Chapter the Twenty-Eighth

In which there is a Homecoming

Delia carefully peered out the through the curtains. Damien hadn't told Alexander that she would be waiting for him when he came home, so she didn't want to spoil the surprise. She looked down at Alexander's dog, who lay on the marble floor, his head between his paws. At this point, Delia wasn't sure who missed Alexander the most, she, his dog or their father. She turned back to look outside.

Damien had long ago given up the winter apartment, which had been torn down and rebuilt and was now used for summer activities instead. He had had the current house winterized, which had cost no small fortune and still managed to cost the Gross National Product of some developing countries to heat during the winter months.

Delia saw a flash as the sun glinted off something and moments later, a car came into view over the lift of the driveway. The dog stood, looked at Delia and whined.

"I told you, I get him first."

Alexander's dog was soon joined by the two other dogs who wandered in from various parts of the house. They waited patiently, but Alexander's dog enthusiastically wagged his tail.

Delia went outside, closed the door behind her and ran down the stairs.

The car stopped before it got to the circular part of the driveway and Alexander opened the car door, jumped out and raced to Delia and they threw their arms around each other.

Alexander had been away on a school trip for ten days and they had never been separated from each for that long. They held onto each other until he realized that his sister had run out in her shorts and t-shirt and socks, though the stairs leading up to the house were free from snow.

"Father didn't tell me that you'd be home!"

"What kind of family do you think you have? We'd never let you come back to an empty house."

"Cecile isn't here?"

"Nope, it is just I."

"Delia, come into the house, you must be freezing."

The driver had pulled the car up and had brought Alexander's stuff up to the top of the steps.

"I'll take it in, thanks."

The driver nodded and got into the car and left.

"Now, I need to warn you. You have quite the reception waiting to welcome you back home, but I told them that I got you first. Are you surprised!?"

Alexander hugged her again. "Very!"

She opened the front door and all three dogs were sitting and waiting. Alexander's dog was whining, little able to contain himself, but knew better than to jump on his master without an invitation. Once all of his things were inside the house, Alexander closed the door and sat. Milo was shaking with excitement and Alexander smiled and the dog made it over to Alexander in one bound and pounced on his master, licking his face and nuzzling him. The two other dogs came over and sniffed and nuzzled him too and once Milo had, to his satisfaction, let his master know that he had been missed, the dog backed away, but sat close by not wanting to leave Alexander.

Delia held out her hand and Alexander took it and she pulled him up, but neither let go of the other. They had been parted from each other and now that they were touching, the desire that had been assuaged over those ten days was screaming to be let loose. But Delia turned her head, breaking the gaze they had shared and, with much difficulty, reigned in her wants and turned back to Alexander. "I missed you."

Alexander had taken his cue from his sister and had put away his arousal until it could be unleashed at a later time. "I missed father. I missed the dogs. I missed my bed. I missed the chapel. I missed Cecile's cooking, but there isn't a word to describe how much I hated being away from you." He picked up her hands and kissed them.

"In the mood to make me breakfast?"

"Nothing would make me happier. I'm starving, too. I was so excited at the thought of coming home, I couldn't eat. But give me ten minutes? I want to change and go up to the chapel. I'll bring this stuff up later."

"Of course." Delia watched Alexander go upstairs and she sat on the steps and waited with the dogs until he eventually came back down, dressed into jeans and a red t-shirt.

She got up and jumped on Alexander's back. "To the kitchen, mush!"

"And you'll be very pleased with your exceedingly manly brother who was not one of the people who had to go home because they were homesick."

"Really?"

"Yep, they called their parents, who sent their drivers to come and get them."

Delia laughed and kissed the back of his head. "Your manliness makes your family very proud."

Alexander brought Delia into the kitchen and put her down by the fridge. "What am I doing?"

"I want tacos for breakfast. Everything is ready, the meat just needs to be cooked. I wasn't sure what you would want."

"Delia, tacos are fine." He had long ago gotten used to her unusual breakfast choices and had eaten his share of pizza and chicken for breakfast with his sister.

Alexander put his head in the fridge and pulled out everything and put the seasoned, shredded beef in the frying pan that was already on the stove. "So, what did I miss while I was gone?"

She came over and punched her brother on the arm. Alexander turned around and then put a ministrative hand over his throbbing upper arm. "What was that for?"

"For making father lose his mind while you were gone."

"Oh, Delia..."

"Screw you, you weren't here."

"Really?"

"Yes. Talk and cook, please." She turned her brother around to get back to making breakfast.

"What happened?"

"He was fine...and then he stopped talking. Which, given the events of the last four days, had been a blessing."

"Why, what's been going on for the last four days?"

She cleared her throat, "'Delia, how many times do I have to tell you to put your shoes in the closet? Delia, how many times do I have to tell you to put your dishes in the dishwasher? Delia, how many times do I have to tell you to not leave your empty soda cans in the family room? Delia, know what you want before you open the fridge.'"

"No."

"Everything I did irritated him. If I was lucky, I could get away from him by going to my room, but sometimes, not so much."

"Deedle, I'm sorry."

"It was kind of endearing...up to a point. Of course, I'm glad your home so it will stop. The daddy jackal will have all his pups in the den and that will make him relax and leave me alone."

Alexander prepared the food and Delia set the table and they sat and ate, enjoying their meals in each other's company.

"How was the trip?"

"Skiing was good. Québec was lovely, as usual."

"Did you meet any pretty French Canadian girls?"

Alexander laughed. "No, but some of the others did. I think there were a few guys who arrived virgins but left otherwise. One guy got sent home for being drunk, though plenty of others brought alcohol. Some of us did some historical sightseeing and that was pretty much it."

Once breakfast was done, Alexander looked at his sister. "I don't think I'm quite done satisfying my appetite."

"Think you can hang on a little longer for the second course?"

"I'll try."

"Clear the table, I'll be right back." Delia ran upstairs and while she was gone, Alexander brought their dishes into the kitchen and wiped down the table and was drying it off when his sister came back. She was carrying a large roll of paper.

"Is that what I think it is?"

She and Alexander rolled it out on the kitchen table, keeping it from curling in on itself with salt and pepper shakers and the napkin holder and sugar bowl. Once they were done, Delia looked at her brother and smiled.

"Until you run off and get married, this will be our home. The plans for your house are on your bed."

Alexander smiled back and then looked down at the blue prints. He and Delia had planned to live together once they realized that children usually don't live at home with their parents for their whole lives. When they were seven, they understood that one of things their company did was design buildings, and they had gone to work with their father with pictures they had drawn and told the architects what they had wanted. It had been childish things at first, with everything from an indoor ball pit to faucets that dispensed cream soda and root beer. However, once the pair realized that one, or both or them would be getting married, the plans had changed. Then they had developed feelings for each other, and decided that they would live together in Delia's house until Alexander got hitched.

"I have even better news."

Alexander looked up.

"I went cross country skiing on the weekend. Father's busy with this whole restructuring thing so we won't be spending any quality time with him over the next few so I had to amuse myself, so anyway, I ran into Morgan Spalding; he wants to sell his property. He's going to live with his sister in Florida or somewhere. You now how racist he is, he'd never sell his property to anyone who wasn't White. He wants to put it on the market ASAP. I explained that I've had my eye on his property for some time and I'd love to buy it, with father's help, of course, but could he wait until all this crap at work was dealt with so that I could talk to father. He agreed to wait until I could talk to Damien. I could have put the Thorn whammy on him, you know, make him want to sell us the property for the million dollars that we have, but I wasn't sure how father would feel about that."

Alexander closed his eyes and after a few moments opened them. "Just think, Delia, while we're off at school, your house will be being built and once both of us are done, we'll be able to live together in our own home."

"And now that we can go to father with a solid plan, we can also ask him about buying up the land west of here so your house can be built, too."

They looked at one another and the tendrils of desire that they no longer wanted to stop, flowed between them. Alexander rolled up the opened plans and they both made their way up the stairs. Alexander's dog whined, wanting to follow his master, but he had been ordered to stay downstairs.

The Thorns made their way to Alexander's room and he opened the door and both of them took one step inside. Alexander dropped the plans he was holding and he turned to face Delia, and suddenly there was a flurry of hands searching, grasping. Their mouths met and in minutes, they were both in their briefs.

"I missed you so much. I wanted you everyday. I hope my sister was a very good girl and kept herself...occupied while I was away."

His mouth was on her neck, his whispered breath sending goose pimples over her body. "I can show you, if you want. It'll be a limited viewing, what with the panties, but..." Delia never got a chance to finish the sentence as she gasped with pleasure.

Alexander smiled at his handiwork. "Part of you is worth all of anyone else."

And that was it, there would be no more holding back. Alexander lead them further into his room and closed the door them.

...666...

Alexander was sitting on Delia's bed when he heard her hairdryer shut off and she came out of the bathroom dressed in her under things and threw herself on the bed, back first.

"Want to go out for dinner?" She was looking right into Alexander's face and he leaned down and kissed her.

"That sounds like a great idea. It's been ten days, I think I'm suffering from Chan's Chinese food withdrawal."

"We'll call for a car and we can go to dinner."

"So, are you going to tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

But Alexander only looked at her, letting her know the futility of her attempting to hide anything from him.

She sat up. "Ten days was a long time for you to be away," her voice was quiet.

"And I never want to be away from you for that long again. There aren't words to describe my inexorable joy at the thought we are going to be attending the same school together."

"Where we will live in our own house and be all alone and do whatever we please, how many times and how often it pleases us, in any room in that house." Delia reached out and caressed his face. "You're mine, I want all of you. I don't want parts of you hidden by your clothing anymore."

Alexander was silent for a moment. "You want to tell father what's been going on between us."

"You know what I've always said...there's no going past the one article of clothing that we do keep on without Damien knowing. It's wrong."

"That's a pretty arbitrary line of wrongness, Deedle. Do you think that he'll thanks us for keeping all the less sexual parts from him only to inform him now that we want to do more?"

"We don't have to give him details...so you think we should not tell him...like ever."

"He hasn't known up to this point, why tell him now?"

"Because...can you imagine him walking in on us while we're doing something?"

"That hasn't happened so far and now that we're going to be leaving for school and living on our own, the chance of him catches us is slim to none."

Delia wanted to think of more reasons, but she couldn't, not even as an exercise in argumentation. "We just have to tell him."

"I'm just playing Devil's advocate, Deedle."

"I know and for right now, I can handle you being married and being away from me because it feels like a million years from now, but that's not the case. I will barely be able to deal with it and if I manage to get through that, there's no way I'll be able to deal with some woman having your child. That'd be one hell of a time for Damien to figure out what I'm feeling aren't normal things for me to be feeling."

"There's points to both arguments and we've always been honest with him, this is the only big thing we've ever hidden from him. It's going to get awkward after that and who knows how long it'll be until things get unawkward...if ever."

"So you are saying that we shouldn't tell him."

"I'm not saying that at all. But we have to be ready to deal with the consequences."

"Yeah, I've been thinking about those."

He could feel a spike in her anxiety. "Delia, he's not going to disown us and remember, we're the ones who are going to leave if he can't handle things."

Delia sat, confused, scared and feeling alone.

Alexander took her hands in his. "We'll tell him. See, for you, it might seem that me getting married is a million miles away, but for me...it's a point in the distance. It's still pretty vague at this stage, but I can feel it pulling me towards it, a destination that keeps getting closer everyday; a destination I'm headed to with the wrong person. You're not the only one who will be dying on the day that I have to take some woman as my bride. He won't understand why we're feeling like this because I'm not going to be able to hide it any better than you will and then he will figure it out and that's no way from him to find out. And I don't even want to think about having children with..." but he didn't want to finish the thought.

Delia smiled at him. "At least with this crap going on at work, we have tomorrow and the next day to worry about it, but this is your first day back...I don't want to talk about it anymore."

Alexander reached for her and held her to him. "Come on, let's get purdy and go out for dinner. We'll gorge ourselves on Chinese food and come back and watch a movie."

They got dressed and went downstairs, where Delia let out the dogs and Alexander checked the machine and found a message from Damien wanting to know if Alexander was home. He also let them know that he would be home too late for them to wait and that he would see them at breakfast. Alexander called his father back and left a message with the secretary letting his father know that he was home and that he and Delia were going out for dinner. Alexander then called a car for and it was six when they found themselves at Chan's and ordering their dinner.

While dinner was, as usual, beyond delicious, the ambiance in the restaurant seemed to be conspiring against them as they were surrounded by what felt like every romantic couple in the city of Chicago who seemed to have picked Chan's as their restaurant of choice. They had also ordered extra food to bring to school for lunch and once their dinner was done, they hailed a cab to take them home.

Ten-thirty found them in the family room, each at opposite ends of the couch, curled up watching Sabrina and once the movie was finished, they went upstairs to the chapel for a while and once done in there, made their way to Alexander's room. They stood just inside his bedroom door, their arms around each other. The dogs were sitting beside their respective masters.

"It'll be nice to sleep in my own bed and have Cecile's cooking for breakfast."

"Just remember to leave your bedroom door open."

"Why?"

"So father can make sure his baby boy is home, all safe and sound. But...I have to confess something."

"What would that be?"

"I only kept myself occupied for the first five or so days, then I just missed you too much. I slept in your pyjamas. I'm glad you're home."

"Promise me that when I become President of the United States of America, you'll move, lock, stock and barrel, all of Thorn's operations to Washington D.C.? I won't be able to bare being away from you for four years."

"Four years!? Your father didn't teach you to be an underachiever."

"Eight years, then."

"I promise." They kissed and Delia pulled away. "Goodnight, Nander."

"Goodnight, Shorty." He kissed her forehead. He wasn't quiet tall enough to kiss the top of her head.

"Just for that, I'm going right to sleep." She blew him a kiss and turned around and went back the way that they had come so she could get to her room.

"Well that was stupid of me.' He looked down at the dog. "Come on."

Alexander changed into his pyjamas, brushed him teeth, got into bed and exhaled. This was more like it. Milo jumped up onto bed and lay so that his face was next to Alexander's and he reached out and gave his master's face a lick. "I you missed too." He gave his dog a scratch behind the ears then pulled the covers up to his chin and it took only minutes for him to fall asleep.

...666...

It was nearly three in the morning when Damien got home. He made his way up the stairs and turned right to get to his children's rooms. There were two other sets of stairs and he headed to his left to his son's room where he found the bedroom door open.

Alexander had not pulled the covers up over his head and he was facing out to his door. He looked so young, twelve going on thirteen instead of sixteen going on seventeen. Damien stood there for a few more minutes and then left his son's room and made his way to this daughter's room. He smiled when he saw that not to be out done by her brother, she too had left her door open.

He knew that he had been far too short with her during Alexander's absence. Both she and Alexander were in the process of getting their driver's licenses and she had her eye on a black Porsche 911 that Damien had initially dismissed as a first car for his daughter, though he was hard pressed to come up with a reason why. She was responsible enough to handle a sports car and his first car certainly hadn't been a beater, nor had he had to 'earn it,' so he would get her the car for her birthday and get Alexander whatever car he decided on by then.

Damien left his daughter and got to his room where he found his dog curled up outside the door. He opened his bedroom door and after being given the okay by his master, the dog came in and curled up on the floor by Damien's bed.

Damien took a quick shower, brushed his teeth and after sorting out some paper work, got into bed and fell asleep.