kazxraval

[kazxraval]

Emre rarely, if ever, acted out a joking jealousy. The corners of Kaz's lips softened. Bicep engaged, suddenly tense with extra pride under Emre's hand. A cheeky nod, "I can bring my hammer over anytime you want." Kaz perked more, himbos tossed out for gladiators felt perfect.

"Yeah, we can have one of those..." He was going to say naval battles. A coliseum filled with water, Kaz and Emre slashing across facades of ships in mock war.

They'd done it already, in reality. In Seattle.

Kaz switched to a different idea of a spectacle, with a knuckle tucked gentle under Emre's chin. "Ah, scratch that. I want to take down a tiger. Wrestle it barehanded. You, with a thick chest rug on display, will take on the emperor's guards for us. Then we'll attack him in his box seats as the adoring crowd cheers us on." Once again, words chosen carefully.

He shrugged. "Dunno. I've gone back to the waterfall, I've carried the crystals. Waited for it to happen again, but nothing." Emre's lips on his palm gave his fingers the opportunity to skim over Emre's cheek. "Watson is just as important as Sherlock Holmes. More than a sidekick." He agreed: "We do make a good team." How many times had they cheated a despicable ending, together? "You were there last time. When the map appeared. So, yeah. Maybe you're what I'm missing."

Kaz sank into the airy, hoarse sound of Emre's voice. The 'accented terribly distracted'. Mirth danced in big eyes and around Emre's mouth. Talk about distracting.

"I didn't know what to do either, mm. I was working on your tattoo, and my hand began to hurt." A furrow blipped across the brow, soon replaced by better memories.

A sweltering afternoon, and not from the weather. "And you looked hot as fuck. Very tempting." Silently, Kaz scanned through the day for the millionth time, in search of clues. Omens, signs, a warning. Even now, the one thing he kept drifting back to stood in front of him. Emre. "Can't figure out what activated the... map. And it hasn't happened since. It's why I was asking. To see if you remember anything else that day, something maybe I overlooked."

"No one would bat an eye, yeah. Who'd want to miss a second of us making out? I wouldn't." Not a new thought, he presumed, however Emre sounded quite suddenly free to talk. And it felt oddly contagious. A fairly mundane thing, an otherwise simple show of desire somehow catapulted to a rapturous height. All because Emre said it out loud. He quietly laughed. "What made you think of that?"

Emre elegantly commandeered Kaz's hand that held the cigarette. A flirtatious and sultry gesture. A subtle, attractive show of dominance. If Emre could steal a smoke, he could steal anything else he wanted. They were no longer in a glorified perch above the trading area. But some place miles away. Smoke filled, eyes on each other. No need for words when eye contact said it all.

Kaz leaned in to Emre's offered cigarette, especially keen to feel the slightly tacky stick of his lips on Emre's fingers. Kaz fell into a a waking dream. Unable to even think of what was being asked (hard to adjust?) or why. Hopefully a few grunts answered.

He was also completely disinterested in pulling away, unless it was to push Emre towards the small little desk in the lookout. Back him up with blind kisses as Kaz's hands claimed much more than fluttering touches. Or drag him right down to the floor, into a frenzied stripping away of clothes and heavy moans ... lose their minds. Scenarios he'd thought about countless times before.

When they did untangle, it was with an amazed exhale. Happy. A quick swat at Emre's ass leaving him. Kaz talked as he looked for a spot to eventually extinguish his own cigarette, a good excuse to move and burn the sweet tension away. "You're dangerous, Akbar. Always dangerous."

Find what more? Kaz wasn't sure how to explain it. He also hadn't thought about it all in a while. "I didn't kill him. I watched." The biggest opportunity gone, obliterated before his eyes. Yet Kaz's brain still ran on search mode. If not for her killer, then for her final resting place. A fruitless journey to say the least, but one his mind hadn't quite let go of. He scratched through the back of his hair. "I mean. Something in the jungle got him before I could. Something big, dragged him right into one of the lagoons. I waited a long time, but he never came up."

All fidgeting ceased. As he listened to Emre, an awful realization presented itself. Georgie knew about the light. Looked for it. Fucking hell. Of all people to be a key to anything. Georgina?? "How do you know it was Priya? Why're you so sure. Shit, I'm not even sure I remember her properly anymore. You know? What she looked like. I haven't seen her in years." Or was that an excuse? "Maybe, hm. Maybe it wasn't her at all."

And yet, they were whisked to a house, or semblance of one, he'd lived in with his mother. "Why would she..." An unanswerable question trailed off. "Ali is nothing to her." Ever emotionless, it was difficult to tell how convinced he was. "She doesn't care about anyone but herself, so. Not sure what interest she'd have in the kid."

"I didn't ask anyone about the cameras." Was it possible that the Tower eye caught their entire trip? The whirlwind to Wembley? The in between with Ali and Priya? "We could check them. See if they captured those lights and sparks, see if that's happened any other time. Or since we've been back."

Was it possible to find Priya and Ali too? "What do you think." Because chances of asking Georgie's help, after the massacre of most of her operation, seemed slim to none.

I can't have a home with one.

The words hit hard enough to see stars. Emre asked something of Kaz, to move forward. To consider the future, and why shouldn't Kaz do so? "I don't sleep well. That's why I stay by myself." At the furthest point from others. Now, his sleep staggered around Emre's. So far, nothing more than a jolt awake occurred and often missed by Emre either already gone or too deep in sleep to notice.

All those years on the island made Kaz forget. Would this have been a life lived outside the island, solitary and distanced? Adapted to remain outside of anyone's reach, or had the island convinced him to do so?

"I can do my best not to wake you." He waited for a flood of regret. The second guessing. But there was only a fire building. Steady waving flames built on curiosity. What new quirks and eccentricities of Emre's might he uncover? Would a home bring a tiny bit of order to his untidy mind? So many questions waited for answers, he could barely count them.

"Okay." His heart beat faster, with more dedication. Nerves (because how did they have the fucking nerve to want anything in rotten hellhole of a place?). Excitement. He was already looking at a face he wanted to see every day. "Okay. Let's do it. We'll build a home." Together.

Emre dared, and Kaz accept that dare. This was mental. Kaz wanted it. There were lists to make-- locations to survey, especially if Emre didn't want the beach. Supplies to gather. Measurements to take. The mundane activities Kaz loved to get lost in. Those could wait. "I was going to take a boat out and catch dinner. Dinner for two then? To celebrate?"

Emre mocked an offended look and cracked his knuckles. "Oi, who was judging this job test? Why innt I was there? I want names." He almost wanted Kaz to playfully push at him, but also knew: that wasn't Kaz's play. That would be a girl's cute reaction, a little affectionate 'oh shut up' as Emre puffed his chest and postured as jealous.

Instead, to his immense delight, Kaz postured right back. Muscle-man on a sunny American beach. Emre was full-grinning now and (maybe like a girl, himself) couldn't resist a satisfying squeeze of Kaz's bicep. Giddy, silly thoughts raced in Emre's head. Kaz holding onto him tight at night wrapped in those firm arms. Kaz hauling him up from some dangerous precipice. Kaz performing random feats of gorgeousness. He kissed his teeth. "Leave himbo to Mik and Nick, right. We're proper gladiators innit."

A boastful claim that sounded 'cool' to Emre. Kaz's gaze flicked up, held Emre's eyes like dark amber. "Not since the waterfall? Why not?" he asked, assuming the mysterious painful carvings that appeared on Kaz's hand were deliberate. Something Kaz had to initiate with the crystals. He was surprised Kaz didn't try to make the palm-map happen since then. He grunted, shook his head at Kaz's soft gaze, sympathetic in the right light.

He upturned Kaz's palm, to kiss it. "No, it's not like that, is it. I want to be part of this, when you figure it out. Yeah? You're the Sherlock, I'm the other bloke, the sidekick." Emre clearly had no idea how those stories worked, but he had seen a cartoon with mice, once. "Besides, we make a good fucking team, man."

Emre didn't quite believe that he triggered the crystals in any way. The 'water crystal', the one Kaz said had taken a liken to him...it was confusing to Emre, confusing how Kaz just knew. Some sort of sixth sense, some deeper communication between Kaz and the crystals. "I remember some of it. I remember being terribly distracted by you, trying to pay attention. Not my fault you're so dead fit, man." The tease faded slightly. "I remember your palm most of all. How painful it looked. I - I didn't like what it done to you, I remember that. I wanted to help, but with me too stupid to know how, innit. What do you remember?"

A grin, as chat turned to lighter things, like opportunities to shag. "Reckon we could snog anywhere we wanted, if I'm honest!" Saying it felt like a shock, Emre realizing it was true. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. "We could have a go in the middle of the market and no one would blink an eye. Yeah?"

Me and you. Such a charming idea, it sounded so complete and full, coming from Kaz. But so alien as well, like Kaz Raval wasn't the sort to say that with such conviction. Emre took Kaz's measured touch as a reason to move in closer, bask in the heat emanating from Kaz's skin. He caught Kaz's hand, took a drag off Kaz's cigarette. Offered his own to Kaz's plush lips, his fingers brushing against the soft pink. "After all these years of just you? Hard to adjust, man?"

Kaz butting against Emre, hands trailing like Emre's body was a well-worn map - the thrill that shot down Emre's spine, coiled and simmered deep in his belly. The urge to kiss Kaz hard, rip their clothes off. Wash all thoughts away with sucking and fucking, minds blown, soaked in desire. It didn't help when Kaz breathed a sweet 'stop' that meant the exact opposite, Emre knew it did. It elicited a light groan from Emre, and he forced his eyes open, out of the phantasmagoria of Kaz.

The bustle from below filled his ears, the sights of people down in the distance, the smell of food and others. All Emre wanted to do was breathe and taste Kaz, fill his entire world with Kaz. It was insane. It was also insane that they were still here, just stood here, trying to pull the strings of a casual chat together. Trying to...what? Make this normal? Nothing about Kaz was normal for Emre, but he had no idea how to put that into words.

So he backed away - casually - to give them both a bit of breathing room, right the world again, so it wasn't tilted firmly to Kaz, Kaz, Kaz. "Fuck me..." Emre breathed, taking a last, long drag before carefully field-stripping the butt. No fires on his watch.

Emre looked anywhere but Kaz, as Kaz deftly kept them talking. Talking about Seattle (or Seattle-adjacent), which was a good sign. Especially when Kaz's words pinged. "Find more? Find what more?" Even as Emre asked, he guessed. Tentatively, he said, "You found her killer, didn't you? Here, on the island. You - you offed him, yeah?" Because Emre could only think in terms of revenge. Killing was closure, wasn't that how it worked?

And speaking of killing, there was what happened in Seattle...but Kaz was teasing him, a light pinch on his ear that made Emre smirk despite himself. Right - they'd talk about what happened on that boat, later.

Thankfully, clever Kaz kept pulling the chat together, without even realizing in this case. "Hm," Emre said shortly, about Ali's time-travelling. They'd postpone the cold-blooded murder chat, but Emre couldn't keep this information to himself, not after Kaz voiced his innocent curiousity. "Ali was - taken. Between your Seattle and my London, he was, well. Not taken, he wanted to go. We wasn't the only ones who could, erm, who the crystals was taking on a time travel, darling. Remember Georgina, in the boat? When we all first saw the crystals in the sky - like sparks of light, innit? She knew what it was, she said 'we found it' or she was 'looking for it' or something, like. Georgina knew something about the crystals, knew we had something to do with them. And she weren't the only one, Kaz."

Here it was. Emre wrinkled his nose, stared at Kaz until Kaz was looking right back at him. "Georgina couldn't travel, but...but your mum seemed to travel, like us, and Ali. She got Ali into a car and...dunno. Buggered off. This was right before we landed in Wembley. But I know it was her, yeah. It was Priya."

Maybe after saying all that, Kaz's offer to live in close proximity would be rescinded. Kaz was remarkably careful about things, Emre realized. Emre didn't have to look at crystal palm-maps with him. Emre didn't have to build anything on Kaz's beachfront land. There was always an out. Not a rejection, but a way for Emre to escape; no harm, no foul.

So even after dropping the mother-bomb, Emre decided to fuck second-guessing and caution, politeness, and even exit strategies. "I don't want to live close by you, man. I want to live with you. In one place, not separate. No visits, no sleepovers, no privacy. Together, innit. I want- I want a home. I can't have a home of one."

But Kaz could. Kaz could - and did! - carve out a home for himself, just himself. Kaz had even generously offered to parcel out land for Emre, close proximity, like a moon orbiting a planet. But Emre insisted: "Two make a home."

[kazxraval]

Kaz gave a shrug to the pondering of a 'career' direction he'd not given much thought to. "A pivot, perhaps," he played along. "I passed the hammering shirtless test, yeah. Won me the job, that skill." He curled an arm in front of him to admire. "Gonna have our himbo summer now, Em."

"No one is leaving this place for a minute." His departure from the market well-timed. Kaz's eyes jumped from his hand to Emre over the burrowing of crystals, as though they were little parasites in a wait to infect their chosen host once more. "It hasn't happened again. Not since that day with you at the waterfall." A glorious day interrupted by the excruciating pain and confusion of a map to nowhere.

A faint and sympathetic smile graced his lips. "I know you didn't ask to solve anything. Don't have to, either." Despite it, Emre became deeply ingrained into the fabric of the mystery. "I've not told anyone else. Or heard any stories at all." Kaz briefly grinned. "It's been our secret for so long. I kind of don't want to share it." But the Tower maintenance and tech teams certainly focused on the last trip Kaz and Emre took.

In his cupped hand he examined the pieces and noted the qualities. Pale, translucent, lifeless. With a furrowed brow, he funneled the dull shards and crushed powder back into the pouch. "We can try to induce the crystals to show us the map again. This time, I'm going to follow it. There's some reason why they activated at the falls, but no where else, hm? And with you."

A pause to brush over his beard. "These crystals in connection with the teleporter showed us the past." Arguably, a version of the past. "I need to know what they want to show us here. Do you remember it all, that day at the falls?"

Electricity and proper plumbing, Kaz hadn't thought about rooms in the tower. "Oh." He nodded his head. 'We can still fuck' drew a small laugh from Kaz. "Glad you've nailed down the most important aspect of a home. Being able to go at each other in relative peace."

A polar shift in Emre existed for a while, just not in so many words: the independence of one brother provided freedom to another. The push for Emre's own place, in his own life, began to make sense. With you, obvs. A feathery type of flutter rose inside Kaz. One felt often with Emre. Not just his dick getting hard.

Their hands already roamed throughout the conversation. All to punctuate or assure, or simply to remind of the blissful sharing of space. This time, his fingers grazed over Emre's chest and to an arm to squeeze. "Me and you." A chant to invoke into existence what had undoubtedly already been floating around them to begin with.

Kaz made a quiet but amused sound. "Ah, you're tearing me apart," said low, no real emotion tied to it. He tried not to smile at Emre's most dainty and hands full applause. "Mhm, and the like. I'll show you more later."

Kaz did want an autopsy of Seattle. Not necessarily a neatly generated report, but a start. The more devastating parts of the trip still hidden in the corners of his grotto for now. Did Emre think about the man (men) Kaz killed as often as Kaz? Or the image of a blank but blood-splattered expression?

For the time being, he'd rather stay nested in their ring of tobacco scent and smoke, perfectly mirrored in the way they each held a cigarette between fingers and exhaled away from each other. Fingers gently claimed Kaz's hair. His chin brushed Emre's forehead in a cat-like affection. A hand stayed on Emre's back, alternating between trailing around and pressing the palm into the well-defined muscles.

Plenty ways we can lose our minds... "Stop," an empty warning in a whisper. Now his dick could definitely get hard. "All the way, yeah, all with you." They wouldn't stay locked together long. But he closed his eyes and felt Emre's touch pour over him, a warm splash of want, the right balance of excitement without growing too out of hand. Enough to relax. (Wouldn't he kill to always feel this damn good, this adored and horny and protected?)

"Rolled over onto it?" He slipped out of his trance with a longer lasted smile. Basked in the beams of 'weirdo' and 'fucked-up mind' laced with nothing more than appreciation. "Your sheets don't make the best hiding place, so don't have to worry about that."

And right on time, Emre provided an intriguing idea. "Dunno. Part of me... part of me wants it to be real. If I can find this hidden box of Ani's maybe... I can find more." A cradle of bones on a beach, her final resting place? Utterly delusional, and he frowned. "I mean. I know it's not realistic."

More smoking before he changed directions. "Or. I'd like to see your little self go ballistic over missing shoes." Kaz softly pinched the top curve of Emre's ear. And Emre's kisses left stars in his beard, precious gems to keep. "Reyansh having a meltdown over missing cheese would be gold."

"If we took things, we could've left things, don't you think." Was it possible? And what the hell was the point? "It's weird that Ali didn't stay in London. He traveled to my... past. If you can call it that. But didn't stay in yours." Another thought. "I asked the tower techs to locate anything picked up on the cameras in Seattle from our trip too."

They could've left things. The value came at him in strange ways. A warning to Urmilla. To Omar, all trajectories altered... but was any of it true? Did those strange semi-memorable places they visited abide by the laws of their own weird-ass universe?

Emre acted as though Kaz unintentionally caught him stealing a sweet or something. A lot of being grown, pointed out a real home, a real man. (Which Kaz had never known anyone real-er than Emre) Kaz asked himself: should I say no? Backtrack. Claim to be misunderstood. Except he didn't feel any of those things were accurate. His hand clasped over the one on his shoulder. "You don't have to move down there. It can be rough riding out storms if you're too close to the beach." Flooding, exposure to more wind damage than the interior... then again, a storm anywhere was rocky to endure.

"I see the allure of the tower too. Kind of like living in a high rise or something." Which might suit Emre. "I'll visit, wherever you go." He stopped to smoke again. "But I don't see why we can't be neighbors."

As he said it, the usual urge to run from any perceived attachment was barely a vibration in his head. The idea of something begun triggered the inevitable ending now so far out it fell off his horizon. Jaanu. "That way, it's easier to borrow a cup of sugar."

Emre snorted in amusement, taking a moment to peer over the railing at the little stalls below. Bustling and busy, as was normal at this time of day. "Yeah..." he drawled lightly, magnetized by Kaz's thinking, but reluctant to just copycat the other. "So you're opting for a new career in building instead. 'Kaz the trader' is now 'Kaz the builder' - got a nice ring to it, innit." Emre teased deadpan, tilting his head. "Can you hammer whilst shirtless, is - is that a thing?"

All for himself. Emre's mind slipped back into more sun-mottled, ocean-spray, sultry moments. Him and Kaz, slippery in wet and naked heat, whispering love in multiple languages at each other. Claiming each other in tender but firm ways. It felt so right then, it fixed so much into place, made things real. But neither of them really knew what to do next, Emre realized. After bleeding, intimate promises of worship and fealty, they both just....continued on in their lives. Emre back to work, Kaz back to work, bouncing back together for occasional jaunts and adventures.

The separation suited them both, between their reality and the other reality, but...why?

Kaz reported about the teleportation room, as Emre enjoyed his fingers prying for the lighter. "Oh. Oh - so one teleport still actually works? I reckon no one would dare use it though." In case it blew apart too, exacerbating the Flower tower malfunction. He watched as Kaz extracted a little pouch - so dear. So darling, the way Kaz stored things. Altoids tins and little compartments and cheap velvet pouches - and shook out the contents.

And explained the magnitude of what happened. Emre stared at the crushed crystal pieces, then up at Kaz. "Careful with that, luv. Looks like it could slice your hand. Or - or...burrow inside. Your other palm, Kaz. Remember the map on your palm? Might be time we look into that again. Crystals that can be shattered and puv...pulp...puvverized, yeah. Fuck me..." Emre kissed his teeth. "All these bits and pieces of a puzzle I never asked to solve."

But Kaz was a detective, of sorts. Investigative, curious, determined. Coupled with some internal apathy, and a natural wariness. "Do you reckon anyone else knows about the crystals like you - like we do? Should we tell anyone else? Or maybe others have had erm, encounters with crystals, innit." Or better to figure it out themselves. Emre was leaning keeping it on the down low, if only because he wasn't sure how to begin explaining. Only Kaz understood - possibly more than Emre.

"The Tower's got dorms! For people to do shifts overnight and that." Not permanent homes, but Emre shrugged. "Calm, luv, calm. I'm just spoiled for the electricity and toilets in there innit."

Emre wasn't serious about living in the Tower, but Kaz's protest sounded almost...blustery. Kaz, indignant? That felt new; or maybe Emre read him wrong. Why would Kaz have strong opinions on Emre's new living area, after all...? Right. Emre grinned. "We can still fuck in the Tower, you know."

The mention of Iyaz felt incongruous, and Emre shook his head. "No. nah. Bruv's truly found his own life out there. I wouldn't want to..." Emre paused, pondering his feelings. He'd thought about his brother, but not as obsessively has he used to. No little (tall) younger to mind, control, fix, help. "He...he was right, you know. We needed to be separated. He needed independence, so...so I could be free. I've got my own life now, don't I." To lessen the gravity, Emre winked up at Kaz. "With you, obvs."

Emre leaned in to take the flame, leaning back to exhale smoke. "What's a jimmydean," he replied, not expecting an answer. Kaz had a trick to show him - playful and fun. Was this what Kaz was like, with his mates? Full of little skills and novelties, amusements for others so he could be amused in turn. Whiling away hours just...hanging out. Being normal. Emre grinned, with a two finger applause on his palm. "Wager you can blow them funny smoke circles and the like too, innit. Man's got all sorts of talent with that pretty mouth."

Kaz clearly didn't want to dissect Seattle. And when he collected Emre close, teasing with the alien cool of the lighter juxtaposed with Kaz's calloused fingers on his skin, post mortems flew out of Emre's mind as well. All that mattered was the now, the present. It was so easy to do that with Kaz. He never wanted to scrape through the past, or plan for the future. It was just now, here, with him. Emre raised his arm, draping it over Kaz's shoulder, hand curling into the nape of his neck. That thick tangle of silky black hair slid between his fingers, pure luxury.

"Mmm. Maybe you're right. Just slow down for a moment, yeah? Manual labour. Plenty ways we can lose our minds, focus on the physical." A drag of his cigarette, and then Emre nuzzled his forehead against Kaz's scruffy chin.

Ani's treasures in the dorm. Emre exclaimed, leaning back. "You what! You hoarded enough in your bloody rock-cave, got to spill over into mine? What if I rolled over onto it and crushed it all?" It was a joy, though, knowing Kaz trusted Emre with Ani's treasures. Or...maybe not Emre, but his sleeping quarters? "You fucking weirdo. The way your fucked-up mind works..." Emre sounded fond, admiring. He shook his head. "Still can't believe we was able to bring stuff back from the past. Oi, fuck, Kaz. What - you don't think that was...real, do you? Little me comes home to find his prized creps is jacked? Or poor little Ani can't find her ticket stub and keychain?"

Kaz flipped the lighter joke into a trainers quip, clever little sod. In response, Emre pressed two, three, four kisses in quick succession along Kaz's jaw. Kaz was still talking, about his property, his beach. But then -

A pause. Emre leaned back again, to meet Kaz's plum-dark eyes. "You what. You...what? I'm - you know that's not what. I weren't saying we should, dunno. It wasn't a hint at anything, you know that." Emre's turn to bluster. "Dorm really is just getting too small, and I'm a grown fucking man! My grieving period is over! Yazzie's moved on, I've got to do the same, I've got to make a home, a real home like a real man. And - really? Your beach. You want me, on your beach. That close to you. Bruv. Mate, darling. Jaanu." Emre laid a heavy hand on Kaz's shoulder.

"I'm serious here, my love. Is that really what you want? I'm not asking for that. Not that you'd be pressured into anything even if I did ask, you're no pushover innit. Nah, this is just - are you sure?"

[kazxraval]

"Change of scenery," was his response. "Ready to do something different. You know." A quick glance cast down from Emre's perch over the market. "Tired of dealing with those pricks down there." Pushy and whiny 'customers'. The thrill of the deal no longer enticed but grated. Kaz was done with it for a minute

Any of his own complaints went up in smoke with the lighter remark. Were I this lighter. This little bastard. Seemed so long since they had the time to be so irreverent. So long that for a second it felt strange to even reply. An old dance he'd forgotten the steps too, and needed Emre to gently remind. The comment about the lighter relaxed him, and allowed a smile to surface. "I see something I like, I want to keep it all for myself." A sweep of his eyes down and up Emre, not hidden but exaggerated to play along. "Can't be helped."

He'd never thought of Emre's dorm room as being small, however maybe he paid more attention to what the room held. What it smelled like, what it represented. But he nodded along in agreement. Yes, it was cramped. Yes, they'd be bumping their heads on the shelf, mhm.

"Ah," he paused. And frowned, but not because Emre made taking back the lighter difficult. That part, he enjoyed. Pushing against Emre's soft skin, pulling at a strong hand. Studying the blue ink or the bend of the joints of the fingers. What a funny way they had, to 'hold' hands.

"I did go back to the teleport room. The one we used is broken, yeah. The other one is alright. The tower team is pretty pissed." How to fix something that you don't really understand how it worked to begin with? "Pissed at us, they know it was our trip that fucked it all up."

The lighter game took a time out. From another pocket, Kaz pulled a small bag, velveteen and deep blue. The drawstrings were loosened and he shook out the contents. Some of it looked like finely ground powder and tiny rocks, until Kaz moved it into a shaft of sun that poured into Emre's workspace.

"This was all over the floor in the teleporter room." Crushed crystal pieces were held out for inspection. "Remember when we were playing around with one, the first one I showed you? And it broke the vice? Look at these. All broken, much of them pulverized. Turned to dust, Em." As they could've been. "How's that fucking possible?"

As Emre continued with the homestead plans, Kaz felt his lips part. Incredulous, he balked. "The Flower Tower? What in hell would ever make you consider moving-- that's not even a real place to live." Said the guy who lived in a cave. "Why'd you think about the tower, how's that make sense?"

He supposed Emre hadn't lived on his own until recently. There was the idyllic house they visited, with empty crisp packets on the floor. Then with a grandmother, with Iyaz. In army barracks. Two closets in two homes (one with Melody, one with Iyaz). The only other place he lived alone was a prison cell.

And now, in the dorms. A lonely sentiment, and Kaz wasn't sure what to say. "We can try to look for him again, your Iyaz."

He grinned and accepted the cigarette, although he placed it behind an ear. "Smoking now? You look like a brown Jimmy Dean with it." There wasn't much wind. Regardless, a hand cupped around the end of Emre's cigarette to carefully light it.

"Want to see a trick?" Kaz wet his lips and gave the lighter a few flicks. Then the flame was held up lit, and Kaz brought it to his pursed mouth. He sucked in quick, and most of the flame fully bent, drawn between his lips. The magic lasted a short time, five seconds or so before he laughed the fire was extinguished. Kaz smiled. "Ever do that? Not even sure why I ever did it to begin with..." Friends, fucking around, doing dumb shit.

Fighting, running, escaping. Their life. Kaz lit his own cigarette for that first long, beautiful drag, which for some reason had to be done looking upwards. An inhale deep enough to hollow his cheeks, and luxuriously audible exhale of smoke after. Fuck, he missed smoking. "I don't know why." Even so, the apocalyptic office tower they began in flickered through his mind. Georgie's goons kicking him in the ribs. Emre with blood up to his elbows. Kaz was less inclined to think of it fondly.

Kaz squinted as he placed the cigarette between his lips again. He reached for Emre's sides to pull closer, and lifted Emre's shirt enough to slide the lighter between skin and the waistband of the shorts. He took a puff and then held the cigarette up to blow smoke over the cherry tip. "I'm kind of tired of fighting, running, escaping. Felt like we were in some big video game last time, hm? Leaping around, shit. Happy to stay here for a minute. A building project, yeah. What could go wrong with it?" Absolutely everything, but at least on the island they didn't have far to run.

He hummed a laugh. "Ani's box is tucked away at your place." A quick flash of teeth. "Didn't expect that, did you, ha. Guess I gotta move it now. Since you're leaving. How many damn people you have over to your place anyway, that's gonna see the trainers? Figured you wanted 'em. Didn't know they'd end up an, uh. Objet d'art, or whatever." It was fun to harass (affectionately) Emre over fancy shoes. Better to see Emre light over over the Jordans. "Oh, to be those shoes..." he teased.

"I don't like people on my beach." A pause. "But. Well, you could build there." His head bobbed, then brows tightened. "Funny thing, I had this weird idea to build a beach hut. Or even something sturdier up on the cliff, as a sort of look out." A 'look out' sounded ridiculous, but for some reason he had it in his head. "Navy team gonna land any day now, I know," he drawled jokingly.

"I'd let you. Only you. No one else. Not that you need any more ideas on where to live. Maybe I should help you narrow them down instead of adding to the pile." Another pull from the cigarette, this time he exhaled through his nose and ruffled a hand through the top of his hair. "What do you do up here all day anyway? Spy on me?"

The light tremour of amusement crossing Kaz's face, barely a register on the Richter scale, was like a full-blown laugh from anyone else. That same (slightly smug, now) thrill that automatically echoed in Emre, whenever he amused Kaz. It was practically mechanic, by this point. Flick a switch, the light turns on.

Emre was turned on, incidentally. But that was merely due to the presence of one certain golden-skinned, long-haired man in Emre's 10-metre radius.

"Sure you haven't," Emre replied dryly, but not chiding. Kaz and Isela were like beans on toast; but sometimes the toast was overdone, or the beans were off. Neutrally, like holding a branch out to a wild stag, Emre asked, "What sort of change?"

It is mine, hummed with such casual confidence. "If no one else has claimed it," Emre amended, knowing no one else would. Emre hadn't even noticed it, himself. But the innuendo was irresistible; Emre flicked the lighter between his fingers and cheekily added, "Were I this lighter, ey?"

The tease of 'soldier boy' from Kaz was new and stupidly intriguing. It could've been mocking; Emre despised his time 'fighting' for the British Army, even if it shaped him so indelibly. But this was Kaz, and when Kaz said anything about Emre, it felt like...attention. Attention from someone Emre never could've conceived he'd yearn after. "Yes, wot. They're a prize! I've got to keep them somewhere I can see them without knocking my head against the bloody little shelf when I'm crawling about in there. And what if you're in there too?" Emre kissed his teeth, shook his head. "Nah, man. It's too small now, too cramped. I want something bigger."

Emre clucked his tongue. "Not as if we'd be able to go back out there to find more Jordans, not for a while. You've been back to the teleport room? What's it like? Is people pissed it's broke? Did you, erm, find...anything that...explains...?" Explained why it broke, why the crystals were there, why they flicked and shunted Kaz and Emre between countries and timelines, like pinballs.

He'd started fidgeting compulsively with the lighter now, until Kaz's hand curled over his, thumb deftly stroking along Emre's palm, then tucking in to pry. To make it a game, Emre held on to the lighter as tightly as possible, letting Kaz fight him. Enjoying the contact, the power of Kaz on him. Even in small ways, like this.

Back to Emre's idea to move homes. He shrugged. "Dunno, really. Was thinking the Flower tower, but it's all public innit. I want privacy." A little side-smile. "For us and all. And our shisha bar, yeah! Maybe one of the houses...I dunno." Emre shook his head.

"I hate living alone. Was easier when I had to make a home for Yaz. Now...what. Make a home for just myself? That's not a home. That's just me, innit."

Kaz succeeded through pressure and gentle force, and Emre relinquished the lighter. As a reward for Kaz's light-fingered ways, Emre shook two cigarettes out of a pack, gave one to Kaz, stuck the other in his own mouth and waited.

"Building projects? I can help too," Emre said, before hastily amending, "If that's alright. It'd be a riot to work on something together, don't you think? Something what don't involve fighting and running and escaping," Emre chuckled. "Why is we always fighting and running and escaping, man?"

Emre hardly sounded bothered, more nostalgic. Romanticising - Emre's favourite pastime - their jaunts to the outside world together.

Another shrug, when Kaz asked about a timeline. "Dunno. Honestly, luv, it was the Jordans innit. Seeing them on the shelf, was such a shame, wasn't it. You saved those, for me. They should be prominent, like. I want everyone to see it and get green, yeah." He jutted his chin towards Kaz. "And what of Ani's little box of treasures? Tucked it away into one of your rocky niches, then?"

[kazxraval]

An amused reaction to 'Iz' rippled across his brow and mouth. "Iz said I've been snapping at her since I got back." A short pause, a long blink. "I haven't." Isela was overly sensitive, Kaz decided. "Been wanting to make a change for a while, so. It's fine."

He angled slightly into the hand dipped into a pocket. Emre's reach left a delightful but brief ghostly touch behind, a little eddy of shared closeness that floated around Kaz's hipbone before it disappeared. "Mm, it is mine." Words to say as he watched Emre examine the lighter. "I'll let you look at it for a second."

Kaz huffed, an instant reason popped up in his mind of why Emre needed to put those damn shoes on and march through the sand. Wear those fuckers until they wore out. Actually, there were a few things to say but Emre's announcement threw him off, as timely as it was about to be.

"Okay." Seeing his old room? His dad? What brought on the move, Kaz wondered. "Looking for more closet space then. Soldier boy gonna grow more Jordans." Not posed as a question but a nagging sensation in his stomach hoped Emre would explain.

Kaz took the hand that held the lighter. Turning it over, he gently scratched the palm with his thumb nail. Then, his thumb gently began to pry open Emre's grasp.

"Where you moving to?" He couldn't imagine Emre would return to his old shared house with Iyaz. Kaz heard about it long before he saw the inside. The proud shower, a bare bones room (not unlike Kaz's younger bedroom, ha). Could hear the scrape of a chair leg on the wood floor Emre built himself, the rattle of a teapot lid when a fist hit the table. Remembered how far an angry step took off the porch.

But maybe? Maybe it was Emre's plan to move back into his old home. Hell, he was already a little surprised to hear this idea to move in the first place. And--

Fuck, why the hell was his brain picking this apart?

Kaz had the lighter once more but gave Emre's fingernails a quick once over. A slow press of the pad of his thumb over every single nail. "Funny you say this. Because I've been thinking about signing up for some those building projects going on." At least the ones that provided the right distractions for Kaz. Mindless lifting, moving, sweating. No frustrating challenges for a minute. No unwanted flashbacks, no bloody lips. Nothing he had to think too much about.

He dropped Emre's hand. "Hope you won't get rid of the smoke room." His thumb flicked the lighter once. "And this is happening when..."

Emre stared off into nothing. He didn't feel bad about it; the trading post was, by this point, self-managing. Emre really only showed up to be a lynchpin of governance, his visibility keeping people in line, even if altercations were minor. He didn't like seeing himself as a guard, or a fucking pig. More like a watchdog monitoring the flock.

He still couldn't rid himself of those 'dog' analogies; but at least this one, Emre picked for himself.

But since their trip to Seattle (and...somewhere else. London? Space-time portal realities, as Iyaz called it?), Emre could only think about Kaz. One might argue that Emre was always thinking about Kaz, or at least the other occupied about 65 - 70% of Emre's mind, at any given point.

But it was always thoughts in conjunction with something else. A wedding necklace, a corrupt cop, a lost mother. This time, it was about crystals. Emre still had the water crystal; Kaz wouldn't take it back. But there were other crystals in the (now-broken) teleport room. Exploded bits of glass in the air, on the floor...but where did it all come from? What did they see in Seattle? What took them to their past?

And why did Emre feel Kaz was at the centre of it all.

Like a djinn summoned by thought alone, Kaz's rattly greeting pulled Emre out of his thoughts, with a sharp inhale. Too slow to register Kaz nicking the forgotten lighter, but Emre made a belated disapproving frown anyway. He stood up from his perch and it only took three steps to reach Kaz.

Kaz, carefully keeping his distance, as always. That caution, even now. But for entirely new reasons, again. And again, and again. Emre didn't have time to greet Kaz back, as he announced his and Isela's designs; or lack thereof.

"You what?" Emre paused a foot away from Kaz. Tilted his head - surprised first, confused next. "Why you shutting it down for so long? You and Iz had a row?"

Emre stepped closer, hand slipping in a proprietary way into Kaz's shorts pocket, to extract the lighter. "I'm afraid is not yours either, darling." A little game to play; Kaz had set it up. A slight snort, as Emre studied the lighter. Content in his close vicinity to Kaz. "You joking? I put the shoes up on a shelf, after giving them a good cleaning. Bruv, I need a bigger place to live. I reckon it's time."

[kazxraval]

[kazxraval]

Army boy. "They cleaned up after you," he murmured with a half-grin. After a pause to picture this 'army boy' in his head, he said, "I never thought about it. Why you were so tidy." Memories of Emre insisting he didn't mind talking about the military, about the war. Or about being held by the feds. The wrappers and waste now represented a sadness, a time cut short.

"I'd never make it in the army, hm?" A faint and tired smile filled in for something more provocative he'd like to say to Emre. And then in a lower volume as he looked around again. "You've gone through a lot, Emre. From the very beginning."

They were healing? Now that Emre said it, Kaz lifted a shoulder. Took a deeper breath, touched his jaw, and found the pain diminished. Muscles cried out less. Cuts and bruises that had mostly peppered Emre's hands also not as severe. So he posed a question. Either it was some fucked up side effect, or. "Maybe we really have been gone longer than we think." The day did feel like weeks.

"Alright, alright, calm down. I mean. You were kind of spoiled though, gotta admit. Those are Jordans you got, yeah?" Emre's insistence over an allowance, the defensive pride in his voice something Kaz wanted to consume. "I want to know about these errands and chores. Little entrepreneur. Smart." And fussing over the shoes brought another smile to Kaz's face. Especially the defiance towards the lights.

Emre's change into the salwar turned him from boy to man again. Kaz took the jumper and held it at arms length for a moment before he changed into it. Snug, but not terrible. "I remember she told me to be careful going out to clubs in Seattle." With the torn and bloody shirt he took off, Kaz folded it loose and tossed it to the desk. "But she Americanized it to getting shot, not stabbed. Like, damn let me have a little fun."

As Kaz continued to tidy himself, he looked in a small mirror that hung on the back of the closet door. Emre's reflection just over Kaz's shoulder, and a sound rang out only heard a few times before. A dreaded, almost despairing and humorless laugh. Kaz nodded. Yes, he'd probably stay with Emre those first few days back rather than at the grotto. It also seemed like a good time to show what he'd found.

"I caught her hiding it once." Eyes dipped down and then he straightened up, and a hand scratched at his neck. "I know what some of it means. The concert ticket-- it was her first concert. Our father made me go with her, to watch out for her, so she wouldn't be alone." Kaz wished he had the foresight to edit the wording, but did not.

He sat on the bed and craned to see the little magic 8 ball toy, but Emre held it too closely. Instead, his brows knitted together with a soft amusement at the corners of his mouth, when Emre explained he didn't want to be different. Kaz paused, about to say but you are different.

Then Emre uttered what he never had: Why did she have to ruin it. The remark wasn't made for anyone to answer, but Kaz blinked once as he stared at Emre's profile beside him. "I don't know Emre." This comfortable upbringing, these walls of a warm home that cradled Emre so protectively. It was easier for Kaz to turn his back on a childhood that wasn't so pleasant.

Emre had never so openly voiced what could not be attained again. Kaz recalled so very long ago when Emre spoke with such blind love. She's a good person, or something along those lines. And a cynical Kaz shook his head, no.

As Kaz said earlier. Emre had gone through a lot. The strip to Seattle originally meant to connect Emre to Urmilla. Perhaps it had gone too far in the wrong direction.

The lights dropped low. Emre looked beautiful amongst flying colors that flew through the room. We want to go home!! Kaz grabbed Emre's shoes as quick as he could, to stuff under an arm, and held on to Emre too.

A rumble vibrated under their feet. He looked at the floor, but it was the walls that began to splinter and crack around them. A sound like a freight train crashing into the building. Great puffs of brick and wood. And a shattering. Not quite glass, something heavier. Dull shards exploded and showered over them. Kaz held Emre tighter to his chest as his gaze snapped around the room in search of an escape. The room didn't just shake, it began to seize violently. Trapped, with no where to run-- the worst nightmare imaginable. Kaz tucked his head down against Emre's.

There was no long heart-stopping fall, and nothing came crashing down. The roar of a blow out ceased instantly and Kaz opened his eyes.

He was on the floor of the teleporter room. Not in one, but outside an open door. He lifted a hand to wipe small bits of something out of his eyes (dust, gravel, rock?) and the clunk of shoe box was heard falling from under an arm. The other slipped away from Emre as Kaz partially sat up.

"Hey, hey we're back." He hoped, it wasn't another faux familiar room. Both teleporters sat dark. Not even powered down, but perhaps not working as there were no lights on anywhere. The doors were open, and the only way he could see Emre was by the moon coming through a skylight.

"You okay?" He brushed a hand over the Adidas jumper and felt the same small pieces. Dirt? Kaz found the same substance on Emre's cheek. He spat the grit on the floor. "What the fuck, something's on us."

His arm was still tangled in one strap of the backpack. Kaz found a small flashlight to shine across Emre's chest, and his own hand. Did he bring a few crystals in the backpack, were they somehow crushed in coming back to the island? If so, how were they completely covered with those tiny hard specks of color?

He finally came to stand and helped Emre do the same. Kaz picked a blue piece of crystal out of Emre's hair, about the size of a small coin. It was placed in his palm so they could both inspect it. "Looks like your water crystal, doesn't it?"

[kazxraval]

Post-trip Trading Post @emreakbar

A pathway split the trading area, covered in dirt and sand. At this time of the day, crowds criss-crossed and crowded between stalls. Wind kicked up grit and he shield his eyes. He paused for a moment to make certain Emre was at his post before continuing on. Kaz wore his usual: shorts (longish today but not to the knee either, athletic and teal) and sandals. Even at a distance, Emre looked so put together, more than he should after the journey they'd had. Burnished and beautiful, with an Immaculately trimmed beard along the razor's edge of a jawline that often begged Kaz's teeth to snap at. Emre's gaze surveyed the area sharp, a vāgha, in tall grass, stilled but alert. (And too involved in studying something else to notice any far away admiring).

At the top of the stairs, Kaz knocked on a wood railing, as there was no door to the 'lookout'. "Hey," lazy and monotone as ever, attention on a lighter someone left behind. "This isn't yours," Kaz noted as he pocketed the lighter.

"Isela and I are closing shop." No beating around the bush. The words twisted dull in his chest before they made their way out. This didn't sit right, but it was all Kaz's decision. "Packing up our stall and won't be using it for a few months." A second or two, then. "You can always use it for storage for a while. Isela may be back again." Or Kaz himself.

Finally, he zoned in on Emre. Kaz leaned back, ass against the railing, arms crossed. This felt as awkward as walking away from his trading stall. "You tried your shoes on yet?"

[kazxraval]

Army boy. "They cleaned up after you," he murmured with a half-grin. After a pause to picture this 'army boy' in his head, he said, "I never thought about it. Why you were so tidy." Memories of Emre insisting he didn't mind talking about the military, about the war. Or about being held by the feds. The wrappers and waste now represented a sadness, a time cut short.

"I'd never make it in the army, hm?" A faint and tired smile filled in for something more provocative he'd like to say to Emre. And then in a lower volume as he looked around again. "You've gone through a lot, Emre. From the very beginning."

They were healing? Now that Emre said it, Kaz lifted a shoulder. Took a deeper breath, touched his jaw, and found the pain diminished. Muscles cried out less. Cuts and bruises that had mostly peppered Emre's hands also not as severe. So he posed a question. Either it was some fucked up side effect, or. "Maybe we really have been gone longer than we think." The day did feel like weeks.

"Alright, alright, calm down. I mean. You were kind of spoiled though, gotta admit. Those are Jordans you got, yeah?" Emre's insistence over an allowance, the defensive pride in his voice something Kaz wanted to consume. "I want to know about these errands and chores. Little entrepreneur. Smart." And fussing over the shoes brought another smile to Kaz's face. Especially the defiance towards the lights.

Emre's change into the salwar turned him from boy to man again. Kaz took the jumper and held it at arms length for a moment before he changed into it. Snug, but not terrible. "I remember she told me to be careful going out to clubs in Seattle." With the torn and bloody shirt he took off, Kaz folded it loose and tossed it to the desk. "But she Americanized it to getting shot, not stabbed. Like, damn let me have a little fun."

As Kaz continued to tidy himself, he looked in a small mirror that hung on the back of the closet door. Emre's reflection just over Kaz's shoulder, and a sound rang out only heard a few times before. A dreaded, almost despairing and humorless laugh. Kaz nodded. Yes, he'd probably stay with Emre those first few days back rather than at the grotto. It also seemed like a good time to show what he'd found.

"I caught her hiding it once." Eyes dipped down and then he straightened up, and a hand scratched at his neck. "I know what some of it means. The concert ticket-- it was her first concert. Our father made me go with her, to watch out for her, so she wouldn't be alone." Kaz wished he had the foresight to edit the wording, but did not.

He sat on the bed and craned to see the little magic 8 ball toy, but Emre held it too closely. Instead, his brows knitted together with a soft amusement at the corners of his mouth, when Emre explained he didn't want to be different. Kaz paused, about to say but you are different.

Then Emre uttered what he never had: Why did she have to ruin it. The remark wasn't made for anyone to answer, but Kaz blinked once as he stared at Emre's profile beside him. "I don't know Emre." This comfortable upbringing, these walls of a warm home that cradled Emre so protectively. It was easier for Kaz to turn his back on a childhood that wasn't so pleasant.

Emre had never so openly voiced what could not be attained again. Kaz recalled so very long ago when Emre spoke with such blind love. She's a good person, or something along those lines. And a cynical Kaz shook his head, no.

As Kaz said earlier. Emre had gone through a lot. The strip to Seattle originally meant to connect Emre to Urmilla. Perhaps it had gone too far in the wrong direction.

The lights dropped low. Emre looked beautiful amongst flying colors that flew through the room. We want to go home!! Kaz grabbed Emre's shoes as quick as he could, to stuff under an arm, and held on to Emre too.

A rumble vibrated under their feet. He looked at the floor, but it was the walls that began to splinter and crack around them. A sound like a freight train crashing into the building. Great puffs of brick and wood. And a shattering. Not quite glass, something heavier. Dull shards exploded and showered over them. Kaz held Emre tighter to his chest as his gaze snapped around the room in search of an escape. The room didn't just shake, it began to seize violently. Trapped, with no where to run-- the worst nightmare imaginable. Kaz tucked his head down against Emre's.

There was no long heart-stopping fall, and nothing came crashing down. The roar of a blow out ceased instantly and Kaz opened his eyes.

He was on the floor of the teleporter room. Not in one, but outside an open door. He lifted a hand to wipe small bits of something out of his eyes (dust, gravel, rock?) and the clunk of shoe box was heard falling from under an arm. The other slipped away from Emre as Kaz partially sat up.

"Hey, hey we're back." He hoped, it wasn't another faux familiar room. Both teleporters sat dark. Not even powered down, but perhaps not working as there were no lights on anywhere. The doors were open, and the only way he could see Emre was by the moon coming through a skylight.

"You okay?" He brushed a hand over the Adidas jumper and felt the same small pieces. Dirt? Kaz found the same substance on Emre's cheek. He spat the grit on the floor. "What the fuck, something's on us."

His arm was still tangled in one strap of the backpack. Kaz found a small flashlight to shine across Emre's chest, and his own hand. Did he bring a few crystals in the backpack, were they somehow crushed in coming back to the island? If so, how were they completely covered with those tiny hard specks of color?

He finally came to stand and helped Emre do the same. Kaz picked a blue piece of crystal out of Emre's hair, about the size of a small coin. It was placed in his palm so they could both inspect it. "Looks like your water crystal, doesn't it?"

Kaz's sticky response, bitter like burnt toffee, only made Emre love him more. That strange twisting inside Kaz, obscuring things. Emre could only see glimpses of through the shadows. A fire that burned cold. A juxtaposition that wasn't a fight, at least not the normal kind. Something scarier, because it was emptier; and that empty was deliberate.

But Emre was convinced there was something there. Everyone had something there in their childhood, even if it was absolute shite.

And now, running through the halls and up the stairs of his own childhood, Emre felt full to bursting. Warm and sunny and those home-smells of cleaning and food and daily family bodies moving in one small, happy space. One might even say a little overly-idyllic, but it was what Emre remembered, and it was cram-jam, overflowing.

The photos on the stairwell were all posed - either by one parent taking the photo, or actual studio photos of the assembled four, smiling (or twitching, in baby Iyaz's case) for the camera. Some of Emre in studied schoolboy poses, or Iyaz in adorable shocked-eyed stares. Urmilla and Omar on a wedding or anniversary day.

And Emre's bedroom, which he reveled in as if he was 15 again. Bringing his bestie, his secret boyfriend, his intense crush up into it to revel with him. Kaz played into it, with the same breezy way he played into Abu's concern on the pavement. A flick of Kaz's naughty tongue against the poster had Emre howling with laughter, hoarse and thready.

Kaz doing his own poke-about, and Emre was happy, proud to let him. Let Kaz look at everything. Who knew how much time they'd have here. Emre desperately tried to find something, some memento to take along, just as Kaz had grabbed something from Ani.

He paused to look at Kaz binning the rubbish. A grim smile. "Wasn't an army boy yet, was I? Still had mum and dad to pick up after me." And Dadi, after that. "You should've seen our flat after Dadi kicked it. Yaz and I lived like absolute swine 'til my arrest. Only time I tidied then was - was when social services came to home visits, innit."

Emre kissed his teeth in great amusement. "Them photos is embarrassing, wot. I'm dead gorgeous now, that's all you need. Kaz - hangabout." Were they really healing? Emre caught Kaz's shoulder, looked at him. Less bruising, less cuts. Kaz's arm hung a bit better. Incredible. Confusing. Suspicious?

He looked down at himself, then over at Kaz, squinting a bit more seriously. "You're...we're healing. Your eye's gone down. And...Kazzy, even for the teleports, this - this isn't normal innit."

Emre tugged the tie on Kaz's neckslung . "Keep that - looks fit on you." When Kaz erupted Emre's show boxes though, he protested. "Oi! Careful with those! I was not spoiled, I worked hard for each and every one of them! Chores! Errands for Uncles and Aunties! Allowance was proper earned, mate! Oh bloody hell -" Emre snatched one particularly precious pair up, stroking the white and red leather. "I'm keeping these. Hear that sparkly yellow lights! Where ever we go next, I'm keeping them!"

Emre managed to get changed out of his filthy shirt and into a salwar; it fit well - still a little loose, but comfy. He found an oversized Adidas green jumper with white stripes on the arms and offered it to Kaz with a smirk. "Will you change into this? Band shirts, nah man. I had a Tupac t-shirt, but mummy wouldn't let me wear it. She thought it'd get me stabbed."

Emre suddenly burst out in another laugh, but this one less funny, more shocked, horrified. He still cradled the shoes, but slowly sat on the edge of his bed, staring a thousand yards away. Despite their weird healing, he suddenly felt exhausted. He agreed with Kaz noiselessly, about sleeping like the dead when they got back. "Don't go sleeping nowhere else, when we get back." If we get back. "Stay with me."

He ate another sliced cheese, unthinking; then was gratefully, gladly distracted by the treasure Kaz revealed. Emre put the shoes to one side, turned his attention to the tin box. Precious relics of a teenaged girl; so painfully, sweetly innocent, it (naturally) made Emre think about Iyaz.

But Iyaz was alive, healthy, well. Kaz's little sibling, the one he tried so hard to protect. She was dead. This was all a representation of everything Ani was. Emre's heart shattering, once again.

How could Kaz explain it. How could he explain any of it, ever, to another living soul.

"We've got to keep this for you, man. Hold onto it. How'd you even know about this box, man? Seems something a little girl would keep secret from her brothers, innit. But you know all what's inside of it too, like - like she showed you the contents? Story behind each one, is it?" Emre took the keychain and shook the 8-ball. Talia had one just like it. "Can we get back home?" he asked it, and the toy responded:

you are here

"What?" Emre said, but before he could show Kaz, the words floated away. Emre looked up at Kaz. "What? Star Wars? Yazzie's the anorak. Dunno, I suppose I just..." Emre looked around. "Did my room up the same way all my mates did theirs. Didn't want to be different, did I."

Emre looked at Kaz, that contained hunger in his gaze. A hunger to know, to understand. Maybe, just maybe even experience vicariously. "We were just normal, man. It's a normal I'll never get back again. Why'd she have to ruin it for us..."

The room dimmed; yellow lights flickered along the walls, but not just yellow this time. Other colours, mixing and flickering and moving like a prisms shaking on a cord.

"Fucking hell," Emre put Ani's tin back into Kaz's backpack, shouldered onto Kaz. He clung onto Kaz tightly as well, arms protectively encircling Kaz's slim waist. Forgetting all about his precious trainers. "Home. We want to go home!!!" Emre yelled, and thought of the magic 8-ball's response.

you are here

[kazxraval]

(by Peter Thomas)

[kazxraval]

[kazxraval]

I can't just ask you anything, can I. No anger in the statement, but in his condition everything felt abrasive. Kaz wondered if he should defend himself. He muttered low, "You can..." How to explain there simply wasn't much to talk about? That life did not begin in a facade of a house. But as a grown man, in beautiful brief flickers of freedom before the ocean swallowed him whole.

And now. And now. What could be said to convince Emre all that mattered was ahead, and not backwards?

But they leapt away, were swept away, yet another important conversation delayed. They landed amongst those perfectly lined houses, like volumes in an encyclopedia, and Kaz wanted to find the book that contained a young Emre Akbar.

But first, they pushed and grabbed and lightly shoved. Ali randomly climbing into a cab seemed... weird, then again the entire trip had been weird.

Kaz held out his arms to inspect, looked over his clothes again. "I dunno, is your abu blind?" At Kaz's house, there was a vague attempt to clean themselves up. The red still lingered here and there (just a color, could be anything, Kaz thought). Regardless, Omar hadn't bothered with too many questions and Emre was suddenly shot out of a canon to get home.

Home! With an excitement missed during the course of this hellacious journey. A casual note of 'Urmilla at the market', and Emre led Kaz down the street as if they were new school friends on their first hang.

Kaz was more than content to follow the path laid out by Emre's hand over a hedge. His own fingers brushed over the greenery too, and mortared matching walls of houses, all to confirm he was really there. And when Emre stopped in front of one address, Kaz studied it as though it were a preciously preserved gold scalloped and gilded-framed work by a master painter.

Emre's excitement became a pain reliever to Kaz's aches, breaks, and bruises. It certainly padded the hop over the fence and fueled curiosity as he peered over a shoulder and watched Emre convince the door to open.

Mummy! Kaz became a statue for a few seconds, with a pounding heart caught in the surreal disco beat of 'oh fuck is Urmilla here?!' Nope, the market, the market. Kaz lined up blood splattered boots next to Emre's, this routine of entering a desi home so welcome after all they'd gone through.

"Hey, hang on, I want to see this pic--" On the staircase, Kaz felt he was on a bullet train, driven by Emre, unable to enjoy the scenery of Akbar family photos whizzing by.

The final stop: a dedicated exhibit, a quiet gallery packed with importance. So much to take in. How it looked, smelled, felt.

Kaz stood silent for a moment to absorb it all, stamp a wide shot of it into his memory. And then he followed the strings attached to every single piece which led back to the person it belonged to. He moved towards the tiger first. A hand brushed over an orange and black shoulder of the printed animal, the colors darker in one direction and the fibers slick once more as his hand traveled in the opposite direction.

Toys on a shelf drew his hands as well, with no one to quell the desire to maneuver arms on an action figure or spin the wheels of a car. Kaz slowly strolled to check out the posters on the walls. "Hey, Em, look." He made sure Emre indeed looked as he leaned in, cheek almost flush to a footballer's poster. A few seconds of a flickering tongue very near the bum of the player, before Kaz pulled away with a low laugh. Kaz free to act as he pleased in a teenage boy's room.

Books were thumbed through. Markers uncapped and smelled, before Kaz scratched a note in green on an inside notebook cover. A long squint at the school uniform before he crouched down to pick up the old wrappers, investigate their empty contents. "Come on, man. What happened to the neat freak?" The wrappers were tossed into the bin.

He stood beside Emre at the closet and touched the fading scar on his neck. "Mm. Loaned me clothes once isn't an always, Emre." He pulled the tie free from the hanging school uniform and focused on tying it around his own neck as Emre judged the fit of old pants. "You were a skinny ass back then. Or, I guess. If you'd bothered to let me stop and look at those pics hanging in the hallway, maybe I'd know." His gaze lifted from the final tuck of the knot on the tie. He adjusted it, slipped it upwards but kept it a little loose. "Nah, see now your body is all built from island work."

Emre already dove into the open closet. Kaz played with the tie, giving the pointed end a flip as he scoffed. "Can't believe you had to wear this dumb shit to school. Bet you made it look good though." As Emre dug around, Kaz pulled out boxes of expensive sneakers to peek inside. "Damn, you were spoiled. All this, is fancy clothes, fancy shoes." A pause to rewrap the shoes and align carefully back in their box. Kaz slid hangers over, scanning clothing. "No band shirts?"

Emre held Kaz's hand so gently. Kaz squeezed back to ensure he wasn't made of dry sand, and a frown covered up for being caught off guard. "Me? Yeah, nothing an emergency room can't fix." Ha. "At least I know I'll be sleeping good when we get back. You, you okay now?" No more tears, Emre temporarily distracted.

He pulled over the chair from the desk and sat. Dropped the backpack finally. Dug through, found the ripped open package of American cheese stacked with individually wrapped slices instead, and tossed it at Emre with a small smile. "Go easy on those, or else you won't be able to shit for a week."

Ani's hidden treasure was pulled out of a pocket. An Altoid's tin similar to one in Kaz's grottos, but teal trimmed instead of red. "She hid a lot of things," said with a bittersweet bounce of his brows up and down. The nature of the Ravals. Kaz held out the tin to Emre. "Go on."

Somehow, Ani stuffed several items of importance into the little tin. A folded concert ticket stub, with a faded name: Britney Spears. Most everything matched in their similar tiny size: a small but working harmonica that would fit on a necklace, an miniature purple koosh, a pink plastic spider, a softly scarred purple guitar pick, a pair of gold hoop earrings, extremely small dice. A rock in the shape of a heart, painted with a design in burnt orange, mustard, cornflower blue, white.

"This too." He grinned and held out a magic 8 ball toy, one that was meant to be a keychain. "I want to ask it if we'll ever get back, but I'm also kind of afraid what the answer will be."

"So you just... you spent a lot of time up here." An assumption, and Emre would correct if needed. "Not gonna lie, I expected you to be a Star Wars nerd. And have shelves of that shit." A quick smile. Kaz couldn't stop glancing around, cataloguing everything. "You said it looked exactly the same. How you remember. Now that we're here, is it the same. Nothing out of place then." A pause. "Tell me what it was like to be here, Emre."

Kaz's mother slept on the sofa. His mother. Even in their worst rows, the Akbar parents would never cast Urmilla outside of her bedroom sanctuary. Maybe it was a sexism thing, but Emre didn't believe so. Some rules about men and women and arguments and nighttime were just...unspoken. To him, how he was raised; the idea of the wife being relegated to the lumpy sofa was a humiliation bigger than the roles reversed.

They moved around so often, Kaz said. So why this house? Why was this space called up from whatever memories Kaz still bothered to hold onto? "No, man. My home is the only home I knew. It was where my ammi - my birthmum lived too, raised me until..." A pointless detail, that Emre felt almost guilty about. "You can ask me anything about my childhood, yeah? You know that. But it's not the same with you, is it. I can't just ask you anything, can I. You can't respond to me, can you." Emre wasn't accusing, just resigned. Sympathetic and sad for a childhood Kaz seemed to forcibly repel, even when he was standing in it.

Things happened quickly, after that. The lights, losing Ali, Kaz making his mad leap out the window (to follow Emre. Because he thought he was losing Emre. It was a good thought that, even if Kaz was an absolute nutter. But he was Emre's nutter). Finally landing on a side street in a small community of row houses that all looked the same. Little gardens, some trees, red brick and white bay windows. Duplexes and townhouses. A range of fences.

And Omar and Iyaz. And Kaz was smoothly conversing with Emre's dad, and Emre felt temporarily, gloriously insane, watching them. This is him, Abu! Daddy this is him, this is Kaz, my Kaz, this is him!!!!

Iyaz as Emre always saw him, no matter how old Iyaz got. And Abu...handsome and jolly and the kindest face that Emre had ever known. It hurt, but Emre didn't allow himself to feel it, until they turned the corner, leaving Kaz and Emre by themselves again. Emre only then reached across the pavement, for his fingers to creep and curl against Kaz's long digits.

Kaz shoved him, and Emre couldn't help the indignant smile. Despite it all - the murders and violence and the ugly state of them - he felt like a kid again, running on fumes and elation. He weakly shoved Kaz back, mostly just an excuse to keep touching him. "Still a dickhead, running off! Ali ran off and - and he just left. He hopped in that Black Cab and. Dunno man. Kid knew what he was doing, I wasn't going to chase after him, was I. I had to go find you."

Emre played it off as no big deal. Kaz barely cared about Ali anyway, so the boy's absence, Emre guessed, would be easily dismissed.

In quick succession, Kaz murmured those sacred names, then leaned in to press bruised lips against Emre's skin. The unreality of both events sent a luscious shiver down Emre's spine. He should be miserable, but...he was excited. Kaz murmuring curiousity and sweet petnames only ignited Emre further.

"To mosque? Nah, man, look at us! We're fucking filthy...fuck, did Abu see the blood on...?" Emre looked at himself, then at Kaz. The rusty blood spatter could've just been a post-pub brawl, to Omar's innocent eyes. "No we're not going to mosque, darling. We're going home!"

Emre scrambled up, looking at the sky. "No flashing lights yet, yeah? We've got time. Urmilla's gone to market, we'll have the place to ourselves." Pulling Kaz up, Emre jogged them across the street and down aways, slowing to a walk to touch hedges, fences of his neighbours. He listed the names as well - Shellen-Auntie and her five daughters, this was old Mr and Mrs McMullens, that was the Jairi family.

He paused at a house that looked like every other, but Emre was staring up at it like it was a house of god. "Here we are. C'mon -" Emre went around the back, hopped the fence, and jimmied open the back door into the kitchen. "Mummy!!" Emre called out, forgetting he had a man's voice, not a boy's. No response, which meant Emre got his shoes off to add to the jumble of shoes on the mat, and he ran Kaz up the skinny stairs (framed family pictures lined the wall, all the way up), two at a time.

Emre beelined for one room, opening it to reveal... "Oh fuck me. Exactly as I remember." To an almost insane detail. The tiger duvet cover, clearly customized for Emre's single bed. His room was about half the size of Kaz's in the Seattle house, but cram jam of knick-knacks. Old forgotten toys from his younger days, posters on the wall of cricket and football players, movie posters, and some chaste pretty girls. School books stacked messily on a desk, with other school supplies. His school uniform hung on the closet door, and an incredible collection of clothing and sneakers, some still in their boxes. Even a garbage bin, with some crisps and candy packets crumpled and not quite made into the bin, discarded on the carpeted ground.

Emre went into his own closet, and selected some shirts and trousers. "Here - let's clean up and change. I'm always lending you clothes..." Emre lifted the jeans to his own hips, chuckling. "I suppose I've gotten a little wider, haven't I. I have some baggy jeans though, I'm sure they're in here..." Emre rooted into the back of his closet.

He emerged though, to pause and look over at Kaz. Reaching closer, to take Kaz's hand - delicately, like Emre knew he was doing something forbidden or naughty, but badly wanted to do it anyway. A fit of teenage rebelliousness in his own bedroom. "You alright?"

He looked down at Kaz, then back up. "Oi. What'd you take? From Ani's room? Do you still have it?"

[kazxraval]

A mug that Urmilla somehow gets to Kaz on his birthday, JUST GO WITH ME HERE!!! She thought it was very accurate and sentimental (for her LOLOL)

[kazxraval]

No explanations fit quite right. Around them was a reflection, or a fractured rewritten memory? A dream, a nightmare? Emre pointed out the one person present to even confirm the house was Kaz.

Emre clarified his very astute observation. For Kaz, it felt like touching a pan you forgot was hot on the stovetop. The need to hide what happened in that house was instinct, a reaction that needed no thought. "Sometimes my mother fell asleep there..." He trailed off, rubbed at the back of his neck, and moved on.

"We didn't always live here. We lived in a few other houses is what I meant. My father moved us around a lot. Your family, they lived in the same place the whole time?" Those types of families were fascinating for someone who was glad there was no single home that held his childhood.

The cheese was declined again with a scowl. Reyansh loved the stuff. The package went into the backpack with other supplies.

When they returned to the island, Emre made it be known he wouldn't let Kaz forget. A needles and pins type of thought, that the blood would eventually be washed off but these events somehow stained beneath the surface of the skin.

I'm still here, innit. That's on you, jaanu. The disconnect of the gore and mess was gone with Emre's words. They nestled together for a short count of seconds-- one, two, three. One of the few times Kaz felt... well, weirdly whole, standing in the mock up of the upstairs bathroom. A clinging embrace, broken by fireworks that for once were not of their own making.

Much of the shouting for Ali rested beneath a whirring sound reminiscent of persistant attempts to turn over an old car engine on a cold morning. The lights popped and swung across the sky in correspondence to the noise. Much of this, Kaz didn't notice until he'd returned from the single-minded search of Ani's room.

A flash of alarm sparked in his chest. A leap out the window to catch up with Emre and Ali made all the sense in this topsy-turvy world (or who he thought to be Emre and Ali). Stepped up on the windowsill, the air outside felt damp and cold on his face, his arms. As Kaz began to make the jump, he suddenly found himself yolked by his shirt collar, and dragged down to the floor. Instantly he squirmed, he elbowed to be freed, his head slammed back to retaliate at whoever pulled him out of the window.

Everything crumbled around them. The 'house' gave way to a midnight sky. His stomach dropped as they plummeted through dark clouds, and as he heard Emre's cries. They crossed some type of a boundary midpoint in the fall. The bleak sky gave way to bright daylight, with a sidewalk that rushed up to meet them. At the point Kaz realized he fell with Emre and not some faceless enemy, he tried to brace them both for impact. Mercifully, the landing was more controlled than it appeared.

A wonderful insulated silence surrounded them, broken by a few bird chirps and soft closing of a car door somewhere down the road. A lullaby of traffic and a gentle rumble of a city bus rambled in the distance. A neighborhood similar to some of his mother's relatives, and instantly comforting. Real families lived within those walls, or that was how Kaz always envisioned it.

A man whose hair matched his salwar stopped with the type of smile that could elicit a grin from anyone. Kaz gave his best 'gee mister, we're sorry' expression, honed in his youth and provided to the more pleasant (but clueless) parents of his friends. "Yeah, kept my friend here out too late. But thank you, we're all good."

So that was Omar. And Iyaz! Who'd been a name over a heart for way too long, longer than being on the island. There Iyaz was, the type of person with one of those eternally unchanged faces from child to adulthood (minus the facial hair, of course). He stood with an impatient tap of a foot, and waited for his father. Except Kaz could've sworn Iyaz was younger when Omar and Urmilla left?

Omar backed away to head off again, with a gesture for Iyaz to follow. 'I reckon you should get your friend home, before his family worries,' Omar looked to Emre with the same warm smile held during their exchange.

Iyaz fell in line with his father. Kaz watched, mesmerized by the two. And then... oh. Oh, shit, the blood. Kaz looked down at himself. Tugged at his shirt, turned his hands over. Most of it dried, but still there. And then he reached for Emre. While he wanted to kiss the tear-streaked face, he was instead (rightfully) shoved.

"I told you I was coming back! I had to find something in Ani's room. You left without me!," Kaz insisted. "What do you mean he bolted, what happened to Ali. Who'd he go off with? He has to come back though." None of it made sense in the moment.

He hung an arm around Emre's shoulders. "You said it when we were falling. If you hadn't, I still would know." His head ducked to study Emre's face. "Omar and Iyaz."

His hold drew Emre closer for a quick kiss on the nape of his neck. Kaz looked back in the direction it was assumed Omar and Iyaz came from. "Which one is your house, I want to know." He whispered. "What do you want to do, mari priya." Kaz's attention went to the opposite end of the road, where Omar and Iyaz headed off. "I think you should go after them. To the mosque."

"Bruv, you honestly think we've...gone back in time?" Somehow even saying it sounded so insane. Emre pulled his hair back from his forehead and gave a small, huffy, disbelieving laugh. "Well anything is possible now, I suppose. We're back in time. Except we're not."

Because as much as Kaz insisted the twins were his siblings, he described this entire house as a movie set. Emre vaguely understood that to mean: it wasn't real. It was just faked; Kaz was saying the entire house was faked, but by who, and why? And to this level of detail? "The only one who knows your house this well is you, Kaz. The only one who'd recognize the twins, is you innit."

(And...also Kaz's mother? She'd know the children, this house, too. But Emre wasn't going to mention that to Kaz).

Shaking his head, he clarified: "No, I meant someone was using the sofa as a bed. Did your parents ever do that? Sleep separate? Edward on the sofa, like?" It confused Emre, these intimate details. Some just incidental, others pointedly off-key - like Priya's shrine, apparently. "Another house? What other house, was it when you was visiting London, like?" A flash of Emre's own memory, London. Not the weird wreck that he and Kaz had teleported to years ago, but Emre's West London, his parent's home. His childhood home, cozy and warm and nothing like this misplaced tomb that a young Kaz Raval had to survive in.

"Take the bloody cheese, you need the energy. How bloody long has it been since we've eaten...Ali, come get some cheese!" Of course Emre was ignored, and they all ended up upstairs. Kaz and Emre, in a small, secret pocket of time for them both, Ali's chordless soundtrack strumming in the background.

"It was three. Captain Ginger, one dickhead right after, and the other a bit later. At the risk of sounding like a twat, you've got to remember them all, luv. You can replay it in your head as much as you want. I was there, I saw it happen, yeah? I won't let you forget." How could he? It was awful, knowing Kaz killed three men with very little consequence. No pigs to chase after Kaz, no gang retaliation, no news reports...nothing. Kaz had taken lives effortlessly; and their memories was the only thing to make that fact real.

Did I do a good job then?

How many more times can a man's heart shatter? Emre felt it break again, as Kaz asked that strange, simple question. The minute tilt of his head, that comfort-seeking softness about Kaz. That only ever peeked through the diamond-and-steel of his gorgeously crafted expressionless features, for Emre's eyes only. Emre nuzzled Kaz's mouth, not sure if the comfort was for himself, or Kaz. Maybe both. "I'm still here, innit. That's on you, jaanu."

No time for this. Or rather, their brief moment was over, things where happening. Things were always happening and they never had enough bloody time, not for them, not for them! It wasn't fair, but it was life. Getting shafted constantly - that hadn't changed from London-grind. Only in London, there'd been no one there for Emre to yearn for more time, except maybe his brother.

Lights flashed, like search lights beaming into them hunting them. Kaz ran, Emre held on tight to his hand. Into Kaz's bedroom, where Emre froze, taking it all in. The barebones horror of it, a damaged wall, some scrawl on the paint. A sad sheet used as a curtain, tacked up. No posters, but ripped or crumpled paper everywhere. And that mattress. That bare mattress on the floor, a thin blanket twisted on it where Ali perched. "Get off of that!" Emre yelled at Ali, as if the boy was squatting on an artwork masterpiece.

The least of their issues, as the flashing, pulsating yellow light filled Kaz's room too. Ali was whimpering, and Kaz - "Kaz! No wait!" But Kaz had disappeared into the dark; Emre was turned to the light, squinting at the shadow that Kaz insisted was Emre. He was right here! That shadow wasn't Emre! ...But Emre recognized it in an instant. That shape of his shoulders, that gait. It was...

Ali pelted out of the room screaming about wanting to go home, and Emre kissed his teeth. "Are you deaf? Kaz said don't move, you bloody-" Emre chased after Ali, pausing on the stairwell to find the boy downstairs in the foyer, holding that photograph of Kaz's mom. Crying, hugging it, mumbling something unintelligible. Something akin to 'I'm sorry, I wanna go home. I'm sorry.'

It froze Emre in his spot, watching the boy crying over Priya. Glad Kaz was...where ever he was. Not here to watch this.

"Ali..." A voice called from outside, and Ali perked up like a baby kitten at the call of its mother. The boy took the photo and pelted out the front door. Emre started to rush after, but paused, looked upstairs. Kaz was still up there. Ali had run out of the house. It only took a blink of an eye for Emre to choose.

Emre skirted back upstairs, just in time to se Kaz flinging open a window, genuine panic in his voice as he yelled towards someone outside. 'You left me, jackass!'

"Kaz no--"! Emre lunged into the room to grab Kaz's shirt back, prevent Kaz plunging himself out of the second fucking floor of this fucking house. He held onto Kaz's shoulders, panting hard against Kaz's neck, as he glimpsed the view outside. A black car, golden trimmed. Marigolds tumbling onto the street like a wedding day, out of the car boot. The passenger door opened, and hand and a face beckoning Ali inside. The face matched the framed photo that Ali still clutched: it was Priya. She pulled the child inside the black cab, took one look up at Kaz and Emre frozen in the bedroom window...

...then shut the door and was driven away.

Light flashed, muddling the street, splitting the scene into facets. Two figures passed by the car, ignoring it as if it wasn't even there. A small figure shuffling behind the taller one; and Emre suddenly realized how Kaz had mistaken the shadows, for him and Ali.

But it wasn't him and Ali.

"Abu! Iyaz!" Emre cried out, as the ground gave way, the flashing lights blinding them, as he and Kaz went tumbling forward...

...to land on a sidewalk. A quiet early morning in another type of suburb. Rowhouses crowded together, the smell of wet ashphalt and cigarette smoke and lavender in the post-rain haze.

The taller shadow - a man, a man with greying hair and small glasses, wearing a grey salwar - paused and stooped to help them. "Salaam alaikum, are you two alright? Late night out, eh lads?" The man asked, in somewhat jolly if knowing concern.

The boy - no more than eight or nine, but already so tall - watched dispassionately, a few paces away. The boy whined, "Abu, we're gonna be late!"

Wordlessly, Emre just nodded, mumbled his wa-alaikum, held up a hand to reassure the older man. The pair - clearly father and son - continued on their way, turning a corner. Frozen, Emre watched them go, unable to stop looking until they were out of sight.

"Mosque is a few blocks east," Emre whispered hoarsely, finally able to move. He was crying, but he didn't realize it. He sat on the curb, clinging onto Kaz's arm as he watched father and son depart. Out of sight, Emre turned his feelings to Kaz, and shoved him (then dragged him back close again). "You fucking left me! You're the bloody jackass! The fuck you go running off like that, fucking hell! Where did you go?! Don't - don't just! You can't just run off, then Ali bolted off on his own...kid's gone, man. He - he left. With someone else."

Emre shook his head, which was starting to pound. "Fuck me...Dunno how much more of this we can handle, man. What is going on. What is them teleports doing." He massaged one temple, then gazed around again, unable to stop himself from breathing in, hard.

"Do you know where we are?" Emre already knew of course, he just wanted to hear Kaz - his clever, inquisitive, quick Kaz - say it out loud. In his Kaz-voice, in that Kaz-tone. Emre just needed to hear it said. He swallowed, and then said softer, "D'you know who that was?"

[kazxraval]

"I saw them," he insisted. "They were young, close to Ali's age. It was them, I know it was. Ani looked at me." Or someone who looked like Ani? No, his head shook once. "She knew me. It was her."

The sitting room sounded so formal. Kaz froze for a moment, voice low. "I didn't see anyone in the... sitting room." Ali certainly would've announced it too, the kid unable to keep his mouth shut. "I checked the whole house before letting you two in. No one's home." The fact Kaz believed Emre saw someone sent a chill down his spine.

His mouth wanted to protest but didn't have the energy. The odor of the dish soap was far more potent than he remembered, chemical notes of dead flowers. His brain checked out as two sets of red-stained hands mingled under the faucet. Emre's hands with his own.

"It's familiar but... no, not salad dressing but like. Maybe it's not necessarily time travel. Like we're on a movie set. It's designed to look like where I lived. But it doesn't feel the same-- it's not exactly the same. Like the altar. My mother kept an altar in the kitchen of another house. Not this one." Overlapping memories? "Something's off. Meant to fuck with my head, I guess."

Kaz pulled a marigold from the garland with dry hands and brushed it, twirled it as Emre dug through the refrigerator. Kaz pocketed the flower and frowned. "Fucking hell." He stepped back with a hand up, expression in a disparaging frown that eventually softened for one reason: Emre's delight. "No I don't want a slice. That's some nasty shit." No response from Ali either. "Even the kid don't want that garbage. Eat that and you won't shit for a week."

"Don't want him going through my things," but it was a little late to stop Ali. Upstairs, the reality of what happened on the boat tried to settle in again. Three? "Can't be right," Kaz murmured under his breath. Too large of a number to consider. Maybe one, and Emre was confused.

You wanted to save me. Emre's hands were softer than they should be, and Kaz could've melt into them. Curled up like a cat that crawled in from a cold night and found the comfort of a warm lap. His monotone sounded scratchy, hoarse. "Did I do a good job then?"

Emre glowed in the richness of the orange and yellow lights, and Kaz let himself linger in the stickiness of those big brown eyes. Lights popped bright and Kaz squinted at Emre. Were they even real, or part of whatever the fuck this house was? If the trip did happen, were they now irrevocably changed somehow?

Emre gripped his shoulders, and Kaz's hands rested light on Emre's elbows. "Yeah, I feel it." The sensation of teleportation tugging at his insides wasn't as much of a relief as it should be. "If those teleporters break down in the middle of this..."

Don't let go of me! Kaz grabbed Emre's hand and led them out of the bathroom. Not that it'd do any good to get to Ali. The yellow bounced through the few open doors in the hallway. In a bare bedroom, Ali looked up from blindly strumming an acoustic guitar, 'What? I sound good man!' Kaz didn't bother to address the kid, but pushed forward.

A red sheet covered a window. When Kaz yanked the piece of tacked up fabric away, the room was flooded with rapid pulses of yellow. The sky was completely bathed in the color, as though the sun had gobbled up everything in the nearby solar system and now waited just outside to do the same to them.

Kaz let go of Emre to shield his eyes. The sky seemed to be partitioned. Broken into angled pieces, but still connected. A large shadow passed through one facet. Kaz turned to Emre. "Fuck, Emre." An outline of a person, like drawn in charcoal. Featureless, but with movement. Kaz recognized the shape, the gait, the special energy of one person. "I saw you out there. Did you see it! I saw you!"

Ali's eyes were also glued to the window. He hugged himself tight and whimpered, 'What is happening! I want to go home, I want you to take me home now!'

"I've got to get something. It'll only take me a second, okay? Don't move." Fifteen seconds was all he needed. Easier to dart off on a mission rather than explain. His eyes were pulled to his closet, but that wasn't the direction he set off for.

Across the hall, Kaz entered a much larger room. An explosion of lavender and posters of pop idols on the walls greeted him. Britney, Christina, Backstreet Boys, etcetera. All of Ani's loves who Kaz loved to tease her over. Kaz began a search more akin to a dismantling. Drawers were ripped out of a white dresser and left bleeding clothes on the floor. He frantically opened small jewelry boxes and swept books off shelves. Fifteen seconds suddenly wasn't long enough.

He attacked a pile of stuffies on the bed, and finally decided on Ani's favorite one. A penguin, with horns and hooves that matched the lavender of the room. He tore into the insides and-- yes! Found it.

Kaz rushed back to reach Emre and Ali. The lights still flashed but neither were in the room. Kaz ran to the window. One ghostly figure had become two.

Ali and Emre had gone somewhere without him. He peered out the window, face to the glass and hands cupped around his eyes to search intently. The vague images became crystal clear. Kaz saw a street view. A black car drove along, with a back license plate the color of gold (marigold).

The car passed by two people walking, and the focus stayed on them. Emre, his Emre, in full recognizable stroll that he'd recognized minutes earlier out the window of the bathroom. This time, Ali trudged in a begrudging shuffle beside Emre.

Kaz banged fists on the window. "Hey! HEY!! You left me, jackass! Come back!" Fuck. Kaz didn't waste a lot of time calling out. With the window flung open, he climbed out on the roof. Then, he jumped.

What was Georgie looking for? Emre had no answer for that, ominous as it was. He had to remind himself that they were safe and protected. Eventually. Trust in the bloody teleports. What happened in the outside world - whatever the fuck Georgie and whoever else was searching for - it didn't matter.

"One thing I know for sure, Kazzy. When we finally get back, I'm not leaving the island for a long time, yeah. And neither are you." He exhaled angrily. Still addled with worry over Kaz's physical health. "Can't believe the bloody slag ordered you beat up."

The idea that the teleports were malfunctioning was not a good thought, so Emre decided to put that aside for now. People knew he and Kaz were out here, others might've travelled as well. It had to be fixed. (Emre wouldn't contemplate any other alternative, not yet).

Instead he brooked no complaints to Kaz guiding them. Kaz seemed to know exactly where to go, yet Emre felt like they were traversing through a thick bramble of thorns. One wrong move and the thorns would barb them. Kaz would retreat into himself, nothing more to be said, aside from his quiet impatience and frothy frustration and...that third thing Kaz did, whenever Emre tried to get him to talk about his past. A certain dulled defeatism: Em, what's the point.

"You think this - what, how? We're not on the island, my luv." Or were they? Emre stared at Kaz's old home as Kaz pointed it out, still uncomprehending. "Why does it look like that?" he asked, and meant 'so normal'. Everything in this suburb was relatively normal, as if the world hadn't ended. Kaz relayed 'brother' and 'sister' and Emre thought he'd heard wrong.

"I'm sorry, what? Back up, Kaz. What're - what??" I know it sounds fucking crazy. "Too bloody right you do. You sound mad. You're - you're tired, darling. This is all just..." What - a dream? One Kaz pulled Emre into, somehow? It didn't make sense.

Right, and then there was Ali.

Emre followed Kaz in (Ali right after) and looked around this odd home. Bigger than Emre's childhood home, yet somehow it felt more cramped, tense. A 90s set-up, the brink of modernity. The photos...Emre wanted to study them too, but Kaz had already moved on, like the images meant nothing to him. Emre followed into the kitchen.

"Someone was sleeping in the sitting room, darling," Emre told Kaz, who seemed to be taking an intent, mental roster of everything. Like he was making sure it was there - the appliances, the spices. Emre paused at the modest Hindu altar, staring at it with a mystified, aching reverence. "Subhanallah - the marigolds. Still fresh, innit."

Emre turned to find Kaz scooping water into his mouth. Emre came over too, ducked under the faucet to drink, wash his face. Green dishsoap to scrub at his red hands - he grabbed Kaz's hands as well, used the dish sponge to scrub them. The water was hot, beautifully scalding just like Emre liked it after a...after a job.

Thrown back in time. Emre had to laugh at that - a real genuine laugh, as he glanced up at Kaz. "Sweetheart. C'mon. Time travel? That's - that's impossible, you what." As impossible as teleporting around the world? Emre's laugh faded, then he frowned. Then he kissed his teeth. "Fuck me. The bloody teleports is time-travelling now? What you mean it's 'set dressing', what's that mean? Like salad dressing?"

Emre pressed a dishtowel into Kaz's hands to dry, then headed to the fridge to peer inside. "Right, we've got eggs, orange juice. Cheese - American cheese!" Emre pulled the packet out, peeling off a slice and carefully extracting it from the plastic. "Ali! Come look at this! Ali!!"

For some reason, Ali didn't bound into the kitchen like an obedient dog at the behest of his brother's killer. Emre didn't mind; he was eating a slice of cheese, grinning and wincing at the same time. "Oaaw fuck me, it's awful. I love it." He handed a wrapped slice to Kaz.

And of course Kaz made plans. Odd plans - sleeping in a garage when there was a perfectly fine, empty house here. Then again - stupid Emre - why the fuck would Kaz want to ever sleep again, here. "We could -" Emre started to agree, but Kaz was admonishing Ali for something; and Ali, typical adolescent, pounded his 80lb self upstairs like a tiny elephant.

"Oi allow it, man. Kid's harmless, 'llow it. What's - why does it matter if he goes nosing about?" No really, why. Kaz was on edge - he hid it well, or maybe Emre was way off-base, but. He could only imagine suddenly being back here; what person wouldn't be on edge in a ghost house from a past they'd forcibly removed? "He's a little, he's alone in this world."

Saying all this to the tuneless strum of a guitar. Kaz's room - Ali found it and Emre wanted to see it. A frizzle of boyish excitement at the idea of actually seeing Kaz's teenager room - ostensibly a room before anyone was actually cool, but they definitely tried hard to be.

But first, Kaz tugged Emre into the bathroom, ugly fluorescent lights casting stark, unforgiving white light on them both. And then Kaz asked, the smallest, biggest question in the world.

Right. It wasn't just Kaz's physical health to worry over.

If it were anyone else, Emre would default into care-taking mode. Like with his brother, or mates on the island. Coos and pets and reassurances and 'never mind all that, not now'. But Kaz was a different sort of animal, who'd never been taken care of, in his life. He didn't recognize it, he wouldn't understand it. Not in any usual, default ways, anyway.

Emre cupped Kaz's bruised face. "You killed three grown men who was gonna off us if they had the chance, yeah? Self-defense. It was survival." Was it? Kaz could've injured the Captain. He could've scared the others buy time for Emre to get them.

Instead, Kaz killed. Without hesitation, it seemed. Emre swallowed hard, dismissing the soggy, generic reasons. This was Kaz; Emre had to get specific, or it wouldn't hit home. "You wanted to save me."

A flicker in Emre's periphery and his head whipped, still alert. A strange reflection in the sink mirror, from outside. Behind Kaz, Emre looked out the window, into the night. "There, Kaz. There it is again. Them strange sparks outside. In the sky, like." Big, yellow bursts, but not like fireworks. It looked more like...fragments? Facets, caught on the moonlight, way up in the sky.

Emre felt himself twisting inside as well, and he gripped Kaz's shoulders. "You feel that?? We - we should get Ali. Somethings happening." The flashes got brighter, moved faster, threw yellow slides of light into the bathroom, bathing them both in marigold. "Don't let go of me!"

[kazxraval]

Emre blew the dust off the people who had been packed away for a long time. From another lifetime, one Kaz rarely thought about. "Fiona liked anyone with an accent. Carmen, she would've shared me I'm sure." Kaz did not remember all the finer details of Emre's massive fuck up with Talia. "She would've loved me," he said with a bruised half-smile (but confidence intact). "You'll remind me of it when we're back, hm. What happened between you two."

Kaz left Emre with quiet thoughts. Maybe Emre hadn't heard those raw words-- what Kaz thought was raw and honest in reality too cryptic, not direct enough. Maybe none of it mattered then. Judgement compromised, Kaz concluded, with a head only for those rain-soaked kisses.

Then they went back to Georgie's swollen eye rolls and dry laughs, as if she clung to some impenetrable secret. Dealing with her as laborious as trying to walk through waist deep mud. Still not as rough as dealing with Ali. However, the afterburner of rage fired up in the kid actually impressed Kaz. Go off, be pissed, do something about it-- Kaz understood to some extent.

I was thinking. And Kaz waited with anticipation. But the answer came not from Emre but from a silent stuttered light, a flash of long roots of lightning in the sky that cast them in blue (a blue similar to the teleport room?) A one one-thousand, two one-thousand passed followed by a crack of thunder...

...and then he found himself on a street corner with Ali. In a neighborhood with a perpetually overcast sky. Kaz watched versions of his siblings ride away, with immature little faces his memory only retained blurry memories of.

The street, the houses, everything smaller and shrunken by time. Horrors once loomed large but now it was Kaz who towered over the banal setting. All the malignancy and pain experienced on this block now rendered impotent through the eyes of a grown man. Ali tugged at Kaz's elbow, 'Do you know them kids on the bikes?' Kaz turned away from the road. "No, I don't."

Pyaari, pyaari. Kaz was just as eager to hold on to Emre. To search Emre for new damage (fuck, did they all look like hell). Kaz barely heard the shouting between a neighbor and dog (what were their names?) and Emre.

"I don't know what happened," he answered before Emre even finished. Ali's reply to Emre's ask also came swiftly, with a hard grab of Emre's arm, weak young hands angrily twisting at the bone.

Meanwhile, Kaz's heart beat fast, too fast, as his eyes scanned vigilant around them. He wrapped an arm around Emre's middle to steer them across the street, towards the inevitable. "What was Georgie looking for?" It. What could it be?

"I didn't even notice the tug." Probably wouldn't notice a piano dropping from the sky on his head either, not then. "You're right. It had to be the teleports." Ali snorted behind them as they walked, with a soft 'teleports, what'.

What's wrong? Plenty. "I think... I think the island is fucking with us." Even off the island. He tried to gauge more by his siblings riding off on bikes, the neighbor prepared for bed, even the night sky. But none of that made sense either.

He pointed to the house Kaz already guided them towards. No lights were on. "This is where I lived in high school. Or. Well, it looks like it. I saw my brother and Ani out here, before you found us. They looked younger, Emre. They saw me too, and didn't seem to recognize me. I know it sounds fucking crazy." So much that Kaz didn't want to finish the thought.

Kaz asked Ali and Emre to wait in the backyard. Predictably, he found a spare key hidden under a rock near the front porch. After a sweep through the house, he let Ali and Emre inside.

The living room was small and neat. A bookshelf housed an older television and stereo equipment. A pillow from a bed seemed out of place doubled over in the corner of the couch, fresh head imprint left behind. A single family photo sat on the bookshelf, with a much younger version of Kaz and the twins as toddlers held in the arms of each parent. Ali slowly walked over to the framed photograph. "Don't touch anything, we'll be right back."

Kaz waved for Emre to follow him into the kitchen. Everything there appeared orderly and clean too. Appliances were older, the common whites and blacks of the 1990s. The digital clock on a microwave read 0:00 as the time.

Dishes sat in a rack beside the sink, an empty pressure cooker waited to be used again on another counter. Despite the lack of food present, typical aromatic scents of cumin, coriander, and turmeric bloomed in oil hung in the air. A discreet altar was in the easterly corner. A joyous garland of marigolds was on the floor beside it, as if it had been haphazardly thrown, dropped, or knocked over.

Kaz turned on the kitchen sink and cupped a hand of water to gulp down. He motioned to Emre to do the same. "We'll grab some food to take, get cleaned up quick. Do you need any clothes?" He looked Emre over for the millionth time. "I don't know what this is. A trick. If we've really been somehow thrown back in time. Because, like. Some of this doesn't look exactly right. Like it's set dressing or something." Those sparks Emre mentioned. "What do you think is happening? And the sparks, were they from the ship?"

"My mother's car is in the garage. I found the keys." The unnerving question: why was her car there but she wasn't? "There's a shed in the back yard, you probably saw it. We could hide out there a few hours. Get some sleep. Then take off in the car." What to expect was completely unknown. Kaz wondered if it was even real.

He peered around the corner at Ali, who was holding the photo and staring intently at Kaz's mother in the picture. "Hey, I told you not to touch anything you little freak. Put that back." Ali scowled, but returned the photo to the shelf. Then the kid bolted towards a staircase, feet stomping heavily as he took the flight up.

"Get back here!" Kaz grumbled, and then took Emre's hand. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

Upstairs, Ali clearly found Kaz's room, as the sound of an out of tune and aggressively strummed acoustic guitar came from down the hall. "Gonna break that kid's hand if he doesn't stop. Nosey little bastard." But first, he led Emre to a bathroom. Kaz turned on a light and froze at the sight of him. Of both of them in the stark fluorescent lights.

The thought of even washing his face suddenly felt akin to climbing Everest. He looked from his own reflection to Emre's. Clothes torn, skin covered in welts, hair tangled and glued with sweat and sea water to his forehead. Faces caked in the scarlet of blood splatter. "Emre," he began, voice low in a whisper, "How many people did I kill?"

"I want -" Was it what Emre wanted? No. Yes, maybe. "I'd want to meet them." Did he? Kaz had mates, and he'd cared about them and vice versa. Would Emre want to meet them, then? Now he'd said it, so he might as well add, "I wish you could meet Tiz. I wish Tiz would want to meet me up again," he added with a slight snort. No more bitterness, just realistic. If Talia was even still alive. "Carmen and Fiona, yeah? Sweet names, that."

They were the lucky ones. It was a lot to fathom, especially when Emre's thoughts kept circling back to Iyaz. Who kept reassuring Emre over occasional texts that he was happy off the island, with Peter. Emre grit his teeth. "Proper frustrating."

Kaz insisted he wasn't punished, adding a quip to make it real, and Emre didn't persist. His tough man, his Kaz. Or maybe Emre just picked the wrong word; his tough and nitpicky man, his Kaz. Emre looked up to the rain.

"I don't want you catching cold." See - he could be as pragmatic as Kaz, putting aside (for now) the pretty metaphors of oceanic bonds. But under a steel overhang, rain pounding above them, Kaz caught Emre up again in a flurry of the warmest kisses, the gentlest praise. Emre whimpered into Kaz's mouth, fingers skating Kaz's bruised and bloody face.

More teasing, and Emre shook his head with a hoarse laugh. "I'm waiting to hear your pretty voice first," Emre teased back, as if they were simply caught in a flash storm on a London or Seattle main street. Emre frowned, glancing up at a flash of lightening in the clouds. Where did this rain come from, so sudden? And why did the world keep feeling like it was closing in on them, only for it to be up to them to push the world forward? These stops-and-starts in strange jolts - was it just Emre wanting to hem the world away from him and Kaz, or was it something...bigger?

An undercurrent that pulled them back to Georgie. Who somehow managed to still get under Kaz's skin, say the exact thing to get his attention on her. Attention in the form of Kaz's hurricane anger and retorts, but Georgina got what she wanted. A CV of what Georgina put Kaz through, in crisply listed examples. Emre gave Georgina a smirk. "Old tricks, darling. Not even your fucking mindgames were original then? Sad."

Then back outside again, this time to give Ali the truth. The poor little bastard didn't take to it well; Emre of course, frozen in heartbroken grief, hearing Ali and thinking only of Iyaz. Emre, the older brother who was into shady shit. At any point in Iyaz's young life, Emre could've ended up like Feroze - a beaten, broken, discarded corpse, forgotten and derided in a shallow pool of water and blood. While Emre's killers would then find Iyaz out and tell him in no uncertain terms: you belong to us, now. A palpable, constant fear, a nightmare Emre had jolted awake to, countless times back in London.

Except it wasn't a nightmare, it was a portend. And Emre was the killer. He'd done to Ali, what he'd feared the most for Iyaz.

"I - I was thinking -" Emre stammered, at Kaz's prompt. But he didn't know what to say. Mind blank with a long lost terror, rearing back up in his head. Face warming with anger at killers, all of them including himself. Fortunately, Ali's tantrum was enough of a distraction. Lightening cracked above them again, yet the boat didn't rock in rough waves. "What..."

He watched Kaz's hand on Ali's shoulder. Kaz - how could Kaz be so sweet, so protective of him, yet so uncaring and dismissive to this child? - trying to assure Ali that his brother's killer was actually the man to trust. It was all so much. Emre's head spun. Was Georgina laughing from the bridge? He turned towards the fore, where Captain Frank's body slid forward on the upper deck. And then Emre saw it; and Georgina's cackling turned to a scream.

"Kaz--"! Emre whipped around, but Kaz and Ali were gone. Gone - GONE! Emre bolted to the railing, looking overboard. Nothing in the water. The sun was coming up somewhere, but the rainclouds turned sunrise into a dull grey glow. Except for...what they were sailing right into.

"KAZ!!" Emre swung back up to the bridge, where Georgina was crawling out the other way. "Where is he! What is that?!" Emre grabbed Georgie and pointed out the window in front of the boat. Outside, bright sparks exploded out in the water, up in the sky. Bursts of light like decaying fireworks, that seemed to gobble up water and chunks of boat, before fading, only for more to spark up around them. Closer to them.

"I found it," Georgina' whispered, her ice-blue gaze half-crazed with triumph. "Let me go you idiot! I found - wait." Georgie stopped struggling in Emre's grip, stared at him. "It's you. You and Kaz, you made this happen! You caused this, however you got here! You're gonna take me with you. Back to the beach. Kaz! Kaz, we're coming sweetie!"

Georgina wouldn't let Emre go, tried to carry him with her; Emre wrestled to both take control of Georgina and drag her, not the other way around. The pair slipping and sliding on the wet, bloody deck until Emre gave a roar as he pushed her hard. But he lost his balance too, stumbling back as his arse hit the railing and his feet gave way. He blinked, expecting a fall into the drink.

But instead, Emre just opened his eyes to a...fence. Mown grass on his cheek. A scream from above; Emre pushed up on his arms to find not Georgie, but a stranger. An older woman clinging to her backyard clothesline, edging away from him. "Get lost! Go away!" she screamed, flicking a shirt at him.

"Going, I'm gone!" Emre scrambled to his feet and ran, hurdling over the fence (not effortlessly; not like his scrumping days) and ending up in a cul-de-sac. All clean, large (to Emre) yards and homes, a curated suburbia that seemed specific to America.

It was twilight, no rain. No boat. No Georgina. Then - 'EM!'

A cracked, urgent call of Emre's personal siren, the vocal culmination of immense relief. Emre pivoted to find Kaz staggering towards him, dragging Ali along. The little youth looked in shock, Kaz looked even worse for the wear under the yellow streetlamp of middle-class civilisation. Emre bolted forward to hold onto Kaz. "Pyaari, pyaari."

A porch light went on, and a man in a dressing gown opened his door so he and his toy poodle could yell at them. "Quiet down, you crazy kids! Get outta here!"

"Leave it, alright! Geezer!" Emre shot back, despite probably being the same age as the man. Who huffed and shut the door, because Emre was already slinging his arm around Kaz, to walk them away. "C'mon. Kaz..." Emre's tone wary, uneasy. "What the fuck happened. We were on the boat and then - then you and Ali disappeared, yeah. Georgina started going on about 'finding it' and that we was the cause of these...these bright lights in the sky and water. Bursts of them, like sparks from a car."

A pause and then Emre recalled. "I felt the tug in me, you know. Like - like the tug of the teleport, when it drags us back? But I've never seen those strange bursts of light before. One flashed right in front of me - then I ended up here." He looked up at Kaz. "Fucking hell, man. We can't keep losing each other. And we need to find you somewhere to rest."

Emre tipped his head, glancing at Ali. "Oi, younger. You alright?"

Ali didn't respond, but just kept walking, holding onto Kaz's larger hand with both of his. The boy seemed alright despite...despite everything. Emre's first priority was Kaz. "Where the bloody hell are we now. Did the teleports take us here, instead of home? Kaz..." Emre finally then looked at Kaz, under a streetlight. The familiar implacable stony-face, and yet. Emre had gazed lovingly, longingly, fascinated by that face for long enough to know: something was off. "Something, right. What's wrong?"

[kazxraval]

Kaz answered with a soft grunt. Yet another thing saved for later, would he even remember half of this trip? This mix of lows with a few euphoric peaks. These facets of Emre cut and polished in front of him that Kaz wanted to retreat with into a grotto or dorm and hold to the light. Study them all, peer through every geometric pattern, every sparkle. An impossibility and yet Kaz wanted to spend the time trying. His ruby, no wonder he thought to swallow the ones given to him long ago.

It made him forget much of what happened. Beatings, blood. A fear totally unknown, until today. That he might've lost Emre.

He huffed, a little amused. "What you want with my mates?" Kaz's fingers weaved tight with Emre's. "Carmen, Fiona. They probably got out before all this shit went down. You're right, don't want anyone I cared about here." Seattle overrun, what other places were like this? "Fuck, we gotta be better off." They both referred to the island as home. A first for Kaz.

Kaz would prefer to talk about anything else. Not on the boat anyway, not in the middle of a mess. "Punished? Nah. I wasn't. I'm punished now with the worst headache of my life." The heel of his head pressed above gashes and swelling close to a temple. The topography of the worst parts of the trip all over his face and body.

I've only felt things for you, that I'd never felt for anyone else. So unexpected, or was it? The 'cheers' at the end, the settling back into their forced forward momentum made him question the involuntary smile on his face. Thick spears of pain pierced his head, neck, shoulders, chest-- damn near everywhere else. All made it difficult to comprehend much. Perception skewed, maybe Kaz didn't know what to make of anything at the moment.

As long as he was understood. "Georgie was a drop of rain." The steady rainfall had grown heavier, not the usual thin mist. All Kaz had to do was open a hand, and a fat bead of water splattered on his skin, like a little explosion. "Me and you, we're the ocean." Probably sounded cheesy as fuck, but through what he assumed at that point was a concussion he suffered, it needed to be said.

Those words, my humanity, my goals. People kept as memories (Omar, Urmilla, Ajit). All a succinct barbed wire string of moving images cinched around his heart for Emre. Kaz stood quiet for a moment.

His hand unlatched from Emre's to cradle a face he'd not tired of examining, at great distances as well as up close, with eyes shut to dreams or rubbing the sleep away in the morning. Kaz kissed him. Not near as long as he'd like, but he lingered as much as possible in the soft heat, while bobbed around on the waves. When he broke away, Kaz said, "When we were on the water, you asked me if you were the most beautiful." They were interrupted by that fuckwit Feroze. "I said you were a beautiful thing. And you're the most beautiful too."

Kaz felt he'd spilled so much of himself, like the insides of the bodies they needed to dump. Unforgivably obvious, as slippery and bright red across the deck as the blood at their feet. Then, he was smiling again. "Don't think you were an ass. I liked it. You don't sing anymore. Guess you woo'ed me and were done with the songs, yeah?" A tease, of course.

There they were, sucked through some existential bilge pump and spit back out into a very cold and bitter sea. Surreal to hear Georgina, of all people, inform them of the state of the family Raval. The facts (lies? very probably from Georgie to throw at least a few in) were sorted as he might have back in his days as a journalist. All block lettered in sharply drawn columns, hints with sketches to accompany. To place in a dead file, bury, or use when something missing called to him.

Kaz didn't spring to life again until Georgie claimed he was needy. "Are you joking?" A poisonous laugh burst from his throat, despite the knowledge she made every attempt to wind him up. "Holy shit-- you were THE neediest person I'd ever me!" So many examples to choose from. "Was it the 3rd time we fucked that you said you were pregnant? Just to trap me? Stop lying Georgie. All you did was try to run off my friends. If you thought I was meeting up with someone you didn't like, you'd call me back saying someone was stalking you. Or your brother beat you up, remember that one? For five fucking minutes of your life. Stop."

Georgie scoffed, seemingly unable to counter what Kaz threw at her. You know Ali's on this boat? Her eyes flitted over to meet Emre's. A long pause, what Georgie clearly envisioned to be dramatic. A visual check-mate, before she simpered, 'I do believe you know the answer.'

Outside in the cold wind, Emre seemed more serious than before. Not that Kaz wasn't. But he still reeled from Georgie's insanity, and fought the desire to crash in the captain's unmade bed.

"We're a few hours out from Seattle. I say we dump Georgie and head to Victoria, but doubt we'd have the gas for it. Maybe we can make it to the coast at least. Emre, you're thinking about something, I can tell. Is it Georgie? What is it?" We know the rules, luv.

When Ali was confronted by the news-- your brother's dead --he snapped his wrist out of Emre's grip and covered it with his other hand. Big brown eyes went even wider and tears welled, which made Ali seem even more fragile. After a long pause, his mouth knotted up. Tears spilled, first from the right eye and then both.

His anger burned a hole through Emre. 'You're lying.' A pause, then a shout. 'You're LYING!' A swift leg whipped out to kick Emre's shin. Then, small hands gave Emre a shove to the stomach before balled fists lashed out.

'Where is my brother!' Ali whirled around to face Kaz, like an adolescent kitten's attempt to intimidate the two adult alleycats that cornered him. His lower lip began to quiver and his voice rose higher. 'Feroze! I found them, those two DICKS,' said like a proud 12 year old cursing for the first time, which wasn't far from the truth for Ali. Then, blurted as he reached for the first thing he could: an empty bucket on deck, that he threw at Kaz's chest.

Kaz managed to dodge the bucket and held his hands up. "Hey, it's true. You know your brother was involved in some shady shit. But." A quick glance at Emre. "This guy wants to help you, okay. So stop shouting! I know it's not how it's supposed to be. We didn't want this either." As Kaz went on, Ali's eyes landed on a thin trail of blood on the deck, and began to follow it visually as it widened into a pool. As dark as it was out, the moon seemed to highlight the violence. As well as the ghostly unmoving arm on deck, a hint of the Captain's speargunned body around the corner.

Kaz dropped a hand to Ali's shivering shoulder, the truth shaking Ali's whole frame. "Feroze isn't coming! He's gone. You gotta suck it up. You gotta keep going. So, let us help you get the hell out of here in one piece."

Kaz blinked. Thought he did, anyway. When his eyes opened, he was still hunched over little Ali, fingers cupped at the kid's shoulder.

But they weren't on the boat anymore.

Kaz slowly straightened up. They stood under an umbrella of light from a street lamp. Evergreen trees soared and peeks of a snowy mountain popped through the green from far away. They were at the corner of a neighborhood street lined with older single family homes. One car garages and small but fairly neat lawns. Not sprawling or anything fancy, built for practical living rather than to impress.

Ali asked the reasonable question of where are we, and Kaz whispered back equally as stunned that he wasn't certain. Except. It was way too familiar...

Two kids around Ali's age sat on bikes in a nearby driveway. A boy and a girl. Siblings. Maybe even twins. They stared silently at Kaz and Ali. Oddly in observation.

Ali waved, and Kaz grabbed his hand to force down. He called out. "Reyansh? Ani?"

The kids made no sound between them. Their eyes said more, the girl confused and the boy protective. They circled their bikes out of the driveway to pedal away. The girl in particular cast a look over her shoulder as they took off in the opposite direction.

"Oh, fuck. Fuck. Ahhh." He looked around. "Emre! We gotta find Emre. EM! WHERE ARE YOU??"

"He's only a little," Emre sighed, not bothering to hold back his sentimentality. Kaz wouldn't deride him for feeling things, not like Emre's old mates. And Kaz didn't follow up, leaving Emre to believe perhaps Kaz allowed a bit of softening too; if not for his sake, or Ali's sake, but for Emre's. The power of influence, and love. Emre had used love before to manipulate Iyaz, for Iyaz's own good (so Emre convinced himself). With Kaz, though? It felt...so clean, so honest. Emre couldn't help a beaming little smile, incongruous to their surroundings.

Still picking at a carcass. Trust Kaz to point out the hard, dire reality. "Are we the lucky ones? Got my mum, running for her life. Here's your Seattle, caught up in this mad-max survival. I'd wondered if we'd run into your mates here, but maybe...it's better we don't find out what happened to them. Kaz.." Emre wanted to reach out, say he was sorry. But it sounded trite, stupid. He just held Kaz's hand instead, fingers pressing into Kaz's sturdy palm.

Shaking his head, Emre knew he wouldn't figure out the map-word mystery. Maybe it didn't even matter. As Kaz implied: they didn't belong in this world, not anymore. And Kaz caressed and pinched, and looked at Emre like they were the only things that did matter. It wouldn't be the first time everything around them was cut away, leaving only Kaz to fill Emre's entire gaze. All-encompassing - those terms of endearment tumbling so naturally from Kaz's mouth, like little diamonds.

Emre held Kaz's hand in place and murmured, plaintively, "I could lie in your little unmade bed for a million years. I want to go home." Home. The island. A place of relative safety and privilege. A place to not think about anything else but Kaz. Selfish, indulgent, and perhaps even lucky.

In this old fishing boat throughway, Kaz unlocked more recollections of himself and Georgie. Love. It was love, though Kaz wouldn't say it. And Georgina knew it and broke Kaz's heart. "So you knew what it felt like. And you were punished for it anyway."

Emre marveled at this little gem of information, unsure how to parse it just yet. He was exhausted, Kaz even moreso, he imagined. Yet Emre still continued, "I've only felt things for you, that I'd never felt for anyone else. Not even Melz." Emre smiled, guessing Kaz might ask. "Not sure what to make of all this right now, if I'm honest. But. Cheers for telling me, yeah. I mean it."

Emre hummed at Kaz's query. "Loads of things. Seemed only thing I did manage to let go of though, was bits of myself, innit. My humanity. My - my goals and dreams and hopes and that. If I lost anymore people though, who would I have left? I couldn't let go of them, nah. Not even as memories. I replayed memories a million times in my head."

Singing in the rock. New, bright memories flooded in. Emre kissed his teeth, lightly butting his head against Kaz's shoulder. "Fucking hell, of course you'd hold onto my most embarrassing moments. Precious memories is me making an arse of myself, is that it?" A low, amused chuckle, fully adoring and in complete contrast of their dire surroundings. But currently, it truly was just him and Kaz right now, nothing and no one else.

The world couldn't stay dammed-up for long though. It returned in big, forceful chunks around Emre's periphery, and here they were stood, completely knackered and filthy and bloody and stuck in a tin can on the water of a nightmare city.

Back with Georgie, who was looking a bit worse for the wear. Did she feel it? She mocked them, but still gave up the gossip anyway. Something to do, something to manipulate Kaz with, she likely hoped. Dad in prison, brother...somewhere. Mum divorced. That was surprising to Emre. "Priya didn't follow Edward as well. And look what she made of herself, staying in Seattle. Pairing up with you." His lip curled at Georgina.

Georgie's glare remained on Kaz, though. "On a beach. And you paired up too? With him?" She tried a flippant toss of her grey-gold hair. "Kazzy could never stay alone for long. He's soooo needy."

Kaz, the most self-sufficient man that Emre had ever known. The very definition of 'lone wolf'. He actually could imagine a younger Kaz, duped by this woman and the ideals of love, deciding to reject everything to do with love entirely. The Raval's had done a good job scrubbing that concept raw; then Georgina came along and made it worse, an infection for Kaz to rid himself of completely.

Emre did his best not to look directly at Kaz. Because Kaz would read everything in Emre's eyes, he knew; and Georgina would see that. Her childish retort, and Emre silently prompted her with the map. She decided on one port: Fermé. Emre thinned his eyes.

"You know Ali's on this boat?" His tone was ominously quiet. Was Frank the captain supposed to encounter them mid-sail? Did Georgina somehow plan all of - no. That was impossible. Georgina couldn't have masterminded how this all fell out. She hadn't expected Emre to even make it out of that operating table back on Whidbey.

And as if on cue, Ali started up his caterwauling. Fucking hell, Emre hated coincidences.

At Kaz's beckon, Emre followed him back outside. Emre stared hard at the dark water and moonlit islands around them. Not many other lights to guide them. Not even any lighthouses, no blinking buoys to warn them off rocky juts in the water. It was dangerous, sailing like this. They needed land, or they needed teleporting out of there.

"Even if we land there, what then? We just...wait up to five days? Let Georgina go? How far are we from Seattle, now?" Take Ali back to their island? Emre blinked in surprise at Kaz. "We know the rules, luv. We can't risk breaking them with a child..." Could they? Save Ali or get him killed - were those their only two choices?

The little sod had impeccable timing. Emre chastized Kaz with a look for stomping on the hatch - he opened it, and hauled Ali out by his shirt collar. Emre let him stand, but held onto Ali's thin wrist.

"Run if you like but there's no where to go, I'm afraid." And then bluntly, "Your brother's dead. He knew the sort of life he got - got you both into, didn't he. Now he's dead for it. You're all alone, now. You was in this hatch when we found you, reckon Captain Frank would trade you for parts, yeah?" Emre held Ali's tattooed wrist to see. "Feroze every told you what he actually did then? Working for Georgina? She's in there, if you want to go to her."

[kazxraval]

"That little sod's getting to you." An hour ago, Emre slashed and stabbed his way through an entire crew. Yet doted on this kid. Maybe thinking about his own childhood in comparison to what hand Ali was dealt. Ali, thrust out of the safety of what the world was and thrown into combat on the streets of a dystopian version of Seattle. Dog eat dog, watch your back because someone like Georgie's people might be watching it out too. Maybe Ali's dad liked poetry too. Maybe his mother didn't carry him but it was the only mother he ever knew.

Kaz paused to watch fingers trace up his arm. They left a pleasant sensation behind, Emre's fingertips leaving invisible ink behind .Kaz's voice sank lower while he hung on Emre and consulted the map. "No one ever talks about this. What happened out here, do they? 'Cause we can come and go as we please, hm? Still picking at the carcass." Nothing imbued in the words, merely a fact. "Haven't actually thought about how I'd still be here, you know. If I hadn't ended up on the island."

"Ever know anyone named Marlboro?" He smiled as his hand reached for the prodding elbow. Pain settled over him like a blanket. Once they returned, it'd be more like a blanket heavy with water, weighing him down. For now, Kaz moved for his sake, for Emre's too. "Think one of these pricks has a five year old stale pack of cigs around here?"

The numbers in a long table didn't take much to decipher. Unmade bed, undisciplined. An observation to play again and again in his head. "Untidy bed, untidy mind, huh?" He hummed. "My priya." He brushed Emre's cheek and pinched it in the end. "My pasandeeda." His gaze wrapped all around Emre, affectionately. "I leave my bed unmade after you've been in it. As a reminder."He squinted as if seriously contemplating. "Maybe captain got laid?"

A velvet hammer kept chipping at the whole Georgie thing. Once upon a time, Kaz had the brain to collect information, construct and parse it into something digestible and understandable. Always about others, not so much about himself. His laugh came from the deep end of his throat, as a hand combed dark wavy strands of hair back (dried sea water, dried blood).

His tongue made a soft click as his lips parted. "Emre, I felt things about her I'd never felt about anyone else." Kaz wouldn't say the word out loud, it hadn't been meant for Georgina in years. "When it ended, it really hurt. And I didn't want to feel it anymore." A tenderness, a vulnerability used up, and used against him.

Seconds suspended to examine Emre's expression. "But, can't hang on to that shit." A soft laugh. "It's okay to move on. She's just someone I used to know." Yes, he recalled the recent conversation about people changing. "Haven't you ever felt something that you just, like. You want to forget about? Let go?"

"I'd rather look back on you singing that song into the rock." A more relaxed sound, like a sigh. "At the waterfalls. I look back. I look back all the time." Not indignant and not pissed off, the emotion was one for Emre to excavate.

Now, Georgie. He'd like to bury up to her neck in the cold Pacific sand.

Feroze, Edward, Reyansh. Georgie spat-sprayed a bloody cackle. 'Oh, I'm supposed to give a run down on every person in Seattle?' Georgie squirmed in her seat and then cleared her throat. 'Edward went to prison in California. Reyansh followed to be close to his daddy. Surely Kaz told you his brother was a real kiss ass.'

A more introspective quiet followed by a frozen whisper. 'Feroze's brother.' Her jaw set firm and light eyes burned as they turned on Emre. 'He's little. A boy. But he can do a lot of damage. Especially when he finds out you killed Feroze.'

The name Edward absorbed all the light in the room for Kaz. Actual questions he'd waited ages to find the answer to, about Edward, might be sitting with their back to him (Georgie). "Do you know if he got out of prison?" Probably, with the charges brought against Edward, Kaz doubted his father would've still been in jail, in 2020.

Georgie turned her head towards her shoulder. It wasn't enough to see Kaz. For that, she'd have to completely twist around in her seat. The gesture enough, her tone meditative, careful. 'I wish I could tell you. Priti divorced him, so. I don't think she kept up with Edward after.' She waited, and then asked, 'You still haven't said where you've been. If not in Seattle, where?' Kaz didn't waste a minute. "On the beach. Lazing around, floating in the water."

Emre turned those spotlight eyes on him. Georgie aggressively snapped the map away from Emre. She sighed with a dramatic eye roll, and a snide mutter: 'Places to be, hmph. You're embarrasing.'

The map was given the briefest once over before a sharp nail tapped the paper. 'Here. Fermé has been abandoned for a while. No one guards it. But enough ships pass by too, they can pick up me and Ali.' Kaz immediately approached to rip the map away from Georgina. He slipped into a seat at the helm and proceeded to figure out how the hell to steer towards this word he'd never heard before.

Ali's high-pitched wolf barks someone filtered up to them. Georgie dropped her head back against the chair she was in, a demonstration of exhaustion. Kaz stalled the boat for a moment, then motioned for Emre to follow him just outside the bridge, to speak away from Georgina.

"Don't know if I trust her, but reckon we have no choice. Ali, though..." The sentence trailed, the thought of Urmilla's hand turned to sand in Emre's that time, when Emre refused to let his mother go.

A hand pointed out the dark coastline. No lights, no evidence of life. "The place she mentioned, Fermé? It's somewhere over there. Not too far away. But. You okay with leaving the kid there with her? Because I don't know what else we can do for him. Unless." A dumb thought. "Wonder if two people have ever tried to bring someone back from the outside." Or would the kid end up as molecular spaghetti stretched across time?

As if on cue, Ali's fists pounded his agitation out on metal below in a staccato rhythm. The shout wasn't muffled so much that they couldn't understand. 'I can hear you stupid motherfuckers! You ain't leaving me anywhere! Now, let me OUT!'

Kaz stomped a foot twice and shouted at the deck. "Holy shit, hold your fucking horses you little twat? We're trying to get us all the hell out of here!"

"Can you blame him, though? What sort of life has he had, man." Emre murmured, staring down at Ali. Listening to Kaz's brittle-edged tone of...what? Frustration? Annoyance? Confusion? "Little sod like that shouldn't face daily struggle, he should be kicking a ball about innit."

But of course, Kaz had nothing to yearn for. Emre looked at Ali and remembered his own gloried, nostalgic, safe childhood, something to be cherished and preserved. What did Kaz have, from that age?

Kid's lucky he didn't end up like his brother.

A soft snort of agreement as Emre touched Kaz, fingers sliding along the inside of Kaz's long, heavy arm. Reminding Kaz of humanity, if nothing else. Kaz just killed two men; it was hard to come down from a brutal, bloody high like that. Emre was trained to switch gears, when he had his own baby to mind, back in his London days.

The hatch closed for later (Ali would be fine) and they turned to the maps. Kaz thankfully maintained that contact, arm around Emre like he didn't want them to split again. Emre nestled in easily enough, watching as Kaz translated the maps with his keen discernment, noting patterns and codes in the writing that Emre never could.

"Riddles, that," Emre decided, as Kaz pointed out the words. "Last names, maybe? Could bloody do with a ciggie right about now, if I'm honest." A grin, a gentle elbow against Kaz's side (his bruised ribs, were some cracked? Kaz was surfing on adrenalin but not for long. Emre had to get him home, somehow. Fucking teleports!) Kaz smelled of fresh sweat and salt, making Emre's mouth water. Thirsty, hungry for Kaz even now. "Map was in a binder, all numbers in a long table. This seemed the most useful; we've got to dock somewhere on this map, don't we." A cluck of his tongue, about the Captain's cabin. "Unmade bed; undisciplined, that."

The Georgina question was bound to get Kaz discomfited. But he gave Emre the story willingly, and more of the picture formed. "It's always complicated. I know you don't feel bollocks for her now, but. She still affects you, yeah. She's from your past, of course she does..." Emre tilted his head up, allowing Kaz more scratching space under his chin.

"Bloody hell, you never look back, do you darling." It was the same with Ani, that poor little ghost-creature trailing after Kaz, who Kaz would barely even acknowledge...and then she was gone again. "You've got to, luv; she's here."

And Emre wanted answers. And maybe his reasoning was a little selfish; he was hungry for Kaz, even from Georgina's memories. Georgie was happy to provide tantalizing stories of this man, his man. About poor Ani's memorial, and Kaz in grief.

Emre's feelings split in two. Supremely irrational jealousy of Georgina, for having been in Kaz's life back then, known him back then. Been there with Kaz, when Emre obviously wasn't. (Kaz at seventeen...Emre would've been in Afghanistan.) Emre wanted to know everything; and had to hear it second-hand, in torturous ways for Kaz.

And Emre had the graces to feel bad, seeing how much Kaz hated it, but. Hated what, exactly? The old feelings that Georgie forcibly exposed, or some embarrassment he felt now? Or something else entirely, maybe. Kaz tried to give Emre his past, which Emre was grateful for but...bloody hell, he'd never get this chance again, would he? Actual people, from Kaz's past. If Emre could strangle and wring out every tidbit about Kaz from Georgina's long throat, he would.

Georgie's description of Priti felt so different from the woman that Kaz had described from his childhood. A useless ghost of a woman, who couldn't even pull herself out of her own self-pity, to love her children. Never mind protect. And now, Georgina called her a caretaker, for kids.

"What do you know about Feroze's brother?" Emre squinted at Georgina. "Priti would give the little blighter away for organ shifting, that's how she 'takes care' of bloody kids, then?" He kissed his teeth, dropped his hands from Georgina and took a step back in deliberately showy disgust. "You're both twisted sisters, innit. Cut from the same cloth. And what about Edward? Reyansh? They still about?"

Kaz, slightly bowed, on the borderline of begging for some sense out of this. Something that didn't have Georgina rake him across the coals; and Emre knew he had to tread lightly here.

"We're all fucking tired, sweetheart. Grow up, it's embarrassing you acting like this." Emre smoothed out the map in front of Georgina. "Find us some place to land. We're not here to fucking destroy your trade, don't you worry. We don't - we can't fucking care, yeah? We've got places to be, don't involve your blood profit. We just want off the boat..."

A long look at Kaz over Georgina's head, a meaningful, heavy gaze. Georgina was beyond redemption, this much was clear. And what Emre assured her of her safety once they landed could easily be a lie, if Kaz chose.

If Kaz chose to kill Georgina too.

A banging noise from below deck. And then a small, hoarse (and pissed off) little voice, howling: "Hey!! Hey get me out of here! Help, hello! HEYYYYY!" It was Ali, awake.