tumbling lights

Pushing up out of the seat opposite Freyja, Frank bent, hugged her awkwardly with the growing bump that held his niece or nephew between them. In just a few months they were gonna make their appearance, shrieking their way into the world, hopefully healthy after all that had happened since they’d been … nope, he wasn’t going there. He huffed out a breath, drew back enough to kiss Freyja’s cheek. The baby was going to be fine, Freyja was going to be fine and without Theo there he was gonna step up for the both of them in a way he hadn’t at the start, too shattered by what had happened to take care of the woman his brother loved. "Come by for dinner on Friday, OK? I’ll cook.” He’d heard enough from Theo to know that Freyja couldn’t, but that hadn’t been the motivation. He was trying to step up now that he’d started the scrape the pieces of his shattered life together. Broken shards left littering the ground after the worst had happened.

He pushed it out of his head as he said his goodbyes, leaving enough to cover the check on the table, offering to walk Freyja back to her office but being turned down. They were all scrabbling, the process somehow made worse by the way the truth of it was held tight between just a handful of them. Frank headed for the door of the Grill, his lips pressed hard together. He still hadn’t told his parents, covering the lie with emails, stilted messages filled with lies tapped out from his brother’s email address, Oscar worthy phone calls that left him retching in the bathroom afterwards, the act tearing something deeper inside of him every time but how could he turn back now? Theo was still gone and with each passing day the lie was constricting tighter in his throat but he couldn’t get the words out, hadn’t told anybody outside of that tiny circle that his brother had died out in those woods. Theo was gone.

That sense of his brother being right there, just out of reach had lingered all those weeks. Glances aside feeling like they should’ve revealed Theo standing right there, the word asshole on his brother’s lips in the way it always had been, that laughing affection between them that could never be replaced. Frank felt it as he stepped out the door, glancing back at the table to see Freyja still sitting there. His throat constricted as he nodded. One hand coming up to sign to her. "Love you both. Bye.” Family. He still had them, gathered around each other in that circle. Freyja, Kit, Niko, Dom. The child growing in Freyja’s womb the only one tethered to him by blood but family was so much more than that.

Turning away, Frank started across the square. Family, the people you would give anything to protect. He raised a hand, running fingers uneasily over the long healed wound in his side as he glanced warily around the square. That sense of helplessness had struck again as Freyja had shown him the wounds the asshole who’d killed his brother had put on her out in the woods, the story … the truth that someone was still out there, painting targets on them … leaving him in that heightened state of awareness. A constant prickle between his shoulder blades that shouldn’t have felt alien but it did now, here in a town that should’ve been idyllic but was really hiding this dark underbelly.

God he hated it.

Frank dragged a hand over his face, starting across the square towards his car on the other side, where he’d parked when he’d driven over after morning classes. His Wednesday afternoons were always free, time he’d once spent catching lunch with Theo, hanging out on campus until his brother headed into his early evening class. Now … now they were time to be filled to avoid him sliding back down that slope and into the grief that still lingered black and oily at the bottom of it, ready to drown him if he wasn’t careful.

Frowning, Frank slipped a hand into his pocket to retrieve his keys, almost gouging himself in the thigh with them when the sound of his name alone had him startling. Fuck. His hand clutched around them like he could tear them out and stab someone in the throat with them if he needed to. He half turned, brow furrowing deeper as he stared at the hulking form on the bench, sunglasses in hand, long hair pulled back, eyes squinting up at him. "Raik? What the hell…” The laugh that rolled out of him was a little uncertain, his hand releasing the grip on his keys leaving the ghost of the feel of them behind. He dragged his hand out of his pocket, extended it to the guy who’d helped Kit keep him alive after the IED had blown, leaving him bloody and useless on the sand. "What are you doing here man? Last time we spoke you were in Vegas.” He dropped onto the bench next to him elbows planting on his elbows as he glanced sideways at the medic. They’d stayed in contact afterwards, the bonds you made at times like that rock solid in his experience.

Tagged: RAIK DURMAZ * Word Count: 888

Two men had kept him alive long enough to get to Ramstein, for the docs to get him stable enough that he’d survive the flight back to America. Kit, with his own body and mind jolted by the explosion, hands red with blood Frank knew he come from the wound that had almost torn his arm free of his body as he kept the enemy at bay with his gun. Then Raik. The medics arriving was always a reason for relief, that knowledge that someone with more training was there to hold together the shattered bodies of your team, and his arrival that day had come with a scream of attitude that hadn’t made it past his lips. By then he’d been too far gone on the medications Kit had fumbled to get into his system from the ragged remnants of a first aid kit from the truck to see more than blurs approaching. Hands scrabbling weakly as he was examined and patched, a kaleidoscope like image of the guy’s face that wouldn’t come into focus until later.

The truck. The side of his gurney at Ramstein. The hospital in Bethesda as he’d swum in and out of his medicated haze.

Raik was sure as hell looking better now than he had. He imagined that made two of them. Lines carved deep by the time spent at war still there, but softened in some other way, the same way his own had been, the way he still hoped Kit’s would as he saw his friend ground down by the guilt of what happened when the explosion that had wiped out half their team had kept him in its agonising grip.

Frank knew that if Raik was sticking around he’d see that weight still on Kit, the man he’d been no longer the man he was. For now he was throwing that shield back up, the one that hid the grief that had crushed his own heart until it felt like there was nothing left but torn and pulverised flesh, desperately waiting for something to stitch it back together. A touch of uncertainty to his laugh the only thing that might’ve given him away as he’d extended his hand to Raik. Frank let out a long breath, giving Raik’s hand a hearty shake as he brought his other hand to clap it against Raik’s other arm. ”It’s … good to see you too.” That faint hitch in his voice that he wasn’t sure came from fear or doubt or some sort of relief.

Settling on the end of the bench as Raik sank back down, Frank leaned forward, elbows on slightly spread knees, his turned to keep the medic in sight. He managed a huff of amusement as Raik told him he was right. A light whistle sliding out between his teeth. ”It’s Vegas, man, what did you expect? I swear, Chaco’s bachelor party there? We barely got out in one piece.” His throat felt like it was closing up the minute he’d said it, leaving him clearing it just to try and dislodge the fist that closed hard around his windpipe. Chaco had been driving the truck when the IED hit, his wife had been inconsolable at the funeral he wasn’t allowed out of his hospital bed for.

Bobbing his head, Frank sniffed in a deep breath. The memories were still raw, probably always would be but shying away from all of them was only going to leave those wounds bleeding so heavily that they’d eventually end up mortal. ”So I can thank him for dragging you out here…” Frank nodded, letting out another sharp breath of amusement out through his nose. He clenched his hands together between his knees, his teeth raking over his lower lip before Raik’s question hit. Hazel eyes cut sideways as he straightened up slightly. Frank slipped a hand into his pocket, retrieved his Whitmore ID to flash at his friend. ”You’re looking at the second Professor Damasca. I’m teaching. Boring the next generation of minds with the history of our illustrious country. You should sign up, take a few classes at Whitmore, maybe sharpen that brain of yours up, if you’re sticking around that is. Have you and Remzi got plans other than friend visiting?” He wasn’t sure how Kit would handle another face from back then being around. Another reminder of what had been, someone who knew enough about what had happened to likely have an opinion on his guilt. It was pressure, enough that it would probably leave Kit struggling for air the way he’d almost been at the thought of the first Professor Damasca.

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They’d seen death almost every day there. Knowing that every time orders came down and they were heading off base there was a chance they might not come back. It didn’t matter if they were given brief reprieves from it, trips back home to decompress, to let someone else rotate back in to try and bring peace to somewhere that never seemed to hold onto it for long. You could travel halfway across the world to leave it behind but there were always traces of it clinging to you. Dark cobwebs that had left a grim pall hanging over them for just a few minutes in the middle of that night. Men gathered around, loosened from the shackles of the uniform by the booze they’d already sunk. Faces grim until Chaco had cracked some wild joke. Laughter broke it all, if you could find it still in all of that darkness.

Frank fought for it now. His throat was tight from the memory, grief’s grip tight but the sound was there in the wake of his whistle. Rusty, probably rustier than it had ever been but forcing that grip to loosen. ”That’s what you get for being a choir boy,” he joked, a nudge of his elbow in Raik’s ribs. That had always been Theo’s role, the steady to his explosiveness. The twin who’d settled down, who would’ve been at lunch with them today, love filling his goofy face as he’d looked at his pregnant girlfriend.

The ache intensifying, Frank had tried to push the thought away. Theo was gone. He was gonna be the one there with tears in his eyes as the baby was born. Faintly green despite it all but trying to at least hover over those big footsteps his brother had left behind.

The second professor Damasca. It was the way he would’ve introduced himself before but as Raik had wrung what he was doing now out of him, Frank had dialled it back. His shoulders shrugged, pushing the ID back with a long breath. ”It was that or start washing dishes somewhere. Least this way I’m still boring someone with all that history stuff, you know.” A passion turned a job while he’d tried to keep some grip on his career. Another reserve weekend would come up hard some time soon. Days away from the town and the weight it was still gonna be pressing on his chest like a concrete block. ”There’s a med school,” he said honestly. ”If you’d ever thought about becoming Dr. Durmaz. We can get Remzi one of those dish washing spots.” Humour laced his words. Without Raik’s medical knowledge he’d have come home in a pine box, just like Chaco. A flag draping his coffin, gone before he could scream over his own brother’s body.

Shifting on the bench at the thought, Frank tried to burn the images out of his brain. Curling forward, elbows planted on his knees, fisted hands propping his chin. Dark brows beetling as he watched Raik shrug off his question about his plans. Mystic Falls was a hell of a place to find on the map for just a little visit. If it hadn’t been for Theo finding his way to Whitmore he’d never have known about the place. His answer had a low laugh rolling out of him, the strain obvious in it. ”It’s pretty but I wouldn’t exactly call it uneventful. You might wanna watch out for your brother here.” Like he thought he had been for both of his. At the mention of Kit, Frank sat up, nodded. ”He’s here too. Got myself a roommate. Did you … stay in touch?” There were gaps, for all of them, after he’d been released from the hospital. More after Kit had killed Kace and people in his life had started putting up walls between them all.

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Choir boys weren’t all that rare in the military. There were plenty of men who enlisted who saw it was a way for them to their duty, imagining that putting their own lives on the line was going to save scores of others. They could’ve gotten dirty in the trenches, literally and metaphorically, but some, like Raik, and himself in a way, Frank guessed, clung on to it. Sainthood a possibility for the future, in Raik’s case at least. His own bright and shining armour held some tarnish now, what had happened since the explosion had torn his life apart for the first time dulling it down.

Letting Raik’s laughter roll over him, Frank stared down at his hands, closed around his ID as he flashed it to Raik. No sign on them of the crescent moons his nails had scored into his palms the night Theo had died, no redness from the wringing, from the lake of tears that seemed to have spilled out of him without running dry. No outward sign of what had been cut from him in that clearing. Swallowing hard, Frank tried to push the image of his brother’s blood on his hands from his head as he pushed that ID back out of sight. Theo was gone, spilling the horrific tale of how he’d gone right here in the middle of the town wasn’t going to bring him back. It was just going to leave him sobbing on another team mate’s shoulder.

It should’ve been easier talking about work but Theo was tangled up in almost every part of that too. A deep breath in at Raik’s question and Frank managed a grunt in response. He nodded, the corners of his mouth twitching into something less carved in granite. ”Theo went there. It’s why I came here. He was already on staff and he put a good word in for me when it came to applying. I could do the same for you, write some sordid tale of how you saved my ass.” He wanted to choke up at that, his throat thick as he tried to swallow the sensation away again. If he had died would Theo have still been here to stumble into the path of whoever had stabbed him to death. A question the police still hadn’t answered.

Frank had hoped that the pressure would ease as he’d hunched forward but it had merely shifted positions, settling on his shoulder blades, his back instead. The twinge of a joint that was never going to be what it was and that reminder again of just why he was still there and others weren’t. Two men had risked their own lives for him, holding those shattered parts of him together so he could be back here and Theo wouldn’t have been right where he was now.

Those hazel eyes had lost any gleam of humour as he propped his chin on his hands and glanced sideways at Raik. He couldn’t tell him about Theo now. It would only open that Pandora’s Box of why he hadn’t lead with that. Long minutes into this conversation and he still hadn’t been able to find the words ‘my brother’s dead’. From the moment Kit had led him out of the clearing where Theo had died it had seemed easier to hide the agonising truth, wrapping his guilt and grief up in a shroud in his chest, only letting it loose when he was alone or with those wrapped up in their own. Not a word to his parents yet, nothing to anybody at the university. Always just those lies instead, tossd out with a breezy confidence that wasn’t even entirely skin deep.

Straightening up, Frank sniffed in a deep breath as he gestured around the two of them. The town at large would go, his own loss only a tiny part of that. ”Pick up one of the papers. There’s something new and bloody on the front pages practically every other day. It’s home … but Mystic Falls isn’t exactly Shangri-la.” It was something far redder in tooth and claw and Kit was as aware of that as any of the rest of them. A slow bob of his head in understanding, Frank slid a hand back into his pocket. ”Anybody who didn’t push him away got pushed away, if you get what I mean. We’re keeping each other afloat, you know?” He extracted a stub of a pencil from his wallet, a receipt from the Grill, and balanced it on his thigh to scrawl his address on. ”Kit works most nights but you should stop by. Bring Remzi too. We’ll grill, have a few beers, celebrate fate bringing us all together here.” Frank raised his brows in invitation as he held that scrap of paper out. There’d be two gaping holes at the table – Kace and Theo – but he doubted either he or Kit would begrudge a man still able to hold on to his brother.

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