Warnings: Shonen-ai/yaoi/slash/mm/guys doing guys..! Incest, prostituion, underaged people doin overaged stuffes, crossdressing, more incest, and uh.. Yeah, more Shonen-ai/yaoi/slash/mm/guys doing guys.... :D Chu haef been war-ned

Conspiroº

He smiled and sighed a little, as he gazed out over the seascape before him. His friends were running back and forth on the beach, playing frisbee with a random dog or tackling whoever had a football. A few of them coasted across the waters on surfboards, stopping when they fooled around too much and crashed into the waves, only to jump right back up again, fully revitalized and ready for more. The sun was getting lower in the sky, too, not enough to be considered a sunset, but enough to tint just the horizon of the robins-egg-blue sky purple and pink. These were good days; they were fun, relatively carefree, and he enjoyed them.

Vladamire stood finally, and shook his head of pale, sandy hair, damp enough to send a few stray drops of the salty sea water askew, and he scooped up his own board out of the sand at his feet and went running towards the coast. He didn't even shiver as the cold ocean water lapped up against his legs in small waves, and when he was deep enough he dove with his board onto the water and paddled further out. Maybe the rest of his life was mediocre, but these moments he enjoyed. The people he surfed with, though he didn't know them very well and they were really more surfing buddies than actual friends, didn't judge him at all. Not by the way he looked, or how smart he was, or the clothes he wore, or who he hung out with, or even how well he surfed.

It wasn't that his life was so bad, though. He blew a few random strands of his bangs up and out of the way, squinting across the churning waters before him and looking for a good, unoccupied wave. Vladamire had enough friends, and his family actually did -really- well... He did okay in school, enough to pass regular classes with B's and the occasional variations, and there weren't any major problems in any part of his life. Everything was perfectly mediocre. With an impish grin, he found quite the beautiful wave welling up in front of him, and he spun his board ninety degrees, pushing himself up to a crouching position, his hands holding the front of the board and holding it back towards the beach.

That was the thing, though. Everything was so normal, sometimes it was bland and undesirable. Like when he was home... He didn't fight with his parents really, or anything, and they seemed relatively satisfied with the fact that he was just about average in nearly every way, but they weren't particularly loving or sociable towards him, either. Both worked to manage the very healthy living they had, and were seldom home, least of all both at once. Any time he did accomplish anything above average, they didn't seem to care, either. But why should they, he thought to himself as he finally stood, and the water pulsed beneath him.

After all, it wasn't as though he was an only child. He wasn't even the only son, or the first born. He was just the other child, second to his older, smarter, better looking, more talented brother forever and ever, no questions, no arguments. That was okay though, he decided then, as the wind billowed lightly around him and the dull rush of the water sounded in his ears. As things were then, he was perfectly content and happy with his lot in life. Sure, it was disappointing to always be a let down to his parents, who were accustomed to the perfect child that was his brother, but they'd recently given up on reprimanding him to not living up to his standards, and Vladamire was still hopeful that he'd eventually come up with something to make someone of himself.

For now, though, he was more than happy to just live like he did, going out in the afternoons and weekends to surf here on these vast oceans of water, with the familiar but not routine faces of fellow surfers, and just live a little without doing anything societal at all. It was nice to get away, and the rush he experienced when he rode these waves was like nothing else in his life, full of euphoria and excitement, and even fear that something could happen. Nothing had ever happened to him yet, but he'd heard ghastly stories, which almost made it all the more enticing. This was the one thing he could do against all the odds, and come out relatively unscathed, or at least more mature for having tried.

Someone, whose name he didn't know and who probably didn't know his (though he could recognize his face if he saw it), had once told him that how you could feel about surfing was nearly exactly the feeling of love. You surfed because you wanted to, and picked a wave you liked, and dove into the uncomfortably cold water even though there was no guarantee of what would happen next. Sure, usually the waves ended nice enough, with the more than just occasional harmless wipeout, but sometimes there were bad, dangerous ones that were actually harmful, sometimes you had to look out for sharks, and you always had to be careful not to drown. Vladamire could do nothing but smile at this; he'd never really been truly in love before, at least not the way he'd had love explained to him with the surfing anecdote.

He fell then, of course, with a huge grin and ample lack of balance, and crashed into the cold water, making his own tiny wave in all the wrong directions. He resurfaced again, throwing his arms over his board and clinging their contentedly for a moment, letting the water carry him back to the shore of its own accord, and he gazed now at the sky scape of the city just yards away from where the beach ended, a view so terribly cold and contrasting to the warm colors of the watery, fiery horizon behind him. Vladamire smiled again, his green eyes lighting up a little with a simple happiness, and he just hung there in the water until he was washed up onto the beach, and he flipped over on his back with one arm around his board, sighing contentedly, sand sticking to him all over and the water still lapping at his feet and ankles.

A shadow fell over him after a bit, and he opened his eyes to look up at a familiar but nameless face, the one who'd compared love and surfing, and he grinned. “Yo, are you dead or something?” he asked with a friendly playfulness, concern barely even faintly evident in his words. He nudged Vladamire with his foot as though furthering the question of Vladamire's prolonged stillness, and Vladamire sat up finally, pulling his knees into his chest, his gaze falling from the guy to the waves again.

“No, I'm good,” he said simply, with an equally simple smile. He just loved the smells and sounds and feelings of being by the ocean, even if he'd just wiped out. The sun was getting lower now, and with every minute the sky was splashed with another bright, warm color. “I was just enjoying myself, is all.” He thought if surfing really was anything like falling in love, he could stand to fall in love pretty soon too.

“Yeah?” the guy asked, a little rhetorically, sitting down next to Vladamire and planting his own board in the sand to the other side. They sat there for a while, just looking at the water that splashed up in little white sprays at their feet, washing away footprints and previous water lines with every swell. “You know,” he said, after a while, finally breaking the silence. “You'd make a good soul surfer, kid. You've got it in ya, that's for sure, the way you sit here starin' off at the ocean like it was your life all of the time.” He stood up finally, and stretched, plucking his board from the sand and grinning down at Vladamire. “If you ever decide to, you oughta let me know, I can get you started out pretty good around here.”

Vladamire nodded and said his thank you's, though he doubted his parents would let him live if he'd ever decided to become a soul surfer. He liked the guy and he was nice, but it just seemed to Vladamire like a nice, mystical way of saying a bum who only surfed. “So...” he said, pausing for a moment, and Vladamire looked up, surprised he was still there. “You know, we're all leaving now,” he said, tossing his head back to the group of surfers packing in their gear and hauling off their boards. “There's supposed to be a great new night club called Byzantium opening tonight and we're going to go check it out... D'you wanna come, or do you need a ride home or something..?”

“Nah, no thanks...” he replied sincerely after a moment of actually considering it. Clubs just weren't his thing; he was too outdoorsy and liked his alone time. “I'm gonna just stay here for a while,” he said, turning back to face the ocean. “Maybe surf some more before it gets totally dark... I'm just going to walk home, because I live really close and I could do with a walk anyway,” he smiled, looking back up at him. “But thanks.”

“You sure?” he asked again, seemingly hesitant to leave. “Because I think just about everyone but you is leaving and ah...” He gave a sheepish grin and shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. “Just be careful out there, okay? It's tempting but it's not good to go surfing alone, you know?” He trailed off for a moment, still standing there as though he wasn't quite ready to go yet. “Don't you have a brother or something who can come get you..? I mean I don't mean to sound like a mom, but it's not good to be walking on the streets too late, too.”

“Umm... No,” Vladamire finally answered after a brief bout of silence. He hugged his arms around his knees, and turned away again, furrowing his eyebrows. “He doesn't live with us anymore, and he's never around so...” He gave a strong smile, the kind of strong smile he had to put on for things like that. His lack of family unity had made him stronger, he supposed, because he felt the constant need to pretend that it hadn't. “Thanks though. And I'll be careful; I promise.”

“Okay, if you say so,” he said finally, taking a few steps back. “See you then, I guess!” He called as he ran off to the group of other departing surfers and beach goers. He watched the older brunette stack his surfboard onto an old car with a few others, and pile into a car that looked a bit too small for as many people there were trying to fit in it. Before driving off, he made a point of leaning out of the window and waving goodbye to Vladamire, and with a smile Vladamire waved back. With a lingering smile he thought it might be nice if his brother was like that.

Really, he thought, as he waded back into the water again, he didn't have any idea what his older brother was like. His parents did nothing but praise him and his accomplishments, which seemed to Vladamire to be quite numerous, certainly many, many more than he could hope for himself. It had been three years since he'd actually lived in the same house as his brother, and almost as long since he'd really seen him last. His brother was away constantly at a very prestigious, very expensive private high school, and their parents invested everything in him, whereas they could care less what Vladamire did so long as he didn't disgrace the family name.

Again he gave his strong smile, but this time it was just for himself. No one could see, the beach was empty, and so was the sea. He was all alone there, but did he feel lonely..? He wondered, too, about his brother, and if they would be friends if they had the chance. The rate things were going now, Vladamire thought perhaps he'd never really know his older brother, and only live in his shadow forever. But he could live with that, he supposed... Why he was thinking so much about his brother then, he didn't know. One of the few things about surfing that was bad on occasion was the fact that he did it so naturally now his mind always ran around with random thoughts...

Another of the few bad things about surfing was wiping out in a bad way, which is just what he did. Somehow, trying to turn his board more towards the direction he wanted, he'd stuck his foot or slipped or something. It had happened too fast for him to really recognize what he'd done, but as he splashed into the water rather hard, and felt a dull throb in his ankle, he knew whatever he'd done it hadn't been good. When he finally broke through the surface of the water again, he spent a while thrashing about rather unprofessionally before gaining enough breath and enough composure to breathe and wipe longish hair and the salty water away from his eyes.

A ways away from him his board floated upside-down but from the looks of it unharmed, and he propelled himself through the frigid water towards it, wincing a bit at the pang his ankle sent through his leg. It wasn't so bad, but it wasn't pleasant either. He'd probably twisted it, or at least sprained it. He pushed himself back towards the beach again trying his best not to use his left foot, and sighing miserably because the older surfer had hit the nail on the head. He'd insisted on staying by himself, hurt his leg, and now had no way of getting home other than walking, something he wasn't keen on doing.

Once he made it to the beach where the sand was dry, he abandoned his board and crawled over to where he'd left his bag, fishing out his cell phone with a sigh. He sincerely doubted either of his parents where home, but he didn't know where else to call, and was hoping one of the maids or other house attendants would be around to answer the phone. Otherwise he didn't know what he'd do, and he felt incredibly stupid for it. Biting his lip, he dialed the call and waited, knowing no matter who it was they'd probably be disappointed he'd done something so dumb.

“Hello?” Vladamire didn't reply right away. The voice on the other end who had picked up the phone was stern and sounded annoyed, almost like his father, he thought, but not. He didn't remember the voice as belonging to someone who worked at the house, though his parents changed them often. Besides, he'd always known them to be a little more... Polite when answering the phone. “Hello??” the voice asked again.

“H-hello?” Vladamire said finally, his voice meeker than he'd intended it to be. “Who's this..?” he asked, unable to hold back the audible suspicion lacing his words.

“Konstantinos,” came the voice on the other end, after just as wary a pause. “And who is this?”

“Konstantinos..?” he asked with a dull awe, his mind slow to work out what was going on. Konstantinos? His older brother Konstantinos? Answering the house phone? His house? “H-hi,” he said slowly, still not quite grasping what was going on. Why would Konstantinos be home like that..? “You're... Home. I didn't know... Nobody said anything-”

“Yeah,” Konstantinos cut him off, sounding very annoyed. “But who the hell is this?”

“O-oh!” Vladamire said finally, shaking his head a bit. “This is um... Vladamire. I was kind of calling home because uh... I need a ride home from the beach, and I was going to see if mom or dad could come get me...” It felt so surreal telling all of this to Konstantinos. It was like telling it to a complete stranger, a stranger, it seemed, who wasn't exactly happy to hear from him. “So um... Is anybody else there..?”

“No, there's nobody else here.” His answer was curt and to the point, and neither of them said anything afterwards for an uncomfortable time. “What the hell do you need a ride for, anyway?” he asked finally. “It's not that far away from here. “

“Well yeah but... I was going to walk home,” Vladamire replied worriedly, a grim feeling setting in his stomach. It didn't seem as though Konstantinos was very apt to helping him out, and without anyone else home, he didn't know what he'd do. “But I...”

“Geez, would you spit it out already? I don't remember you being so slow.”

“I uh... I think I twisted my ankle and I don't know if walking home is such a good idea.” He blurted out finally, mostly because he was surprised at how blunt and rude Konstantinos was being. Not that he really remembered much of his personality, but his parents always spoke so finely of him that Vladamire had thought he'd turn out to be more... Cultured, or something.

“Okay. I'll come get you then. But don't go wandering around, and you'd better be there when I get there, I've got other things to do.” Konstantinos said quickly, and Vladamire was about to thank him, when the dial tone sounded from the phone. Konstantinos had hung up on him.

Limping, Vladamire made his way in a daze to the showers just down the beach a bit, dragging his bag and towel with him. He rinsed the salt water off and was more or less dry before his brain actually started functioning. Konstantinos was eighteen, and should be at the beginning of his senior year in that private school. Why he would be home now, especially since there weren't any major holiday breaks scheduled for months, and he just never came home any more anyway, was beyond Vladamire. Pondering it, he changed from his wet suit into a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and some sandals, but the entire time he wasn't able to come up with a single explanation.

By the time he got out, having thought of little in the time that transpired, an unfamiliar, sleek little black car was parked in the sandy lot, the tinted windows keeping him from seeing much of who was inside. He wasn't sure, really, that that was Konstantinos who was driving the car. He'd said on the phone, after all, that he wasn't going to wait if Vladamire wasn't ready and waiting, and because of his small but persistent injury it'd taken him longer to rinse off and change than he'd thought. He took a few feebly, wobbly steps forwards, stopping when the door to the compact vehicle swung open and someone nearly twice as tall as it stepped out.

His hair was bleached, and practically white, a shineless sheen of platinum, paler than his skin, though that itself seemed lighter than normal. The expression he wore was as dark as his long black coat, worn over a pair of dark, baggy pants, which were tucked into well accessorized leather boots. He only stood, glaring at a dumbfounded Vladamire for a moment, before slamming the door closed again and stalking over to him, pausing for a brief moment and looking him over, as though making sure he had the right guy, and then grabbing Vladamire around the waist and slinging him over his shoulder.

“H-hey!” Vladamire protested as he was carried back to the car, thinking this was probably his brother Konstantinos, but not exactly sure. Last he'd saw him, Konstantinos had had dark brown hair, and a skin tone a little less abnormally pale. Also, with Konstantinos having been off at private school for so long, he'd expected him to dress a little more... Conservative, was that it..? His look was a bit more punkish than he'd expected, more like someone dressed more for a night of partying with friends than someone destined to head a large corporation. “What're you doing??”

“Well, you screwed up some part of your foot or leg or whatever, didn't you?” he shot back, almost in a retort, as he stopped at the side of the car. He opened the door to the passenger side with his free hand, pushing it open the rest of the way with his foot, and dumped Vladamire off in the seat rather unceremoniously. “So quit complaining, get in, buckle up, and shut up. And how the hell did you twist your ankle at the beach, anyway?” he asked, though it contrasted the latter part of his previous string of commands.

“I was um...” Vladamire began lamely, still just... Shocked at who Konstantinos had turned out to be. “Surfing,” he said finally, throwing himself into the word so much, as though he'd just experienced an epiphany, that Konstantinos raised a questioning brow. He didn't seem to think much of Vladamire. “My board's...” he stopped when Konstantinos closed the door on him, cutting him off. He sat in the car in a dumb silence for a while, before the back door opened a few moments later, and his surfboard was shoved about as awkwardly into the back seat of the car as he had been in the front. “Umm... Thanks,” he said awkwardly, but sincerely, when Konstantinos slid into the car seat next to him.

The door slammed shut, and Konstantinos shoved the key in the ignition, starting the car and only giving Vladamire a noise of dismissal in reply. Vladamire barely had time to do as he had been instructed and pull his seat belt over and on himself, before the car spun faster than he was used to out of the parking spot, and onto the main road. Konstantinos wasn't the kind of driver he was used to; he wasn't the kind of anything Vladamire was used to, and for a good deal of the drive they both just sat there in an uncomfortable, uncomfortable silence. Finally, Konstantinos broke the silence, asking, “What the hell were you doing surfing anyway?”

It took Vladamire a brief but quite noticeable moment of considering all angles the question could have been asked from before he replied. As far as he could tell, there was no nice way of looking at his words or his tone. “Uh... I... Surf,” he said simply, with an equally simple shrug. “It's just a hobby, and I was with some friends earlier, but they all left a while ago, so when I went out again alone just now I-”

“By yourself?” he asked, interrupting and not bothering to wait for a reply. “That was a pretty stupid thing to do,” he said bluntly, turning the car down a side road so fast Vladamire's hands automatically gripped the side of his seat as though in a safety measure. “And surfing's an incredibly stupid thing to twist an ankle over,” he added, barely breathing between what Vladamire considered to be mostly heartless remarks, if not just blatant insults. But when he added, “That stuff's dangerous; you should be more careful,” Vladamire was willing to believe that Konstantinos wasn't totally and 100 a complete ass.

Vladamire only nodded quietly, and the silence resumed. “You look... Taller or something,” Konstantinos said awkwardly after a while, though of course his words were more aloof than anything. Vladamire noticed, then, that other than when he'd first looked Vladamire over for that brief moment on the beach, he hadn't really looked at him again; barely even a glance. Vladamire just shrugged, and then nodded, not really keen on answering. He didn't really know what to reply with. What would he say..? ‘You've gotten taller too'? ‘You look older'? Stating the obvious was almost worse than just sucking it up and not saying anything at all.

With the way Konstantinos drove, he thought that the short trip home would seem even shorter, but it felt more like the longest quick drive of his life, and most of it was spent in silence aside from the faint buzz of the radio at a low volume, and the dull hum the car made as it shot down the road. Konstantinos swerved through the streets of their wealthy neighborhood with much more precision than his extended time away let on, so much so that Vladamire almost didn't know where they were or where they were going, until they pulled past the gate around their house and into the circular drive. Konstantinos shut off the car and got out with almost as much speed as he had gotten in an started it back at the beach, throwing open both doors on the side of the car Vladamire was on, and pulling him and his surfboard out of the vehicle before Vladamire even had his seat belt all the way off.

Again he slung Vladamire over his shoulder, carrying his surfboard under his other arm, and walked up the steps to their front doors. Vladamire just hung there limply, his cheeks red from some embarrassment he didn't know the source of. It just wasn't normal being carried around by someone like that, least of all someone he barely knew. Eventually he was deposited onto the main staircase, his board leaning against a nearby wall, and Konstantinos near the middle of the small rotunda, his hands on his hips, staring at Vladamire again with more of a glare than an impassioned expression. Vladamire felt like shrinking into himself, and becoming very, very small and unnoticeable; Konstantinos' admonishing look reminded him of the look a parent too angry to scold a child might give. Finally, Konstantinos shook his head, and turned on his heel, heading back to the front doors, which he'd neglected to close.

He looked back for a moment before closing the door, and rather than giving a formal goodbye, simply said, “Good luck with the stairs,” and was gone. Vladamire Kapranos, the poor, distraught and confused boy that he was, could only sit there and stare at the doorway his brother who never came home or even called or wrote had just walked out of. He sat there staring as he heard the car started again, and as he listened to it drive away; he was still sitting, just quiet and staring, when the sun finally set and the natural light from outside faded out, one by one the street lamps coming on, along with the automatic porch lights that lit the front walk and garden. The only remotely profound thing that went through his mind then, as he tried desperately to think again of his brother Konstantinos and what his sudden presence could mean, was that life as he knew it was certainly going to be very, very different from now on.

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:) Okay, a new year, a new story, yeah..? This is actually a joint effort with another author here at FP, Sara-Ford So yeah, go be nice and say hi on her account too by reviewing, okay? (And Sara, you have to review this story too..! Get up our review ratio! Yuse? :) Hehe) Yeah, I don't particularly like this chapter much, but I seem to be writing longer sentences and paragraphs these days, so it is very long but not much happens, yeah..? Oh well, I'm promising it will get better as it goes along! I has to, because I love the characters and the plot too much to let it go bad..! Haha and maybe because I have Sara there, she can convince me to update and actually finish this..? Yus..?? Haha

Visit Sara at:
h t t p : w w w . f i c t i o n p r e s s . c o m / S a r a - F o r d

& at Deviant Art at (for pictures of characters):
h t t p : s a r a - f o r d . d e v i a n t a r t . c o m

& me at Deviant Art at (for more character pictures):
h t t p : l a p i x l a x u l i . d e v i a n t a r t . c o m

Remove the spaces I had to put in the links because otherwise FP eats it. Rawr Und also, be warned because my picture descriptions kinda contain spoilers, and also mostly right now you have to look in my sraps for character sketches from this story, but I'm working on getting up colored versions of everyone..! Hope you enjoy and lah thanks for reading, yus?

P.S.)) Which stands for pssst.:poke poke nudge nudge:. Windy is still looking for a luberly beta, so chu interested..?