Moving Forward

The Sleepover

Kota's POV

"None of us took it well," I told Victor and Luke. "It doesn't help that we learned they are in a relationship with each other the same night. It bothered us that they kept it secret, that they didn't trust us."

"As in a couple?" Luke wanted to make sure he wasn't misunderstanding.

"Yes," I confirmed. I knew this wasn't going to go over well with them. None of us had anything against gays; it was the omissions, a form of lying that we had trouble swallowing. We all had admired them both and to find that they had feet of clay, that they used us, I was worried that we may not be able to get past it. We were hanging on by a thread, trying to keep our family together and I knew one more blow would tear us apart.

"Okay, I'm done." Luke raised his hands in surrender. "I don't want to hear anymore, I don't even want their names mentioned in my presence."

"Extreme, much?" Nathan asked.

"Maybe, but you weren't the one kicked off the team for standing up for a brother who was being treated unfairly." Luke glared at Nate.

"You said you like your new team better," Nathan pointed out.

"It doesn't make what he did right," Luke argued. "You don't set yourself up on a high horse and demand everyone meets your high standards when you can't meet them yourself. He and Doc aren't better than us, just older and too arrogant for their own good. Brothers are equal, one doesn't lord it over the others... Forget it, he isn't worth a second of my time and as far as I am concerned the two of them no longer exist in my world." He stood and went to the kitchen to check on dinner, Victor following him.

"He is right," Gabe defended his friend. "We went about the whole team thing all wrong. Mr. Blackbourne and Doc muscled in on our team and took over when they should have been the low men on the totem pole. We were stupid enough to let them. It is something we are going to have to watch out for so it doesn't happen again."

"Let's table the discussion for now," I reach for some chips. "Luke is right; we are here to work on mending fences between the seven of us. Mr. Blackbourne and Doc aren't a part of this evenings activities and we can't force them on Luke and Vic. They need time to process the new information they learned today and to be honest, I would enjoy a break from dwelling on it myself."

Once we were in the living room, having finished dinner, we discussed a few games we could play. Several of us vetoed Truth or Dare, Never Have I Ever, and Spin the Bottle; they were getting to be old hat. We ended up bundling up and heading outside to play Man Hunt, Flash Light Tag, and Sardines. In Sardines, it took us forever to find Luke and of course, he had to be up in a tree. We were lucky that he chose a branch strong enough to hold six of us; I would have hated to break a bone if the tree limb had snapped beneath our weight. It was a lot of fun though, a change in pace. Afterward, North built a large fire in an old oil drum and we roasted hot dogs, sausages, kebabs, and had drunk hot drinks. We put the fire out before going inside to watch movies and kicked back before going to sleep. I have to admit that it was somewhat weird to see Luke gnawing on salt-water taffy and North not saying a word about it.

We ended up staying up watching movies quite late; we had the volume off and spoke for the characters. Blurting out the first thing that popped out of our mouths, it ended up being funny, especially with Nathan and Gabe. One of the movies we watched was "Logan", the new Wolverine movie.

Wolverine was fighting some bad guy and extended his claws, the bad guy said something and then swung a sword at the blades.

"Oh, look, you have hangnails. Let me fix them for you," Nathan spoke for the villain, his voice high pitched and girlish, and cracking us up. "Hey, hold still, I don't want to end up cutting off your fingers. Don't worry about the sword, I sharpened the blade just last night and I can assure you that I am a professional Manicurist. I have my license and everything."

"I want a lemon yellow colored polish," Gabe spoke for Logan, "Black pinstripes running down the length."

"That would look totally fab," Nathan clutched his hands together and pressed them to his chest as if picturing it in his head. "I have some awesome clear diamond dust glitter we can use, make them all sparkly."

Victor and Luke left early the next morning, returning to Mass. The five of us woke up to breakfast waiting for us in the oven. It was some kind of baked oatmeal, it had chunks of fruit and nuts mixed with orange juice and sprinkled with ginger and nutmeg. It was quite good, filling and warming at the same time. We fixed scrambled eggs, bacon and toast to go with it, deciding on a full breakfast.

"I wished they didn't have to leave already," Gabe grumbled.

"Be happy, we at least got to spend one evening with them." North pointed out. "They will probably sleep on the flight home, I know I would."

"Ugh, school tomorrow," Nathan made a face, "Back to the grind and the idiots."

"I can't wait for this mission to be over with,"Silas frowned. "The classes aren't challenging enough and most of them are repeats of what we have already taken."

"Get used to it," I help myself to more oatmeal. "I have a feeling that we will be expected to remain in Public School from now on."

"I was able to make a list of Orphanages that we can check out," North changed the subject. "We all should investigate them to see which one we want to adopt. After we make our choice, Sven will add the others to the Charity list for Academy members. With eight of us, we should be able to do most on our own. We all have our area that we are good at and will bring many skill sets to help them. I've already talked to Uncle and he is willing to help, he is good with kids of all ages and will know what kind of things we will need."

'Why does Sven have a cast?" Nathan asked as he stretched out his legs and raised his arms, doing an entire body stretch on the couch.

"Accident while snowboarding," North replied, dismissing it as if it was nothing major.

We discussed the list of Children homes, their location, which organization ran them and what other information North had gathered. He was right; we needed to know much more about each one before we could make our decision. We would also need to get Mr. B and Doc's opinions; I would prefer to have Mr. B check into their financing to ensure their funds weren't being mishandled. I would hate for us to do all the work to make the kids living there have a better life only to have it stolen from them by a greedy director.