A/N: PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU START THE STORY!!!Now, I know this may be a little confusing, but SLOTH is set shortly after GLUTTONY takes place, so Soap and Ghost are on leave and are in Scotland with John's sister (my OC) Kira. I could think of no better place for these two to laze about than with Kira. ;3 Also! Just a little warning: There are a shit ton of footnotes for this one... got a little carried away I guess... Oh well. :D
GothicBandicoot: I'm glad you liked it. :3
yeah-bled: Heheh. My "boyfriend" (don't even ask me to define it/explain) is my beta reader for the books. :D I was a little surprised when I found out he didn't mind slash. It's not really his favorite thing to read, but he is totally fine with my yaoi addiction. XD
MissPumpkinHead: I try to make sure there's more to my work than just smut... I mean, those are hella fun to read and all, but sometimes you want a little... more... You know? Anyway... I'm really glad you liked the stories. :)
There was a mechanical grinding and an organic cracking coming from somewhere in the houe. John recognized it as the sound of Kira sharpening another pencil. He opened his eyes and was pleased to find the room was bathed in warm sunlight. They had finally managed to override that internal alarm clock and "over sleep". It was nice to wake up after sunrise. Next to him, Simon sighed in his sleep and his right hand curled into a loose fist. John pulled him closer and the Lieutenant's eyes snapped open. He looked around the room for a moment before scowling in dissatisfaction.
"You're making us lazy, John." He accused.
"When was the last time we got to sleep in?"
Riley continued muttering to himself, but he gave in. It wasrather nice to be able to sleep beyond the first sickly gray streaks of sunshine. They lay there for nearly half an hour, listening to the sound of Kira's music floating through the house from another wing and watching the sun slowly creep up the walls. Riley eventually forced himself out of bed and to the slate-tiled shower. He stepped through the gothic-style arch(1) and started the water flow. He stood under the steaming hot water and grudgingly admitted to himself that it was nice to be able to move at a speed that wasn't three paces of "rush" or "hurry". He was very nearly done when John decided to join him, but Riley made it known that he wasn't in the mood for any games.
He headed towards the kitchen where he heard Kira singing and clanking in the kitchen. She was making something...
"Morning, Simon." She smiled over her shoulder. He was sometimes surprised by how much Kira and John were alike. They both had the same way of knowing when he was around. He knew it was because John could hear his footsteps, no matter how quietly he walked, but that was part of his training. Kira just seemed to instinctively know. They had that same crooked smile that was just a softer and wider version of a smirk.
Kira's arctic blue eyes gleamed softly in his direction, as if she knew what he was thinking. John had the same unnerving look.
"Where's my brother?" Kira asked as she flipped a pancake.
"Still in the shower, last I saw of him."
"Hm. Keep on with the pancakes while I start the eggs, yeah?" Kira asked.
Simon nodded and took over her place by the edge of the stove. She stood next to him and started warming a pan for a batch of eggs. Riley took the current cooked pancake off the pan and set it to the side and started another one. He frowned when he realized there was pancake batter on the side of his hand. He shrugged and idly brushed it against the leg of his jeans. He wasn't planning on going anywhere today, except for maybe the living room. John entered the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee.
"Ew. You're seriously drinking that black." Kira's face crinkled up. She wasn't a huge fan of drinking black coffee. She needed milk and sugar and possibly some kind of flavoring added to her coffee for it to be considered tolerable. John and Simon had spent too much time drinking piss-poor coffee without the luxuries of milk and sugar to take it any other way. Just the fact that the coffee wasn't burnt was good enough for them.
Riley snatched the coffee mug from John's hands and the Captain muttered something under his breath and made himself a new cup. Kira shook her head and went back to her eggs.
"So, do you boys have a plan of attack for today?" Kira asked casually.
"John has decided we're going to do as little as possible." Riley still sounded a little irritated.
"Good. Perfect, actually. I have a new room design that needs to be tested." Kira grinned.
John raised an eyebrow at Simon, who just shrugged. Kira was difficult to understand.
"Help me carry all of this to the table." Kira ordered.
They grabbed plates of pancakes and bacon and eggs and a fruit salad to the table. Breakfast was always a casual and quiet affair with Kira, which was something the two men were thankful for. John was engrossed in reading a newspaper article regarding deteriorating conditions between the US and Russia. Next to him sat Simon who was reading a magazine article on a new handgun that was small enough to be hidden just about anywhere without sacrificing stopping power. (2) Kira was entertaining herself by reading an architectural magazine and muttering about some sort of new super adhesive that could, in theory, replace the need for nails and screws in certain support structures.(3)
When breakfast was finished, the dishes were carried into the kitchen where a member of Kira's private staff began washing them. John always felt a little guilty leaving work up to someone else, but Claire had been working for Kira for a long time and she continually bragged about how housekeeping was her dream job because it gave her an outlet for her Obssessive Compulsive Disorder. He smiled at Claire and she smiled in return.
They followed Kira down a few long hallways and down a flight of stairs they never took before. She was humming softly to herself and trailing her fingertips along the wall as she walked. They came to a large black door and she stopped short in front of it. She reached out and her long fingers skipped along the keys of a code-entry pad and the light below the doorknob flashed green. She swung the door open and motioned for the two men to enter.
The room was huge. The ceiling was easily ten feet up and painted a dark blue color that nearly looked black. The recessed lighting was dimmed considerably, casting everything in a warm, almost candle-light-like glow. The walls were done in a dark green that somehow looked good with the blue ceiling and dark cherry-wood floors. The three couches were white and sat fifteen feet or so in front of a fully-stocked bar and thirty feet away from one of the largest television screens John and Simon had ever seen. The low coffee tables were made of driftwood and polished to a shine that was nothing short of gorgeous. There was an off white door that Kira told them lead to a full bathroom and near that was a solid wood door that led to a bedroom.
"I worked on this new insulation system that's supposed to really isolate the room and keep the noise out. It's the perfect entertainment room. I just need to give it a real test. And since you guys aren't doing anything today... I figured we could hang out." Kira's grin was somewhere between sheepish that she was actually asking her brother and his "boyfriend" (it was a word that both men disliked using) to hang out, and mischevious because she knew they were firmly in the mindset to do nothing, meaning they weren't going to turn her down.
John and Simon, predictably, relented. Kira's grin grew a few molars and she shoved them down on to one of the couches, grabbed a bottle of scotch and three glasses from the bar and a remote from the teak coffee table, and started a movie.
"You planned this all out, didn't you?" Simon asked, thoroughly suspicious.
"Uh huh." Kira nodded and her bouncing curls made her seem much younger than she really was. Simon shook his head and took the glass of scotch she was holding in his direction. The movie started playing and he recognized it as some "feel-good" film made in the 1970's about a summer camp made of misfits and social rejects competing against a summer camp composed of wealthy and socially affluent children. (4) It was entertaining enough, and the volume was movie theater loud, which was fine by John and Simon. Too many years of grenades and bullets had done a bit of damage to their hearing.
The second movie Kira played was a cheap horror film from the 1908's. Typical serial killer scenario. John and Simon had both had a few glasses of scotch and were a little closer to "sentimental" than they normally were. Soap had thrown his arm across the back of the couch and Ghost had pressed up against the Captain's side and the arm moved from the back of the couch to around the Lieutenant's shoulders. Kira allowed herself a sappy little smile at this.
Once that movie was done, Kira turned the lights up a little, turned off the television, and drug two massive beanbag chairs that looked almost like beanbag mattresses(5) into the middle of the room and announced it was time for board games. She dropped onto one that was an electric green color, leaving her brother and the Lieutenant to share the very vibrant orange one.
"So what's his name?" John asked as they started setting up a game called "Apples to Apples"(6).
"Who?" Kira asked, eyebrow quirked in confusion. Soap saw through the act.
"You've been seeing someone. You wore your favorite perfume to that 'business dinner' last night." John mused.
"Deign's friend Alastair." Kira admitted. She could never hide anything from her brother, no matter how hard she tried.
Simon chuckled at their antics and the game started. They drank a little more and lounged on the floor, playing board games and watching television from time to time.
"So, no, no, listen. The hottest part about Alastair is that he's American." Kira repeated. They'd been lazy for the past six and a half hours and were all carrying a little bit of a buzz.
"What does that have to do with anything?" John asked his sister. He laid a card down and rearranged the cards in his hand. Kira had convinced them to play a few rounds of Gin, claiming that if she could beat her brother when they were kids, she could beat him now.
"It has everything to do with everything. I like listening to him talk." Kira shrugged.
Simon laughed but generally refused to get pulled into the conversation. He knew what Kira was saying about enjoying a different accent. That's why he swore he'd never get involved with anyone from England. Soap was Scottish. Some people would swear there wasn't that much of a difference(7), but it was there.
"You know, I remember when we did this as kids. Remember when Dad would set us up one of those blanket forts in the living room and we would play castle defenders and fight off imaginary dragons with sticks tied together to look like shitty swords? We'd just lay under the canopy that never seemed to fall and we'd talk about what we'd do when we grew up. You remember that, Johnny?" Kira asked. Her blue eyes were distant as she reminisced.
"I remember I thought I'd be doing something along these lines by the time we were this age." John chuckled.
"Remember I told you I was going to be as good at making forts as Dad was?" Kira smiled.
"You're doing a pretty damn good job, Key."
"What about you, Simon? What does all this lazing around remind you of?" Kira asked.
"Reminds me of the tree house my brother found. It was really a couple of boards nailed across a few of the branches with four shoddy plywood walls and not much of a roof. He said it was our secret agent headquarters and we'd plan raids on the movie store in town."
Kira laughed and won another hand of Gin, the sixth one in a row out of the seven they had played. John shoved all the cards into a stack and slid the deck back into the box. Kira turned the television back on and they all settled in on the massive beanbag chairs to watch television. They hadn't done anything all day and Riley wasn't feeling antsy like he normally was after so much inactivity. With Soap's warm chest pressed against his back and heavy arm around his waist, he decided he didn't mind this "lazy sentimentality", at least for the moment. In fact, it felt rather nice after working so goddamned hard for so goddamned long. Sometimes, sloth was worth it.
(1): My Mum has a friend who's an artist and actually bought a bunch of slate tile and tiled their shower in slate and did a Gothic arch out of this really pretty blue/purple slate... It was GORGEOUS!!! Also, my inspriation. :3
(2): Yes. This is me, making a "shoutout" to my brother's favorite perk on Online play. X3
(3): I have no idea if this shit is real. Don't quote me on this. I'm making it up as I go along. I suck at my engineering class. I know jack-shit about archetecture.
(4): It's a real movie, this one. It's called "Meatballs". It's an old Bill Murray movie. I love it. It's totally chill and hella fun to watch when you just feel like being lazy. :3
(5): Also a real product. It's called the Omni and it's produced by a company called Sumo Lounge. It's ridiculous. I want one in lime green.
(6): Real game. Really fun game too. :D
(7): This is kind of a quote from my ex-boyfriend. I was watching Torchwood and he made a comment about one of the characters (Ianto) having an annoying British accent and I promptly corrected him and told him it was Welsh. He looked at me like I had three heads and demanded to know if there was a difference. YES! HUGE DIFFERENCE!! Kay bye. XD