Today was a pretty slow day which was surprising since a peaceful day was rare around here. We were all just sitting about, minding our own businesses, when Kade had arrived home from work with a look of deep thought on his face.
Lucas turned his head towards Kade when hearing the door shut.
"Welco-"
"Do you find me attractive?" Kade asked out of the blue.
We all just looked at him in surprise. None of us made a move to answer but it seemed as though Kade's eyes were trained on Lucas who had made the mistake of making eye contact with Kade.
"...so are you going to tell us why you're asking that or do you seriously want me to answer?" Lucas said after a while.
"Just answer the question!" Kade whined.
"Well...you're you" Lucas said as he averted his eyes. Kade frowned at Lucas's answer, clearly not satisfied with it.
"Maxi?" Kade said turning to Max who just scrunched up his face.
"No, your face is nasty and it makes me want to throw up" he said and Kade pouted, and I could see that he wasn't taking Max's words to heart.
But then, his face lit up and turned to me to which I instantly paled.
"That's right! Ceres is a girl, she'll understand. Honey, am I handsome?" Kade asked and I so very badly wanted to be anywhere but here in this pressuring position.
What was I supposed to tell him? Hm...maybe I should tell him something he'll want to hear? Yeah, let's go with that.
"You look like this pretty fish I saw one time. Wanna see it?" I asked and Kade's expression changed from curious to that of horror.
"Don't compare me to a fish!!" He exclaimed and I frowned.
"Sorry..." I muttered and Kade sighed.
"Kade, is there a reason behind this sudden questioning of how vain you are?" Lance asked.
"Okay, well, you guys won't believe it but I think I found...the one" Kade said as his eyes twinkled when thinking about whoever he was thinking about.
"Come again?" Ares said as if he hadn't heard Kade.
"You know, like, the person you want to spend the rest of your life with?" Kade said and Ares grimaced.
"Were you looking in the mirror again...?" He asked and Kade gave him an irritated look.
"No!" Kade cried.
"Wait, is that why you were asking us if you were...tolerable to look at?" Max asked.
Kade just fell into a heap on the couch and crossed his arms.
"I tried to talk to her but it was as if she was ignoring me! I mean, surely when a guy this handsome comes up to you, you'd get flustered. She didn't even bat an eyelash at me!" Kade whined.
"Holy shit, he's serious..." Roman muttered.
"Well, what did you say when you tried to talk to her?" I asked and Kade's cheeks turned red when remembering his earlier discussion.
"I'd rather not say..." Kade muttered.
"Oh come on, you can't come in here all worked up and then force us to listen to you if you're not gonna spill all the details" Ares said and Kade just shook his head.
"I made a fool of myself in front of her...jeez, I don't know if I'll ever see her again either. This is horrible..." Kade sulked on the couch and held the throw pillow in his arms tightly.
"Well, don't feel too bad about it. She probably won't remember who you are the next time she sees you" Max said but that did nothing to help Kade and if anything it made him sulk even more.
"She was so beautiful...I swear I saw a halo above her" Kade said and Ares just clicked his tongue.
"Since this sad love story is over, can we please get to driving now?" Ares said as he looked at the curled up Kade.
Kade had agreed to teach Ares how to properly drive under the condition that he managed to keep his job and so far, Ares has had his job for a couple of months now.
"Don't feel like it..." Kade muttered with a shake of his head.
"No way, you promised! Come on, I held up my end of the bargain now you need to do the same" Ares said as he tried to pull Kade off the couch.
Seeing that Kade had no plans of getting up, Lance just gave a sigh.
"Since Kade is out of commission, we can go for a couple of streets" Lance said as he adjusted his watch.
"Wow...is there a catch or something?" Ares asked and Lance shook his head.
"Of course not. You've held your job for quite a while and I'm proud to see that. Teaching you how to drive is the least I can do" Lance said and Ares did a fist pump before rushing out to the car.
"I've got to see this" Max said as he moved from his seat.
"You're actually gonna get in the car?" Roman asked and Max made a 'pssh' sound.
"Fuck no. I'm sitting on the steps" he said and Roman just chuckled. Once they were gone, I looked back over to Kade who was still sulking.
This lady must have really been something for even someone like Kade to be affected by her charms.
Apparently it only took thirty minutes before Lance had gotten fed up with Ares and they came back into the house.
"Oh, come on, I wasn't even that close to the curb!" Ares exclaimed as he followed after Lance.
"You weren't close to it because you were on it!" Lance retorted.
"I'm surprised they made it out the driveway" Lucas said and Max snickered.
"Yeah but he didn't make it past the stop light" Max said and Roman just shook his head.
I could see that it would take some time before Ares could ever get his license back...
~ Later that night ~
I was sleeping peacefully with the comfort of my stuffed animals until I heard the faint sound of gibberish being spoken. At first I had planned to ignore it, but the closer the voice got the louder it became.
I groaned and cracked open an eye to look at the clock on my nightstand and saw that it was only one in the morning. Who is making all this noise this late at night?
"...leave this house!"
I frowned when hearing the loud voice just outside my door and decided to get up and see what was going on.
"Ares, what the fuck?" Max's voice was the first I heard when opening my door and it was clear that Ares' voice had woken him up as well.
In Ares' hand was some kind of stick and it was smoking as Ares waved it around. What bothered me was that it didn't have the most pleasant scent.
"Oh for goodness sake please put whatever that is out. It smells terrible" Kade said as he held his nose shut.
"You'll thank me later once I get rid of these ghosts that are living here" Ares said and we all looked at him with frowns.
"What type of nonsense are you on now? Ghosts don't exist you moron" Lucas said and it made sense that he didn't believe ghosts exist since Lucas was always the more realistic type.
"Then explain to me why when I went into my room, my things were messed up? Were any of you in my room?" Ares asked and we all shook our heads.
"Maybe you forgot to clean it, like you always do" Roman said with a shrug and Ares glared.
"I wouldn't carelessly throw my trophies on the floor" he said.
"Look, maybe you just accidentally knocked them over?" Lance said and Ares just kept shaking his head at all the logical explanations our brothers tried to provide.
"I don't care what any of you say. I'll be damned if I let a demon snatch me up" Ares said before going back to yelling whatever gibberish he was saying before and waving the stick in his hand around, spreading the stench even more.
"Give me that" Kade said before snatching the stick out of Ares' hand.
"Hey!" Ares protested and it was just then that we all heard a crash. We all stood frozen and wide eyed as we looked at one another.
"I usually don't play this card but...DAD!!" Ares yelled before running to Papa's room. We all followed after him and when we came in, we saw Papa tiredly glaring at Ares who was just shaking him.
"Dad, you have to come like right now! This house is being taken over!" Ares cried. Papa rubbed his hand on his face before letting out an exasperated sigh.
"What did I ever do to deserve this...?" Papa muttered before slowly getting up.
"What exactly are you going on about now?" Papa said.
"Okay, like, we thought Ares was finally losing his marbles because he was trying to purify the house but then we heard a crash and it couldn't have been any of us cause we were all standing with each other" Kade explained quickly.
We all stood huddled together as Papa went to go inspect where the crash came from and I couldn't help but think Papa was very brave to do this as all of us were to scared to do so. Even Lance looked like he didn't want to be the one to investigate.
"Hm, it just seems like your lamp fell" Papa said as we now stood outside of Roman's room.
"Yeah but how? I wasn't in there" Roman said and Papa just sighed.
"Listen, it's late. Maybe Ares really is just seeing things and honestly, I don't know how to explain your lamp falling" Papa said with a yawn at the end of his sentence.
"I didn't see anything, I came back to my room messed up! Dad, my trophies were on the floor! You know I would never leave those on the floor" Ares reasoned but his words fell on deaf ears as Papa seemed ready to just go back to sleep.
"Let's give it until the morning to really claim anything okay?" Papa said and Ares frowned.
"Nothing happens in the morning, nighttime is when the demons come out" he grumbled but Papa just went back to his room.
"Well, what do we do now?" Lucas asked as we were left in the hallway.
"I don't know but can I sleep with one of you guys? I don't think I'll make it through the night by myself" Ares said.
"You tend to kick in your sleep and I need my beauty sleep. I can't be worried about things like that, sorry" Kade said before retreating into his room.
Ares turned to Max who just have him a look.
"No" he said before returning to his own room and shutting the door.
"You know, you guys are supposed to be my brothers..." Ares sulked and Lucas let out a sigh.
"You can sleep in my room" At Lucas' words, Ares turned to him with googly eyes.
"I swear you're the only one who loves me around here" Ares cried and Lucas just gave him a disgusted looked.
"Keep that up and you're sleeping on the floor" Lucas said and with that the two headed off to Lucas' room.
Once they were gone, it was just me, Lance, and Roman left.
"I swear, we never catch a break around here" Lance said with a sigh.
"Ceres, will you be alright to sleep on your own?" Roman asked and I nodded.
"I will be fine" I said and Lance chuckled.
"I can't believe our fifteen year old sister is handling herself better than her older brothers" Lance said and Roman nodded.
"Well, goodnight then" Roman said and I said it back before heading back to my own room.
Crawling into my bed, I grabbed my turtle and held her closely to my chest before closing my eyes and letting sleep take me once again.
"...ow..." My ear twitched at the sound of a soft mewl and I felt a weight on my chest but I didn't know what it was.
"Meow..." The noise repeated itself and this time, I opened my sleep filled eyes to see what it was and when being met with the pair of green eyes, my own same colored ones widened.
I screamed.
And like that, I could hear several pairs of footsteps running until all of my brothers had shown themselves in my doorway.
"C-C-C...." I couldn't finish my sentence as the awful creature mewled again and rubbed its head on my face and I wanted to completely and utterly vanish.
"Oh, it's a cat" Kade said and I was on the verge of a breakdown with this thing being so close to me.
"G-Get it off...please!" I cried and Kade walked over and picked up the cat and like that I was out of the room in an attempt to get away from the creature.
"Is this little guy the one that messed up my stuff?" Ares said as he looked at the struggling cat in Kade's arms.
"It's a feisty one" Roman said. I had made sure to stay a good few feet apart from it but when I saw it escape from Kade's grasp, I tensed. It began to walk over to me and I just took the option of running away from it.
I ran as fast as I could but no matter where I went the cat continued to follow me and I even tried to sit on top of the island, but it just jumped up there too.
"I don't think Kiddo likes it as much as the cat likes her..." I heard Ares say.
I hated cats, if anything they're probably my least favorite animal on the planet. When I was younger, there was a stray cat and I only wanted to give it some food but it attacked me and ever since then I've hated cats and basically any other animals with claws.
My last resort was locking myself in the bathroom and it worked, the only thing was that the cat was scratching on the door.
"How did the cat even get in here?" I heard Lucas ask.
"No idea. Maybe someone left the front door open?" I heard Kade say and I grew worried when my stomach began to growl.
Was I going to be trapped in here forever and eventually die of starvation...?
"I don't think it has an owner, there's no collar on it" Max mentioned and I heard Kade make a humming sound.
"Well, it can't stay here. Ceres doesn't like it" Roman said and I was all for getting rid of it until I remembered that time I had seen that commercial of those poor animals locked up in the cages, they all looked so sad and even if I didn't like cats, I wouldn't want to send it off to somewhere it would be unhappy.
I made sure to only open the door a crack so that the cat couldn't get in and from what I could see, all of my brothers were huddled outside of the bathroom.
"W-What are you going to do with it...?" I asked.
"Well, the obvious choice is to take it to a shelter" Lance said and I frowned.
"But it'll be sad there..." I muttered and Lance gave me a surprised look.
"I thought you'd be all for the idea of getting rid of it" he said and I just looked at the cat that was still mewling and scratching at the door every now and then.
"I don't like it...but I don't want it to be sad..." I said and Kade rose an eyebrow.
"So is that your way of saying you want to keep it?" Kade asked and I sighed. I was torn between my sense of morality and my feelings of wanting to get rid of it.
Then, I got an idea. I would wait and see if it was truly any harm and the moment it hurts me, that's when I'll boot it out of the house.
"I don't want to, but...I guess it can stay..." I said.
"Well, you do know that once you come out, it's just going to attach itself to you again" Lucas said and I nodded even though they could barely see me.
I opened the door and the cat wasted no time in rubbing itself up against my leg to which I just froze up.
"Come here little guy" Ares said as he tried to get the cat away from me but hissed at Ares and he backed away immediately.
"I wonder why it's so attached to you?" Roman said and I wondered that as well.
"Well, I'm just glad that there aren't any ghosts in the house" Ares said and Lucas rolled his eyes.
"I tell you all the time that they don't exist" He said.
"Never mind that, we need to head out to the store now that it seems we have a new addition to the family" Kade said.
"Wait, this thing probably doesn't have it's shots and it looks like it needs to be groomed" Max said as he looked at the cat that had by now curled itself up at my feet.
"We're also going to have to give it a name if we're getting a collar for it" Lance said.
"What are we naming it though...?" Lucas asked and we all looked at the cat. It's black fur made it stand out on the white tiled floor and it's green eyes just stared back at us.
"Well, we definitely can't let Ares name it. He'll probably name it something dumb like Sushi" Max said and when Ares stayed quiet, he knew he had hit the nail on the head.
"I guess we can figure it out later. I'll head to the store and get it some food and you guys can give it a bath. Hopefully it doesn't have fleas..." Kade said.
"Why do you get to miss out on all the fun?" Lance said humorlessly.
"Cut me some slack, I'm still suffering from a terrible heart break" Kade said with a frown and Lance rolled his eyes.
"Ceres, wanna come with?" Kade asked and I nodded but then realized that I couldn't because the cat would just follow me and we were supposed to bathe it.
"Can't..." I said pointing to the cat and Kade just nodded.
"That's alright. Lukey, come with me?" Kade said and Lucas just nodded and the two headed off.
"Well, I'm currently suffering separation anxiety from my bed so I'm just gonna go cure it" Max said and Lance grabbed him before he could get any further.
"Oh no, you're apart of this just as much as the rest of us" he said and Max grumbled a few incoherent words.
I guess it was now bath time for the...creature.