Summary of the chapter: Kids are always full of questions… will Matt and Dom have all the answers?
Chapter V B: It's time to play
Matthew and Dominic realise only in that moment that they forgot to wear a change of t-shirts, since the ones they wore now lie on the floor, half-chewed and wrinkled.
"Fuck, how could we forget such an important thing? C'mon, Dom, my dear boy, think, think fast!" the blond thinks to himself, as he searches for a brilliant excuse that finally he finds.
"You're right, but I took it off, because in Matthew's room there's always a hot temperature," he justifies.
"That's right. See? I'm not wearing a t-shirt, either," Matt nods.
"I want to sleep shirtless, too!" Alfie states.
"No, you're still too young and you must cover yourselves pretty up! Nobody is going to sleep or wander around shirtless!" Dom assures, caring like a mother hen with her chicks.
"And why do you have messy hair?" little Frankie asks the two lovers.
Dom and Matt stare at each other, realising that the kid is telling the truth.
"We have messy hair because there's always a strong wind in my room!" Matt finds a brilliant explanation, at least he thinks so.
"Wait, you said that that room is always hot, how can it be hot if there's always a strong wind?" Alfie gives them trouble with his smart question.
"They're not Chris' sons, they're Sherlock Holmes' sons!" Matt muses, as he starts to grow agitated.
"Yeah, right. It's a strong but warm wind, that's why that room is always hot, it's like a oven, you'd better never go there," Dom saves them both promptly.
"So do you want to stay here, finding more secrets about my room, or do you want Dom and me to take you to the Bellamy Lake?" Matt asks them.
"Where?" the kids ask in unison, staring at him puzzled.
"I'll tell you as we're going there. Now let's go change clothes, c'mon!" Matthew ralleys them all and the kids run upstairs, followed by the adults.
"Do you realise that we risked a lot?" Dom whispers at his boyfriend.
"Yep, they were about to become very suspicious," Matt nods. "But it was so exciting!" he smirks mischievously.
"I've never said that it wasn't!" the other reveals with the same smirk.
When they're ready, after placing the kids in the back seats of the car, Matt and Dom come back home for one last check.
"Well, the uncles are so odd sometimes," AvaJo starts.
"Yeah, besides, I was in uncle Matt's room and there's no wind and it's not hot, either!" Frankie confesses.
"Plus, their hair were messy and they looked so satisfied," Alfie goes on.
"Yeah, just like when Frankie and you wrestle for fun!" AvaJo figures out.
"That's it! They wrestled for fun and they don't want to tell us!" Frankie asserts.
"Yeah, that's why they felt hot and they had messy hair. This must be the only explanation," Alfie states.
"And they don't want to tell us because probably daddy would scold them. After all, daddy reproaches you every time he sees that you fighting, even if it's for fun!" the little girl explains.
"I don't know why he does that. Sometimes I wrestle with Johnny at school, it's so much fun!" Alfie smiles.
"That's true. Ava, why don't you ever want to wrestle with us? You would have fun!" Frankie incites her.
"I don't want to. It's bad boy stuff. Mommy always says that good girls don't do bad boy stuff!" AvaJo justifies, looking like a little angel before sticking her tongue out at her brothers.
"Boring!" Alfie snorts.
"Sissy!" Frankie crosses his arms at his chest, bothered.
The adults reach them and, for everyone's sake it's Dom who puts himself at the wheel.
"You know, Matt, I'm a little afraid of going there," Dom comments as he drives.
"Why? We won't ever lose sight of them. And they can forget about having a bath in the lake, we're in December. Plus... " Matt babbles.
"Nope, I meant that I'm afraid of bringing you there. Bells, you know that it's full of tourist shops and when you visit that kind of shop... you become dangerous!" Dom retorts, staring at him worried, without losing sight of the road.
"Don't worry, Dom," Matt reassures him. "If since the last time we've been there there's no new arrival in their inventory, I won't make buy anything!" Matt giggles.
"What does inventory mean?" the littlest kid asks.
"Inventory is... all the stuff that there's in a store!" the singer explains.
"Practically it's also all the stuff that there's at uncle Matt's house, scattered here and there!" Dom makes a witty remark and the kids laugh.
Matt's expectations were dashed and Dom's hopes came true: there were no new arrivals in the stores, so Matt wasn't possessed by the demon of shopping.
While the children, are happy, having seen that amazing lake, taking a walk through the stores and ending it in the sweetest way ever-in a nice bar near the coast, in front of a delicious hot chocolate. The perfect way to warm up a little bit.
There's something that made that moment even merrier and it's the phone call by Chris and Kelly. Both parents and sons told each other about the day they had, as Matt and Dom observe from distance that tender picture.
The happy gang comes back home in the early afternoon, just in time to receive the purchased musical instruments from the delivery guy who rings the bell half an hour later.
As it's easy to figure out, Alfie and AvaJo rush eagerly towards their own instruments, Alfie even helps Dom as he sets the little drums.
After the setting, the two adults play the teacher role, giving the kids some basic lessons.
Both Matt and Dom show their respective pupil a simple exercise to repeat constantly, after a short but necessary introduction of theory.
As Alfie tries to hit two different parts of the drums with a different rhythm, without even remotely getting close to such goal and Ava tries to press, one by one, all the notes of the first four frets of the guitar, producing graceless cacophonic and trembling sounds. Matt amongst the chaos managed to keep an eye on Frankie.
At the beginning, the littlest boy had observed the lessons, but then after growing bored, he went upstairs, coming back after a while with a bunch of plastic soldiers in his hands.
As the exercises go on, more or less, Matt keeps watching over an amused Frankie who is playing on his own with the soldiers, pretending that there's a war. However, the adult immediately changes expression when he sees Frankie getting dangerously closer to the Christmas tree.
"Okay, kids, let's have a break, we all need it!" the front man establishes, placing carefully both his guitar and Ava's on the floor.
Matthew walks towards Frankie who is all engrossed trying to hang the soldiers on the tree, near the spaceships.
"Hey, little devil, what are you doing?"
"You know, uncle, first the soldiers were fighting against each other, then they understood that it was stupid and then they decided to join forces to send the evil aliens away from Planet Earth!" the little kid explains, without even looking at Matt as he goes on with his task.
"It's such a noble and brave intention, I must admit! But your soldiers can't even begin to imagine what they're going to face. They're all going to die, all of them. Zetas are not peaceful guys at all, your soldiers shouldn't challenge them so openly!" Matt warns the little boy.
Frankie turns towards the guitarist, staring at him with very curious eyes.
"Please, uncle Matt, can you tell me all the things that you know about the Zetas?"
Matthew nods greedily; thrilled by the fact that finally someone is showing an nterest for all his twisted and paranoid theories.
"Well, Frankie, you must know that..."
TBC
Some notes:
I know , I know, it already happened in 'Try Something New ' and 'Eternally Missed ' , but the version of Matt being souvenir-addicted is something that I love way too much... and I truly believe in that, lol!
I would pay everything to listen to that speech between Matthew and Frankie for real, lol!
Next chapter is titled 'Are we really out of sight?"... but don't think too scandalously! XD
Hope you'll like this part as well, but feel free to tell me everything, of course