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 Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 11:13 am
Normally, on such a hot, humid day Kam would have been holed up in the apartment spending his time kicking a** on Call of Duty. As it was, Bo had come home not long ago with a girl on each arm and, as a devote follower of Guy Code, Kam had found a second to slip out and leave his friend alone to work his game in peace.
He'd wandered to the humble hole in the ground they called a pool and, after a few laps, he had just retired to a lounge chair sitting comfortably in the shade. He had hoped there would be girls swimming, or trying to get a tan, but it seemed people had other priorities today - or maybe Bo had already walked by and cleaned them out of the place.
So he was just sitting there with his iPod plugged in, not a care in the world, at least until he got a suspiciously angsty text from his little brother. At the pool, bro was all he had texted back to Khetal's inquiry. He was concerned, even if he didn't show it, and he spent the time that it took Khal to bring his lanky a** over to the complex with a frown on his face.
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 3:18 pm
A little while later, Khal hopped the shitty fence around the apartment's pool. The smell of chlorine hung on the humidity. His back still hurt from the force of the energy that had radiated from the door slamming him into the wall, but he'd dealt with worse before. There was some exhaustion on his features though. Teleportation wasn't going to be an option any more today when he'd already spent two attempts in a relatively short period of time.
Khal sprawled onto the empty chair next to Kam's and stared up into the mostly clear sky. It wasn't hard to find his brother out here, even beside the fact that the pool area was pretty empty.
"Hey," he started as if the word weighed a hundred pounds. As if putting that word ahead of the rest of his thoughts would somehow postpone them. He was still on edge after the situation in the Negaverse. How could he not be? It was that kind of frustration that made a knot out of his stomach because there was nothing he could do till later tonight, if she was even home when he got there, or if he was allowed back if she was. It was all pretty clearly written in the look on his face.
"Have you ever really pissed a girl off," he spoke slowly, trying to choose his words carefully, "And like. Well, I mean, she started it..."
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 3:30 pm
Kam glanced up at Khal plopped into the chair next to him and, without a word, he rolled to the opposite side to dig around in a little old plastic cooler he had brought out with him. A few seconds later and he simply tossed a can of beer into Khal's lap - cold and wet from the half-slush half-ice the cooler water had melted to. Then he flopped back into the chair comfortably, only just resisting the urge to tell Khal to go sit in one of the sunnier chairs and try to get a tan.
"Hm?" he rolled his head back to look at him as Khal tried to get his attention. He didn't miss the fact that his 'Hey' was not a light-hearted, brotherly greeting. Nor did he miss the fact that his brother looked like someone had run him through a course at an army camp. He steeled himself for whatever he was about to ask - something about their parents, maybe?
Then he could only smirk and shake his head, popping his own can of beer and taking a long, refreshing gulp of it. ******** women.
"Sure I have, I've pissed off dozens of them. Just so you know, it's never their fault. That's the first thing to learn." He chuckled to himself and shut his eyes then, leaning his head back against the chair. Clearly, women troubles were not at the forefront of Kam's mind. He didn't date and he wasn't concerned with hurting a girl's feelings most of the time. Of course, some part of him wanted to be helpful to his little brother, so he brought himself out of his apathy and gave the kid another glance.
"What'd you do, forget her birthday or something?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 4:07 pm
Khal gratefully accepted the beer and copycatted Kam in taking a long drink. He'd tried to hang out more often with Kam when time allowed for it. Probably the best thing Kam could have hoped for was a brother he could still always beat at video games. Most of the awkward vibe diminished, though he knew his brother could never be entirely distracted from the fact that Khal had barely any recollection of him. One day he'd ask again, very seriously, and Khal wasn't sure how he'd explain it. But until then Khal just made an honest effort to be Khetal, and hoped that his memory would whole in time.
"Oh god," he responded, sounding a little distraught. That was exactly what he didn't want to hear. He'd seen enough movies to fill in the blanks of what women did when they were angry; he was going to come back to the apartment and Kaia was going to come at him with a kitchen knife or something. She was going to murder him because she had crazy girl rage or crazy senshi rage or even crazy girl senshi rage and she'd regret nothing. It was all over. He sank further into the chair. "She's gonna kill me then."
"Well I wanted her to lay off me around some people I knew and she lost her s**t." This was all suitably vague enough, right? He hadn't really had the time or focus to invent a cover story. He wasn't entirely sure it was possible to do that when Negaverse politics were involved. "So she got all ice queen on me and then I was mad so I called her something and I left and now I don't want to go back there. She's my roommate."
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 4:46 pm
For what it was worth, Kam tried very seriously to listen to his brother. The difference between them, he noticed immediately, was that Khal was genuinely stressed out about upsetting this girl where Kam probably wouldn't have given two shits. He'd learned a long time ago not to get attached to anyone but his bros - blood or otherwise. Sure, that included some ladies, but they were also the kind that weren't going to flip their s**t on him like this.
"No she won't," he finally just sighed, resisting the urge to make some joke and choosing the option of actually trying to help him instead. He swung his legs over the side of the lounge chair so he could face Khal. He propped his arms on his legs and let his hands hang down between them, his beer can still gripped in one.
"Your first mistake is living with whoever the hell this girl is, that makes them feel like they own you and causes all kinds of s**t." He took a long gulp of his beer and then crumpled the can in one hand, tossing it over Khal and into a garbage bin against the fence. "Your second one was leaving before she did. She's going to feel like she won that fight, no matter who started what, because you're the one that bailed first."
He brushed his dreads back from his face with another long sigh, then fell back into his chair again. It had been a long time since he'd actually dated, but he supposed girls were the same where they were girlfriends or one night stands.
"The longer you're gone, the worse it will be. They want you to come back so they can yell at you for doing whatever they think you're doing while you're gone." He shrugged and reached down for another beer, then popped the top and set it on the little dusty patio table at his side. "I don't know how to tell you to deal with her, they're all different, and if you're living with her then I assume you actually like her or you wouldn't be."
He gave him a suspicious look then, as if he were trying to figure out the relationship laying beneath the surface. If Khal actually wanted to date and try to do the boyfriend thing, then he'd let him. There was no reason to push his lifestyle onto the kid if he was enjoying his own. Still, it was hard for Kam to grasp after years of purposefully not forming relationships.
"So I guess it's just down to whether or not it's important enough to fix." He took another sip of his beer then, purposefully not looking at Khal, instead just concentrating on the pool in front of them.
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 5:24 pm
"It's... we're not... she has a boyfriend. I think." He didn't even know what kind of a point he was trying to make to Kam or what he was defending himself from. "I don't know."
"This is so crazy. Girls are so crazy." He finished his own beer a little while after Kam had already started on his second, and in his frustration he toyed with the metal tab until it came loose. This was a lot to take in, but he trusted Kam to be right about this stuff in a way that completely bypassed his paranoia. All he had to do was just say he was wrong, then? Even if he didn't think he was. He guessed it was worth it though, even if he wasn't completely clear on the reasons why, even with himself. He'd never been so stressed out by an argument with anyone before. He didn't want to be on bad terms with her. He just... he couldn't stop himself from saying that stuff. He was pissed off too.
It would have helped to have even a vague idea of how girls worked, maybe some experience that was from before he was a hormonal teenager. His spotty memory was still missing any recollection of his own mother, who would probably have been the one to go to about this sort of stuff. It was always a dangerous gamble to shine a big spotlight on his amnesia but it was the only way he was going to find anything out. Even so, he didn't bother looking over at Kam as he spoke. "I guess our mom wasn't like that though, huh."
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 5:42 pm
Kam glanced over at him as he tried to fumble through his words to defend himself, smirking to at Khal's sudden discomfort. He wasn't reveling in the fact that he'd upset the kid, just that he was so terribly bad at anything to do with girls. At least he hadn't come back to some punk with a big head and too much confidence. Like himself. Kam didn't think he'd get along with someone too similar.
"You think?" He grinned again and looked away, tossing back another gulp of beer. "She does or she doesn't, and you can choose to care about that or not." He shrugged at the thought and looked up at trees overhead that were providing a spotty bit of shade and a little relief from the sweltering heat. "Girls are just girls. They're not so much crazy as they are just.. different." For a moment he seemed to be considering something, maybe someone, that he had once known. Then it was gone, fleeting beneath his playboy attitude and his goal of getting as drunk as possible off of the beers he had with him.
Then Khal steered the subject towards something that sobered him and made him want to drink more all at once.
"No, she wasn't like that at all," he said quietly, narrowing his eyes on the branches and trying to find the guts to talk to Khal about the dark, looming cloud over their new fledgling relationship. He bought a little time by fishing out another beer and holding it out for Khal. The talk was probably only going to get more depressing as they went on and he wasn't going to let him stay sober for that. Beer fixed a lot of things.
"Do you remember anything?" He set the almost-empty second beer on the chair arm with his large hand still curled around it, adamantly refusing to meet Khal's gaze now. "Her, Dad, the scar?" He closed his eyes against the sky, looking for all the world like he might just be relaxing, but it was more that he was trying to keep his emotions in check. Beer was actually not that great for emotions, actually. Surprise.
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 7:32 pm
Kam was some kind of advice Buddha, and Khal was in awe. Not only was he terrible with girls, but he was also terrible with opening up to people. It was a rare occurrence even within the few relationships he could call close. He didn't like to display his emotional weaknesses to anyone. Every exception he made for Kam, he made because his even his valuable intact pride wasn't worth it. It didn't grant him any degree of tact in discussing these things, though. He just fumbled around sensitive subjects and left his feelings pretty exposed in the process.
Not one to pass up free s**t, Khal accepted the offered beer. They'd both steered clear of family talk for a while now but it had grown unavoidable. In Khal's anxiety he was becoming reckless and impatient. He wanted results, he wanted more out of today than getting thrown around a room and pissing off his closest friend. He was watching his brother's reaction even as Kam seemed to want to avoid looking at him at all.
"No." He knew it was a disappointing answer, but he'd tried as hard as he could to dredge up even one thing independent of Kam. The photograph was burned into his memory but it had not in turn sparked anything. That wasn't how it worked with him, apparently. Even the little anecdotes about their sibling rivalry Kam offered him seemed to bring back more than that.
"When you showed me the photo the first time, I just got kind of a sense... that something happened to them." It wasn't really a sense even. It was an assurance. He was afraid he sounded like a TV psychic as he tried to find the words for what he'd experienced. But he didn't like to take those vague memories seriously without Kam's confirmation. He wanted to remember on his own, he wanted to know who the hell he was, completely... that was just a luxury he didn't have. It was one of his deepest fears now that Kam would grow impatient with him and stop talking to him, right up there on the list with Kaia rejecting him as well. So he was nervous. "Something bad."
"I wish I could say I knew more than that, but I don't."
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:02 pm
He was quiet for a moment as he lay there listening to Khal. His eyes were still shut and his head was still leaned back into the lounge chair, but he was trying his best not to react to the memories that Khal unknowingly brought to the front of his mind. Spotty light, laughter, and then the awful sound of a crash.
His eyes snapped open with a grimace and he sat up, rubbing one hand across his face while simultaneously downing the rest of his second beer. He crunched it like the first, but just let it drop to the rough pavement beneath their feet. He let out one long, deep sigh - he wasn't mad, it was pretty obvious, he was just trying to steel his nerves enough to say what he needed to.
"Maybe it's better that you don't remember. We were there." He brought up his left hand and traced an x onto his own cheek - he knew the pattern even without looking at his brother's face. It had been something that troubled him, for a long time afterward, because it was a constant reminder.
He paused then and reached down for yet another beer. He'd come out to get drunk while Bo was playing pattycake and he intended to do just that, especially so now that he had to have an unintended serious discussion with Khal. He popped the top and took a sip, but then he just settled it between his legs on the lounge chair and toyed with the tab. It made a dull ringing noise as he plucked at it and he stared at it while he tried to find the courage to say those simple little words.
"It was a car crash," he swallowed against a lump in his throat. It hurt, to have so much emotion attached to this and know that his brother didn't know any of it. "They were taking us camping, it was on some stupid mountain road." His hand clenched a little and the mostly full beer can let out a small crinkling of protest.
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 5:32 pm
He recognized the motion and unconsciously covered the majority of the scar with one hand. Well, it wasn't like he expected his face had been mutilated for a good reason. He just never expected anything quite like this.
Living with Kaia had attuned him to emotions better than he had been before, but he was still at a loss for how to deal with them when they surfaced in others. He could see he'd inadvertently hit a nerve but there was nothing he could do about it now. Well. If he could remember, he would already know the story his brother was mulling on, and he'd know how upset it should have made him. Instead he just had that cold prickly feeling of a disconnect and the realization that a conversation suddenly went sour.
But as Kam kept talking, the scene was etching itself in his mind's eye. No approximations. It was exactly as his brother was describing, almost hideously vivid and sharp in comparison to less significant memories. In the past he must have replayed it a hundred or a thousand times in his head. The inside of a moving car crowded by himself, and Kam, and their parents, if only the backs of their heads. They were there.
No amount of detached, morbid curiosity could override how disturbed it made him feel. He didn't want to see what came next.
The sound of the beer can Kam was crushing seemed to bring him back from it and he looked away. "Kam. Listen. Forget I brought it up. I don't think... I'm ready to hear this." In the silence that swelled from the interruption he tried to think of how to veer the subject anywhere else. If he kept drinking his own beer maybe he could buy himself time.
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 7:41 pm
If Khal had been ready to hear what he had to say at any point, if he ever wanted to know the details, Kam would have been surprised. No one wanted to know their entire life was one big tragedy. The important thing was that he needed to know, he needed to hear. Kam needed him to know so they didn't just keep dancing around details.
"No, you don't get to avoid this," Kam's tone wasn't the joking, funny guy he tried to be normally, just to make Khal feel better. This was serious talk time, and Khal would listen to him. "You're never going to be ready to hear this because no one is ready to hear this kind of s**t." He grit his teeth for a moment, making the muscles of his jaws tighten. He was trying to steel himself for it, no matter that he had basically been telling Khal to suck it up already.
He took one long drink of his beer which, honestly, was not helping him be a soft and caring older brother at the moment, and then set it on the patio table next to him. He was still a long time before he shifted in the chair and twisted his upper body so he could look at Khal. "Dad," the word tasted odd on his tongue after so many years and he paused for a split second, gathering himself up to keep going, "Dad was driving and a deer ran out in the road." He frowned then, replaying the images he could see so clearly in his head. "He swerved to miss it and the Jeep flipped."
For a long few moments he was quiet, solemn because of whatever he was seeing in his head. Khal was like a stranger then, someone that was listening to a story they had never heard. It was an odd, painful dynamic because he could see Khal in his mind as clearly as he could see him sitting in front of him.
"Dad died on impact, Mom on the way to the hospital." He shifted so he could sit back in his chair, reaching for his beer on instinct. He would need a lot more of those to keep dealing with this s**t. "You didn't wake up for a while, and I was.. waiting." Saved from injury, but not from guilt or panic or loss. He'd just watched as they all slipped right through his fingers, one by one, and Khal was the only one he'd managed to hold on to.
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 10:15 pm
Kam's words were cutting into him like knives, worse than that even. Cuts and injuries hurt on a surface level. This was digging deeper. It was the price he was paying for his memories, he'd realized some time ago, to relive them briefly as he recovered them. He saw it all whether he wanted to or not. Kam knew exactly what to remind him of. There was a faraway look in his eyes while Kam spoke, betraying his waking nightmare. But it was clear Khal was bothered by what he heard.
Khal pushed himself up out of the chair, and stood there for a moment, staring off into the distance with an empty look. He could have just left right then. He wasn't so close to Kamboja that he couldn't just walk away from all this before he got in any deeper. This wasn't the past anyone would have waited three years to reclaim, he could probably reason to himself. Maybe he could convince himself that Kam had been wrong about him and they weren't brothers. This guy was crazy to think that same brother he'd been searching for would still be around Destiny City after losing both parents and having his brother run off to South America. It was all a mistake and all he had ever really had was the endless cycle of the Negaverse --
No.
Slowly and silently he crossed in front of Kam's chair, leaning down and scooping a another beer out of the little cooler propped up beside it, and continued on until he reached the chair on Kam's other side. He'd already popped the top of the beer before he'd collapsed back down. He stayed staring out across the pool.
"I remember now."
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 10:35 pm
Kam just watched him, silently, waiting for any kind of response. He didn't for one second think that Khal would just leave, he couldn't outrun his past forever and Kam would just find him again. He'd always find him. If there was one thing he wasn't going to let him do, it was continue being alone.
They were the only ones left, it was important they were together.
"I'm sorry." The way he said it didn't seem as if he were sorry for telling him, but for something else. That it was something he had to say to begin with? He just watched Khal where he was sitting now, while Khal watched the pool. Then he idly picked up the phone sitting next to his iPod and checked the time.
He'd given Bo plenty of space by now.
"Just drink your beer, kiddo. Then we can go play some Call of Duty and I'll tell you more about how to deal with your not-girlfriend." Booze, Games, Advice. They all seemed like damn good ways to stop thinking about the past which Kam felt they both clearly needed, even if he'd just been the conductor through suckville.
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