Keeping the Filth Contained // [Glamour Oneshot]

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

Glamour Kinkade

your compliments look good on me

His rage had cooled to the level of burning embers, but it had not gone out. He'd attended an official cocktail hour for the Quell, dined amongst people he would almost consider friends, and run through the next day's agenda with Winnie. She was proving herself increasingly valuable, which was a pain. He would likely have to increase her salary to keep her. As he wasn't making money from anything but endorsements, that was a teaspoon of salt in his already briny life. He needed to work, but he couldn't just demand that the President hire him again. And it wasn't like Warren Whip was going to pay him any more than a stipend for consulting.

He balled his right hand into his fist and put the knuckles between his teeth. He bit down hard enough to leave deep grooves as the elevator opened to the fourth floor of the residential tower. He probably should have sent ahead someone to check that Leon was out and about. But according to his little birdies in the Training Center, Leon hardly spent any time in his suite. He kept himself entertained in the gym, at the local clubs, with the other victors. For once, Glamour let that bother him. He let it warm the embers until they ignited.

Glamour eased open the door to the victor's bedroom. He dropped his messenger bag against the wall and then walked to the center of the room. He turned in a slow circle before settling on the laundry pile. He lifted a shirt, pressing it to his face in the dark. It smelled impossibly exciting and oddly familiar. How had he become so intimate with Leon so as to recognize his smell, his particular musk? Was he so desperate?

He threw the shirt back into the pile in disgust and moved onto the bed. He sat where Leon usually lay, the covers rumpled on one side. On the nightstand, shining the moonlight, a painted shell. Glamour turned it over and over, wondering what it meant in a room that had so few personal affects. He set it back on its side. "What are you doing here, Kinkade?" His voice a whisper in the shadows. He was here to:

remind Leon that he still existed
remind himself that Leon was still alive
that Leon was worth his time
that Leon was something more
and to remind them both
that Michel Krigel was very far away
and Glamour was right fucking here
in his room.

He pounced on his messenger bag, sorting through documents and fountain pens and a letter opener until he found something soft and squishy. He looked back to the bed, considered tucking it in. But that would be too cute, too obvious that it was from him. No, this wasn't about whatever Leon and Glamour shared. This was about Michel's interference, his inexplicable dislike. He couldn't put a desecrated plushie in bed.

He held the offending object at arm's length as he marched across the room. He knelt, then pushed apart the logs. Into the gap he squirreled the plushie. His hands came away sooty and tainted by the exercise. He couldn't bring himself to touch the logs again; if the plushie burned without anyone noticing, at least it was one less blasphemy in the world.

He stood, pressing his palms together to keep the filth contained. "I hope you burn, Michel Krigel."

When he left the Training Center, he had his messenger bag dangling from his hands, which were pressed into prayer against his sternum. If anyone thought that Glamour Kinkade was acting odd... well, no one did.