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Sun gets out of jail on a Tuesday.
It’s summer, she knows this, yet somehow the afternoon heat is a startlingly unfamiliar presence, heavy on her back, sweat pooling almost instantly. She knows in any other situation the dirt road that stretched away from the prison would be an impressive view, but since she woke up this morning in Germany, faced with a downpour and Wolfgang’s increasingly acerbic humor, all she can think of is how there’s no family there to pick her up. No family at all in fact. She gets a perverse pleasure from that.
Sun takes exactly two days—one to collect her dog and the other to watch the tabloids smear her brother’s face and reputation all across the financial district—then buys a ticket to an EXO concert.
Neol hyanghae keojyeogan maeuma, the lyrics bounce, the beat pulsing past her, Neo malgon geu muneul dada. Seoul Olympic Stadium is one of the last places she’d have been seen prior to everything that happened. It’s noisy, full of teenagers and rowdy drunks, and there are far too many people around her that she isn’t allowed to fight. Most of her possessions have been boxed up and stored by her father, prior to his murder, so she’s wearing some obsidian one piece curtesy of Lito’s pushy tastes, standing out in the crowd of teenagers.
It’s only part way through the second song when Riley shows up.
“Oh!” she exclaims, “This is that band!”
Sun nods, staring blankly forward. There’s dancing. She can feel Riley’s smile.
“They’re incredible dancers,” Riley shouts, or thinks really loudly. Or maybe Sun was the one who thought it really loudly. Kpop had been a bit of a secret pleasure of hers as a child, although she hadn’t listened to much of it in the last few years.
The concert goes until late, but since it is only just evening where Riley is, Sun treats her to dinner. They sit in the parking lot and eat some deep friend monstrosity, Sun listening as Riley carefully describes how Will is, how Kala’s careful concoction of drugs continues to work. It is not a long term solution and yet it is the only one they have, besides killing Whispers.
Dawn hits long before Riley needs to leave. She stands up, leaning over Sun and dropping a kiss to her cheek—intimacy that Sun would never have imagined before the cluster-fuck happened.
“Thanks for the concert,” Riley says, smiling widely, “and the distraction.”
There’s no point in lying—Sun doesn’t think she actually can. “Thank you for keeping me up to date while I was indisposed.”
Riley laughs. And then she’s gone.
Kala doesn’t really do the touristy things—you never do, when you live in the place the tourists flock to. But she supposes there are always exceptions.
“Is that the Gateway of India?”
“Yes,” Kala frowns at it, “I did not realize it would be so busy.”
Nomi grins, “I’ve been told it’s the city icon. We’ve got the same problem with look outs at the Golden Gate…only San Fran is pretty overcast, so it’s not like everyone wants to go outside.”
“Do you ever go just to see it?”
A laugh—“God no. It’s enough to have to pay a toll just to cross it.”
Kala has headed into South Mumbai a few times, ever since Nomi’s girlfriend Amanita expressed a very loud interest in hearing about the colours and the culture of India. They’ve already been to the Kala Ghoda Festival, done day trips to places like Matheran and Mahabaleshwar. When Diwali happened Nomi was right by her side, gleefully describing everything out loud for a video back home. And in a few weeks, thanks to an early birthday gift from her father and a rather…well-intended consolation gift from her sister (“Instead of a wedding gift I got you a break-up one! C’mon Kala, there weren’t any refunds.”) she’s headed to New Delhi. Apparently she’s been rather obvious in her recent excursions—her mother assumes its part of how Kala’s coping with the broken engagement, which is…well, it’s a possibility. Kala isn’t thinking too hard about it.
Truthfully, at least in part, having seven other eyes watching her India makes Kala very ambitious…and very proud. So she tries to see it all.
Amanita sighs wistfully. “It’s a shame we can’t go visit for ourselves. I hear the food in Bombay is to die for.”
Kala feels a rush of fondness—well, feels Nomi’s rush at least. Nomi licks her lips.
“Oh,” she agrees, “it is.”
Kala puts her hand on Amanita’s shoulder and leans into her. “Someday soon,” she promises, “when it is safe. I insist.”
Amanita grins. “Deal. Man, when all this fucked up shit with the psychos is over, we are totally hosting a party. An international, sensational welcome home party.”
Now it’s Nomi next to Amanita, and she swoops down for a kiss. Kala is always a little happier after they visit—Amanita may have never actually seen Kala, but Kala sees plenty of her thanks to Nomi. And she gets all of the happiness that comes with that.
—and the crowds are abruptly too much. Kala turns back the way she came.
“What do you two think about a bazaar?”
Nomi repeats the question for Amanita. Amanita clasps her hands,
“Darlings, that sounds perfect. With all of this new fashion you’re seeing, you are sohelping me pick my costume for the next parade. I’ve seen the pictures and let me tell you, I adore all the colour.”
“You haven’t left that couch for two days Lito.”
“Hernando, I most definitely have.”
Hernando flusters—lovely, darling Hernando flushes so pleasantly. Lito simply has to pull him down for a kiss.
After a few moments—and several snickers from the other side of the couch, which Lito ignores because he’s actual quite used to having an audience—Hernando leans back. “Lito I am being serious. Is everything alright?”
Lito draws his knees up, trapping Hernando with the length of his legs and holding him on the couch that, alright, he may have not quite left for very long in the last…while. But it is for a good cause—an emergency, as it were.
He tells Hernando this. Hernando frowns.
“It’s for that uh—that weird mind family thing,” Dani calls from the kitchen. Her and Hernando have been making food all afternoon, although Lito has not seen any of it. However, Dani had cornered him about the whole thing yesterday, when they’d been working out, because Dani is much quicker to be nosy than Hernando is.
The first time Lito tried to tell Hernando and Daniela about the cluster, Hernando had hunted for the script Lito had to be quoting, and Daniela sat very seriously on the bed and asked if Lito had been taking drugs. And if he maybe wanted to share. But then they’d caught him talking aloud in Swahili and well, it was a little easier to believe. Plus, they’re pretty much perfect and Lito loves them so much, so it’s no surprise they accepted the sensate thing after that.
“Weird mind family…two whole days?”
Wolfgang is sulking on Lito’s other side. He can feel it very strongly, though he doesn’t look away from Hernando and his cute little pout.
“There is no television in Friedrichsthal,” Wolfgang defends.
Lito nods. “And you find telenovelas very addicting, I know.”
That’s the nice thing about the cluster—you always know. It’s so open and honest…Lito loves it. Loves them.
Beside him Wolfgang tries very hard not to smile. Lito knows.
Hernando is staring at Lito strangely. Lito kisses him on the nose.
“Was that…what language was that?”
“German I think,” Lito glances over at Wolfgang, who nods. Ever since Wolfgang had to relocate—to run away from the bundeskriminalamt, because Wolfgang’s life is as dramatic as Lito’s films—he’s been speaking in a different dialect. Sometimes even French. Lito is very impressed.
“Ah.” Hernando says, “Well then. Let me know if you need anything.”
Lito smiles. He can tell it’s very sappy and he does not care one bit. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Hernando grins. From the kitchen Daniela is calling him in, “You and your uh, your whole family.”
Lito has to try very hard not to move this conversation to the bedroom. Instead he turns to look at Wolfgang, who is curled up in a ball on arm chair, wearing the same pj’s as yesterday. His cheeks are faintly pink.
There’s a long quiet moment and then—
“The next episode of Juro que te amo is recorded.”
Wolfgang sinks lower into his seat. “Yes please.”
“Like this?”
“No,” he moves her hand slightly, “Not unless you would like the recoil to hit you in the face.”
Nomi’s brows pucker. “Not particularly.”
She tests out the feel of the piece—she’s held guns before, but never one she had bought specifically for potential-shooting-of-other-humans.
“Maybe we could just say killing,” Wolfgang says, smirking down at her. Nomi elbows him in the stomach.
“Yeah, no thanks. I have enough of a problem owning this thing. I don’t want to consider what sort of damage this puppy could do unless I have to.”
Wolfgang nods. “Unless it’s Whispers we’re killing.”
Nomi loads the magazine and thinks of Will, of him offering to do this exact thing and—“Yeah, or that.”
They look out at the field, and the makeshift ‘bodies’ that Wolfgang had her scatter around. Apparently with Sun teaching them basic self defense and Kala disappearing for a week for some sort of pharmacy-conference-lotto thing, Wolfgang thought gun lessons would be the next best thing to cure his boredom. Well, that, and also Amanita has wanted to know how to do this for ages, and Nomi couldn’t not ask for the favor.
First though—her own gun. She looks down again.
“Are we certain this is going to be effective enough?” She asks.
Wolfgang turns the piece in his hand. “It’s a .22,” he explains, again, “so it’s not going to do as much damage as I’d like. But it’s enough for one person.”
She huffs, “Yes, I know. But maybe—”
“Start with it for now. If you decide later that you want a larger one, you can get it.” Wolfgang’s lips curl up, “In fact, it’s very simple to get really heavy firepower in America. If you wanted a flamethrower—”
“Wolfgang, no.”
“An uzi?”
“…Probably not.”
“I would not mind an uzi,” another voice says, and Nomi doesn’t need to look back to know that it’s Riley at her side. She does anyway, raising an eyebrow.
“Really?” Nomi asks, “Where would you fire an uzi?”
Wolfgang walks over to the two of them and lays a hand on Riley’s shoulder. It’s hard not to feel extra protective of her lately, an open wound of nightmares and a haunted future, particularly since Riley and Will are the only two to have met in person, and any mention of Riley brings to mind the general…feel of Will. Almost instantly Nomi has a surge of his affection, even under the induced coma Kala’s locked him into.
“Will has guns,” Riley explains, reaching into her pocket for a small handgun—police reg. “And I’m the only one protecting him right now.”
Wolfgang presses his hand tighter, saying nothing. Riley blinks up. “Well of course, we’re all protecting him. But—”
“You’re the only one doing it physically.” Nomi smiles. “You know that I’m perfectly fine with it. Ready to shoot some hay bales?”
Riley undoes the safety. “Absolutely.”
It is only the first practice of course, so there are more bales standing than not by the end of it. But Riley calms down, Nomi feels soothed over the whole ‘owning a violent weapon of destruction’ thing. And they’d have to be utterly apathetic not to feel Wolfgang’s pride—misplaced though Nomi thinks it is.
“Tomorrow we’ll try again,” he demands, then smiles, “Maybe I will set up that flamethrower anyway. Just in case.”
Nomi sighs. No point fighting it. “Yeah,” she lays her head on his shoulder, “just in case.”
Capheus loves auto rickshaws. Loves them. Kala ends up taking them—entirely needlessly—to work, just because Capheus shows up and well, that’s never a bad way to start the morning.
“Ah,” he’ll say, with a grin, because that’s really how Capheus rolls, “another beautiful day! You are looking particularly chipper this morning.”
And who doesn’t want some more of that in their lives?
Honestly, Capheus loves pretty much everything, whether it’s the trams in San Francisco or the KTX bullet trains in Seoul. The only problems come up when someone lets Capheus drive. Not that he isn’t an excellent driver, really. Nomi considers asking him to take her driver’s tests just so that she can have her license. Well, a real one, not the fake one Wolfgang sent her way–you never know when shit like that will come in handy.
The thing is, Capheus is a bit of a uh…insane driver. Kala learns this the hard way when she coordinates a chance to drive one of the rickshaws, and then promptly has a heart attack.
(They do regularly show up on the Van Damme, when there’s room. Capheus really enjoys it, and honestly—he’s probably the wisest of them all. Lito comes to him when he’s trying to figure out how to propose to Hernando, and whether or not he needs to include Dani in that, and Sun habitually pops up when she wants to calm her ire instead of punching it out. Riley shows up as dealing with the Whispers situation becomes too much, or that time one morning right after she finished a Van Damme marathon and needed to talk about it. A lot.
Wolfgang, well…he’s always trying to get Capheus to teach him how to be a better getaway driver. Skills my friend, skills.)
Lito gets married on a Tuesday. His groom is gorgeous, and Dani walks them down the aisle.
It’s a quiet affair—it has to be, with the way Mexico is at the moment. But there are six empty seat in the front row, enough to be noticed.
(Well, the wedding party knows they’re not technically empty. And Lito keeps grinning every time Nomi cheers particularly loudly, which makes Dani laugh and Hernando glance over with a small smile. It’s family, his family, their family. There’s nothing more he could ask for.)