CHAPTER 2 — BOOK IV
After the Noise
(Post-Mardi Gras, early March 2017)
Some bonds weren’t meant to be claimed.
They existed to be kept.
Somewhere behind them, music spilled out of the crowd — a voice insisting, joyfully and without irony, that family was something you could claim simply by standing together.
Geoffrey and Embong didn’t stay long enough for the chorus to repeat.
They hadn’t meant to stay as long as they did.
Confetti stuck to the soles of their shoes. Someone behind them was still dancing in platform boots that defied physics. The bass thudded through the pavement like a second pulse.
Then it started again — loud, brassy, impossible to ignore.
We Are Family spilled out over the crowd, carried by glitter and whistles and voices that had no intention of lowering themselves.
Geoffrey’s head snapped toward the sound.
“Oh no,” Embong muttered immediately.
Too late.
Geoffrey turned, walking backwards now, arms wide as if addressing an arena instead of a side street.
“We are family—!” he sang, full voice, grinning like he’d been waiting his entire life for this exact moment. “I’ve got all my brothers with me—!”
A group behind them cheered in agreement.
Embong closed his eyes briefly.
“Do not,” he said.
Geoffrey pointed directly at him on the word brothers, entirely unashamed.
“You are making a scene.”
“It’s Mardi Gras,” Geoffrey replied, as if that explained gravity itself.
“It explains nothing.”
Geoffrey fell back into step beside him, still humming, shoulder bumping Embong’s deliberately.
“You love it,” he said.
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
Embong tried to maintain the scowl. It lasted three seconds before it betrayed him.
“You are insufferable.”
“And yet,” Geoffrey said brightly, slipping an arm briefly around his shoulders before Embong could dodge it, “still your brother.”
Embong removed the arm with controlled precision.
“Temporary.”
Geoffrey laughed.
But he didn’t stop humming.
And when the chorus rose again behind them — louder this time — Embong did not move away when Geoffrey nudged his hand.
He only said, very quietly,
“Keep walking.”
Geoffrey did.
Still singing.
They drifted off the strip and into narrower streets where the glitter thinned, where the air cooled, where the city’s celebration turned into an echo rather than a demand. Mardi Gras had burned itself out a few streets away, still bright and loud in the distance, but already beginning to feel like a different world.
They ended up in a narrow late-night place just off the main drag — steam-clouded windows, plastic menus, the smell of broth and fried garlic hanging in the air like it belonged there permanently. Inside, everything was mercifully calm.
Geoffrey slid into the booth opposite Embong and sighed.
“I can still hear whistles,” he said.
“You were shouting,” Embong replied, peeling glitter off Geoffrey’s sleeve. “Hold still.”
“I am still.”
Geoffrey’s hand rested on
the table, fingers shifting without purpose.
Embong noticed before he meant to — the restlessness, the faint edge beneath the humour.
Without thinking, he leaned forward and cupped Geoffrey’s hands between his own, steady and deliberate, grounding rather than possessive. Just long enough to be sure.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
Geoffrey looked at him — surprised, then soft — and nodded.
“Yeah.”
Embong let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.
Then, noticing a stubborn fleck near Geoffrey’s forehead, he reached up and smoothed his hair back into place.
“There,” he said. “You looked unhinged.”
Geoffrey smiled at him — grateful, unguarded — and didn’t pull his hands away until Embong released them.
At the next table, two women sat over half-finished bowls and a shared bottle of wine. One of them had been watching with gentle curiosity and now smiled openly.
“You two are a very lovely couple,” she said warmly.
Geoffrey laughed, surprised and delighted.
Embong blinked.
“We’re brothers.”
The woman’s smile sharpened.
“Really?”
“Foster brothers,” Geoffrey added easily.
“Brother by bond,” Embong said, realising far too late how easily the moment had unfolded. He sat back abruptly, composure snapping into place. “Not biology.”
The woman looked between them — the reflexive closeness, the quiet familiarity, the way Embong had adjusted Geoffrey’s hair without thinking.
“Well,” she said, lifting her glass, “that explains the affection.”
She exchanged a look with her friend, both of them smiling now, conclusion reached. They gathered their things, paid at the counter, and slipped back out into the night — interest satisfied, story complete.
The café settled again.
There was a beat.
Then Geoffrey leaned across the table and kissed Embong lightly on the temple.
Embong froze.
“No,” he said calmly. “Absolutely not.”
“What?” Geoffrey asked, innocent. “I’m expressing fraternal appreciation.”
“Do not appreciate me like that.”
“You literally fixed my hair.”
“That was maintenance.”
“And checked on me.”
“That was crowd control.”
Geoffrey grinned.
“You’re blushing.”
“I am regretting my life choices.”
“Still,” Geoffrey said, settling back happily, “good enough to be your brother.”
Embong stabbed a noodle.
“Next time,” he muttered, “we’re telling people we’re distant cousins with unresolved tension.”
Geoffrey laughed — quieter now — and nudged Embong’s knee under the table.
“Brother,” he said.
Embong didn’t look up.
“Don’t make it a habit.”
But he didn’t move his knee away either.
Outside, the city kept humming with leftover celebration. Somewhere down the street, someone screamed joyfully into the night, and someone else laughed as if they’d never been hurt in their life.
Inside the café, Embong’s phone buzzed once.
He glanced at it just long enough for Geoffrey to see the name on the screen.
Ibu.
Geoffrey didn’t comment. He only watched Embong’s face shift — the subtle tightening, the quiet withdrawal, a small internal door closing.
Embong flipped the phone face-down on the table.
Geoffrey lifted an eyebrow.
“Not answering?”
“Not right now,” Embong said, and took a sip of water as if that settled it.
Geoffrey let it settle.
There were a hundred ways to talk about family.
They chose the one that didn’t set anything on fire.
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