Harry Potter/Much Ado About Nothing

Title: Perfection

Author: Chipmunki

Rating: T

Summary: Don John has too much on his mind to even consider manipulating the peons – like that beautiful Harrison.

There was celebration in the air the day Don John, his kingly brother and his men rode into Mecena. It infected them all, even Conrad and Borachio were gazing about with gleeful eyes at the upcoming household. Only John remained unmoved, having felled many a man in the war and yet received no praise or recognition for it. Not like the young, lion hearted Claudius.

John's black mood grew as his surveyed with dark eyes the group of men around him. While they jumped and frolicked he preferred to wash himself at a statelier pace, making sure to rub away the dirt and grime accumulated in his travels he was sure his comrades would miss. He was done long before them though, and left to avoid the noise and happy discord of it all. He waited for his men and saw a flash of white from the corner of his eye and, thinking it was one of those women in the bright dresses that ran across the land in greeting to them, ignored it. Then a dark splotch of wild black invaded the edged of his vision and he tiredly turned, his mind withdrawing from itself and its darkened thoughts to look at the creature in front of him.

He was not a woman like John had originally thought, but a man, barely out of boyhood. He was small and slender, with exotic tanned skin and hair darker and like a creation of chaos, completely untamed, attractive to John. But it was his eyes. So green, so wild and passionate, he could tell the person he was viewing, see into them, with just those eyes to guide him.

At a second glance, Don John could hardly believe he mistook this man for a female. He may have been smaller than John, and share the essence of the same vulpine features, but there was a patch of stubble on his defined jawbone that spoke of puberty and a certain masculinity of the lines of his eyebrows and his jaw. It like there was a battle between man and woman on his face. With man in the skeleton and the brow, but feminine in the reddened round lips and freckled nose. John would have thought it would be ugly, too unsettled and unsettling to be beautiful or handsome. But instead Don John 'The Bastard' found as he stared at the man before him that it was...

Perfection.

oOo

Love was in the air. Claudius was shooting Hero entranced peeks lovesick fool, and Hero was glancing and blushing back. And they weren't the only ones. Although Beatrice would never fall in love with a man – or be fallen in love with either, she could easily recognise the stare from Don John at her cousin Harry. Normally, it would bother her; Don John the Bastard had a dark reputation for being a villain but with the way Harrison was smiling to himself she thought it best to leave it up to him. Harry, well, he could be a cunning and deceptive as the next snake when he wanted too, and the boy took the phrase 'trickster' to a whole new level.

But she did watch them, whenever she wasn't too distracted by that idiot Benedict.

oOo

With Beatrice's quick tongue and large social circle the news of Don John and Harry's mutual attraction (nobody would call it wooing, because it seemed that even though Don John was making the moves Harry was very much in control of the entire situation and very good at manipulating both his suitor and everyone else in his quest to rile John up) Harry was so very in control of the situation that the others felt no need to involve the Prince or his crazy schemes. Beatrice and Benedict however...

They were in dire need of help.

oOo

There was madness after Borrachio and Conrad's plan. The Prince looked around for his brother, sure to see him making a hasty exit. He must have been involved in this plan.

Don found his brother, conspicuously absent in all of this madness, kneeling at the feet of his friend's ward, eyes warmer and happier than they had ever been. The prince's face fell slack with shock, but also amusement. It seemed Benedict was not the only contrary man to fall in love this summer.