Disclaimer: Oh, yes, I haven’t a connection to Malice Mizer. Surprise, surprise. *sighs sarcastically*
Gackt: *blinks*
Puff: I think he’ll be delicious in a soup, with carrots and potatoes. What do you think?
Gackt: I think I don’t want to eat any soup for the next few weeks….
Mana: *waking up*
Puff: Oh, Mana, how are we? Do you feel all right? Do you want some fresh soup when the cooks make it?
Mana: *looks interested at the mention of soup*
Gackt: *trying to tell Mana to say no*
Playing House
Chapter Twenty-One
“The carpet people are here,” Gackt stated, walking back into the master bedroom, “I was just out on the balcony and I saw them pull up. Do you think that I should go down to greet them?” Mana looked up from the material he had spread out over his lap and shrugged his small shoulders.
“Do whatever you want to do. But I think the servants will be able to handle them; all they have to do is show the carpet people where the stains are,” Mana said placidly, obviously much more interested in his sewing project than he was in dealing with people who had been sent over to try and remove the food stains from the white carpeting, “We might as well let Adam actually do his job for once in a great while, since he’s awake. At least he was the last time I went down to check on him.” His bright blue eyes flicked back to the black cloth in his hands as he returned to his careful stitching.
“I probably should go downstairs, just to see how they’re going to handle the job,” Gackt said in a slightly louder voice, trying to recapture Mana’s full attention. The guitarist looked up briefly, genuinely confused as to why Gackt had raised the volume of his voice. He thought about it for a moment before deciding that it had all been in his head.
“That’s a good idea,” Mana said simply, his gaze focused intently on a small knot that had formed in his shiny black thread and had temporarily halted what he had been doing, “You should do that. It’ll give you something do to while I work on this.” Gackt, his curiosity finally peaked, sat down next to his friend and desperately tried to figure out what Mana was so delicately sewing.
“What is it?” Gackt asked when he realized that he failed in his attempt to recognize the cloth, gesturing at it nonchalantly with one of his hands, “It isn’t a new stage costume, is it?” Smiling softly, Mana loosely folded the material up into a small pile and set it gently onto the carved ebony table beside him. He set the thread and needle on top of the thin black fabric, brushed a blue-black lock of hair away from his sapphire eyes, and folded his hands over the top of his dark gray skirt.
“I thought that you were going to go downstairs to make sure that the carpet guys were doing their job correctly,” Mana said offhandedly, in an obvious effort to redirect Gackt’s attention. The vocalist tentatively reached out to snatch the cloth off of the table but ended up getting his hand slapped away painfully; luckily for the auburn haired man, Mana didn’t use his left hand since the diamond ring would have sliced easily into his flesh. Recoiling out of shock and a good deal of pain, Gackt cradled his hand as it rapidly turned an angry shade of crimson.
“That hurt!” Gackt hissed, his azure eyes sharpened by the slowly subsiding ache radiating out from the red splotch, “Was that even necessary? All I did was ask you what you were working on. When you didn’t answer, I just wanted a look. It’s not like I was going to tear it into shreds.” He sulked when Mana’s darkened lips turned up even further, showing his pure amusement to the vocalist’s reaction.
“I apologize. I shouldn’t have slapped your hand away from my very delicate project,” Mana said dryly, his tone of voice a far cry from matching what he had actually said, “Now, would you please leave me to finish this? I promise that, as soon as I’m done, you can see what it is.” Gackt nervously watched as Mana stood up and offered his pale ungloved hand to the vocalist. With a definite touch of apprehension, Gackt took Mana’s hand and was promptly led out into the hallway.
Ignoring the confusion plastered over his friend’s face, the guitarist quickly fled back into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. When Gackt finally snapped back into reality and grasped the antiqued doorknob, the lock on the other side clicked loudly into place.
“Crazy guitarist,” Gackt muttered softly to himself as he rubbed his fingers over the back of his still crimson hand, setting off down the shadowed corridor to get to the candlelit staircase, “I wonder what he’s up to.” His train off thought was cut off when he saw his butler standing at the bottom of the stairs. The man looked up and seemed slightly startled by Gackt’s appearance.
“Adam, what’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Gackt teased as he slowly walked down the stairs, delighting in the fact he had servants to mentally abuse if he chose to do so, “I would normally suggest that you rest for a little bit but you’d do that anyway.” The man stared at the vocalist with blatantly confused green eyes before he burst into a boisterous fit of echoing laughter. One of Gackt’s eyebrows rose slightly as his sky blue orbs glanced around for the other man’s source of hilarity.
“I’m sorry, sir, that I’m laughing. It’s just that I’m not Adam. My name is Adair and I’m Adam’s identical twin brother,” Adair explained cheerfully, noting the incredulous look that danced across Gackt’s visage, “I work at the business that you called to come take care of your carpet. Just so you know, I was lingering at the bottom of the staircase because I didn’t know if it would be alright if I went up.” Gackt nodded slowly and leaned up against the wall, watching Adair with hawk like eyes until the other man fidgeted under the intense gaze.
“Why were you going to go upstairs?” Gackt asked after an uncomfortable moment of silence passed, walking past Adair to go into the extremely well lit hall. The vocalist winced at the sudden harshness of the artificial light that radiated out of the many high-powered lamps that were set up. He shielded his eyes with his hand until they had adjusted reasonably well to the intense luminosity and then let them slip back to the face of Adam’s twin.
“Oh, yeah, I was supposed to inform you of the fact that we couldn’t get the stains up even when we tried the most powerful chemicals we have at our disposal,” Adair said cautiously, a little more worried about upsetting Gackt now that he was able to clearly see the vocalist in the light, “There’s a good side, though. Since you have pure white carpet, we can match it easily and just replace the damaged parts with new carpet.”
“I guess that’ll work,” Gackt stated, his tone pointedly illustrating his desire for Adair and his co-workers to get it fixed as soon as was humanly possible, “When can it be done?” Adair thought for a moment and counted a few sets of numbers out on his calloused fingers. He fished a small notebook out of his back pocket and flipped through the rumpled pages until he found what he was looking for.
“If you want, sometime today,” Adair said with a distinct air of confidence, smiling broadly at the thin vocalist, “I wasn’t quite sure if I remembered correctly, but Adam did call me before I came over. He explained how bad the damage was and he thought that I should bring some carpeting with me just in case it actually did need to be replaced. Adam was so diligent about making sure he measured the area right so that I’d have enough.” He had been planning on continuing to praise his twin brother but stopped when he noticed that Gackt’s breathing had ceased.
He poked at Gackt warily, faintly worried about the pause of a necessary bodily function. As the musician began to turn a lovely shade of pale blue, Adair’s concern increased tenfold. Shaking Gackt with a desperate urgency, the blonde man finally was able to jolt him out of his shock and restore his breathing.
“Are you okay?” Adair questioned concernedly, wondering if he should usher Gackt to some place quiet to rest, “You stopped breathing for a few seconds. I think something I said shocked you.” His green eyes showed that he was more worried about his own reputation; it simply wouldn’t look good if you frightened a customer so badly that they stopped breathing and suffered serious ill effects from it. Gackt brushed Adair’s hands off of his shoulders and smoothed the new wrinkles out of his white silk shirt.
“I’m fine. A little surprised that Adam actually did something productive around here, but fine otherwise,” Gackt said coolly, glancing in a nearby mirror to make sure his golden-brown hair hadn’t gotten mussed, “I’ll be outside, getting some fresh air, if you need me.” He quietly opened the curtained glass doors and slid outside into the shade. Breathing deeply, Gackt leaned up against the wall of the house and began to relax.
Unfortunately, his relaxation was cut short by the loud talking of a large group of men as they paraded out into the backyard to join him. Gackt backed away from the cool wall, not wanting to get cornered, and placed himself safely out into the open area between the house and the pool. As the horde of men settled into place, the vocalist was able to pick out the three neighbors he had already met.
“Hey, Gackt, how are you doing?” John asked cheerfully, not detecting the fast movements of Gackt’s azure eyes as they darted from face to face, “Scott, Anthony and I came over to apologize for what happened at that dinner party. But we figured that, since we were coming over anyway, we should bring some more guys for you to meet.” He quickly pointed to everyone and listed off their names, only messing up once.
“It’s nice to meet everyone,” Gackt said calmly, vaguely noticing the soft click of the glass door being shut in the background, “I’m glad to see that Mana and I are so welcome in the neighborhood.” He smiled for a split second before the grin fell off of his face; he realized that not one of the men had even glanced at him while he had been speaking.
“What are you all looking at?” Gackt asked, trying to figure out what had so quickly captured all of their minds. Almost as if on cue, Gackt heard the gentle tapping of high heels on the pavement behind him before warm fingers entwined with his own.
“Who are all of you?” Mana questioned in a voice that could be considered heavily flirtatious, batting his long eyelashes over his crystal blue eyes. The vocalist turned his head to get a better look at his friend and his eyes quickly grew wide with shock.
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