Here is just a little holiday fluff piece I promised to write for Ducky, Free, Peachi, Pinki, Spicy and the rest of you. Hope you enjoy it. (hopefully, I can get the next chapter done before next year..ha hahahaha!)

Disclaimer: Not mine. I own nothing. I am trying to bring some holiday cheer.

Dancing with Vettriano

Chapter 1: The Escapade

Something extraordinary was holding him down, trapping him beneath its weight. He tried to move, but there were things against his sides, across his legs, and his arms. He was pinned in place. Trapped. Someone was holding him down, preventing him from moving. He was beginning to panic.

With a sharp intake of breath, V's eyes flew open and his body flinched. It was a dream, he suddenly realized, blinking sleep away. He was dreaming.

Lying very still, he let his heart settle and his breathing even. He could feel sweat on the few areas of his body still possessing sweat glands and over all, he was hot. Roasting in fact. The weight still pressed against his chest and one of his arms was numb. There were things pressing his side and across his legs, making him extremely claustrophobic and itching to be free.

Glancing down, V noted the soft, fine brownish blonde hair of his son's head as he nestled further into his chest. One of the baby's arms was draped across his shoulder and the other hung loosely at his side. There was a puddle of drool directly above his heart as his son whimpered and made smacking noises with his mouth.

Slowly turning his head to the right, he had expected to see his wife snuggled into his side, lying on his arm. Instead he looked into the innocent face of his daughter, who was sleeping soundly. Her long blonde hair spread out on the pillow next to his head and her body pressed close to his. A movement on his left indicated another one of his children had snuck into his bed.

He remembered the baby crying and retrieving it before it woke the household, but he did not remember his twins sneaking their way into his room as well. The previous evening had been their birthday and he was not too surprised they had drifted into the room with upset stomachs seeking their mother. Next to him, his middle son stirred, clinging on to him as if he were a life preserver in a stormy sea; his blonde head lying awkwardly off the side of the mattress. Eyeing the amount of room the young boy had, V was surprised the child was even in the bed.

Shifting slightly so his son would not fall, V raised his head and looked across his daughter in search of his wife. Sure enough, she was there, lying on her stomach with an arm across their daughter's back. But, he quickly realize, his wife now sported two heads, one sprouting from her back. The second head, its honey-brown hair mingling with its mother, belong to none other than his oldest child. Somehow Victor was laying with his head in the center of his mother's back, his long body stretched under his sister's legs and his legs draped over his father's. V smiled. It was no wonder Eamon was barely on the edge of the bed, especially with his brother's feet pressing against his chest and stomach.

His family.

Silently V thanked the heavens for the brood piled on top of himself and his wife. It was amazing how they managed to sneak into their bed and sleep in the amazing positions they managed to achieve. It was amazing, even more amazing, V thought, he and Evey even managed to conceive their youngest, Valerian, with their other children constantly abandoning their own rooms.

Next to him, V felt his daughter stir. Glancing at her, he watched her bright blue eyes open and stare into his own before closing again as she snuggled deeper against him. On his chest the baby's whimpering was increasing as was the smacking sounds of his lips. Small hands clutched at him and the little body stretched, indicating feeding time was very, very near. There was also something warm and wet on his belly, spreading quickly down his sides.

Enya lifted her head and sleepily looked at her hand trying to determine what it was which had just awakened her. She blinked and looked at her father, sleep preventing her from comprehension.

'Your brother just wet on us,' mumbled V quietly.

His daughter looked at her hand, her mind still foggy. 'Huh?'

'He peed Enya. Val just pissed on us. That is what is on your hand.'

For a moment the blue eyes just stared, then suddenly grew wide. 'Ooooh. Yuck, yuck, yuck,' she cried sitting bolt upright and flailing her arm around, wiping her hand on the blankets. 'Disgusting! Yuck!'

As Enya moved, she jolted her baby brother causing him to wake with a start and a scream. Eamon, startled at the loud, piercing cry echoing through the room flinched and fell from the high bed, landing on the floor in a heap while Victor screeched in pain as his sister climbed over him still braying forth her disgust. Evey, suddenly wide awake, attempted to wiggle her way out of the bed and survey the chaos underway. For his part, V sat up and tried to soothe the child his arms. Swinging his long legs off the side of the bed, he carefully stepped over his middle son.

'Are you damaged?' he asked while standing and running his hand up and down the baby's small back.

'No,' came an angry reply. 'But that hurt.'

'I am certain it did.' V looked at his wife. 'Evey?'

'Go on,' she waved him away, turning her attention to her son howling in pain from the middle of the bed.

With a nod, V headed towards the bathroom only to discover his daughter at the basin, furiously scrubbing her hand. In his arms, Valerian was beginning to settle.

'Enya, away with you. I need to bathe your brother and myself.'

The little girl glanced up at the boy in her father's arms. 'Why did you have to have him Daddy? We were fine with just the three of us.' Turning off the water, she grabbed a towel from the wrack. 'I mean, couldn't we have gotten a puppy or a kitty or something instead?'

'Your brother said the same thing about you when you were small young lady,' he replied calmly while setting the baby down and beginning to remove the little boy's pajamas. 'Now I believe you and Victor are quite fond of each other are you not?'

'No, we're not.'

V smiled. 'Of course you are not, it is merely a figment of my imagination you like your brother.' He glanced at the scowl on his daughter's face and chuckled. 'Now away with you and shut the doors as you go.' As his daughter stomped from the room, V grinned down at his son. 'Someone forgot your nighttime knickers didn't they, Valerian? We shall have to speak with Mummy about this shan't we? We'll have to see who dressed you last night.'

The little boy stared up into his father's ruined and mangled face, oblivious to its scars and laughed. At eight months old, he was still very uncertain at all the activity which was constantly happening around him, but he was learning to accept it.

Discarding his own pajama pants and underwear, V turned on the shower and lifted the baby into his arms. 'Let us wash up, Val. We shall be nice and clean and then we will go and help Mummy change the bed and feed the pride.'

Valerian stared at his father with bright blue eyes, blowing bubbles between his lips. 'Da.'

V grinned. 'That's right, I'm Daddy.'

VEV

Sometime later when all the children where calmed, fed, bathed and dressed, Evey Hammond, Prime Minister of England and its surrounding territories, sat at her small kitchen table reviewing a pile of papers.

'Mummy?'

'Hmmm?'

'Can we go out today? By ourselves?'

Evey looked up from her papers, her eyes questioning her oldest son from behind the spectacles resting on her nose. 'Go where, Honey?'

'The twins and I want to go Christmas shopping, Mummy. We only want to go up the street to the shops. We thought we would take Val.'

Evey looked shocked. 'Val? Why?'

Victor blinked his large brown eyes in complete sincerity. 'We can't pick out a gift from all of us if he's not included. If we did, then it would just be a gift from most of us.'

A smile played at the corner of Evey's mouth as she considered her son. He still amazed her. He looked like his father, he sounded like his father, he even had his father's air of seriousness, but his thought process was completely his own. 'I believe Val is still a little too young to be assisting in your decision-making process, Honey.'

The boy shifted from one foot to another, the look on his face apprehensive. It did not take a genius to figure out Victor and his siblings had an ulterior motive for requesting their baby brother's presence on their outing. 'But Mummy, we must have him. Just for an hour or so, maybe less.' The boy grinned his father's grin, a knowing smile creeping across his face as a thought dawned on him. 'If we had Val, you and Daddy would be alone. There would be no one around to bother you and you could do what you want.'

Evey blanched. 'Victor,' she snapped harshly. 'You are ten years old. I do not think you are old enough to imply what I hope you are not implying.'

The smile on the boy's face grew larger. 'Oh, Mummy. You and Daddy are always doing that. Always. Remember, I can hear you and I can hear Daddy complaining because you are not doing that.'

'Victor, my darling, you are older than your years.'

'Yes, Mummy,'

Evey eyed her son, 'How do you propose to keep up with a baby and two seven-year- olds? You're not going to sell your brother are you? You haven't been trying to auction him off like you did your sister?'

The boy shook his head, growing serious again. 'Oh no, Mummy. I learned my lesson. I can almost sit again since Daddy punished me for trying to get rid of Enya. Honestly, Mummy. We are only going to the shops. We will not cross the street or talk to strangers or anything. Right there and right back. We'll take the mobile and Daddy can watch us on the surveillance if you want.'

'I don't like the idea of you out on your own.'

'We can take someone from the office.'

'Victor.' Evey drew in a deep breath, preparing for one of her lectures. 'No one from my staff is willing to go anywhere with any of you after what you did. Sword fighting in the residence, re-enacting the fight scene from the Count of Monte Cristo like your Daddy does. You scared them to death, especially when Eamon pushed you off the roof.' She shook her head, trying to hide the smile playing at the corner of her lips as she remembered being dragged out of Parliament by a shrieking assistant. She had listened patiently to the details, asked if any child was injured, and then shrugged and returned to her committee meeting assuring her assistant it was normal behavior for her children. In truth, she was glad V had not joined in.

'Mummy, please,' cut in her son, 'Worm and Booger will help watch Val. We'll be back quickly. We know what we want and where it is. You can time us. Please, Mummy please.'

With a sigh, Evey conceded defeat. 'You have thirty minutes.'

'An hour.'

'Thirty-five minutes.'

'Fifty-five minutes?'

'Forty-five minutes and not a moment more. If you are not back here in that amount of time…with all your siblings, I am sending your father after you.'

Victor nodded. 'Agreed. Thank you, Mummy. Um, bye Mummy.'

Moving as quickly as he could, the boy raced out of the room.

'What did she say?' asked his sister the moment her brother appeared in the hallway. 'Did you screw it up? Can we take the wizzer?'

'We have forty-five minutes. She's going to time us and if we don't make it she's sending Daddy to get us.'

'Daddy? No, Ick. That's horrible.' Eamon looked at his brother, scrunching up his blue eyes in disgust. 'Remember the last time.'

'I know, I know,' shushed his brother. 'We can do it. I'll go get Val and his perambulator. We'll need it. I told Mummy we were going to the shops so, Booger, go grab that bag you got on Saturday? We can say we went to the same store. Worm, go work on getting some money from Daddy so it looks real.'

VEV

V knew his daughter was up to something the moment he saw her face. Mischief was written all over the little girl.

'Daddy?' asked Enya innocently as she hobbled into the library. 'Daddy, are you busy?'

'Yes.'

'Oh,' she looked crestfallen.

Shutting his book, V considered his daughter. 'But I have a moment for you, cub. What is it you need?'

'Money, Daddy. Mummy said we can have forty-five minutes to go to the shops to buy your Christmas present. We need some money.' As she spoke, the little girl climbed into her father's lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. 'Can we have some, please Daddy? Pretty please?'

V chuckled, hugging his daughter to him. 'And how much do you need, little one?'

'Enough to buy you a present. Except…except Mummy says if we are a moment late, she is going to send you after us and…Daddy…it's Christmas and…and I am not certain if we can do it in forty-five minutes. Maybe fifty minutes, but not forty-five. I think we can make it if it's fifty minutes. We know where it is and what we want.'

V watched his daughter, a smile playing at the corners of his lips behind his mask.

'Hmm,' he intoned. 'You have a good point, but still forty-five minutes is a long time for three young children to be on their own in the shops.'

'Nuh huh, Daddy. Not when you go to the shops on the corner. We can spend days in the shops on the corner.'

V grinned; glad the mask hid his amusement. 'You have forty-seven minutes and not a moment more. Do not make me come and find you again. This time I will not be so lenient.'

'Yes Daddy.'

Standing, so his daughter dangled from his neck, V crossed to his desk and pulled out a drawer. Reaching inside he extracted four ten pound notes and returned to his chair, settling his child back onto his lap as he sat. 'I expect change from this.'

Enya took the money, a smile spreading across her face. 'Thank you Daddy.' Leaning over, she kissed the cheek of his mask and climbed from his lap to bounce from the room.

'Enya.'

'Yes Daddy?'

'You had better return with all your siblings. There will be no selling, auctioning, giving someone away, having them arrested or trying to push them in front of a lorry.'

'Yes, Daddy.'

With a grin, she fled the room.

VEV

Eamon, Enya, and Victor Hammond stood, not in the shops on the corner of their street, but in the museum three blocks away. Before them was a small-to-medium-sized painting of a man and a woman dancing on a moonlit beach. The man was tall, dressed in black, his head turned so only his black hair and broad shoulders could be seen. In his arms, he held a woman close. His arm wrapped around her waist in a loving embrace.

The woman in the painting wore a long, flowing white gown. Her brown hair in a stylish bun on her head, small earrings dangling from her ears and long white gloves encasing the slender arm she draped across the man's shoulder. Like the man's, her head was turned, looking at the moon and the silhouettes of other dancers further up the beach.

The three children stared at the painting while their little brother Valerian sat comfortably in his perambulator, cooing at them.

'Just look at it, Ick,' exhaled Eamon in breathless wonder. 'It's them, it really is them.'

Next to him, his brother nodded.

'Yeah, it is.' Leaning forward, he looked at the name plate on the wall.

'What's it say Victor?' asked Enya. 'Have you heard of this Vic-tri-a-na person before? Is it really Mummy and Daddy?'

He shook his head. 'It's Vettriano and no, I don't think so. The date is wrong for it to be them, but it starts with a V, so Daddy and Mummy should like it. It's called Dance me to the End of Love. They should really like that too.'

The twins nodded their heads in agreement.

Looking at his watch, Victor glanced at their baby brother. They had less than thirty-five minutes to pull off their stunt and get home with their prize and their little brother before their father came to find them.

'Okay, know what to do?' he asked his brother and sister.

'No problem,' answered Enya lifting her baby brother from his seat and moving towards the hallway. I'll go drop him somewhere down the hall and make him cry. Then I'll go to the guard and say he crawled away and I lost him."

'Wait,' Victor thought for a moment. 'Let's change. I'll look more pathetic and you don't look old enough to be watching him on your own. ' He reached for Valerian and settled him on his shoulder. 'Give me five minutes. In the meantime take the codes I downloaded from daddy's computer and turn off the alarms. You should be able to get the painting off the wall then.'

The two little children nodded. 'What do we do when we get it down?'

'Put it in Val's perambulator and cover it up with his blankets, then look innocent and worried. We need to give it a good act. We can't get caught or let them call Dominic or Eric or…' he gulped, 'Mummy and Daddy.'

The children nodded in agreement. 'Okay.'

'Okay, let's do it.

'Right,' said Enya. 'One, two, three, and we have Mummy and Daddy's present.'

The twins looked at one another and grinned.

'Ready?' asked Eamon.

'Go' replied Enya.

The children moved into action.

Author's Request…

Okay, the scene is set. Tune in again to see if they manage to get the painting for their parents and if they misplace the baby. Will they get home on time or will Daddy have to come after them? Since I haven't written the next chapter, tell me what you would like to see happen in this story and I may add it in as a holiday gift!!!! See you on the review page with your suggestions. Belmont-Bellamy

A special thank you to VveritasV for doing the beta thing!