by Diane Lennox
“I believe you deserve the best, but I also believe I may not be the best judge of what that would entail. I don’t know you in that way.”
“And whose fault is that?” Leander asked with a roll of his eyes. He had tried to get Simon to talk about his preferences in men many times before, but Simon always made it quite clear he wasn’t comfortable talking about that, at least not with Leander.
“I find it strange to talk about it with you,” Simon said.
“Why? Other brothers do it.”
“I’m sure they do, but our relationship isn’t like that. Wouldn’t it make you uncomfortable to know what goes on between Alexei and I, or what I find arousing about him? Would you really want to know what we did the other night in this very room?”
Leander blushed hotly and looked away. Despite all his bravado when teasing Simon and Alexei, the idea of actually knowing what they did behind closed doors was a bit much for him. Perhaps Simon had a point. It did make him rather uncomfortable, especially when it probably happened on the very bed he was currently sitting on. “Alright, I get it.”
“Exactly.”
“But I still think I could trust you when it comes to a suitor for me!” Leander countered, going back to the original argument. “I believe you’d know whether or not a man would be good match for me purely based on my personality and his.”
“You may be right, but I still don’t feel that my opinion should carry so much weight.”
“Well it does, and that’s my choice to make, not yours,” Leander said then picked up his phone and got up off of Simon’s bed, making his way to his closet with a tired groan. “I guess I may as well start the day now. What would you like for breakfast?”
“I’ll come help you,” Simon said and stood with a big stretch.
“If you like, but that didn’t answer my question,” Leander said and threw his favourite dark fuchsia robe over his matching pajama pants and loose fitting T-shirt.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” Simon said and headed out of their room in his pajamas as well which for him consisted of black silk pants and a tight black T-shirt that flattered his lean frame very nicely.
“You’re so helpful,” Leander said with a roll of his eyes and headed downstairs with his twin.
They walked into the kitchen together and the two of them stilled as they saw their grandfather already sitting at the table, tea in hand, looking rather unkempt with his short grey hair sticking up at all angles.
“Good morning, grandpa,” Leander greeted softly, a little scared to bother the man. “We’re just going to quickly make some breakfast, we’ll head right back up after.”
Jacob shook his head. “You two stay here, I’ll go back to my room. But first, Leander, I did a little thinking about what we talked about.”
Leander nodded, his heart speeding up as he waited to hear the verdict.
Jacob glanced to Simon. “Have you already told Simon everything?”
“I have,” Leander admitted.
“I figured, just wanted to make sure,” Jacob said with a fond little smirk. “So, I’ll need to talk to Lazarus about making you my successor, it’s a big decision and I don’t think I should be making it alone. However, that’ll have to wait, ‘cause right now I still want to beat my son to a pulp.”
Leander nodded again. “I understand.”
“As for the other matter, I’ve decided to leave that in Marius’ hands. I give you permission to ask him if he’ll allow you to act as mediator on behalf our family. The only caveat is that I want to hear his decision directly from him, so he’ll have to call me and say what he wants to do after he speaks with you.”
“Understood,” Leander said, unable to hide the grin forming on his face. “Thank you, grandpa, for giving me this chance.”
Jacob stood then made his way over to the twins, taking his tea with him, and wrapped his free arm around Leander’s shoulders, giving him a little squeeze. “Don’t be upset if he says no though, he may want to deal with me directly since I am the Shar.”
“I know,” Leander said and hugged his grandfather in return. “Um, before I speak to Marius-khan, am I allowed to talk to father about what happened?”
“If you want to, but Laz might not say anything if you’re not going to be the mediator.”
“You’re probably right,” Leander said with a nod. “I’ll speak to Marius-khan first. Do you have his number, grandpa? I’d rather call him directly rather than go through Alexei. I want to approach him as a mediator, not as Alexei’s friend.”
“I’ll give it to you after breakfast,” Jacob said and kissed Leander’s forehead. “Now you two get something to eat.”
“Yes, grandpa,” Leander said, smiling at the older man.
Jacob smiled in return then moved to Simon, giving him a quick hug too before heading upstairs.
Leander waited a few moments to make sure his grandfather wouldn’t hear his antics before bouncing around Simon. “He said yes!”
Simon chuckled. “Congratulations, Leander. I hope Marius-khan says yes as well.”
“I’ll do my best to convince him. Now let’s make breakfast, and while we do so I need you to tell me everything you know about Marius-khan that I may not know. I don’t want to go in totally blind,” Leander said then started moving about the kitchen to make them both breakfast.
Despite there being an ambitious fire burning in his gut at the idea of being able to be a mediator for his family, Leander also felt a little out of his depth. He’d never done anything like this before and honestly didn’t really know where to start, besides trying to learn more about Marius. He didn’t want to back out though, he knew that much. For one, he wanted to be able to take care of his brother’s worries in a much bigger way, and secondly, he wanted to show his grandfather that he was really serious about his desire to be his successor. That meant there really was no other option at the moment except to forge ahead and pray that his ambitious side would give him courage when he needed it. And he was going to need a lot of it.
~~~~~
Pasha Scarlett hated Sundays.
Sundays at the Scarlett household meant dinner with the whole family, and that meant Pasha would have to deal with yet another round of his father’s disparaging remarks about his choice of study and whatever else was pissing him off that day. Nothing Pasha did was ever good enough, but at least he wasn’t alone in that. According to Rex, Ezra should already be lead, Yuri should have more clients, and Alice should get a more respectable career instead of massaging naked men. It was the same shit every time. The only variables were how much of an asshole Rex felt like being that day and how long it took for Lucifer, or their grandfather, to step in and gently steer the conversation elsewhere.
Needless to say, Pasha was in a pretty sour mood before the day even got started, but hearing the front door open did wonders in perking him up.
He immediately flew out of his desk chair and rushed out of his room and down the stairs to pounce on Ezra, wrapping all his limbs around his older brother.
“Ezra!” Pasha greeted excitedly.
Ezra laughed and hugged Pasha back tightly. “Good morning to you too, Pasha!” He greeted in return and just the sound of his voice was enough to settle much of Pasha’s irritation.
But Pasha wasn’t satisfied yet, so he dared to nuzzle his face into his older brother’s neck like a little animal, taking all the comfort he could in feeling his brother’s warm skin against his face and smelling his pine-like scent.
“Did you miss me that much?” Ezra asked teasingly as he mussed up Pasha’s fiery red hair with one of his big hands.
“Yes,” Pasha answered, not feeling all that embarrassed by having to say so. “You have to tell us everything about what happened last night.”
“I’ll tell you as much as I can,” Ezra said and finally set Pasha down so he could finish taking off his shoes and coat. “Are Yuri and Alice up yet?”
“Not sure, I’ve just been working
on school stuff in my room since I got up.”
“Did you have breakfast?” Ezra asked and started to move to the left hand staircase that led to their wing of the house.
“No, didn’t feel hungry yet,” Pasha replied and followed Ezra upstairs. “And, um, just as a warning, I sorta fucked up last night.”
“What do you mean?” Ezra asked and walked into his bedroom to drop off his bag.
“I mean I pissed Yuri off by accident. Said the wrong thing. I wanted him to stay with Alice and I in my room, but yeah, that’s not how it ended up.”
Ezra frowned and pulled Pasha into a hug. “It’s okay. I’ll make sure he hangs out with all of us today.”
“I’m sorry,” Pasha apologized and melted into the hug. He knew he was being more clingy than usual, but he couldn’t help it. He was upset over the thing with Yuri and knowing he had to deal with his father later was just making everything worse. He wished he could hide in Ezra’s arms all day and just feel safe and loved. Ezra never made him feel like shit.
“It’s all good. Do you want to tell me what happened exactly?” Ezra asked and moved to sit on the bed, pulling Pasha down to sit beside him.
“Yeah, I’d feel better if you knew, just in case it comes up,” Pasha said with a sigh. “So he came to my room to tell Alice and I that you weren’t coming home last night and I told him he should stay because I missed his snarky comments on my videos and he was all ‘you don’t really want them’ and left. I ran after him and said since you’re not here that he needs to look after us and he said he’s apparently no good at that and shut his door in my face. That’s the gist of it.”
“Mm,” Ezra hummed in response, his swirling grey eyes turning rather gloomy. “It’s okay, Pasha. I’m sure he still liked that you wanted him to stay.”
“I hope so. Fuck. I miss him, Ezra! I know it hasn’t even been a week, but I don’t care. Days feel like months.”
“I know, I feel the same,” Ezra said and gave Pasha’s temple a quick kiss. “I’m gonna take a shower and get into some comfortable clothes, then we’re going to have breakfast with Yuri and Alice and spend all day together, alright?”
“Yeah!” Pasha cheered, honestly excited to spend the day with his brothers even if things weren’t exactly great at the moment between all of them. “I’ll go work on my project some more until you’re ready.”
“Sounds good.”
Pasha gave his brother one more hug before returning to his room to work. He wondered how Rafe and Soren were making out on the project. They were supposed to be designing a website for a personal stylist and needed to keep in mind both the functionality of the site as well as the aesthetics of the stylist’s brand. It was a lot to think about, but Pasha enjoyed the challenge. Despite enjoying it though, website design wasn’t really the sort of thing he wanted to continue doing once he was done with school. He had his heart set on working with video in some capacity, but he wasn’t quite sure how he was going to go about doing that yet. He wasn’t too worried though, he still had two more years of school to go after this semester, which was plenty of time to figure his shit out.
He had probably been working for a half an hour or so when there was a knock on his door.
“Pasha? Can I come in?” Ezra called through it.
“Yeah!” Pasha called back.
The door opened and Ezra peeked inside with a smile. “We’re going to eat breakfast downstairs, come on.”
Pasha saved his project then got up and hurried after Ezra. The two of them made their way downstairs and joined Alice and Yuri who were already waiting for them at the coffee table with a spread of fruit, toast, and jam ready to be shared.
“Let’s eat!” Ezra said as soon as they were seated and the four of them dug into their breakfast.
Pasha gave his oldest brother only a few minutes of peace before delving into what he knew his other brothers wanted to know as bad as him. “Alright, let’s hear all about last night,” he said.
Ezra sighed. “Alright, I suppose you waited long enough,” he said then put his toast down. “It was a disaster. Well, it was eventually a disaster. It didn’t start that way. I met up with Marius and Alexei at their apartment then walked over to the Kane’s, which all went just fine. Shar Kane welcomed us in then said Marius and I should go meet Lazarus-khan who was barbecuing out back. So we did, and well, um…” Ezra said then trailed off, his dark brown skin getting rather flushed.
“Ooo! What’s this? Why are you bluuushing?” Pasha asked excitedly.
“What happened, Ezra?” Alice asked as well and leaned forward, his demonic red eyes sparkling with rapt interest.
“Well, um, Lazarus-khan kissed my hand,” Ezra said and looked down at his plate to probably hide his face from his brothers’ prying eyes, but Pasha could see a shy little smile on his eldest brother’s lips from between his long dreadlocks.
“Oh my gods!” Pasha cried and bounced. “That’s so awesome!”
“It was. It was really awesome,” Ezra agreed before his smile started to fade. “But then things went sideways after that. I’m still not entirely sure what was going on, but when Lazarus-khan went to take Marius’ hand after kissing mine, Marius backed off. I never got a straight answer from Marius as to what that was all about. Lazarus-khan was kind about it though, he said he didn’t want Marius to feel forced to do anything he wasn’t comfortable with, but hoped Marius would trust him.
“After that Lazarus-khan asked me to leave so he could talk to Marius privately. They didn’t come back for a good fifteen minutes or so and then afterwards Marius went upstairs somewhere and so did Lazarus. I asked Shar Kane what was going on and he said Marius wasn’t feeling good and was lying down and wanted a few minutes to himself. It all seemed really weird to me though, so I excused myself to go check on him. When I got to the room he was, well, crying. I probably shouldn’t tell you guys that, so please keep it to yourselves.”
“We will,” Alice promised and Pasha and Yuri nodded in agreement.
“Why was he crying?” Pasha asked.
Ezra sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m really not sure how much I should say, for Marius’ sake. To be honest I don’t really know much anyways, he wouldn’t tell me everything. But yeah, I took him and Alexei home and stayed with him. We had some dinner, watched a bit of a movie, then he fell asleep quite early. Once he was awake this morning I headed out and left him in Alexei’s hands.”
Alice frowned and rested a hand on Ezra’s forearm. “I’m sorry things didn’t go well.”
“So am I,” Ezra said and rested his hand on top of Alice’s. “I don’t want to be angry with Lazarus-khan, but I am, and I hate that I have to be angry. Marius said that whatever Lazarus did wasn’t intentionally malicious, but he still made Marius cry, and I can’t not be upset about that.”
“That’s understandable. Do you think there’s any hope for reconciliation?” Alice asked.
“I think so. Marius said he doesn’t want to stay at odds with Lazarus-khan, not when Alexei and Lazarus’ twin boys are becoming quite close. Apparently Alexei is actually courting Simon Kane.”
“Fuck, yeah, that would be awkward to have their fathers arguing. I hope it all gets sorted out,” Pasha said.
“Me too, but I’m still going to be angry for a little bit,” Ezra said.
“Which, like Alice said, is totally understandable,” Pasha said then started to grin. “But let’s get back to Marius-khan. I’m surprised he invited you stay at his house.”
“Alexei sort of ordered it,” Ezra said with a smirk.
Pasha rolled his eyes. “And Marius-khan can overrule his son. Come on, Ezra, you know I’m fishing for some juicy details. Just how much comforting were you doing?”
“That’s between me and Marius,” Ezra said and went back to eating.
Pasha groaned loudly and heard both Alice and Yuri make their own sounds of annoyance as well.
“Ezraaa,” Pasha whined. “Come on, you can trus
t us!”
Ezra shook his head. “I will respect Marius’ privacy.”
“Well at least that tells us that something went on.”
“I will say it wasn’t that much,” Ezra said. “But that’s all. And that I slept alone on the couch.”
“Fine,” Pasha said, deciding to relent for now. He knew his older brother was a gentleman and it was a quality Pasha quite liked about him, even if this time it meant Pasha wouldn’t get to hear the juicy details of what he hoped was a blossoming romance between Marius and his brother.
“Anyways, moving on, what do you guys want to do today?” Ezra asked.
“Skip dinner,” Pasha muttered.
“You know we can’t do that,” Ezra said, though he sent Pasha an apologetic look all the same.
“Do you have anything you want to do, Yuri?” Alice asked and all of them turned to look at Yuri.
Yuri shrunk back into the couch and shook his head. It wasn’t like Yuri to shy away from anything, especially not his brothers, and Pasha found he didn’t care for this new behaviour at all.
“I’ll do whatever you guys want to do,” Yuri replied, looking down at his plate of food.
“That’s not an opinion,” Pasha said with a roll of his eyes.
“It’s alright, Pasha,” Ezra said. “Hm, well for starters how about we just stay in our pajamas and play games until lunch. I’m not eager to leave the house quite yet.”
“That sounds lovely,” Alice said with a smile.
“I agree. Oh oh, let’s play Islanders!” Pasha said with a little bounce, it was one of his favourite board games.
“Done,” Ezra said with a smile.
The four of them went about finishing their breakfast, cleaned up, then curled up back around the coffee table to play the board game together.
It started out well enough, but as the game progressed Pasha began to notice that Yuri wasn’t playing like normal.
“Uh, what?” Pasha asked, looking at Yuri’s placement of a shipping route. “Why aren’t you cutting me off?”
Yuri shrugged. “I can go this way too.”