four, five, three. Around there."

He eats s little, slowly, still thinking about Random as a little boy. There's so much he wants to ask, but it's a week before Christmas and the lights are turned on on the tree downstairs and there's snow outside...maybe this is a time to keep things happy. But still, he wants to know. Some other time, he thinks to himself, when I can hold him and try to make it better.

He doesn't hold out hope that he can make that go away though. How would he?

There's a small sigh around the latest of the rather gorgeous omlette, then he holds a forkful out for Random. 'When I was that young? We were poor. Lived in a slum. I can remember hating that Hector was born, when I was four or so, and being very demanding with my mother and following my father around a lot.' He thinks. 'There were a lot of other kids around though, and my earliest memory is of trying to play football in the street outside and wishing I was Pele.'

Football was obviously a Thing. And with that in mind, his next question is, 'Do you like any sports?'

"Yeah?"

He eats the omelette while Ramon speaks, solemn and considering, and then frowning at the thought of his lover in a slum. Because just no.

"I like rumball, and waterpolo both. They're fun enough. Also riding, hunting, on occasion, and swimming. That amuses me."

He hands the omelette back to Ramon, and twists himself a slice of toast, cutting it in half and offering a piece to Ramon.

"I can imagine you. Hero-worshiping little thing. I used to do that quite a bit myself. But mostly with my brothers, though I'll never admit that. And of course my father, as well. What was your dad like?"

His next question is, of course, obvious but he answers his first. There's a soft chuckle and he steals the fork back, then accepts the toast with a smile of thanks.

'Oderint dum Metuant,' he says. 'That was his favourite saying, my father's. It's Latin, it means Let them hate me provided they fear me.'

He shrugs. 'He was surprisingly quiet, for all that. Didn't use gratuitous violence but when it was necessary he would. Not on me, I mean, I'm talking about at work. And it wasn't a case of me hero-worshipping him really, it was just that there's never been a time when I didn't know I was going to be in charge one day. So I thought to stick by him because that was my rightful place. He didn't object. He was a better father than I ever was.'

It's said matter-of-factly, he's not trying to feel sorry for himself or get that reaction from Random. 'When he told you to do something, you did it. If you didn't, you'd get a beating. And I wasn't stupid then either, so I listened to it. He treated my mother well enough, was a workaholic and always surrounded by lots of very tough men - and still taught me to ride a bike when I was three.'

He came very close to loving his dad, though respect was probably the most accurate term for it.

'We should go riding together, like we said. What's rumball?'

"It's complicated." And he's too distracted to explain, really. It's easier to just curl up to him, and try to imagine what Ramon's describing to him.

"He sounds rather... I don't know. It makes sense. He did, after all, work to build up that organization from the slums. How much of that was him, babe, and how much was you? Because both of you, yeah. I'd have liked to have seen you working together. Or maybe there younger. Formiddable."

Random's not exactly coherent in his thoughts... but he does understand, in a way.

"My mother. Well, the woman commonly credited as being my mother, I suppose. Anyways. She was odd. Frail, almost, and rather distant, vague, uninterested. Didn't really have much of a bearing or say on anything."

'We never worked together, not really. From eighteen to twenty-one I was off learning various aspects of the trade, doing grunt work like other people - learning the smuggling routes, bringing stuff through the jungle, finding out about the way bribes work at the various borders, starting to make contact with people in government and the American military, that sort of thing.'

Making outside contacts for information had been his idea. His father hadn't approved because he knew of the sort of things that would have to be done to enforce co-operation from such people. Ramon? Had no such qualms.

'And then he died and I took over. The 'bringing us out of the backstreets' part, that was all him. He did something major when I was eight and all of a sudden we were living on a ranch outside of town, I was learning to ride horses and drive motorbikes and there was a lot less need to protect yourself from other kids stabbing you. We didn't really move out of Columbia and Panama, as a business I mean, until I got my hands on it though. There was a war.'

He sets the empty plate aside and lights a cigarette, propping himself on pillows and holding him with one arm. 'So you don't really know who your mother was? You didn't see her much or something? What was she like, that you remember?'

"Oberon slept around."

Blunt. Emotionless. It doesn't hurt to talk about it, it's a reality he's lived with forever.

"But he married, too. There were rumours that my birth had been less than honest, but within a few years of my birth people were saying I was legitimate. To mine and Oberon's face, at least. The woman who I remember had very little interest in me, yes. I remember her as passing in the corridors, where I'd bow as she went by. Skirts rustling over stone, long blonde hair. I always thought she was beautiful, and so did Oberon, evidently. On my birthday she called me to her room, and we had tea together: and then she left. Oberon probably killed her. Rumour was they found her body at the base of the cliff... but that might be just a rumour, I'm not sure."

He takes the cigarette, after a moment, taking one long breath of it and then handing it back to him.

"Your mother? What was she like?"

He strokes through Random's hair as he talks, once more finding that he hates Oberon for what he's done to him. It would have been nice to think of Random getting at least a happy childhood with his mother loving him. Ramon is not a sentimental type of man and normally just shrug and say, 'That's life.' But - not when it's Random that's been abused.

'She was pretty. And religious. And my father loved her to distraction, from what I remember. So did Hector, he was the mamma's boy.' He takes the cigarette and smokes idly. 'She was a pretty typical Catholic working-class woman. Get on the wrong side of her, she'd hate forever. A hell of a temper and free with the slaps if you did something wrong. Prayed a lot. She was a good mother, but I didn't appreciate that - we fought every time I was home for the vacations after I went to boarding school. She could see what was happening, I used to meet her for lunch in the city when I should have been at school.' He laughs. 'She always used to say she'd pray for me. Probably did too - but she loved me as well. I upset her though, always. She died a few years after my father and that was that.'

He shrugs. They'd never been close really, not after the money came. But he thinks of her well enough.

'So does it bother you baby? I mean...' He's hesitant to ask this, but wants to know. '...it might have been nice for you to have her. Was there no one that was nice to you?'

"Benedict, when he was there."

He shrugs. You can't miss what you've never had. Not really. And he doesn't.

"I don't know how he survived, but he did. Oberon murdered his two older brothers and his mother, and probably would have got him if he hadn't been strong enough. He let me sit with him, and gave me wine sometimes at dinner, if he thought people weren't looking. Corwin too, though in a much different way. Benedict was gruff where Corwin wanted me to do things for him, like listen in here for the price of spun sugar and whatnot."

He likes the sound of Ramon's mother, despite his apparent lack of affection for her. She sounded rather familiar, somehow.

"My tutors attempted to 'bond' with me and steer me, but they were all either employed by my mother or father, and after I turned thirteen I knew it and didn't speak to them. When I was younger there were nurses, and they were a comfort, though none of them remained long. My real companion- well, I was friends with a milk maid, at least, that's what she called herself. She was really a worker from the scullery, though I met her when I was eight, and didn't find out until were were both in our late teens. She was... a year older? Younger? First girl I kissed, too."

He stubs the cigarette out and sprawls, trying to pull Random a little closer.

'Just kissed? I bet she tried more, knowing you were a prince.' He grins, but then sobers. 'It sounds lonely. I can't imagine what just regular life would be like in that castle though. I mean - dinner? Was it formal every night and was Oberon there all the time? Did your brother's work or just go find Shadows to play in? And were you all expected to pay your own way, or were you rich - being royalty I mean, there must have been a lot of funds available.'

"That makes sense." He smirks, and rests against him. "And she did indeed, and we did indeed, and that's the story of how I lost my virginity in a hay loft."

He steals the cigarette with a grin.

"Romantic, isn't it? But that aside... we do have money available. I just avoid dipping into it, because it makes me feel dependant. As for my brothers... no idea. Probably a bit of both, but to the youngest in the family? No, I was seldom welcome in the courts. Unless Oberon wanted me in there, as happened on occasion. What about you?"

Ramon snickers. 'How old were you then? I suppose it is romantic at that - was it any good? C'mon, I want to hear this story.'

And then he deadpans, 'No, Oberon never really wanted me in the courts either. Bastard.'

He laughs, and rolls his eyes, letting his head rest back.

"I was, hmm, let me see. Fifteen, possibly a bit younger or a bit younger, maybe older. Those years sort of blend a touch. I was upset over something Oberon, or rather, Caine, or Bleys... anyways. I was upset, and I ran and found her, and I was in tears and she pulled me up the ladder and when we were hidden she kissed me. Ended up on a blanket."

He wrinkles his nose.

"I didn't like it very much. It was itchy, and it left me feeling shaky, and sort of sick to my stomach. I wasn't ready, I suppose. But she was happy, and the next time it felt better, and there was something good about having a secret like that, so I kept coming to her. She loved me, and I loved the things she brought me, and said the words and we were very happy."

He blinks down at him, a little saddened. 'You didn't love her but you were happy anyway? What happened to her in the end? Did she find out you'd been lying?'

He likes hearing about him and where he came from, but it's a little disquieting too. All those things I can't make right for him. And at the same time, everything that's happened to him makes up the man he loves now - but it's still strange to hear about things that happened so long ago.

"I thought I loved her. I loved the idea of having a lady fair and ruling our own kingdom in some shadow somewhere, then I sort of learned something about my dad, and started getting heavily into politics, and became quite different, and she went off. Don't remember, we drifted apart."

He likes sharing it. It's nice to tell him. To share it.

"Tell me something about yourself, then?"

'Ummm...' It's that sort of pause that always happens when someone says 'tell me something about yourself' - even the most verbose people tend to go blank.

He wonders whether he should ask what he found out about Oberon. It's hard to know, at times, what's going to upset Random. And he really doesn't want to upset him. At the same time, he wants to know everything - although he knows it won't be possible, probably. Too long a life and some things that'll just never come to light. And perhaps better that they don't.

'I can't really imagine you heavily into politics. Although I imagine the shiftiness of it all would quite appeal - did you choose to go learn to be an assassin, or were you made to?'

And he doesn't say anything about himself simply because he can't really think of anything to tell him.

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