A/N: Heeeello! This here is my first attempt at writing a story, and hopefully, you’ll like it. Please tell me if I should keep this up or not: any kid of criticism will be accepted.

Guess that’s it, enjoy!

-AJones

Defence Mechanism
by AJones

.Prologue

“Founded by Nicholas Greene, in 1876, Greene’s Academy originally started out by being a school strictly for artists, but with its growing popularity, more and more people wanted a place in the Academy. Shortly afterwards the school started accepting money for the guarantee of a place in it; and for this reason, Greene’s Academy transformed in a Private Boarding School, a top one, nevertheless.

With an estimate of 2000 students, between the ages of six to eighteen, the Academy is divided in two separate wings: the Anderson Wing (where the Middle and Elementary School Sections are located) and the Parker Wing (occupied by the High School students). These Wings were named after two former students that wanted to dedicate their professional success to the school that allowed them to have achieved such high posts in their careers.”

She closed the book with an irritated “poof”, accompanied by a frustrated sigh. The only conclusion she came up with was that the Academy was a boarding school for the young heirs of the most extravagant fortunes in the country, some even the world. It was also the place where parents sent their kids to avoid dealing with the responsibility it took to give a proper education to them.

She had just reached a whole new level of boredom, sitting at one of the tables of the school’s library on a Saturday afternoon, reading a book about the freaking school. Saturdays were always the negative part of her week, either her friends had soccer, basket practice or singing classes; she ended up being alone every single time.

As soon as she felt depression starting to overwhelm her, she sat up, determined to not get affected by the situation. After all, she was Blair d’Orey, and “a d’Orey never gave up”…at least that’s what her father used to say to her on situations like this. He would do anything, literally anything, to cheer her up; she remembered this one time when he played house with her, and even helped her to dress up her Barbies. Blair smiled sourly at the memory…God, even after four years she still missed that much. Perhaps that hole would never heal completely, she knew it took time; Blair just wished she could jump the remaining time until she reached that stage.

She got up from her chair and went to her room, to pick up her swimming gear, and walked down the path that connected the Parker Wing to the Anderson Wing, where the pool was located. It took about twenty minutes by foot to get there – that’s how big the Academy was – which she made peacefully, enjoying the green scenario around her.

Swimming always took Blair’s sadness away; it even helped to cover a tiny little bit of the void she felt. And if she was lucky enough, she might encounter the three little demons she was so fond of: Josh, Dennis and Ollie. The three of them were brothers, Josh was ten and the twins, Dennis and Ollie, were seven. She had met them in one of her trips to the pool, and since then she always made sure she visited them two or three times a week.

Having the pool to herself, she swam at her own rhythm, letting the cool water calm her aching heart. At around six p.m., she left the building, her hair still wet as she felt the cool breeze of a September afternoon sweep through its black locks.

Her junior year was bound to begin within a week, and Blair didn’t feel the least enthusiastic by that particular occurrence. She wasn’t a bad student; she had inherited her father’s brains, and her mother’s looks: black wavy/straight hair, tall and lean figure, with slight curves. The only thing that differed from her mother’s genes was the colour of her eyes – instead of being blue like her mother’s – they were the same shade of green that her father used to possess.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, enjoying the breezy afternoon. When she re-opened her eyes, Blair spotted a little boy sitting on a garden bench, looking quite gloomy. She went to him and sat next to the little boy.

“Hey, dork.” she said, smiling at him. He looked up, surprised by her sudden arrival and repeated her greeting with little enthusiasm, returning to stare at the ground.

“What happened?” she asked gently, noticing something was wrong.

“Waiting for my big brother. He said he’d be here half an hour ago.” Dennis answered, looking up once again. For all the time she had known the three kids, she had never met their big brother, although she thought she had seen him around school – after all, they were all so alike: black thick hair, almond shaped eyes and light golden skin that left her looking whiter than she usually was. Blair never ceased to be amazed by the cuteness of the kid – all three of them, in fact. The biggest difference among them was in the colour of their eyes, while the twins’ were a mixture of green and caramel brown, Josh’s were greener and his hair was slightly lighter than the other two (a rich colour of dark brown).

“I’m sure he has a reason for being late. I mean, if I had a little brother as cute as yourself, I’d want to be around you all the time.” she said sounding nonchalant. He snorted and started laughing at her sentence, to which she smirked.

“But you’re always saying we’re going to grow up to be ugly.” he said, chuckling slightly at her contradiction.

“That’s because you’re always doing mean things to me, so that’s your punishment.” she answered in a mocking superior tone; he laughed again.

“So, what have you been up to?”

“My brother gave us the new Superman computer game!” he answered excitedly, all sad thoughts pushed aside.

“Pfft, Superman is boring. I like Ninja Turtles best.” He stopped in his tracks, mouth agape, and disbelief written all over his face. Dennis was ready to put some sense into her, when two boys approached them.

“We couldn’t find him. Must have forg– ” the taller boy didn’t get to finish his sentence, suddenly aware of her presence among them. She looked at the two boys and saw that very strong resemblance to Dennis; Josh and Ollie had arrived.

“Blair!” Ollie shouted, happily running towards her and giving her a big hug.

“Hey, you.” With a smile she ruffled his hair affectionately. “And hello to you too, Joshua.” Josh grimaced at the full use of his name.

“I was going to say hi.” he defended, furrowing his brow to her, disapprovingly; she just smiled at his expression.

“She thinks the Turtles are better than Superman!” Dennis said, looking at his twin, Ollie, in disbelief. Ollie looked at her and gave her the same expression that Dennis had minutes earlier.

“Are you crazy? Superman can fly. Did you tell her that?” he then asked to his brother.

“Yes, but she still thinks they’re better. Can you believe that?”

“Hey, hey. Superman gets hurt by a stupid little rock. The Turtles don’t, plus, -” she defended, looking at them with a mock superior expression. “- their favourite food is pizza.”

Ollie and Dennis teamed up and started making their case at her. While they did that, Josh watched the exchange between them and, without noticing it, he smiled. It was so odd that they got along with a girl her age without having to bear with fake smiles and hugs. Those were the girls who used them to reach his older brother...and they were really annoying.

They just reminded them of his parents’ friends, and that was never a good sign, because remembering home was the last thing they needed.

He could see that the four of them had created a good connection, and seeing as the twins were preoccupied enough to explain to her why Superman was the best superhero of all, he could tell that they really liked her. They had this discussion with their older brother all the time, and it was quite obvious they liked him very much.

Josh was beginning to feel slightly sad again, he did say he’d be there at a quarter to six. Maybe he was just a little late. Yeah, that happens sometimes, right? He hopped so… His thoughts were interrupted when he heard the name of his favourite chocolate brand: M&M’s.

“The yellow ones are way better than the brown ones.” Blair said, very sure of herself.

“No way!”

“The brown ones have chocolate inside, only chocolate.”

“Yeah, they don’t have that nutty thing.” Ollie added, teaming up with his twin, once again. That was the magic of having a twin brother: they could fight a lot with one another, but when someone else discussed something with them, they would always have each other’s back.

“Blair’s right, the yellow ones are much better.” Josh said, joining the conversation.

Blair beamed at him, pleased that he had finally decided to drop that sad face and join their debate.

“Thank you! At least someone agrees with me!” she said throwing her arms up in the air and letting out a frustrated sigh. But one could see she was amused by all this; what could she do? She just loved getting under their skin, because their expressions were so funny to look at.

“Well, Josh always had his tastes wrong.”

“Yeah, ever since he turned ten, his tastes changed. To worse!” Dennis completed.

“Or maybe, you dorks just don’t want to admit that Josh and I are right and you two are wrong.” Blair said, winking at Josh; he laughed in return.

“Yep. That’s probably it.” Josh said, sitting at her side. They had silently teamed up against the twins. Dennis started to counter back, and Josh and Blair exchanged amused, knowing smiles, the ones grownups shared when talking to kids. He felt good to know that she considered him older, like her.

They sat there for about an hour, the conversation never dying. Laughter and pranks soon began, and after a while, Blair had picked up the twins upside down, while Josh took his time tickling them. They had sworn they’d get back at them for doing that, to which Blair replied:

“Ha, what can you do? We’re bigger.”

He looked at his watch once again; damn, he was supposed to be there an hour ago. He left the gym, didn’t even stop to take off his basketball equipment, and started to run towards the Anderson Wing. Man, this place was exaggeratedly big for its purpose, sure, it was build to be the home of over 2000 students, but really, they could have spared the lake and the wannabe-forest they planted to surround said lake. The fucking place was like a little town, it even had a mall inside. It had everything to prevent you from having an excuse to leave its frontiers, he thought with a humourless smile on his face.

As he continued to jog his way down the road, he kept thinking about his brothers…he just hoped he could make it up to them, he didn’t want them thinking he had forgotten them. He wasn’t their parents. Thinking about his parents brought him bitter memories…very bitter indeed. Some people should be prohibited to have children. They don’t just have babies because they think they’re cute; eventually those babies grow up, and that’s when the responsibilities get bigger, so they have to act like real grownups that have children. But some people don’t want to have those responsibilities and so, they just don’t give a fuck about their kids.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts from unnecessary things, he spotted the garden where he was supposed to meet his brothers an hour earlier. He looked around but the only thing he saw was empty benches. A feeling of guilt and sadness shot up through his spine; perhaps they had already gone up to their rooms. Maybe he could go back to his room and give them those new PS games he had bought yesterday, kind of like a peace offering.

Convinced with his idea, he started walking back to the Parker Wing but stopped dead in his tracks a few steps later: there before him were his brothers with a girl about his age. If he had paid more attention to the scene, he would’ve noticed how his brothers were laughing and joking around with her. But he didn’t. He just jumped to the conclusion that this girl was another one of those wanted to get closer to him at any costs, even if it meant hurting his brothers in the process.

Normally this situation annoyed him a little, but today it made him angry beyond reason – perhaps due to the fact that he was feeling guilty that his tardiness had made them sad, and now this girl was harassing them because of him. He seriously had had enough of being the reason of his brothers’ problems, so, instead of talking like the rational person he was, he exploded like a deranged man:

“Hey!” he shouted, making four pairs of eyes look at him. He didn’t even react when his brothers greeted him with big grins adorning their faces; because his eyebrows had suddenly gone down to cover his eyes, a small wrinkle appearing in the middle. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Excuse me?” Blair chocked out, surprised by the rudeness evident in his voice. In front of her stood the older version of the Dennis, Ollie and – a little bit – Josh: the same almond shaped eyes, the naturally golden skin, and the same thick black hair, at the moment drenched in sweat. He stood there with his six foot one, looking down at her angrily; the scar on his upper lip, on the right side of his mouth, only adding to the dangerous aura he was letting out. There before her was that Nocetti guy...he was half Italian (that explained the looks of the four brothers), so she had heard, and had quite the reputation with the female population.

“I said: what do you think you’re doing?” he said trough clenched teeth, looking at her with a murderous stare. Blair’s eyebrows went up, as she looked at him, completely speechless. What was wrong with him?

“Well, I would say that I am sited on a bench. Won’t you agree?” she countered, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back. Clearly the boy was suffering from a severe case of dementia, because she really was just sitting on a garden bench.

His jaw tensed up as he frowned at her, his eyes never loosing that murderous glint; playing dumb now, wasn’t she? Just when he was about to bite something out to her, he felt someone shake his right arm. He looked down to meet a pair of moss coloured eyes – Dennis.

“Sean, she’s –” he started only to be interrupted by his older brother.

“It’s okay Dennis; I’ll take care of it.” Sean said softly. “Get lost.” he ordered coolly to her.

“What the…? What is wrong with you?” she got up, completely outraged by now, and stared straight into his chocolate brown eyes, her mint green ones alive with fury.

“You’re here with my brothers.” he continued with a cold tone.

“And you have a problem with that?” This guy was really getting to her. Usually, Blair was a calm person, but the one thing she did get very angry, very quickly, was when someone questioned her word. Especially with this particular subject-she really did like those kids, and would never think of mistreating them.

“Is it a crime? I did you a favour! If it weren’t for me, your brothers would have been here all by themselves for nearly an hour!”

“Well, no one asked you to do it. I think I had made it perfectly clear that I didn’t want girls of your likes to use my brothers to get to me.” he spit out, now getting angrier by the minute, no, getting angrier by the second. First, she tries to use his brothers and then she says she was doing him a favour! The girl was clearly delusional.

“Oh, so that’s what you’re worried about.” she said, laughing sarcastically now. He thought she was after him! She had to admit that he seriously wasn’t bad for the eyes, but come on, there’s so much of jerkiness a girl can endure on one single guy. “Well, you can relax, because there is no way that I would ever have the slightest interest for someone as stupidly arrogant as you!” she said acidly and turned her back to him to talk to his brothers.

“I’ll talk with you guys later, ‘kay?” she asked them, smiling. They all had apologetic expression on their faces, but managed to cheer up a little at her question. She smiled, satisfied with the response and ruffled their hairs a bit, before giving a nasty look at their older sibling and walking away from them, to the Parker Wing. She really had had enough of moronic pigs for the day.

As she was retreating, he looked at his brothers, clearly confused. The girl had been nice to the kids, and she had been nasty to him. Usually it went the other way round…What the hell had happened?

“That was Blair!” Josh said, answering his thoughts. Sean looked at him, finally taking in his words...Blair. That was the girl they had been talking about for weeks.

“That’s the girl you’re always talking about?” he asked, seeking confirmation.

“Yes! She’s our friend, and we wanted you to know her, but now she thinks you’re a bad guy!” Josh’s frown was something he wasn’t used to see, out of the three youngest, he always had had the calmest demeanour, making a scene on extremely rare occasions. And it just seemed that this was one of them…lucky him.

Well, it wasn’t his fault that she was a girl and that she was talking with his brothers…after all, whenever he found girls his age near his brothers, he knew their ultimate reason: try to get into his pants. As incredibly good as it felt to have his ego inflated a bit – okay, a lot – he didn’t like it the least bit when someone, anyone tried to hurt his family.

“You have to apologize.” Ollie’s proclamation brought him back to reality. Funny, he thought he heard him say he had to apologize; he must’ve been really far away. “Sean?”

“Hun?” was his smart answer to his younger sibling. “Sorry Ollie, what?”

“You have to tell her you’re sorry.” he said once again.

“Tell her I’m sorry. Right.” Sean said slowly, a frown marring his features. Yeah, right. Like he was going to do that.

“You have to! She’s our friend.” It was the word ‘friend’ that made him change his mind...it was a rare thing for them to have a friend of the opposite gender, even rarer, to have one his age. Maybe he could do that...for them.

He looked down at Ollie, his big caramel eyes staring pleadingly at him. How could he say no to a look like that?

“Okay, I’ll do that first thing tomorrow.” The three looked at him with such a grateful expression, that he knew for sure that that Blair girl meant something to them.

“Now, who wants to get squashed by The King of PS?” changing the subject, he looked at them with a superior expression, a challenge clear in his eyes. The three kids started shouting and making fun of his sell-proclaimed title as they followed him to his room; confident that by the following day Blair and Sean would be friends.

What they didn’t know was that that particular occurrence was going to take a little more than just a day.