Hey there, new chapter (thanks to me being a procrastinator -__- Other people start cleaning to avoid studying and I write...). Before we start I quickly want to put up a recommendation: If you like the SHM and their little dysfunctional family you should take a look at BoomChick´s fic 'A brutal teacher'.
http://www . fanfiction . net/s/5709508/1/ (Take out spaces please ^__^)
Another thing: I finally sat down and figured out how old the boys are XD (Yeah, it´s a little late, but better now than never, right?) Okies, here goes!
Vincent: 33
Sephiroth: 16
Angeal: 16
Genesis: 16
Loz: 15
Zack: 15
Yazoo: 14
Cloud: 14
Kadaj: 6
(Lucrecia: 32)
Many many thanks to my wonderful beta AlexJ69!!! (COLOUUUUUUUUUUUUR!!!!!)
And now finally, enjoy!
Chapter 8
*
A careful knock against the light wooden bathroom door.
"Yes?" Yazoo tilted his head, looking over from the steaming tub where he was buried in soft, warm bubbles that lazily swirled through the air, exploding into tiny rainbow showers.
Sephiroth peeked inside the dimly lit room, pushing aside the green bathrobe that dangled from a hook on the door, threatening to obscure his vision. The air in here was thick and damp, and the cream coloured tiles glistened moistly. Their mother had a thing for Mediterranean style, and so the bathroom looked right out of an Italian designer catalogue with earth-tones and discreet stone-ornaments. The boys had added their own note, because the bathroom was actually quite messy under all that warm elegance. All four of them fought regular, fierce battles for the room (their parents had a shower of their own, which was a relief at least), and therefore it was littered with towels, hair brushes and various items that piled up on the floor, roughly pushed into a corner. The sink was blotched with crusted toothpaste and the damp mirror was painted with many layers of smileys and desperate reminders of 'wash me!' their mom had not so subtly left with her forefinger, but it went professionally ignored. The boys were in charge of cleaning their quarters on their own and they were pretty comfortable with their 'creative chaos'.
The warm aroma of wet skin, toiletries, bathing oil and detergents hit Sephiroth´s nose and he took a deep breath. He rather liked that smell.
"Do you need some help?"
Yazoo awkwardly held up his left arm that was wrapped in a thick cast, covered in messy writings and paintings of good wishes to get better soon. Water marks darkened the formerly white plaster despite his obvious efforts to not get it wet.
"Sure."
Sephiroth stepped inside on bare feet, closing the door behind him with a soft click, and walked through the small lake on the floor towards the tub. The hems of his grey pants were instantly soaked, becoming anthracite and spotty. Outside a fat moth bumped against the closed window.
"I can´t reach my back," Yazoo informed his brother with a quick demonstration of his good arm twisting and grabbing thin air behind his arched spine.
"I can see that." With a smirk, Sephiroth crouched down beside the tub, reaching for a soft, tomato shaped sponge that sported a huge, printed smile, and pressed it under water. His fingers bumped against Yazoo´s smooth leg. The boy stretched it, lazily blinking.
"I need you to lean forward," Sephiroth muttered, withdrawing the sponge from the pleasantly warm water, a mountain of foam sitting on the back of his curled hand. Obediently, Yazoo leaned forward, exposing his wet back. He closed his eyes at the contact of the sponge rubbing over his sensitive skin, giving a content sigh. "How´s it going? Did you finish that song? Is Gen still here?"
Sephiroth´s green orbs briefly shifted from his task towards Yazoo´s pleased expression, before they turned back, his callused fingertips brushing over the boy´s spine just lightly.
"He left a few minutes ago. We didn´t finish it yet, there´s some issues with the lyrics." His unnerved eyeroll made Yazoo chuckle, a pleasant purr deep down in his throat. Genesis always had issues with the lyrics, even though he wrote them himself. It was a wonder Angeal, Zack and Sephiroth put up with it, but they had developed the patience of saints during all their years dealing with their slightly over dramatic friend. Yazoo found that rather amusing it seemed and upon closer inspection it probably was, Sephiroth decided. Relaxing his stiff muscles a bit (playing the same song over and over again so Genesis Rhapsodos could catch 'the right flow' was tiring and a bit frustrating), Sephiroth slipped into a sitting position on the floor, his elbow leaning on the cool rim of the tub.
"Will you let me hear it when it is done?"
"Of course." The tomato sponge named Fred, curtsy to Kadaj, who -in a strange phase- had named just about anything that vaguely resembled a face, vanished in the bubble mountains again, gliding along Yazoo´s side. The boy flinched a bit, but his eyes remained closed.
"Sorry."
"´S allright," was the muffled reply that sounded suspiciously sleepy and caused the elder to lift a brow, before he let go of Fred and mischievously brushed over his brother´s ticklish sides. It caused just the desired effect; Yazoo jumped with a yelp, but -and this certainly wasn´t intended- lost his balance. Quick-witted, Sephiroth got up to catch him before he could drown in the fluffy foam clouds.
"Ah, hang in there!"
Yazoo did just that, clinging to his brother´s neck, his cast rubbing against Sephiroth´s long silky hair. A whole storm of bubbles was swirling around them, settling back onto the tub and their entangled bodies like the first fall of snow on a cool winter night. Just that it was very hot in here, all of a sudden...
Sephiroth felt the need to lick his lips, but their faces (lips) were too close to each other. A dry gulp would have to do, he thought, but his throat just wouldn´t comply. His body was frozen, hypnotized and mesmerized by the incredibly huge eyes that expectantly looked into his own, and then the distance between them melted somehow and the next thing Sephiroth knew his lips connected with equally soft ones.
When his eyes opened, the foam flakes had long settled again, and the sweet taste of Yazoo was tingling on the tip of his tongue.
And that had been the beginning of their downfall.
*
Sephiroth was woken by a hand softly stroking some silver strands out of his sleep relaxed face. He sighed, moved under the blankets and drew his brows together, turning away.
Lucrecia couldn´t help the smile that stole itself onto her lips, and she gently shook her oldest son´s shoulder.
"Wake up dear, it´s time."
The first rays of sun light were filtering through the grey blinds that hid the spotty glass of the window and the suburb slowly waking up from its deep slumber outside. The first birds chirped in the cherry trees outside and the sun was lazily moving its round orange belly over the bright, rosy sky. The first cars moved down the streets, heading to neat office buildings and jobs full of conferences and paper work that would pay for the beautiful houses and tidy gardens surrounding their own home.
Unconsciously, Lucrecia´s hand sneaked up to re-arrange the collar of her crème coloured chemise. She was showered and ready for work, and after she had gone over the difficult task of waking her notoriously sleep deprived children for school she would go down into the kitchen to get a nice cup of steaming, black coffee and have a bite of the breakfast Vincent was preparing for his family right now. A brief look at her watch told the beautiful woman that they may had to skip the boys´ breakfast this morning, they were already running late - like almost every Monday morning. It was the kids own fault for staying up so late during the weekends, so Lucrecia had no mercy with them. Yesterday had been an exception, though, because when they had come home quite early their sons had been asleep already (neither of them had been able to enjoy the party and after two hours of boring small talk and forced smiles they had left in silent understanding. Not that they had wanted to check on their boys, not at all. The party simply had been boring. Right. Just a boring party.).
Sephiroth gave an unhappy groan and rolled away from her, pulling the blanket over his dishevelled head.
Lucrecia sighed, and relentlessly pulled the warm blanket away, leaving her son´s curled, half naked body exposed to the chilling morning air.
"Get up, or the bathroom will be occupied."
That did the trick -as always- and Sephiroth sluggishly sat up. His face was hidden by a ridiculously long curtain of silver and Lucrecia envied him once again for his amazing genes he certainly hadn´t inherited from her. Her hair was mousy and thin if she didn´t put tons of hair care products and dye in it.
After he had taken a moment to come to his senses, Sephiroth drew his long legs over the edge of the bed and wordlessly waddled towards the bathroom. To Lucrecia he pretty much looked like one of the brainless zombies from the horror movies that he and his two younger brothers liked to watch. Well, he wasn´t known to be a morning person and she didn´t hold it against him. This was a trait he certainly had gotten from Vincent as well.
As she couldn´t resist the urge to quickly straighten out his blanket, she had to force her eyes away from the pile of dirty clothes towering next to Sephiroth´s overflowing desk because they silently begged her to be washed - but she so wouldn´t. The boys had to take care of their own stuff, because if she started to mother them she would never see the end of it! And if he felt comfortable buried nose deep in stinking band shirts, flakes of dust, guitar strings and crumbled song notes Lucrecia would be the last person to take that happiness away from her oldest.
Closing the door behind her, she went down the corridor past family pictures that were decorating the wall and some paintings her sons had drawn for either her or Vincent when they still hadn´t been too cool for such tasks. One photograph that Lucrecia was particularly fond of was already bleached out; the tones were only a shadow of their former brilliance but somehow it didn´t matter because the image in itself was still so very powerful and brimming with energy! Now it was protected by a pistachio shaded wooden frame and thick glass and it still depicted a sun flooded forest. Big, fresh green firs divided the rays of gold into blinding beams that rained down on her husband, who was wearing kaki pants and a red striped shirt. His wild hair was held back by a bandanna as he stomped over the mossy, stony forest ground. Kadaj was safely nestled in the baby sling that hung over Vincent´s back and had curiously woven his tiny fingers into dark raven strands. He must have been younger than a year, it was their first trip together with the baby...
On his right hand, Lucrecia´s hiking husband held a 7 year old Yazoo, who was busy daydreaming and trying to not trip over his own little feet. The boy´s gaze was glued to the dusty strings of light that filtered through the canopy and he gaped at them with his head craned back and his mouth open, lost in his own world full of mysteries and fairy tales.
Apparently Vincent was busy consoling Loz, whose eyes and nose were a bit red. If Lucrecia remembered correctly, her second oldest had tripped over a root just a few minutes prior and scraped his knee. In the picture it was already treated with a band-aid, littered with tiny blue and yellow cars.
Sephiroth was marching ahead, pointing at something that was cut out of the picture and he looked back at the rest of the group back, saying something to Vincent. His hair was already pretty long, reaching the small of his back, and his hand held a freshly made hiking stick that Vincent had carved for him out of a pine branch with a pocket knife. The 9 year old wore it proudly, Lucrecia could tell.
It had been a perfect moment, and she had been lucky to catch all her boys with the camera...
There were other pictures of their children, pictures that had been hanging on this wall forever, that were so much a part of her morning routine that she didn´t even see them anymore; they somewhat faded into the wall as if daily life had eaten them and they were contently seated in the belly of time. Today however, Lucrecia´s eyes involuntarily got caught by an irregularity that hadn´t been there before; or rather, it hadn´t been outstanding before. But this morning it stuck out of the wall like a sore nail.
It was another framed photograph that primarily showed two silver heads beaming into the camera, namely Sephiroth as a four year old with his arms tightly wrapped around Yazoo´s neck. He was pressing a kiss to the younger boy´s cheek with his eyes closed. Yazoo seemed to be busy with something else, as his eyes were cast down on something that the camera hadn´t caught, but he was laughing and tilting his head, maybe to present his chubby, rosy cheek to his brother.
Lucrecia´s eyes stumbled over the familiar and yet alien picture for only a second. Then she bruskely pushed the memories of two nights ago aside and the photograph melted back into their orderly, innocent and harmonic past.
Kadaj was coming out of his room just now, heartily yawning, and dragging one of his plushies behind him over the carpet. He had gotten into school only a few weeks ago and was still pretty excited, so his mother didn´t have to deal with him at least. As he walked past her, Kadaj briefly drew his arms around her waist and buried his nose in her grey silken skirt, before he yawned again and continued his journey to the bath room. Down the hall a painful shrill ripped the morning apart, followed by an unnerved grunt and a muffled curse. Awesome, so Loz was awake too.
And surely, a few minutes later the door to the second oldest´s room was roughly shoved open and Loz passed her with a grumpy "Mornin'."
"Good morning," Lucrecia laughed, before she entered Yazoo´s dark room. The low humming of the computer greeted her, and she silently shook her head. How could he sleep with that constant, annoying sound?! She´d go crazy in no time!
"Yazoo, time to get up."
The teenager in question was still tucked in, awaiting her with a long, suffering look, his nose just sticking out over the sheets.
"My belly hurts....................................................... I think I have pancreatitis."
Lucrecia gave deep sigh, but walked over to sit on the edge of his bed anyway. Pancreatitis? Now that was a first. Usually it was a cestoda, medulloblastoma or at least a gastro-enteritis.
"Yazoo, what did I tell you about randomly searching the internet for illnesses you don´t have just to pretend you´re sick enough to avoid your English class?"
For a moment the boy kept his pain stricken act up, until he pouted his lower lip out and routinely droned "I shan´t do it, because when I really have something no one will believe me." But just for good measure, he petulantly added with a slightly cool look "It really hurts."
If they hadn´t had this particular conversation almost every Monday morning since school had started again, Lucrecia might have melted under his skilled, pleading look, but she remained strict. "Get out of bed darling, you don´t want your brothers to be late, do you?"
"........No."
It wasn´t said with as much conviction as Lucrecia would have liked, but still Yazoo wriggled out of bed and made his way to the bathroom with a passionately muttered "I hate English."
Shaking her pretty head, Lucrecia got up from the squeaking mattress to check on her husband downstairs and help prepare the lunch boxes for their children.
Tbc
Review replies:
Psycho Steph: Thanks! I added the flashback scenes last minute XD Yes, exactly, Sephiroth never had to thing about the consequences before, so they just did it because it felt good. And now he is a bit stuck XD Yazoo either still isn´t aware of the consequences or he really doesn´t care... We´ll see about that XD
Labe: Haha, yeah, Seph is a tough guy indeed XD Hm, and I suspect that Yazoo is simply a bit spoiled; Sephiroth s the older brother and always takes care of everything, so Yazoo might expect him to deal with this problem as well XD But he doesn´t see how much pressure Seph is under now :(
Natzilla: Yeah XD Seph is a bit snappy when it comes to his parents, but that´s only the hormones XD You know, incest is very practical indeed! You don´t have to bother with all the getting-to-know-a-potential-partner-rites and whatnot! Of course your brother would have to be good-looking, otherwise it´s not very aesthetic *cough* There is nothing wrong with incest, it´s all that biological blablabla, but really, as if 'normal' parents couldn´t have disabled kids as well T__T And if it´s two brothers there shouldn´t even be these qualms *shrugs* Haha, and that is the phrase my mother used when she first heard me listening to Burzum XDDD Hm, we´ll see about the vacation ;)
oztan: Ah yes, Sephiroth doesn´t take this lightly, he is a thoughtful, responsible kid, but he does have conflicting interests he has to figure out ;) Uhm, I don´t know anything about Noct, I just saw a trailer once, but he seemed yummy! We´ll see where it goes ;)
PoppetlurvesZexion: Haha, you threw a yogurt at your teacher?! How come??? Hehe, we´ll see about the fun *rubs hands*
AlexJ69: Gahaha, I love smut warning too XDD And it is only there thanks to Zack getting a spanking, that was very inspiring ;) Hm, I think Sephiroth was just brutally jerked back into reality wen they got caught; he might not have thought much about it before... Honestly, I think there´s no one/ nothing Seph can´t top :D You can´t force your socks to love each other! Though you may try... XD
Anne Voda Hime: We will meet all their friends in the next chapter! Sephiroth will have to make a decision sooner or later I suppose, Yazoo will want to know what is going on – either way, I sniff drama ;) Yes, after re-reading the chapter I noticed that there was a bit much 'd, so this chapter the flashback/dream is italicized and hopefully it is easier to read^^ Thanks for pointing that out!
BoomChick: Haha, too bad no one ever listens to us! I so want Vincent to be supportive and all, but realistically speaking he wouldn´t. There´s too much prejudices and moral qualms for him to just accept it :( And no worries, I´m glad you joined and enjoy!!! (I know I´m horrible, I write too much stuff __ I can hardly keep track myself).
Danslalune27: Thank you! Yes, I am trying to keep it realistic XD Which is why Vincent is outraged instead of being supportive and joining the fun (which would be incredibly awesome as well, but uhm... *braindead*). I think Yazoo is both: young, oblivious and he doesn´t give a damn XD Being the youngest child until Kadaj was born he might have been pampered and shielded by his brothers, so he doesn´t really know how to worry about anything. He has his own code and trusts that Seph´ll take care of everything... We´ll see how long this´ll work XD
Review please? I has cookies!!! *offers*