When Winter Ends part 12
Jun. 2nd, 2018 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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krystalkatzficz“Is there a reason that you came, Jun?” Sho asked dryly as they made their way carefully through the woods to the land that was owned by the young lord. Aiba Masaki. The man had been barely away from his mother’s skirts when he had been thrust into the role of lord. His parents and younger brother killed by highwaymen barely a week after Nino had come into his life. Sho had thought that he would have anything to do with the boy but a year after he had arrived Nino had found him wandering in the woods near their home. He looked as though he had been out there all night, in fact he looked in worse condition than Nino had. At barely six years old Nino had brought him back to their home and treated him from a bad chest illness. The young lord had been swept away a few hours later only for the best medic in the village to come beating down their door to ask Master Sho what treatments he had used. Sho had been against helping, after all he had done nothing, but Nino had given him a hard stare until he had agreed to take him to the manor.
There was no doubt in Sho’s mind that Nino had saved the young lord. No matter if nobody else knew that. He supposed that he should have suspected that Nino had been something more than he had appeared but a part of him had believed that Nino was apprenticed to a healer before he had arrived at his home. He looked at his little brassy eyed brat with a smile, although he had promised to trust Nino and he would, but he still wanted to know more about the Ohno’s. If it was true that Nino’s father had hurt him he would pay and pay dearly.
“Because I refused to remain cooped up in your stinking home…How you cope with it is beyond me…It’s like a cat that has been scenting…” Jun spat darkly and Sho rolled his eyes. Like Sho had been once Jun was a wanderer and didn’t need to scent his home to tell other vampires to back off but Sho did, more so when he wanted to hide the scent of the human living with him. Nino was silent at his side his hand in his as though it belonged there, but his head was clearly somewhere else.
“Nino? Aren’t you happy to be seeing Masaki-kun?” Sho asked gently trying to break through the mood that had settled over the younger man. Nino looked up and rolled his eyes dramatically slowly a touch of a smile forming on his lips.
“As happy as I ever am to see the idiot, master. He treats me as a pet…”
“You are a pet, Nino, my pet…” Sho laughed lifting the hand that was holding Nino’s and brushing it over his cheek. Nino’s cheeks warmed quickly his lips losing the smile as he started to nibble somewhat nervously on them. He looked away again back down at the snow which was thankfully less here in the woods. There was still enough underfoot that it was crunching as they walked but it wasn’t deep enough for Nino to be lost in it the way that he would if they were using the roads. “Sorry, did I embarrass you?”
“No more than you normally do, Master, at least this time you don’t have a noddle sliding down your chin this time…” Nino teased dryly and Sho growled low in his throat. He wasn’t truly angry however more glad that Nino was acting like his old self in that moment. “I told you a long time ago Master, that growl won’t work on me…I’m not afraid of you…”
“What are you afraid of? If you weren’t scared of a vampire as a five year old brat…What kind of life were you living before?”
“Jun! That is enough…There is no need to talk about this at all, much less out here in the woods…We are not far from lord Aiba’s lands. His men were meant to be meeting us at the boundary of our lands…” Sho hummed looking up ahead and using his advanced senses to see if he could see the men Aiba would have sent to escort them. If the young lord would have gotten his way he would have sent one of his finest carriages to pick them up but Sho refused to allow it. Animals like horses were very adapt at understanding he was a threat and he wouldn’t risk the death of a horse, Nino wouldn’t like that. His brassy eyed boy pretended to have a cool heart, but he had once seen him mourn the death of a sparrow that had flown into the window. He had cradled it gently in his arms with tears falling from both his eyes. Nino had denied it afterwards but Sho knew he had been grateful when he had buried the creature instead of tossing it into the woods.
“Why do the people of the village mistrust and hate you so much if you are the one that saved their lord…?”
“Because nobody knows, Nino preferred it that way…”
“I barely did anything master…The idiot just likes to pretend he was worse than he was…”
“You shouldn’t be so modest, at barely six years old, Nino did what no healer could do, he brought the young lord back from the brink of death. Sadly, his lungs have been permanently scarred…” Sho sighed remembering the roughened way the young lord spoke. It didn’t dampen his spirit, but it did make him sound alluring.
“At six? How were you able to do that?”
“…You suspect me of being inhuman again? I was always a sickly child in the chest…My brother fed me potions that he swore would save me…” Nino answered softly once again looking pained and confused as he spoke about his brother and Sho found himself comforting the best he could with his thumb moving over the gentle fingers. “I thought that they would save the lord in turn, I was a stupidly optimistic child, thankfully it worked…Master the lord’s men approach”
“I see them Nino…I also see the young lord himself in front…” Sho rolled his eyes forgetting about Nino as he swept himself into a polite bow. He may not care about the opinions of others but he had a mild liking for Lord Aiba Masaki. He couldn’t explain why but something about him was uplifting more so when he had a wild idea for a crazy experiment.
“My lord…You didn’t need to come here yourself…”
“I wanted to! I’ve always enjoyed walking in the snow…”
“If you get sick again don’t come crying to me, idiot-lord…” Nino mumbled in a way that only he could get away with to the lord. His honour guard didn’t even twitch at the tone used and Masaki let out a laugh, high and clear through the forest.
“You never change, Nino…Come you must be cold…Eh? There is one more of you! Hello…I am lord Aiba Masaki…”
“I am Matsumoto Jun” Jun mumbled his tone surprisingly flat as he looked Aiba over. The lord smiled and inclined his head slowly.
“Welcome to my land, any friend of Nino and Sho is a friend of mine…Come…”
*~*~*~*~*~
As the three men followed the young lord and his honour guard none of them noticed a man watching from the shadows. His face was obscured by a large hat, but his eyes were visible, a pure gold with slits for pupils. If his face could have been seen the observer would have noticed the almost hungry expression around the eyes and mouth and the way his lips curled into a smirk revealing uneven pointed teeth. The pointed slits zeroed in on the small figure of Nino walking beside his lord and the smirk became more pronounced as the watching figure growled;
“Finally found you…”
In the blink of an eye the man was gone. There were no marks in the snow to reveal that he had been there at all but the temperature of the area where he had been watching was several degrees lower than the surrounding one, and bugs and worms that had been living in the tree were dead at its roots.
TBC
A/N: I hope that this is okay >.<
no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 10:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 12:16 pm (UTC)Hehe Aiba probably thought Nino was cute so he treated him as his pet.
I also found it endearing when Sho said Nino was his pet
And Nino has healing power?
Thanks for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2018-06-04 02:33 am (UTC)