[A/N: Bwaha with two hours to go [my time zone beetches] I finish this 8D Happy Hallowe'en all!
And yes, I suck at making up ghost stories .______. The Hojo costume was Chaos' idea!
Enjoy~!]
"It's fake."
"I know it's fake!"
"Then why are you so scared?"
"I'm not scared."
"You're breathing fast; you're overreacting; you're trembling. There are all the signs that you're scared."
Genesis huffed out a breath in irritation and glared at Sephiroth with as much malice as he could summon. "It made me jump, that's all."
The other made a noise of disbelief, the smirk flitting across his face showing his amusement at Genesis' hollow denials. His eyes glittered, narrowed into slits which served only to magnify the intensity of his gaze. "We've seen worse than this in battle, Genesis. Why does it faze you?"
The redhead shook his head, unconsciously hugging a cushion close to him as he leant close against the back of the sofa as if trying to fall inside it. "This isn't the time for your psychoanalysing, Seph…" He tailed off, blue eyes glued to the screen in front of them, and a wince crossed his face with the acted shrieks filling the room through the speakers. Sephiroth glanced at the film; a gory scene where some girl was being horribly, graphically mutilated by something that looked like a cross between a bloodstained Tonberry and one of Hojo's mechanical creations.
"What is that, anyway? Its weapon doesn't look very practical; surely the multiple implements on it would get in the way of—"
On the other side of the room, Angeal growled and set down his glass with a thunk on the table beside him, casting a look that could have killed far more effectively than whatever the Tonberry-mutant-machine was utilising to hack the main character of the film apart. "Look, you're meant to suspend disbelief for these films!" He pointed accusingly at the two SOLDIERs curled up on the other sofa. "If you two can't stop bickering and nitpicking, we'll have to find something else to do."
Genesis yawned, his fear seemingly completely forgotten, or hidden very well at least. As always. "Why don't we do that?" he said reasonably, unable to resist flicking a dirty glance at Sephiroth or letting a languorous smirk slide onto his lips. "The night is still young…"
While Sephiroth seemed perfectly in accordance with this plan, Angeal shook his head, his stare hard on both of them. "It's Hallowe'en! We have to do something in theme with the occasion!"
"I'm sure I could think of some way to…" Genesis pretended to ponder for a second and then continued, the smile on his face as intimidating as any psychotic serial killer could produce, "… shock you, Geal."
"No, Gen, not in the way you're thinking," the black-haired SOLDIER replied exasperatedly, turning off the television and slipping the disc back into its case, not bothering to turn the lights back on. "I know something we could do!"
He turned when there was no response, and instead of listening he saw the other two were suddenly far more interested in each other; Sephiroth played the part of a ravening monster very well in his apparent attempts to devour Genesis whole, but the redhead was hardly doing a good job of trying to repel the assault – quite the opposite.
Shuffling past them in the dark, Angeal returned from the kitchen after a short riffle through the drawers to find the scene unchanged; inwardly sighing, he shone the torch on them menacingly. Genesis spluttered and broke away from Sephiroth with a gasp, dazzled by bright light magnified by enhanced eyes.
"What are you doing?!" he demanded indignantly, struggling to disentangle himself from Sephiroth's limbs in vain.
"Not very scared now, are you?" Angeal returned, tapping the torch on his forearm with the kind of forgiving smile a mother gave a child hidden behind the electrical beam. Genesis harrumphed.
"I never was," he said haughtily, but the indifferent façade vanished at Sephiroth's low laugh above him. "What?"
The silver-haired man shared a covert glance with Angeal as he sat up, pulling Genesis with him to sprawl back on the sofa. "Nothing, kitten." Overriding Genesis' further complaints and protests, he turned his attention to Angeal, who'd reclaimed his place on the far sofa, settling down in the middle of the dark cushions. "What were you planning to do, Angeal?"
Summoning as ominous a grimace as he could muster, Angeal flicked the torch beam on beneath his face, casting the typical eerie uplighting over his rugged features. "We could tell ghost stories!"
Genesis was unimpressed, and Sephiroth's gaze was simply as flat and emotionless as always.
"I have one," Genesis said, leaning back into Sephiroth contentedly. "One day, there was a gruesome murder in an orchard. A young girl was skewered with an apple tree branch and hung from the very same tree; no one saw who did it or how they escaped, for it was late at night and there had been no moon."
He bent forwards towards Angeal, eyes glittering in the darkness like dark jewels highlighted by the now-downcast torch. "And they say that if you go past there when the moon is hidden, you can see her hanging in the tree. And if you take a branch along with you, she'll steal it and stab you with it as vengeance for how her life was taken from her."
There was silence.
"That is not true."
Genesis puffed out a frustrated breath. "That's not the point, Seph! It's meant to be scary, not factual!"
The silver General blinked down at him, a calmly befuddled expression misting across his face as he absently tapped his fingertips on the arm of the sofa. "But how can it be 'scary' if you know it's impossible?"
Seizing a cushion from his other side, Genesis thwacked his lover with it in exasperation, and turned to Angeal with such a melodramatically despairing expression plastered on his face that the raven-haired SOLDIER almost laughed – but stopped himself. Genesis was more likely to follow Angeal's guiding when he'd given up on Sephiroth, instinctively obeying his oldest friends' wishes if he wasn't distracted by the General as usual. "I don't believe him sometimes," the redhead sighed, jerking a thumb over his shoulder towards a slightly-ruffled looking Sephiroth. "Fine!" he twisted backwards to glare into green mako eyes glowing like orbs in the darkness. "You tell one that is scary then."
Sephiroth shrugged. "How am I meant to know any of these stories?"
"Make one up."
The General looked down at the redhead and up to Angeal as if appealing for help, and back. "… I can't just make one up like that."
Genesis was about to let out a self-important rant but Angeal cut him off sharply, not wishing to let them provoke another of their almost legendary arguments in which it was certain something would be destroyed.
"No, no, I'll tell mine," he rushed, successfully catching Genesis' attention. Angeal inwardly sighed in relief; it was as dangerous as trying to tame a wild beast – Genesis was just as changeable. He flicked on the light under his chin again, straightening his expression to become as stern as it was when he disciplined his students.
"There was once a boy who lived in a village, far away from any cities. He had a normal life, for a farmhand; he worked, he came home, he slept, and he went back to work. But he always thought that he could be doing something else, and every day when he wandered off into the woods alone he pretended that he was anything else. A knight, a mage, a soldier… he became all of these when he went out there.
"One day, he met someone in the woods, crept up upon by a man with hair as red as blood and long, sharp teeth. He smiled at the boy with a touch of malice in his eyes, and when the boy excused himself and started to leave the man was always there in front of him. Scared, he asked if he could get past to go home; the man merely smiled wider.
""I'll let you leave if you deliver this message to a man with hair like the moon itself," he told the boy, catching him by the shoulders. "And if you don't, I'll tear off your limbs and feed them to the wild things, and your soul will never find peace. Agreed?"
"The boy was terrified, but he nodded and the man told him what to say; things that a mere mortal should never have heard, things that would surely damn him if ever anyone found out. But he stayed, and remembered the words, and when the man was finished he started off on his errand, always fearful of the whispering of the trees in case it was the man coming after him; scared of the very touch of his footsteps, not recognising them for his own.
"He decided not to do what the man had told him, and instead struck out for his home. He thought he'd escaped; but then one night, he heard a loud banging outside, and upon opening the door he was faced with—"
The story was cut off by a loud knock on the door, startling all three; Genesis turned to glare at the door with such vehemence that by rights it should have crumbled to dust.
"What is this?" he hissed, unwilling to get up to see; Angeal was not sure whether it was because he was too comfortable snuggled close to Sephiroth, or whether his story contributed to the manner in which Genesis clung to the other, almost as if he wanted to be hidden from whatever was outside.
Even the great General looked slightly perturbed; similarly slow to offer to answer the knock. "I think Angeal should go and see," he said, wide green eyes staring at the raven-haired SOLDIER along with Genesis'. Angeal paused for a second, judging the effectiveness of silence on them.
The empty air was shattered again by another knock, and, raising his eyebrows incredulously at the other two, Angeal pushed himself up to answer it. He felt the gazes of the other two on his back as he moved, purposefully slowly, and settled his hand on the handle. There was an almost silent intake of breath from the sofa; and he opened the door…
… to find a waist-high version of Professor Hojo standing outside. Thrusting a large, almost-full plastic bucket in his face, the mini scientist demanded (in an unconvincing affectation of the Head of Science's nasal tone) "Trick or treat!"
For a second there was a bemused silence before Angeal noticed a Turk lurking to the side of the door, evidently guarding this… thing. A tolerant smile flicked across the SOLDIER's face as he guessed the identity of this visitor, as evidently the two behind him had judging from the hints of hysterical laughter.
Dropping a handful of brightly-coloured sweets into the bucket from the pot he'd insisted on installing by the entrance, Angeal grinned at the disguised Rufus ShinRa, the precocious nine year old they'd all come to view with a mix of fear and apprehension.
"Don't eat them all at once," he advised, and the boy blinked behind thick glasses in indignation.
"I'll do what I want!" he replied, and, without anything else, handed the bucket to the long-suffering Turk and stalked off up the corridor, proclaiming his plans for the rest of the night.
Angeal stared after him in bemusement and then with a shrug turned back to the two SOLDIERs he'd left entangled on the sofa. They stared back; all traces of fear were erased, leaving only the haughty and indifferent eyes he'd grown so used to.
"What now then?" Genesis said.
"Don't you want me to finish the—"
"No!" the redhead cut him off, then backtracked furiously. "Not because it was scary. I want to do something else now."
Angeal shared a tolerant glance with Sephiroth before folding his arms with a sigh. "Apple bobbing it is, then."