So... this is my one- shot for Hikari- the- nekoangel's contest. I hope you all enjoy!
"Yahoo!" The energetic shout rang through the Cadelle household, and Christina yelped and barely ducked from her place on the stairs as a black and white blur rushed down the banister.
"LUCAS! WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!" Christina yelled after him, struggling with her grip on the box of Christmas ornaments, "Bao, Chris, one of you, I need a hand!"
"Sorry to say sis, but Nef's got me busy with the tree!" Came Chris' shout back.
"Coming Crissie!" Bao bounded up the stairs, and took the box from his girlfriend with a chuckle.
Christina grumbled, "Where's Aguma? He's supposed to be helping with the heavy stuff."
"Kuro's got him on the roof, stringing up lights." Bao replied, walking downstairs, "These go to the tree, right?"
"Yep. And I'm leaving you to getting the rest of the stuff out of the attic, Bao. I need to start on the food." Christina headed off towards the kitchen, halting in the doorway and glaring at the back of a certian ginger headed, ice eyed teen...
"LUCAS! IF YOU EAT ALL OF THE COOKIES, THERE ISN'T GONNA BE ANYMORE LEFT FOR TONIGHT!" Christina shouted.
Lucas yelped, and then turned and ran out of the kitchen- but not before grabbing about five chocolate chip and five sugar cookies.
Christina sighed.
She could only imagine the chaos that kid would cause this evening, when he reached the peak of his sugar high.
The doorbell rang about six o' clock, and Lucas shouted, "I got it!"
"Oh, no! I got it!" Chris called.
There was the sound of pounding feet, and a few well placed insults, before Christina heard the sound of the door being flung open.
"Wales!" Christina heard Lucas shout, and there was a yell of shock followed by a yelp of pain.
"Christina!" The girl heard her brother call, "How much sugar has Luke had today?"
"He's been sneaking in and out of the kitchen all day for sugar and chocolate cookies!" Christina called back.
"Oh, great!" The blonde heard Nero Konzern groan, "So we have to deal with a sugar high kid?"
"Hey!" Lucas shouted, "Take that back! I am not on a sugar high! I'm just excited!"
"I'd beg to differ." Wales' voice said, a slight hint of pain in it.
Christina sighed as she started to hear the beginnings of an arguement.
"Finally, you calm down enough for us to tolerate you." Bao said in Lucas' direction. Said McKandless was on the floor, shaking a wrapped box around.
Wales plucked it out of his hands, "If you don't stop that, I'm taking this back home and you won't get it until next year."
Lucas pouted.
"Oh, today's been exauhsting!" Kuro groaned, collapsing on the couch, "I miss the old days."
"You're one to talk. You weren't on the top of the house all day stringing lights!" Aguma exclaimed, "And what are the old days?"
Kuro smirked and looked at her brother, who chuckled. Together, they responded.
"Oh, just the Blackheart Bar Brawls."
Kuro and Bao cracked up laughing.
"Remember last year, sis?" Bao asked, "Beck sent me to the hospital with a black eye and few broken ribs!"
"Or two years ago when Jack got so drunk that he started singing Christmas songs- Klara and Beck threw him out into the cold until he sobered up! And then he literally could've passed as Jack Frost when he walked inside!" Kuro cackled.
"You're family's weird." Nefertiti shook her head.
"Oh, and what about the Storm's Christmas?" Bao caught his breath, gasping and coughing for air.
Nile and Nefertiti looked at each other.
"Oh, nothing special. We just pull pranks on each other." Nefertiti shrugged.
"Rather... dangerous pranks." Nile muttered.
"Okay... don't wanna know." Christina clicked her tounge.
"And before you ask," Chris started, "We Cadelle's spend our Christmas' normally- with family. This is the first year we've had just friends."
"Oh well, first time for everything." Kuro shrugged.
Soon, everyone was trading stories on how they spent their Christmases past, not noticing that one boy who had been earlier jumping off the wall was remaining quiet and sullen.
As soon as the laughter resided from Madoka telling a Christmas story on how Kyoya and Gingka had wrapped Benkei in Christmas lights, he spoke.
"You guys are lucky." He said, coldly.
All heads turned to him.
"What do you mean Lucas?" Kuro asked, oblivious to the meaning of the boy's sentence.
"You all have memories you remember, or bits and pieces of a memory you want to remember fully. Me? I want to forget mine completely." Lucas stood up, half glad that some of the people in front of him were beginning to understand the true meaning of Lucas' statement.
Only one dared to ask how he spent his.
"What... were your Christmas' like?" Yuu asked, softly.
Almost instantly, both Tsubasa and Wales slapped him upside the head. Tsubasa, because Yuu had asked a stupid- and possibly hurtful- question, and Wales because he knew the answer and was feeling guilty for leaving his brother out of all the fun.
Well, too late for that.
"Oh, I don't know." Lucas said sarcastically, "Maybe that was the one day of the year that my dad let every man he knew have his way with me! Maybe it was because it was actually a double holiday for me?!" Lucas shook his head, "Whatever. I'm outta here."
With that statement, Lucas turned on his heel and stormed out of the room.
After a few minutes of silence, Nero turned to Wales, asking, "Do I even wanna know what he meant by 'double holiday'?"
Wales sighed and ran a hand through his hair, suddenly looking tired, "Yeah. Lucas was born on the twelfth gong at midnight on Christmas Eve fourteen, well, technically fifteen now, years ago." Wales shook his head, "He hates this day of the year, just because of the memories. They cause his worst nightmares."
"But he was running up and down the hallways all day today!" Ryuto protested.
"Because he was with people he could trust all day. Today must've been the first time he's ever had a real Christmas." Kakeru said, quickly coming to a conclusion, "And then us bringing up some of our favorite memories of Christmas, that must've brought his worst memories up."
"We were bringing up his past up without realizing it." Sophie murmured.
A silence fell over the group. Kuro finally broke it.
"Wales, how much does Lucas like surprises?" Kuro asked, mysteriously.
Wales simply raised an eyebrow.
"Hey." Wales said, walking up next to his brother, who was leaning against the wooden fence at the front of the Cadelle's front lawn. From where he was standing at, he could see all the Christmas lights in the town below the hill the Cadelle Estate sat at.
"What do you want? Not like you were trading some good old stories like I didn't exist." Lucas said, icily.
There was no response to that, except for a jacket being draped over Lucas' bare, goosefleshed arms. The boys sighed, his breath coming out in a puff of white air.
"Maybe so... I just wasn't thinking Lucas, I'm sorry." Wales leaned on the rail as well, and Lucas noticed for the first time that the jacket over his shoulders was actually his brother's.
"The hell?! You need this more than I do! I'm used to the cold, remember?!" Lucas started to take the jacket off, but Wales stopped him but grabbing his wrists.
"Stop it. Just leave the damn thing on." Wales said, sternly.
Knowing there was no room to argue, Lucas reluctantly kept the jacket on. Wales let go of his brother.
"Thanks... I guess." Lucas said.
"Better I suffer something that you did, on today, at least."
Lucas shook his head, "Being cold and hungry wasn't the half of it, and you know it."
"I know... But still." Wales sighed.
A silence fell over the two brothers, Lucas looking at the twinkling Christmas lights, while Wales looked up at the sparkling stars.
"Other than the terror of what dad did to you... is there anything you ever wished for on Christmas?" Wales asked suddenly.
"You'll find it stupid." Lucas replied, but his tone was wistful.
"Try me."
Lucas sighed, but explained anyways.
"You know how much I love the cold and snow, right?" Lucas asked.
"Yeah."
"Well... I always dreamed of finding you one day... Going to Russia where it's snowy. In the last couple of years, I've found out that I'm a pretty good snowboarder. I added on to my dream of finding you that we'd just have a day together, you know, just brothers being brothers and having a little fun-"
"You mean going to Russia and you teaching me to snowboard?" Wales asked, a little dryly.
"Well... you surfboard and there's really not that much of a difference, so I guess... Just us on a little bonding trip." Lucas sighed, "Told you, you think it's stupid, don't you?"
"Not at all. Actually," Wales chuckled, "I've thought a lot about teaching you to surfboard."
"I hate water, unless it's frozen. And surfboarding means being on a beach, and people only go to the beach on a hot day- I don't do hot, remember?"
"Ah... not Julian's private beach. That place doesn't even go above eighty degrees, believe me."
Lucas laughed- a real laugh. Not a cold chuckle, or heartles cackle. An actual laugh.
Wales smiled a little.
Seemed as though his brother was feeling a bit better.
"You get all of that Aleksi?" Madoka asked her friend over webcam. She closed out the comms voice recorder.
"Yes I did Madoka. And I'm sure Lera could talk to her dad and have him open his snow lodge for several hours just for a special event. Just tell me when." The teen replied with a smile as said pinkette appeared in the screen.
Kuro appeared over Madoka's shoulder, "Tomorrow, if possible?"
Lera grinned, "Easy! What times though?"
"Hmm... Say, two in the afternoon until seven in the evening?"
"Done! I'll call my dad right now and have Aleksi call you back!"
The video conference closed out.
Kuro straightened, a smile on her face.
"Well, I'm sure Lucas is gonna be overjoyed tomorrow morning when he sees the private jet tickets." Kuro chuckled.
"Whoo- hoo! Merry Christmas!" A male voice echoed in the hallways.
"Geez, and I thought I was the one who was on the sugar rush." Lucas sweatdropped as Ryuto ran into the room, falling on to his stomach- purposely- and bulldozing into the piles of gifts at the base of the tree.
Lucas tossed a sugar cube in the air, ready to catch it with his mouth, but someone swiped it in mid- arc.
"Hey!" Lucas turned to the culprit, seeing Wales smirk as he popped the sugar cube in his mouth. The younger of the brothers sighed.
"Well, let's start opening the gifts!" Kuro called, picking up one, "Let's see... first one goes to... Ryuto!"
Said boy popped up from the pile of gifts, reaching his hands out in a 'gimmie' motion.
The second the box was in his hands- one that was decorated in orange wrapping with black dragons. Wonder who got it for him?- and tore into the box.
"Oh... NO WAY!" Ryuto yelled as he lifted up a gold dragon with ruby eyes from the box. He whipped on Ryuga, who was trying to sneak out. The younger of the Katashi's tackled his older brother, "THANK YOU!"
"Yeah, yeah, get off!" Ryuga snapped, pushing his brother off him.
Over the next few hours, the gifts were traded until there was only one left- one for a rather dejected certain now fifteen year old McKandless...
"And the final one, is for Lucas!" Kuro tossed the box to the ginger haired teen.
Lucas frowned, "Just one gift?"
"Trust me, it tops any gift you could ever wish for." Wales whispered in his ear.
"I doubt that." Lucas mumbled, but opened the box anyways, "Plane tickets?"
"Ah!" Kuro said, "Look again!"
Lucas read the tickets again, his eyes widening in disbelief.
"Two private jet tickets... to Russia? Today?" Lucas whispered.
"Pick whoever you-" Kuro was cut off.
"Where's the jet?" Lucas asked.
"About two miles... The Cadelle private hangar." Christina spoke up.
"Wales!" Before anyone could blink, Lucas was dragging his brother out the door.
"I'm beginning to regret my decision." Wales groaned as he once again busted himself from a human snowball.
Lucas laughed as he braked on his snowboard, kicking up snow in his brother's face. Wales scowled.
"Oh, come on! It's just like surfboarding!" Lucas exclaimed, before pulling Wales' tobaggan down over his eyes.
"Hey!" Wales ripped the hat off, "How would you know, anyways! You've never surfboarded! I swear, next year, I'm taking you to the ocean on my birthday!"
Lucas stuck his tounge out at his brother.
Wales sighed, before bending over, as though to unclip his feet from his snowboard. In all reality, he was really making a snowball.
"Hey, Luke..." Wales said.
"Yeah?" Lucas turned to his brother. Almost instantly, a snowball crashed into his face.
"Hey!" Lucas tried to stumble backwards, but due to his feet still buckled on to his board, he only succeeded in falling backwards in the snow.
Lucas growled, and quickly unclipped his board, jumping to his feet, a snowball in hand. Wales' grin disappeared.
"It's. On." Lucas growled.
Wales bolted.
"Shouldn't they be back by now? I mean, it's nine o' clock-" Kuro was cut off as the front door of the Cadelle mansion sprung open, and in skipped an overly cheery Lucas, with a teeth chattering Wales close behind.
"Wow." Kuro arched an eyebrow, "I trust it went well?"
"Wales just about froze to death!" Lucas sang.
"Because you practially buried me in snow!" Wales protested.
Christina walked in, chuckling, "Looks like you could use some hot chocolate."
She held said beverage out to the teen.
Wales took it graciously from the blonde, taking down a swallow of the drink.
"Ohh..." Wales groaned in relief, "Thank you..."
"No problem."
"Hey, Wales?" Lucas said, walking over to his brother.
"What?" Wales said, shaking his head and getting his tobaggan off.
"Thank you." Lucas said, wrapping his arms around his brother's midsection in a hug, "For the best Christmas ever."
Wales could only smile and hug his brother back, thankful that Lucas had finally gotten the one thing he had always dreamed of.