+ Fallacy, a 100themes Challenge +
Sarehptar

Theme: 40, Rated
Characters: Avis, Chi, Aotsuki, Hanabira, mentions of Rath, Cesia, and Garfakcy
Pairing: Rath/Cesia
Warnings: It's Chi, of course there are gonna be a million warnings. Umm... Innuendo like crazy, the song "I'm Too Sexy"... Hints of shounen-ai. Also, crazy AU.
Need to Know Info: 黄ばら花びら, Kibara Hanabira, is a Cloaks original character, one of three Dragon Fighters whose official job is "Make Avis Rara's life as chaotic as possible". He's the only one of the three with actual Dragon blood. He's descendant from a long-line of fortunetellers who have practiced in Dusis. Maybe he's distant cousins to Sarazar? He takes his role as a Dragon Fighter deadly serious and idolizes Tetheus. XD (Also, note that this theme is related to Theme 27, and foreshadows important events in Cloaks.)
Title Provider: I'm Too Sexy (Right Said Fred)

I'm Too Sexy for This Song...

"There is something very wrong about this," Avis sighed, pulling his front door open wider.

"No there isn't!" A red-headed boy plowed around him, vaulting over the back of Avis's couch with practiced ease, and flashing a Cheshire Cat grin back toward the door. "I brought popcorn!"

With more reserve than their exuberant friend, two more boys trooped over the threshold and into Avis's once peaceful house.

"S-Sorry to intrude," stuttered the shorter, navy-haired boy.

"It's all right Noyoru," Avis sighed again.

At the sound of being addressing him by his first name, the boy's nut-brown face colored russet. He tripped, ungainly as ever, over the edge of the living room rug.

"Terribly sorry to bother you like this," the last boy, a tall blond, said, sliding off his shoes and leaving them in a perfectly straight pair next to Akano Chi's haphazardly tossed off sandals.

Akano Chi, Aotsuki Noyoru, and Kibara Hanabira: quite possibly the three most troublesome students Avis Rara had ever been forced to educate in his long career as Biochemistry professor at the University of Draqueen.

Avis shut the door with a click, moving to lean against the living room doorway wearily. A headache was already forming behind Avis's eyes and just looking at Akano Chi bouncing on the couch set his fragile nerves on edge.

"R-Rath's not home?" Aotsuki looked curiously back over the couch.

"He's out somewhere with his—" the blond professor made a face "—girlfriend."

"Oh ho!" Chi chuckled darkly. "What could two vivacious high school students be doing out alone at such an hour?"

"I sent Garfakcy with them," Avis replied, hints of something dark and smug flitting across his face.

"Oh man," the red-headed boy winced. "You are the killer of all things fun."

Brushing the comment aside, Avis settled an exasperated stare on the three intruders of his home. "I still don't understand why you come here for movie night," he huffed.

"Because you've got the stereo system of the gods, duh." Chi's enormous blue eyes stared incredulously over the top of Avis's tan couch, wide and unblinking, as if there could be no other answer.

"I wasn't aware Sony was God," the pale blond man couldn't resist replying, a roguish smile slipping across his lips before he could crush it.

"Of course Sony is God," the red-head scoffed, earning nods from his two companions. "I mean hello, Guitar Hero!"

"Can't say I've ever heard of it," Avis shrugged, pushing himself off the door frame at last, with every intention of joining the three intruders in his living room.

"Never heard of it?!" The red-head nearly fell off the couch in shock. "That has to be illegal, a crime! I should go buy a Playstation and—" his impossibly chipper expression sunk as fast as a rock thrown into a pond. "Well, if I could afford a Playstation."

There was a flash of something tight and dark in Hanabira's iris-colored eyes, and the blond boy straightened from where he had been leaning against the back of the sofa.

"Oi, Akano, I'll go make the popcorn."

"Okay!" The red-head cheered up instantly, as if popcorn could chase away the shadows that lingered on his face. A colorful packet went flying in an easy arch toward the blond companion, and was caught by the purple-eyed boy with practiced ease.

"Rara-sensei, I have forgotten where the microwave is," Hanabira said in that stately and stoic voice he used around everyone but the red and blue-haired boys chittering like squirrels on the couch. "Will you please show me again?"

"Hana, you can see the microwave from here," Avis blinked.

"No, you can not," the blond retorted, iris stare making it evident how little the microwave had to do with their imminent retreat to the kitchen. Wondering exactly what had gotten into the normally sulky boy, Avis followed his student into the halogen-lit kitchen.

Rather than putting the popcorn into the microwave, the blond boy turned the plastic package over in his hands.

"Have you…" Sharp purple eyes met Avis's blue in a piercing stare that he could not break. "Have you ever felt as if all of us are connected?"

The question was unexpected but not startling, and Avis knew the answer before even thinking about it. There was a reason he allowed these students to invade his house; there was a reason they brought all their problems to him.

"Yes," Avis replied honestly. "I've always felt that way."

"It is because we made a promise." Brushing long butter strands of hair off his shoulder, the boy looked away at last. "Perhaps this will sound insane… but these sorts of feelings have always run in my family. Something of a knowledge of what has happened long ago… and what is bound to happen in the future. I am sure… that we once made a promise, and that promise is binding us still."

To anyone else, it would have sounded strange, unbelievable—but to Avis, it made sense of many things he had acknowledged but could not explain.

"I'm rather inclined to believe you," the professor mused. "It would explain why I find myself incapable of throwing your asses back out on the street when you three wander into my house as if you were my children."

Normally a comment like that would have earned a half-smile from Hanabira—now it did nothing to lift the boy's cloudy countenance. Avis couldn't remember ever seeing the other blond so disquieted. While Hana was perpetually serious, a shining example of responsibility for his two immature friends, he was also perpetually strong, never wavering in his straightforward and sharp manner. Now however, Avis could not help but think the boy looked a little run down; there was something like fear flickering in his iris-colored eyes.

"I wanted to talk to you… about Chi," Hana said. "He is trying, so hard. But ever since his mother…"

Avis knew about Chi's mother. He'd been the one to the drive the boy to the hospital after Chi had gotten that final, heart-shattering phone call.

"He dropped most of his classes, I am sure you know," the purple-eyed boy continued. "He is paying for a dorm room on his own now, because all the insurance went to her treatments… Still, he has been getting better. He has started really smiling again." Instead of seeming relieved by this, the blond boy's face darkened more than ever.

"But I have a feeling—no, I know—something terrible is coming. I don't know what, or even when… I just know that it is coming, and that none of us will be able to stop it. I don't… I don't think Chi will be okay."

The sudden silence was thick enough that Avis could feel it gathering painfully in his throat. Hana's voice was a practiced calm, laced with quiet desperation that glittered most brightly in iris eyes.

"When that happens," the boy's stare was as unending as always, "you will be there won't you? I feel like you will be able to piece us back together after…"

The professor meant to ask after what exactly, but he was struck by the sudden impression that he once knew what, and simply could not remember now.

"Of course," Avis said at last, the ghost of a benevolent smile dancing across his face. "I made a promise, didn't I?"

For the first time that night, relief lit in Hanabira's heavy gaze.

"Heyyy!" a voice howled suddenly from the other room. "It doesn't take that long to make popcorn… You two are doing something naughtyyyyy, aren't you?" Chi crooned. "And you didn't invite me?!"

Aotsuki's flustered "Eep!" carried all the way into the kitchen, just under Chi's boisterous mock-anger.

"I will finish the popcorn," Hana offered a stiff sort of smile. Avis nodded in reply, steeling himself for the red-headed boy's chipper tirade as he entered the living room.

"You know Akano, I haven't put in the semester grades," the professor threatened, throwing himself easily down on the couch beside the quieter blue-haired student. Aotsuki wiggled away, as if intimidated by the sudden lack of personal space on the sofa. "I can still fail you."

"You can't fail me!" Chi whined, opening his enormous blue eyes even further, his bottom lip out in a childish pout. "I'm too cute!"

"It's unfortunate for you then that I don't grade based on appearance." A snicker wormed its way free of Avis, and Aotsuki barely managed to crush a gale of giggles.

"Ahh, you're just jealous that I'm so beautiful. One day you're going to see me on the cover of a magazine."

"They put b-boys on the covers of m-magazines? I thought only girls got c-cover shots…" Aotsuki shuttered out a taunt.

"Well!" Chi crowed, undaunted. "I'll be a male model then!" The boy leapt up to strut and strike a pose. "'Cause we all know that I'm too sexy! I'm too sexy for my—"

"Popcorn?" Hana's eyed them all—sweeping between the oddly-angled Chi, red-faced Aotsuki, and Avis, who looked like dignity was the only thing keeping him from rolling on the floor in stitches.

"Ooh, I am not too sexy for that popcorn!" Chi vaulted over the back of the couch, adhering to the plastic popcorn bowl like he was an octopus, not a boy.

Watching the blond and the red-head fight over the bowl, Aotsuki whimpering as he tried to choose who to cheer for, Avis felt an inexplicable sense of warmth. It was foreign but familiar, odd but welcoming, and as strange as Avis thought all this was, he knew that his front door would always open on Friday evenings, that there would always be three annoying boys crowding his couch, and making use of his godly stereo system—they were his students and his brothers and even his unruly sons… but above all that, they were his friends.

There was comfort and echo of old promises in the thought.

"Are we going to watch a movie or not?" Avis smiled.

Hana looked up from where he is attempting to stuff popcorn down the back of Chi's shirt, and Chi gave up trying to jab a kernel into Hana's eye.

"Oh yeah!" Instantly the war for possession of the popcorn ended in a peace treaty, and Aotsuki held the bowl, offering it to everyone in turn. Chi jumped up to put in the DVD, falling back on to the couch with a pleasant sigh.

The opening credits started rolling and then….

"Chi…" Avis's eye twitched of its own accord. "What is this movie rated?!"

"Uhhhh… There might be X… or two… or three… in it?"

"CHI!"

Theme 41: Teamwork
"Now is really not the time to be doubting me, Kaistern."