Kaspar Ildstrom

Apparently, in 2051 he had a job to go to. A job that included a badge with security clearance and an office shared with who was meant to be last week’s client. Last week’s client who somehow flagged as a priority number on his phone with a caller ID photo of an intensely choice fighter jet. Lachlan had taken the twins - their twins - to the park while he followed up on this lead. Or what he hoped would be a lead at the end of the utter maze that was C.A.R.M.A. HQ. It felt strange without Stig at his side, but hopefully Agent Ortega would have more information than he di - Ah. 

Brows arched at the recap, he bit down on the inside of a chuckle, “Oh ja,  in private military ops clean language is priority, along with minding your fokkin’ manners on comm during tea time with whatever shit-for-brains is getting trained in handling that week. I think I’ll recover, bru, but I’m assuming in the past you sweetened the pot with better food than queso to balance that out.” 

Stepping closer he surveyed the room before his eyes flicked back to the other man, relaxing slightly at least in solidarity, somehow easy around the agent, “Fok..I didn’t even think to look for weed. Alright, I see your surprise spouse and raise you: Try waking up with three year old twins calling you ‘daddy’. Absolutely bosbefok. ”   With a sigh he rubbed the fatigue of this endless day away, “What intel do we have access to?” A pause customary of spies, C’mon, “Assuming we’re sharing an office with..beanbags that we also share intel.”

He liked the Danish guy. Liked him enough to get pissed off on his behalf and take his case to Ellie, then to her mancandy in the Legal department, but if this future was anything close to reality he had clearly pulled the whole thing off with aplomb. Which was excellent, though he was so scattered at the moment he was being reactive, not proactive. Sighing loudly and rolling his eyes, he forced himself back a step from the edge mentally. “Alright, smartass. I get it. Half the people here are afraid of big scary Agent Ortega, it was worth saying just in case. But you apparently can put up with substantially more of my shit than most given we’re sharing an office space.” Guillermo said, standing and stepping away from his desk. They had commandeered what he assumed was a conference room, which was impressive. A whiteboard in the corner had magnets shaped like chili peppers on it and handwriting he didn’t recognize, presumably Kaspar’s. At the word twins he looked at Kas directly and snort laughed a little, then shook his head at the very idea.

“You don’t seem too upset about it, or who you woke up in bed with. I’ll assume you know that person pretty well. But three year old girls? Been down that road before. Mazel tov and good luck, hermano.” Intel? He had some, conveyed via text message from Ellie, and hell, what was the harm in sharing it? This guy had clearance in this future, he liked him, and he didn’t seem squirrely enough to go telling the press. So he gestured towards the sofa and beanbag chair area in the office, taking a seat himself on the sofa rather than try to dig himself out of the beanbag later. “So Director Sinclair, we’re very close. She’s like my little sister. I love her to death. But apparently this was scientific preternatural recon that research and development didn’t realize would punt us all into the future.” Guillermo explained, looking dubious about the very concept and more than a little put out. “Supposedly it’s like a slingshot thing, we’ll go back. Eventually. Localized to just Pansaw. Like, my niece isn’t here, because Ellie sent her out of town.” The only thing to do was roll with these punches, in Mo’s opinion. Maybe not everyone could, but he believed in Ellie enough to assume they would go back to normal. “You still want this? Because I think you can handle what we go up against, but you want out, you just tell me. Won’t think anything less of you.”

Not too upset? He supposed he wasn’t.  No, well. It was like falling down the rabbit hole. Everything he’d wanted years ago only now with odd thorny pieces and blank spaces twisted through it. Lachlan was...complicated. Twins with the best friend he thought had abandoned him in some shithole hospital in Johannesburg? Not easy to explain. Well. “Ja, you could say that. Saw him for the first time in five years and he thought I was a fokkin’ ghost come to haunt him for...his atrocious dancing, probably. Leaving me for dead, dressing like a gigolo for the past five years, the usual shite.” And the rub was except for one of those things, he couldn’t help but be fond, more than fond, of all the somewhat ridiculous qualities that his former love best friend contained. Openness came easy with ‘scary Agent Ortega’ whose words and posture clearly said ‘don’t bullshit me and I won’t bullshit you’. A relief considering the number of shitheels and wouldbe con artists he had to deal with in his day to day. 

Grey eyes flicked to the whiteboard and he couldn’t help but reach to fiddle with some of the more creative magnets - that was future Kaspar’s problem if the scores didn’t make sense. Petty? Sure, but he doubted it was sensitive information - most tallies that followed ‘ass or legs’ typically weren’t. He missed the familiar weight at his side, the option to scratch through his companion dog’s fur in situations like these, restless moments. Skepticism was tempered by the response he’d gotten earlier, “R&D usually take such a hakuna matata approach to time travel, do they? We on call to stand around intimidatingly or...we get to dig into this today?” Gesturing to the board of...what he knew was likely his own future bullshit muddled with a surprising amount of immaculate cursive snark.  Nothing else for it, but he couldn’t stand to be idle, and here was someone who seemed willing to make lemonade out of a gift horse rather than...fuck it or however that expression worked here. Long fingers were halfway to tracing a map in one corner of the board before stilling, tilting his head curiously at the out before the offer drew a surprised laugh out of him, warm and genuine. There was a reason he his future self had chosen to work with the brunette this long and it was already becoming apparent. It wasn’t a chance casually offered, wasn’t one he’d heard in his old - current - line of work until he couldn’t work.  

An easier sigh left him as he took the opposite end of the sofa, “What? This isn’t a casual tuesday? Time travel aside I was worried you were trying to bore me, bru, when there’s clearly a much more interesting case to solve.” Grin quirking slightly at the other’s arched brow he retrieved his phone to flip through his future self’s photos to find one of himself, Stig, and Agent Ortega in a hangar, tapping the fighter jet in the background,  “Where do we find this absolute beauty?” 

2051. 2051. “Ja, you don’t see where drugged by a strangely domestic meta-fetishist trafficking group rates higher on my list of possibilities than time travel?” The thing was…he didn’t feel drugged. He had scars he couldn’t place, the tech, the dates…it was like waking up in some sort of fantasyland - or what would have been fantasyland if he couldn’t still feel the slight wheeze of his breathing, if his former best friend wasn’t sharing a bed with him didn’t raise more questions than it answered these days. Taking the offered clothing he shifted enough to start layering up, mind pulling at the contents of the clothes basket to draw more layers of warmth to him.

 A snorted laugh left him as he dressed, thin layers stacking over scars, “ Somehow I don’t see that being the next tourism tagline. We need a plan.” The patter of small feet in the hall tugged at his attention, nieces? Nephews? Mags give Bastian a sibling? Even as he fished a cigarette out to steady himself, looking through the drawers for a lighter, his mind dragged back to the lockscreen photo of his phone. Unlit cigarette dangling from his lips he looked up at the words….and felt his heart clench at the sight before forcing a grin back to the twin faces only a moment before finding himself ambushed in a tackle of wild red hair and giggles, “Papa, it’s pancake breakfast today -” “-Ja, you promised!” 

“Did I?” The words hitched in his throat as he sat up, taking in the familial resemblances of the tiny faces and the words. They might be a bit more out of their depth than he had realized. Wry grin tugged at his lips as he turned to his partner - friend - “Try not to faint, Lock, but…Congratulations, it’s twins?” 

He shook his own head slightly, clearing away the dazed revelation. So. Pancakes then. 

Scooping up the girls, who couldn’t be more than three, in his arms he stood with a groan, nodding to his counterpart as his grin broadened at the other’s look, “Look sharp, bru. Apparently, a promise was made.”  Pancakes was a plan.

Lachlan wasn’t terrible with children. Inexperienced perhaps, nervous most definitely, but it helped that he wasn’t alone with the whole ‘suddenly married with kids’ thing. Thankfully he was a competent actor and they were lovely little terrors, Freja and Ilse. Every time they called him ‘papa’ he started a little, but they were terribly forgiving about that, and as the hours rolled by where he was the main caretaker, he felt more comfortable with them. Kas had a job with CARMA, and Lachlan had apparently retired to become what he could only assume was a metahuman vigilante tailor. Not a stitch was sewn, not with how busy he was managing the girls, but it was a good sort of exhaustion by the time they were settled in their beds. His future self must be as paranoid as his current self, for they still had a baby monitor in their room, and he switched that on before he left to return to the shared bedroom. The one he was sharing with Kaspar, whose continued existence he was still getting used to, and who might not want his possibly ex best friend in his bed. Lachlan hesitated at the door, then slid inside as unobtrusively as possible, the better to not bother Kas.

“I could sleep on the floor if you’d um…” He began, watching Kas remove his shirt with the sort of awe one might reserve for seeing a famous work of art in person. Oh, he was scarred in ways that hurt Lachlan’s heart, but he was Kas, alive and in the flesh. There, living and breathing and so beautiful it was like a knife to the chest to watch him. “Given we’re still working things out with us. What we are, after what happened. I don’t mind, if it’d make you more comfortable.” Kas stared back at him in the half light of the room and it made Lachlan shiver involuntarily. Desperate for something, anything to force his eyes away, he looked at the basket of fresh laundry he had done today and fetched the warmest shirt he could find, then handed it to him. That made it worse, because their hands brushed against one another’s by accident and words tumbled through his lips before he could stop them. “You’re so beautiful, I just…I had plans to say so many fucking things to you when we got back to the hotel after that op and I didn’t…” He bit his lip hard, stepping back from Kas before he did something even more stupid like reach for him. God, he wanted to. He wanted to bury his face in the crook of Kas’ neck, to be held by him again, and all he could find right now were festering words from a wound never quite healed. “I loved you, that was what I was going to tell you. That I’d loved you for ages, that I…shit. I still love you. You don’t have to say anything to that, you don’t have to feel the same. I should sleep on the sofa or something though. To be fair to you.”

The redhead tried not to let the illusion of this life sink in too greatly, the comfort of domesticity, of things his brain had planned out before - well. What do you call a hundred successive car crashes? Losing a fight with a parking garage? Yet he still had to swallow back the butterflies of easy association as he let exhaustion guide his hands into peeling out of oil stained and spar roughened layers, the ache of good work twisting through his muscles and old wounds. Fok. He’d have to retape that side. A brow quirked at the offer, as if they hadn’t shared a bed a thousand night before - ah. Ja. Before was operative here. He shrugged, “That keen to tune up your back again, Lock?” 

He let his mind reach for the drawers of clothes, unsure where anything was and letting each tug open in his search for something to cover marks of ruination, letting the wrap of his powers twisting around him soothe something unsteady in him..before failing completely at the words, the warmth of the touch causing a blush to rise uninhibited under freckled skin, a weak scoff leaving him with a shake of his head...though, maybe his friend hadn’t seen? It was dark and maybe - Gods it was a stupid thought. Almost as silly as the way his fingers longed to reach for his friend,  the way his heart still pounded as though it remembered it still could in a way that didn’t mean panic or struggling to survive, “Fok off, you were always the pretty one, flash bastard.”  

...And then he had to say that. Those words. Kas drew in a shaking breath as his mind tugged back to their days continents and years away. His own words stuck in his throat, insufficient. His hand was less inhibited, catching the fabric of a shirt he knew to be his own in another life, tugging him closer to rest his forehead against his long time partner’s, acceptance. Of this. Acknowledgement. Of the sea between them. Time and silence stretching out in one soft moment, letting himself have this much, this intimacy.

Pulling back he resumed his psionic rummage for a shirt, tossing a discard at the Scot with a crooked grin and roughened, “We’re sharing the damned bed, Lock.” They always had.

Noah needed time to think, to figure things out, and Guillermo needed to go to work. Oh, a version of him had taken a vacation day for today in some arcane past, but the Guillermo of here and now needed stability. Normalcy. In any case, he thought that both of those things could be found at work and he had held onto that unlikely hope up until the point he couldn’t find his own office in the space it had been before. Feigning a migraine as his excuse for forgetting, he had spent the past two hours poring over the contents of this new, fancier office in an attempt to figure out what the fuck was going on here. Ellie was ‘in a meeting’ with Matt Morgenstern, according to her secretary, so he was going to have to paddle his own canoe here. Which included calling the guy he had only recently tracked down to check his interest in getting an exception to the CARMA field agent standards, who apparently was #3 on the speed dial on Guillermo’s phone these days. “You know, I am actually trying to recruit you. I have a fucking meeting set up with Ellie Sinclair for Tuesday. Had. Fuck. I don’t know.” He said as Kaspar entered his office, shutting the door behind himself. “I woke up in bed with someone I very much am not involved with in the present, there was weed in my bathroom cabinet, and you know? Of course I can’t find Ellie to ask her what the sweet everloving fuck is going on here.” He paused, sighing at the raised eyebrows on Kaspar’s face. “Yes, thank you, I’m aware that’s a level of unprofessional language you aren’t used to. We get back to 2046 and go out in the field together? You’ll see that’s standard.”

Brows arched at the recap, he bit down on the inside of a chuckle, “Oh ja,  in private military ops clean language is priority, along with minding your fokkin’ manners on comm during tea time with whatever shit-for-brains is getting trained in handling that week. I think I’ll recover, bru, but I’m assuming in the past you sweetened the pot with better food than queso to balance that out.” 

Stepping closer he surveyed the room before his eyes flicked back to the other man, relaxing slightly at least in solidarity, somehow easy around the agent, “Fok..I didn’t even think to look for weed. Alright, I see your surprise spouse and raise you: Try waking up with three year old twins calling you ‘daddy’. Absolutely bosbefok. ”   With a sigh he rubbed the fatigue of this endless day away, “What intel do we have access to?” A pause customary of spies, C’mon, “Assuming we’re sharing an office with..beanbags that we also share intel.”

Warmth was the first thing that registered, enveloping muscles that ached pleasantly against the sprawl of over washed linen beneath him - good fight? Good fuck? Bit of both maybe. That was definitely body heat, radiating unnaturally high next to his usually chilled skin, then the pulse beneath roughened hand on his shoulder.  Bruises he didn’t remember getting the night before at the Madhouse complained as he shifted, disruption tugging at his half asleep thoughts - He didn’t remember anyone coming home with him, couldn’t remember the last time he had shared a bed through the night with someone, how the warmth sunk into his bones in cheap motels or encampments…long before glass and scalpel had staked claim over ribs and joints in precise and jagged lines. This wasn’t right. His left hand flexed slightly against the pillow, restricted slightly by the weight of a band on his finger. Slate eyes cracked open as the covers next to him tugged with movement, pulse picking up hard at the worry tinging an all too familiar brogue, What. The. Fuck.  Pushing himself up from where he had sprawled on his belly, shirtless - make that pantsless too, fok - the redhead rubbed at his eyes groggily, voice rough,  “What the fok, Lock? Ja, it’s 2046 - did you sneak into my place starkers?” Except. It wasn’t his place he noticed as he looked about, there were elements that were his influence, but this was definitely not his flat and Lachlan…  When had he gotten those scars? The beard? How long had they been kept here? No, find more information. Tearing his gaze away he reached for the bedside table, his hand fumbling over a pack of cigarettes with no lighter to his(?) phone. A lock screen with two little girls that had his sister’s eyes hugging a dog with a prosthetic limb that looked like Stig…home screen of him tugging his former comrade closer with a cheeky grin and ki- No. “Shit. Do you feel drugged?” What kind of kidnappers left phones and family photos? And wedding rings? Or cigarettes for that matter…Christ he could fucking use one. 

The hell of it was, he felt good. Not his regular brand of good either, this was a whole new level of rested and cared for, like the world’s best fuck and sleep rolled into one night. No vague, scummy feel in his mind like he had after a night terror and his muscles hardly ached. “Kaspar, who’d waste their time drugging old farts like us? And if they did, would they tuck us into bed? Dunno who’s bed, mind, but I’m thinking not.” Lachlan replied, wriggling his way into a sitting position. There was a basket of clean, unsorted laundry nearby and he reached for it to find something to wear before he gave Kaspar a fit. Sure, they’d slept together that once and seen each other naked more than once, but it was the principle of the thing. Lachlan dressed in clothes he thought were his own, then stood by the window looking bewildered, as if trying to summon a solution out of thin air. “Clock’s wrong.” He noted, gesturing at the date on the alarm clock on the bedside table. The clock, his phone, and the ring on his finger for that part. Well, if they were going to puzzle this out, they’d need clothes to start with. So Lachlan sat the basket on his side of the bed and dug through the laundry. Needlework that he could swear was his own marked pieces that he presumed belonged to Kas, and he handed them over with an ease he couldn’t quite fake. “Suppose this is the wrong time to tell you that Pansaw’s got a penchant for fuckery of all kinds, bru. And that I would assume it is 2051, for some fecking reason.” There were footsteps in the hall, soft and quick in a way he didn’t recognize. Not an animal’s footsteps, at least he didn’t think so. Two sets though, tiptoeing and then stopping at irregular intervals. It was enough to set your nerves on edge, like something out of a shitty horror film, and yet the two little girls that peeked around the doorframe looked vaguely familiar. Very like the ones in the picture on his phone screen, but a bit like Mags too, Kas’ sister. “Kas, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

 A snorted laugh left him as he dressed, thin layers stacking over scars, “ Somehow I don’t see that being the next tourism tagline. We need a plan.” The patter of small feet in the hall tugged at his attention, nieces? Nephews? Mags give Bastian a sibling? Even as he fished a cigarette out to steady himself, looking through the drawers for a lighter, his mind dragged back to the lockscreen photo of his phone. Unlit cigarette dangling from his lips he looked up at the words….and felt his heart clench at the sight before forcing a grin back to the twin faces only a moment before finding himself ambushed in a tackle of wild red hair and giggles, “Papa, it’s pancake breakfast today -” “-Ja, you promised!” 

“Did I?” The words hitched in his throat as he sat up, taking in the familial resemblances of the tiny faces and the words. They might be a bit more out of their depth than he had realized. Wry grin tugged at his lips as he turned to his partner - friend - “Try not to faint, Lock, but...Congratulations, it’s twins?” 

He shook his own head slightly, clearing away the dazed revelation. So. Pancakes then. 

Scooping up the girls, who couldn’t be more than three, in his arms he stood with a groan, nodding to his counterpart as his grin broadened at the other’s look, “Look sharp, bru. Apparently, a promise was made.”  Pancakes was a plan.

It would not be the first time that he had woken up in a strange bed with little idea of where he was, but it would be the first time he did so with a familiar face and a ring around his left ring finger. It took effort not to jump out of the bed like a startled animal, though his heart was pounding as he tried to sort out what precisely had happened. There had been a time where he and Kas sharing a bed was nothing special, but they had lost that camaraderie four years past and their renewed bond was…fragile, at best. Like glass floating downriver, unaware of any rapids or waterfalls that might be in their way. Frowning, Lachlan grabbed for his phone on the table only to find more confusion the moment his finger unlocked the screen. A picture of a wedding as the lock screen, a picture of two red headed little girls on the home screen, and a date that couldn’t be possible. “Hey, Kaspar. Kas.” He said softly, shaking his shoulder as gently as possible to avoid being swung at or scaring him unduly. Two bleary grey eyes looked up at him and Lachlan turned the phone screen his way. “D’you know what’s going on here? Course you don’t, that was stupid. It was 2046 yesterday, wasn’t it? And you went home after we’d watched that movie. Yeah?”

It was a family failing, the nosiness. Guillermo would argue that he had a double dose of it, as his father had been so persistently nosy that he got himself shot to death and his mother was so nosy that she tanked his marriage within five years. He leaned towards the former variety of the fault, thankfully. So when he had caught wind of a rumor that someone had been rejected for CARMA agent provisional hiring for ‘mysterious’ reasons, he felt the need to prod around. Unfortunately that meant consulting the rumormongers at work and having to hear about how handsome this recruit had been, but beggars can’t be choosers. He had hit a wall with his investigation into Leigh’s death, he was tasked with monitoring the Madhouse with some other agents, and maybe those facts combined into a catalyst for him going to said Madhouse to see this guy fight. By and large this wasn’t his scene, but he could understand the appeal. It took balls to still go out here and fight after the HAMER incident, and clearly his file (which he had skimmed quickly before closing the tab)  had been downplaying just how good this guy was in a fight. So he had approached him afterwards, as you do.

The fact that this Kaspar thought Guillermo was there to sexually proposition him made him snort laugh, but they had ironed out that misunderstanding and now he was waiting around at an outside table of a nearby restaurant. As the man approached the table, Guillermo grinned at him and gestured at the menus lying on the table. “I love these places, these ‘authentic Mexican’ places. Haven’t found one yet that didn’t have a menu that reads like an expensive Taco Bell.” He said drily, waiting for Kaspar to take his seat. “Queso and chips, I ask you. I would take you home and show you actual decent Mexican cooking, but we’ve already established that I’m not here to try to fuck you, so I’d hate to make you think otherwise. Keep your hands off the bill when it comes though. I’m taking up your free time and I’m paying.”

Returning the grin with a nod as he spotted the man in question, he slipped into the seat opposite, his own smirk broadening, biting down on an outright laugh as he shook his head, “Homecooked food? I wouldn’t have shot down the Julia Roberts role so quickly if you had led with that. Eh, you can always attempt to seduce me with real barbacoa later.” 

Leaning back to stretch the muscles clenching over his left ribs without attempting to raise too much suspicion, he dragged a menu towards himself before putting a hand up as a show of no protest with a wry grin and arched brow, “Nej, wouldn’t dream of it -  I only pay for clients who keep up the Texan drawl the whole way.”

Losing friends was an occupational hazard. In a world where money bought blood and conquest, the lure of the highest bidder or fastest bullet spared few. When you put your life in the hands next to you, you learned quickly who to trust - for life - and who would end up putting a knife in your spine for a few extra pennies on the dollar. Metahumans in this world of survival of the fittest? Thrived. Soldiers of fortune were valued for their skills, and having an enhancement? You could add a few more zeros to the fee for services rendered. Rare mutations - Psionics, elemental manipulation…you’d be flying high enough that you were never more than a breath away from touching the sun or catching a bullet  from a competitor. When that Ichareon luck finally caught up with the wild and reckless? Everyone knew. You were out. Some friendships though, the ones that ran blood deep after years in every charred forgotten corner of the earth, those still left the shock of the wound and surrounding scar tissue when they evaporated.

Seeing the fleeing form of that fokkin’ Scot again? No. It was one thing to run out when someone was on their then deathbed, leaving them to the realization of waking up alone, discarded like a spent weapon. But this? This?  Kaspar left his half empty glass on the bar where he had been sniffing about for a job or two, fury rising like bile, charged and metallic on his tongue, painting his skin flush as he stalked across the room, down the hall where he had his choice of doors. Toilets? A shifting noise alerted him to the presence in the closer maintenance closet, of course. His mind reached for it before his hand could, jerking the door open - words collided first: His own, “ The fok you think you are- ?” muddled with the more plaintive, “Please. Fuck off or leave me be or…just go. Please.” lilt he had once known better than anything. Temper spiking at the dismissal, voice lowering with true anger, “Think you’ve got that sentiment the wrong way round, Lock.” 

Logical thought was a distant dream at this point, and some part of him knew it. You had to grab the reins of his panic before it dragged you that far to have a snowball’s chance in hell of tempering the reaction and Lachlan had gotten decent at it, but that required focus, which he also didn’t have when he was well past the pale. The door was thrown open of its own accord and his first thought was not ‘perhaps it really is Kas’ but ‘he’s come for me’ as if Kaspar was some vengeful spirit instead of the closest friend he had ever had in all his life. Eyes full of tears, hands shaking, he looked up at Kaspar as if he was puzzling out his very existence. Maybe he was, but a lot of it was the alphabet soup that his brain had turned into trying to find a response to what Kaspar had said, and trying to not flinch at the nickname that only Kas had ever used tumbling into the airspace between them. “It was my fault! I killed you, I tried, I pulled at the rubble till my hands bled, I…” Lachlan said, voice hoarse with tears. He tilted his head slightly, studying the man in front of him in horrorstruck wonder. So much he hadn’t said before that op went wrong, and now the words fled his mind like so many rats from a sinking ship. His hands were at Lachlan’s eye level and he studied them a moment, the familiar callouses and scars he had never seen before only somewhat steadying his erratic breathing. “You died. They told me you died, they wouldn’t let me in your room. I wanted to die with you. Maybe some of me did.” Out of pure instinct, he reached for Kas’ hand, feeling the warm skin under his own and wondering at it after so long a time. “Are you real? I don’t…I can’t tell, I don’t know. You were gone, m'eudail.”

The heat and roughness of a familiar hand against his snapped him out of his inaction, tilting his hand to clasp the familiar-unfamiliar broadness of his estranged comrade’s, frowning at the new scars and babbled words, “Ja - selvfolgelig - of course I’m real.” 

He could just leave. No. He couldn’t. Never could. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Was it? Eyes flicking back to the hallway he prayed this was the right choice this time, kneeling down into the tight space, careful to keep his left side facing away from his once friend, he let his mind  tug gently on the door, closing it to prying eyes. “What are you talking about? It was an accident - I’m right here. Lachl -” Focus up, “Lachlan.” 

Long fingers sunk into the fabric over the other man’s ribs, tugging him closer to hold as so often before, like a twist of the knife in his gut, “C’mere….Breathe.” His own lungs expanded with a slight ache, but slowly - their old pattern - the staccato pulse he could feel pounding against his own prompting him to wrap an arm around the other redhead’s shoulder to hold the embrace, “Just...breathe, Lock.”

He was seeing a ghost, apparently. One four years gone that its ephemeral fingers into his heart like so many knives every time they crossed paths. The first time he saw Kaspar had been a few weeks prior, the second a week ago, and now he was sitting at the bar in Knight Life looking far more alive than he should under the circumstances. Just the sight of him knocked the wind from Lachlan’s lungs, dragged him back to the waiting room of an ER where he was flatly told to leave, that there was no hope for the friend he had tried to pull out of the rubble with his bare hands. ‘Didn’t want to give the family much hope.’ he could hear echo in his mind, the voice of a nurse whose name he had long since forgotten, and that along with Kas’ eyes turning his way was the tipping point. They had the same intensity as the Kas he had known, and it made his breath come in sharp spurts. He needed to be anywhere but here, regardless of a meeting he would be late to in the HQ below the bar if he dillydallied. Anywhere but here, anywhere at all, and that was how he found his way to a supply closet near the restrooms, fumbling with the doorknob as if he was underwater. Once inside he found a corner and planted himself in it, eyes closed to limit just how much he had to process right now. Time was immaterial, time wasn’t real, and so he had no idea how long had passed by the time the door creaked open. “Please. Fuck off or leave me be or…just go. Please.”

Seeing the fleeing form of that fokkin’ Scot again? No. It was one thing to run out when someone was on their then deathbed, leaving them to the realization of waking up alone, discarded like a spent weapon. But this? This?  Kaspar left his half empty glass on the bar where he had been sniffing about for a job or two, fury rising like bile, charged and metallic on his tongue, painting his skin flush as he stalked across the room, down the hall where he had his choice of doors. Toilets? A shifting noise alerted him to the presence in the closer maintenance closet, of course. His mind reached for it before his hand could, jerking the door open - words collided first: His own, “ The fok you think you are- ?” muddled with the more plaintive, “Please. Fuck off or leave me be or…just go. Please.” lilt he had once known better than anything. Temper spiking at the dismissal, voice lowering with true anger, “Think you’ve got that sentiment the wrong way round, Lock.”