Title: Useless

Author: Tsutsuji

Fandom: Pandora Hearts

Pairing: Xerxes Break/Liam Lunettes

Rating: PG/T

Warnings: mostly fluffy (or at least it was meant to be; hints of angst kept trying to sneak into it). not beta'd.

Word count: around 1870

Summary: Liam is generally unnoticeable, at least to most people, most of the time. But not to everyone.

Inspired by a request at the Pandora Hearts Kink Meme, but not so much fulfilling the request as subverting it. (The actual request is at the end.)

It wasn't just the influence of Dormouse that made Vincent nearly doze off in the middle of a meeting at Pandora headquarters, but he didn't mind if that's what everyone thought was the reason. It was really because it was all so boring, as most Pandora meetings were. Another illegal contractor captured, another Chain to be studied; he'd learned all he was interested enough to listen to in the first five minutes, and the rest was just the hot air of people listening to themselves talk. He didn't care if they thought he wasn't paying attention, if that caused some of them to pay less attention to him - not that it was ever safe to assume that.

For example, there was Duke Rufus Barma, looking just as bored with the meeting as Vincent was, only hanging on Lady Cheryl Rainsworth's every word, and there was Lady Rainsworth herself, as aloof and amused as ever. In spite of all appearances, Vincent was certain that neither of them missed a thing that was going around them. In their presence, he preferred to be as easily discounted and as unnoticeable as someone like Liam Lunettes, who had appeared in the corridor with his arms full of files and papers just as the meeting was breaking up. As usually happened, Liam was completely ignored by everyone, including his master. Everyone, that is, except the most irritating member of Pandora of all.

Xerxes Break had at least made a show of being intensely interested in the report of the recent capture, although Vincent suspected that was as much of a pretense as Duke Barma's apparent disinterest. As soon as Break saw Liam, though, he pranced over to him and started making a fuss of interest over the files he was carrying.

Barma didn't turn his head, but Vincent saw his eyes slip to the side to watch their conversation. Break said something in a wheedling, amused tone that made Liam's angled brows dip even lower. The younger Pandora member snapped at him in return, which didn't faze Break in the least. Liam's glasses slipped down his nose so that he was forced to tip his head back at an awkward angle to focus on Break; he couldn't adjust them without risking his grip on the papers, especially with Break rifling through them.

Break's clownish face lit up. With a flourish, he pulled one single sheet of paper from the midst of the stack. Liam gasped, horrified, as the whole mess shuffled like a house of cards, but it didn't scatter after all; Break had extracted that single sheet with a magician's flick of the wrist. Waving it in his hand triumphantly, he turned away with a mocking nod of gratitude to the thoroughly ruffled administrator, and a final, condescending remark about how he really was an expert at desk work.

Break nodded to Lady Rainsworth as he passed her at the door of the meeting room, and she beamed up at him from her chair. But the clownish Pandora member barely acknowledged Rufus Barma in passing, until the duke spoke up and chided Break for taking up too much of Liam's time on his trivialities.

"Liam is not under any obligation to run errands for you, Xerxes Break," Barma reminded him placidly. "He is not your servant, after all."

Break appeared confused for a moment, as if he'd never realized this very obvious fact before. Then, with his usual ridiculous grin, he bowed in exaggerated apology.

"But we're all simply servants of Pandora, aren't we?" he said innocently.

Barma raised an eyebrow at the cheeky reply, but Break pretended not to notice. He danced away down the corridor with his precious sheet of paper, leaving poor Liam with his glasses still askew, red-faced and cringing behind him.

Vincent knew Duke Barma and Break were only bating each other, for no obvious reason beyond habit as far as he could tell. Barma usually appeared to ignore Break as completely as possible, and in Vincent's observation, Liam was merely an accessory to the duke, of less practical importance than his tessen.

So Break played the clown as usual, and Duke Barma watched everything from the corners of his eyes, searching for every scrap of information that might possibly be revealed, as usual. But there was nothing new or interesting here, nothing for Barma to learn, not the merest scrap of information to be netted from this familiar, pointless exchange.

It was all equally pointless as far as Vincent was concerned. He stifled a yawn behind a polite and empty smile at the two Dukes as they passed. Barma wheeled Lady Rainsworth away in her chair down the corridor opposite from the one in which Break had rambled away, and Liam stalked off in another direction with his armload of files.

It was a little disappointing, really; it would be much more convenient for him if someone like Liam did belong to Break, somehow. Then he would be just the kind of pawn Vincent could use to subdue Xerxes Break - someone who did not run the risk of antagonizing Lady Rainsworth, as any threat to Break's young mistress, Lady Sharon, would do sooner or later. But obviously, if there was one thing he and Break could ever agree upon, it was that, for all his diligence and dedication to Pandora, Liam Lunettes was generally of very little use to anyone.

...

Break's mocking grin disappeared as soon as he was out of sight of Vincent Nightray and Duke Rufus Barma. His skin still crawled from the feeling of Vincent's mismatched, deceptively lazy eyes watching his every move, even more closely and more maliciously than the way he knew Rufus Barma watched him. His barely-concealed enemy and his potential enemy, all three of them watching each other and pretending not to, for now. But most importantly, both of them barely noticing Liam in their midst, most of the time, which was exactly how Break intended to keep things.

He glanced at the piece of paper in his hand. It was only mildly interesting, just a tidbit of information gleaned from all the reams of data Liam must have sifted through at Break's request. Probably not all that useful in the long run, more for the show if it than for any practical purpose, he supposed. If nothing else, it provided an excuse for Liam to be seen speaking to Break or visiting Break's room at Pandora, or just in case he was ever careless enough to be observed following Liam back to the private room next to his office, as he did now.

His grin returned when he slipped into the office. Liam had already taken time to sort the borrowed files neatly on his desk during Break's unhurried ramble through the corridors, but he was not seated at his desk behind the stacks. Break deliberately startled him by entering his private inner room through the door, for once, although that also had the practical purpose of making sure both doors were locked shut behind him, just in case.

In the midst of pulling off one of his gloves with his teeth, Liam paused long enough to scowl at him. He snapped the glove off of his hand and started tugging at the other furiously, and opened his mouth to begin the tirade that Break was fully expecting.

Before it could begin, Break stepped up to him and put a finger to his lips. Liam quivered, struck speechless for the moment, although Break hoped that was not entirely from indignant rage, now.

Break tipped his head and peered up at Liam with his most endearing smile. He pulled a bite-sized, ornately frosted cake out of his sleeve, and startled Liam even further by offering it to him. Liam narrowed his eyes, suspicious of this - quite understandably, Break had to admit.

"You're giving me cake, Xerxes?" he said, with a huff of disbelief. "Instead of stealing it off my plate as usual?"

Break pouted. "So untrusting, Liam!" he said. "After I went out of my way to steal this from Oscar just for you, too!"

Liam rolled his eyes, but Break held the cake to his lips until he finally opened his mouth. He let Break feed the little morsel to him, obviously still skeptical and expecting Break to snatch it back and eat it himself at any moment. His lips snapped shut as soon as it was on his tongue.

Break watched with satisfaction as the scowl melted a little; he had made sure the cake was one of Liam's favorites. But even so, as soon as Liam had swallowed the last bite, his eyes narrowed and he returned to sputtering.

"Was it really necessary to make me look like such a fool in front of my master, Xerxes?" he snapped.

Break quickly pulled another of the little tea cakes out for him, from his pocket this time. But now that Liam's indignity had been allowed to bubble to the surface, he wasn't so easily distracted from it again.

"Perhaps not in front of Duke Barma," Break admitted. "But in front of certain other people... "

He remembered bi-colored eyes sliding over the scene outside the meeting room, glancing off of everyone else to rest on him instead, and he shuddered to think of that deceptively sleepy gaze ever focusing its malignant intent fully on Liam.

"My enemies should not also become your enemies, Liam," he said, with a grim smile. "I have quite enough reason to despise Vincent Nightray as it is," he added in a much lower voice.

Liam paused with his mouth open in mid-protest, and scowled even more darkly when he clamped it shut again a moment later.

"Honestly..." he muttered.

He tossed his gloves aside with an angry snap of his wrist. Then, to Break's surprise, Liam grabbed his arm and pulled the hand holding the cake to his lips. He turned Break's hand so that this time, when he took the cake into his mouth, he could curl his tongue and lips around Break's fingers. After it was gone, he carefully licked every crumb and every bit of cream frosting from Break's fingertips.

Liam's eyes closed for a moment, his tense shoulders finally slumped, and he sighed again, happily this time. Then he opened his eyes and pointedly watched Break's face while he continued to suck on his fingers, most suggestively, after the last taste of frosting was gone.

Break didn't bother to hide his reaction from Liam; he closed his eye and let his mouth fall open with a sigh of his own. He leaned in to replace the fingers in Liam's delightfully eager mouth with his own tongue, and hummed contentedly. Under the circumstances, the cake he'd fed to Liam was his own favorite flavor, too.

The first pleasant stirrings of arousal, as they wrapped their arms around each other and the kiss grew deeper, were accompanied by relief. Break had been forgiven, once again, for all the indignities he piled on Liam's capable head.

Even if he hadn't been, though, he would have done the same, because he was quite certain that the best way to keep Liam safe from his own enemies was to make sure that no one, least of all Vincent Nightray, ever saw how important Liam Lunettes really was to him.

~~ the end ~~

(The kink meme request that made me write this: "Okay guys, this anon wants some Vincent/Liam. Vincent recognizes that a good way to hurt Break, is to hurt Liam. Anon would like if Break finds out later about what Vincent's done." Which creeps me out more than I can say, so that's how this fic came to be. Apologies to fans of Vincent!)

Comments are appreciated!