Sephiroth took a deep breath and then let it out. It was a calm autumn day and the leaves were falling off of the trees, strewn about on his path. He was walking from his car to the school auditorium, and his mind definitely wasn't on what it should've been on.
He'd met the most amazing man, the most sinfully erotic person he'd ever had the privilege of coming into contact to.
And he was owned.
Seventeen and owned by a man thirteen years his senior. It was enough to make a grown man swoon, but swoon Alucard hadn't. No, he'd taken up his burden and shouldered it like a man should. Sephiroth smirked as he shoved his hands in his pockets, stepping in past someone else to make his way to his seat in the auditorium. Taken up the burden and made it into his own unique flavor. And what a flavor it was.
They'd been dating for all of two weeks and Sephiroth knew that he was irrevocably in love with the mechanic. However, what was he to do about the situation? Prom was coming up, he had senior pictures, and graduation. Oh, hallowed graduation. He slipped his hand out of his pocket to press his fingers against the glass of the second double-door, climbing the steps to take a seat next to Zack, his best friend. He saw the black-haired boy send a strange look over his way, but he just smiled like the cat who ate the canary and settled down to listen to the motivational speaker.
*********
Alucard was irate. He growled, kicking the hub cap of the car he'd been working on. The car that was trying to eat him. It'd slammed down on his hand, the hood had, and he didn't appreciate it one bit. Even with gloves on, it had hurt like a bitch and he wasn't going to let it go without a fight. He looked over his shoulder through the shaggy mane of black strands and saw Rude, his boss, giving him a quizzical look. Grumbling, the thirty year old turned around and resumed work on the piece of shit, determined to turn it out of the garage so that he could go home soon.
He wasn't feeling well, Alucard wasn't. Maybe he wasn't up to keeping up to a seventeen year old? That thought had crossed his mind as he'd tried to stay up at the rate that Sephiroth could. The boy could sit up all night and laugh and smile and do other various and sundry things that a teenager wasn't supposed to do. He could catch one or two hours of sleep and then wake up refreshed to go to school
Alucard remembered those times. He'd been a seventeen year old only thirteen years before. Only? Hell, that was thirteen years ago. He still acted young, still viewed things as youthfully as age and experience required, but he found that he just couldn't keep the hours that the younger man did. If one would even consider him a man. Was he to call him a boy or a man? He was in the junction between and while it was sinful to have such a creature, he couldn't help what his heart steered his body toward.
"Hey Red! Catch!" He looked up just in time to snag a crescent wrench from the air. "You look like you are having trouble with ze car, yes?" Pip smirked as he stepped up, peering down at the hood. "Get you mind out of ze gutter and get to work. Boss's orders." The one-eyed Frenchman laughed and turned, zipping his jumpsuit up a little more and then walking off.
Alucard grumbled and turned back to his work, though he wasn't entirely happy with the orders or his thoughts.
*********
"Are you sure that he's going to like this?" Lucrecia raised a brow at the recipe and then looked over at her son. It had taken her awhile to get over the relationship, the depth of it and the implications, but she was over it and now she was curious. "You've never brought me anything specifically to make. He must really be special."
"Yeah, he's special." Sephiroth popped a piece of cheese in his mouth, watching as his mother prepared the ingredients. "He has this big old flag that's framed in his kitchen. It's really tattered, and if it wasn't for the glass, it might fall apart. I asked him about it and he said he was Bulgarian and he'd been back there once with his grandmother. I thought maybe... You know, he works so hard, I figured he might want a taste of what he could remember from when he was ten?"
Lucrecia didn't like her son's choice of a man, but she respected what she saw that had come out in the teenager. He'd never been selfish, had always put others above himself to a certain degree, but this man seemed to bring out an air of maturity in the teenager that she'd never seen before. Sephiroth didn't go looking for old recipes for Eric or Sven or Troy or any of the other young men he'd dated. This was entirely and uniquely Alucard that he wanted to look after, and she had to wonder why. "Why do you care about him so much? About how he works, Sephiroth? Is he really important to you?"
The silver youth stared down at the white cheese, picking another piece off the top of the pile. "He's really important to me. He hasn't said he loves me yet, but I know he does, and I know I feel the same way about him. I'm glad, and I don't think I ever want to go away from him."
Lucrecia started to assemble the ingredients, slapping her son's hand away from cheese as she raked it all into a container. "You know, I read that male relationships don't last all that long."
She looked up into sad green eyes that were contrasted with the biggest, brightest smile she'd ever seen on a boy. "I don't care. I'll be his as long as he wants me to be and then when he doesn't want me anymore, that's fine. I want to make him happy because he works hard and I love him."
"Then you handle what's your business and you be a good boy, true to who you are." The mother and son shared smiles before Lucrecia put in the special little ingredients and put the Banitza in the oven.
**********
A white mustang? Alucard smirked as he pulled up into his driveway and saw the domestic car there. Only one person he knew had a 2007 Mustang that was that white and pristine. Sephiroth was waiting on him? He felt sad for thinking the thoughts he had all of that day, and with a heavy heart, he got out of the truck and closed the door, walking to the front entrance of his home.
He entered, saw a young man that he was all too familiar with sitting there on the couch, a large smile on his face. "Good evening, sweetheart. You look well as usual. Whatever do I owe this extraordinary occasion that you grace me with your presence?"
Sephiroth listened to the smooth words roll off of that silver tongue and hugged his knees on the couch, smiling. "I thought I would bring you something homemade for a change. My mother made it." He gestured to the coffee table where a plate of something was set, topped in tinfoil.
Alucard raised a thin eyebrow and moved forward, tilting his head. "Oh, good. Food." He smirked. "How did you know? You must be a mind-reader. Let me go shower and then I'll get out and we can share dinner, then?"
"Mmhmm..."
"Join me?"
"Of course!" The youth jumped up and practically bowled the mechanic over as he ran for the bathroom.
**********
"What... Is this?" Alucard stared down at the thing on his plate, the pastry that wasn't exactly what he'd imagined. Oh no, he'd imagined something entirely different, certainly not the weird thing that seemed only vague familiar before him. "Uhm, lovely? Is your mother doing well?"
Sephiroth took one of the things and sat down across from Alucard, tearing into the pastry with his fingers. "I can't pronounce it well, but I found it on a website. Bantista? Something like that?"
"Banitza?" The way the word fell from Alucard's lips made Sephiroth swoon around the cheese. "Yes, grandmother made these, just not quite like this." The teenager was puzzled as he saw a strange look cross his lover's face. Was it sadness? For a second, then happiness. He smiled up at Sephiroth. "Thank you for this. It's so sweet of you to do something like that."
Sephiroth smiled. "I know it's supposed to be a breakfast thing, but-"
The elder man smiled. "I like breakfast at night occasionally." Alucard took the first bite and blinked as he bit down on something. Something metallic and sharp. He pulled said thing out of his mouth, only to see a ball of tinfoil and a piece of white in it. He looked up at his lover and then down at said thing, a sly grin forming on his own face as he realized what the youth had done. Opening the tinfoil, he stared with amazement down at the words. 'I love you.'
Alucard kept that little piece of paper and every other little piece of paper that were scattered through the banitza pastries as he consumed them through the week. They were all simple 'I love you's and 'I'm yours's and 'Call and I'll be there's and other various things. The well-thought out plan was beautiful to his eyes. He realized he loved Sephiroth a long time before, but he knew that he had to tell him soon. He kept all thirty three pieces of paper in a little jewelry box next to the bed.
