A/N: Yaaay, I wrote for Parakiss again! XD And I tried a new pairing that I think is very pretty indeed- Hiro/Isabella. *giggles* Don't they look so good together?

Sweet mother of mercy, I love this series. How long until volume five again? ;_; *in withdrawal*

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"Diamonds Crawling On Black Velvet"

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Elegant fingers reach out to him, encrusted in beetle-bright rings that the light scuttles over like cockroaches under a spotlight. He accepts them, pulls them in, and kisses each one.

He remembers, once, when he was alone: when no one around him understood his feelings and when those that did had estranged themselves from him. Often, he still feels that way, but this person in front of him has still solved many of those problems.

She is very beautiful- and he does not call her "she" only because that is what she wants to be. Personally, he has always thought that people are what they are, and that the body is really only an incidental part of a person's identity. This is not totally true, but it is the way he sees the world- so in its own way it is true, just not in the way most people might perceive "true" should be.

But he is a hopeless person by nature. Hopelessly foolish, hopelessly romantic, hopelessly lonely.

And always, always, hopelessly in love.

So he kisses her fingers, her palms, her wrists; kisses her lace- shrouded neck and the hands wrapped in tight lace gloves.

Black. Black lace, delicate and fitting like another skin, leaving its pattern pressed into her skin. Not dull funeral black either, but midnight black: the purest, darkest color that he can imagine, the same color as her velvet dress that looks like it deserves to have diamonds and not just rhinestones studding it. The same color of his eyes that are so easy to get lost in, though he does not know that.

He has never understood why she looks at him kindly, why she finds him worthy. After all, he is less than Arashi, who won Miwako's affections. Certainly he is less than George, who made this woman's first dress.

It is his desire, however, to become, if not actually better than them, then at least their equals. He would like to feel like he is passably worth her attention.

What Hiro does not know is that he is already everything that Isabella and her beetle-bright rings have ever wanted.

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. finale .

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. : scarab rings : .