Disclaimer: I told you again and again. Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler owns these here characters and their little plots/flashbacks (well, some of them).
Author's Note: Yay. Huzzah. The plot is finally moving. A bit. Wait, plot? What plot?
Unknown: Thanks, you nice person, you. I personally constantly re-evaluate my reasons for updating this story, but hey, different strokes for different folks. Nny11: I am definitely dedicating a sexy chapter to you. And yes, drivers should understand. "Consensual fucked up incest is hot, expect getting rear-ended!" I swear I will make a bumper sticker, then send it to hillbillies. And by the way, I headed over to Adultfanfiction, and simply adored "Mondays". DACH: Sarcasm? No way. You also get a sexy chapter just for reviewing and writing such sexy Ron/Ginny stories. Goth: Oh my yes, I will continue. Every review is precious to me, I can't fathom why some authors who get 567 reviews sometimes abandon their stories.
Chapter Nine:
Rhetoric
"A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it."
-"Sugar, We're Going Down"
Sweat trickled in slim rivulets down the curve of his cheek, and his cheeks were a faint pink. She could see the angled smoothness to them even in the approaching darkness.
Her son and his uncle played those little games for another half hour as she looked on, occasionally shooting words of encouragement and smiles to the little boy. Otherwise, Violet was looking everywhere, and avoided pointing her eyes directly or even near her younger brother, who currently was arching his torso backwards to land a particularly difficult catch.
Like all younger brothers, he, of course, caught it.
Her son grinned in awe and admiration as he watched his uncle exert himself to the point of perspiration.
His shirt clung to his skin, his fit body outlining the shirt's distorted shape. Violet chewed at her bottom lip, forcing her eyes to her son.
Now is not the time, she argued with herself as her brother's lithe body collided with the ground.
Instinctively and panicked, she shouted, "Are you all right?"
She'd forgotten, for the moment, that she hadn't yet forgiven him.
He sat up, rubbing his shoulder with his knuckles. He double-checked the skin beneath them, rolling up his sleeve. Violet watched as the muscles in his upper arm moved like smooth machinery, like the inventions she kneaded and transformed underneath her own hands. He barely had a bruise, although he examined the sore spot for a couple of seconds, leaving Violet Baudelaire to her own vices.
Which, of course, Violet, being the older sister, always refused.
"Let me see," she insisted, increasing her pace towards her brother. Klaus glanced up with wary eyes, shaking his head defiantly.
"It's fine, it's fine. It's just a scratch."
Violet ignored his excuses, her bare knee grazing the ground as she knelt.
"So said Tybalt," she scoffed. Klaus lifted an eyebrow as he breathed in the familiar perfume of his sister's hair.
"You mean Mercutio."
She moved her head up and glared at her brother. "Whoever."
He narrowed his eyes back, and she could smell the intoxicating scent of his sweat. It clouded her mind for a second.
"Shakespeare, that's 'Whoever'. Honestly, if you had ever read at least one-"
He sharply inhaled as her fingers floated on the outside of his body, just barely touching his exposed skin.
The sensations rippled through him like sixteen agitated butterflies all pattering their wings against his arm and through the hole that comprised of his stomach. Her compromising body lingered so elegantly and sensually near his own that he had to ball his hands into fists, pulling up strands of grass from beneath his palms. He couldn't bring himself to pull out the roots, however. The roots, stood on, underneath the surface, too entangled for anything any longer.
The touch itself was enough to drive him mad and utterly and completely hard, the latter of which he resisted to all his might.
Apparently, that wasn't exemplary enough.
Violet Baudelaire sucked in her breath as similar sensations raced through her veins, but she practically tried to ignore them. But his lips were very close to hers and their noses were almost touching. Their very similar features hovered in the winter air for what seemed like hours. Days. Months.
Klaus was close enough to see his sister's bottom lip quiver slightly, close enough to blow a wayward eyelash, then resting on her high cheekbone, into the outer limits of their irresponsible aura. Violet was also close enough to touch the uneven freckles in her brother's pupils with her nose (not that any sudden need should arrive to allow her to do such a dangerous and unclean thing), and close enough to press her lips to his protruding Adam's apple and perhaps his quivering bottom lip (also, should any need arrive to allow her to do such a dangerous and unclean thing).
"Is Uncle Klaus okay?"
And apparently and ironically, being relatively close enough often led to disastrous consequences, Violet thought as she heard her son's pleas and worried voice for the first time in hours. Days. Months.
Violet snapped out of her daze.
He instinctively moved his face towards hers, but she pulled back, albeit heavily. He could see that her breathing had quickened and she pushed her weight back on her lower body, arching her foot so that she crouched on tip-toe.
"He's fine, James," she breathed heavily, her bent arms at her sides and all her body weight on the balls of her feet.
"He's fine," she repeated, her chest softly heaving up and down as her blood pressure spiked uncertainly.
She then pretended to look very interested in the grass and dew now sprinkled on the lower half of her dress, whatever part she knelt in.
She dusted it off with her hands, and her brother watched as the backs of her smooth inventor's hands ran up and down her body. She arched her eyebrow at his stare, but then caught the sight of the front of his trousers.
"Klaus!" Violet gasped.
She gaped openly at the tell-all bulge between his familiar legs, the arrowhead long forgotten, the stone bathing in the sweat of the young Baudelaire's hand. Tears pooled up in Violet's fluttering eyes, and she placed a hand to her mouth like she didn't know quite why.
She was sure it wasn't because she was ashamed; rather, the tears were just the reaction of the hundred mixed emotions bubbling in her torso. The cause, well, that seemed rather obvious.
Violet had to pretend to look away for Klaus to fix himself, as shocked as she was.
He was going insane, now, and both Klaus and Violet Baudelaire knew it.
"James?" she tried out in a quivering voice. "James, will you be a darling and run inside? I need to speak to your Uncle." Violet pulled her eyes away from her brother's handsome face. "James, will you please go?"
She could hardly see her son in the impending darkness and his silhouette posed awkwardly against the sinking sun. The vague orange glow engulfed his outline, and the darkness prevented her from seeing her son's features, but Violet reckoned she could see them in her mind anyway.
Mothers, she remembered telling her brother once, have an uncanny sixth sense when it all boils down to their children, and sometimes they even seem like a different species as a result.
And like the siblings shared a same mind, Klaus was thinking such a thing. Violet, her floating hair in disarray and angled elbows and puckering lips, looked to him like something else altogether, a nocturnal animal, three-dimensional.
Like she was more than just Violet and simply, just his sister.
"But I don't want to go. I want to stay here with you and uncle!" His lower lip trembled and he stubbornly crossed his arms to his chest. "It's not even dark yet," he pleaded.
Violet's eyes issued back and forth from her son to Klaus. She lifted a smooth hand to her son's face and cupped his chin. James leaned into her touch unconsciously.
Klaus unusually felt pangs of jealousy mar his embarrassment and curiosity as he watched the tender scene, some part of him wishing that it was he whom Violet was touching. He could see her eyes soften, the term "tender-eyed" coming to mind as he dug his nails into the ground.
"Baby, go inside," she softly ordered. "I need to talk to your uncle."
James shifted on his toes, then swiveled around, sort of defiantly, then started dragging his feet up to the house which was sitting quite alone in the curve of the grassy mound. They both watched, Klaus' heart pumping faster and Violet's doing the same, at the boy's floating hair (reminiscent of his mother's) and small form ambling up the tiny hills all blanketed in near darkness. They watched until the boy stopped, took one last look at the unfortunate siblings, and entered through the opened wooden door.
The air was suddenly much chillier and the world, much louder.
"He is a darling boy, isn't he?" Her music box-like voice streamed slowly forth, like molasses in the cracks of his diminishing sanity.
He spoke without conviction, without sarcasm, this time. "You're a darling girl."
He observed her indifferently through heavy-lidded eyes, his mouth partially open and semi-partially inviting. His apathy surprised her but his words shocked her even more.
"Klaus-" she began hesitantly.
"Are you going to tell me to shut the fuck up now?" he interrupted. "We're here to talk, aren't we? Isn't that why you sent the kid away?" He shifted his body, bringing his left leg from under him and swinging it forward so that it rested in a new position. He leaned his face dangerously close to hers, and she closed her eyes, shivering at the nearness of warmth and morning stubble prickling her chin. The tip of his nose ever so slightly made contact with her cheek, and her eyes fluttered open just as immediately as they had closed, only to find herself staring into the angles of her brother's face. His lips brushed the corner of her own trembling lips and dimples.
"So let's talk," he muttered, hot breath like steam evaporating into the creases and chapped cracks of his sister's face and sanity.
"Klaus…Lord…"
Her fingers seemed to move of their own accord, hesitantly touching the skin above her brother's collarbones, causing his breath to catch in his throat. The touch alone seemed to engulf her body with flames: flames at her sides licking up her thighs, her nerves lit afire like the house they lived in so long ago…her parents.
Their parents.
"No, Klaus, no."
She shot her arm back to her side, resisting the urge to scramble away. She pulled away from his nearness, wincing slightly as the cool atmospheric air embraced her cheek, like a half-hearted slap to her face. The sting, she noticed, of being solely and hopelessly alone. She lowered her gaze so that it rest on her brother's chest and not his accusing eyes.
"We aren't children anymore, Klaus. Scientifically and with all probability, we aren't." She breathed in and out, leveling her oxygen intakes, cursing the cruel weather and its vague impairments. Violet ignored the blood pooling in her cheeks and gained enough strength to lift her chin and look her younger brother in his damned accusing eyes.
"We can't stop pretending that what we did was right."
Klaus snorted, his eyes betraying nothing. "Violet, darling, you stopped pretending quite a while ago. In fact, I was never aware that you actually started."
"Klaus," Violet hissed, her eyes darting back and forth from her brother to the house, "Stop it. You're being immature again."
"And me being immature is equivalent to? Oh, right. Fucking your brother over and over during a period of time, then leaving him as soon as boredom and conscience started to set in." His voice grew rougher, and the edges around it, sharper. He pushed his face dangerously close to hers again, yet this time, there was no avoiding it. His left hand grasped the back of her head and his right tilted her chin up so that she was forced look him in the eyes.
This time his eyes exposed more: hurt, excruciating pain, accusation, lust, jealousy, anger, affection. She felt herself melt and simmer under his fragility. The sun and son were both nowhere to be seen, and in the blackness of night, all they both had was the ability and weakness of touch.
"Too bad I loved you, right?"