Thicker Than Bone

23rd January 2015-1

23rd January 2015

Ali woke sharp and silent. His eyes blinked open. The darkness of their bedroom ceiling washed away the harsh blue lights of the police car and the thick red stain that had been splattered across the floor in the flat. The snap and flutter of the police tape on the balcony faded away as a car rumbled past outside. Slowly Ali’s lungs stopped fighting for air.

A dream. Just a f*****g dream.

“Yaz,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Oh God, Yaz.”

He twisted around in the black heat of their bed, dislodging the heavy little lump that was Moxie, and burrowing into the warmth of Yazid’s arms and chest. After half a beat, Yazid grumbled, stirred, and hugged back. Ali buried both hands into that thick hair and found the scar. Thick. Hideous. Healed.

“I love you,” he whispered, his voice cracking in the middle again. “I love you, I love you so much, I love you…”

“Hey,” Yazid mumbled, his voice thick and deep with sleep. “Hey, hey. S’okay. S’alright.”

“f**k,” Ali whispered, rubbing his thumb over the scar. After a minute, he dislodged himself and leaned over Yazid to kiss it. It was thick and bumpy under his lips, the faintest ridge still evident where the surgeon had had to put a metal plate in. “I love you,” Ali repeated softly.

“Hey, c’mere,” Yazid yawned, the mattress shifting suddenly under his weight. He wrapped Ali in a hug. Yazid hugged like an octopus—all arms and legs and scary-strong grip. He could cling better than any small child. And Ali had never loved that grip so much as he did in that moment. “You going to tell me what’s up?”

“That dream again. About—”

“I mean earlier.”

Ali slowly slid his hand down from that dark hair and started rubbing little circles into Yazid’s upper chest. It was a habit, leftover from all those days in hospital when they couldn’t cuddle properly, and Yazid felt so ill he couldn’t settle and sleep. Ali had just…petted him, unable to do anything else to help. It had become soothing for Ali, too, eventually.

“Your phone rings, it’s your mum’s ringtone, I hear you having a right row with her, and then you come downstairs and say everything’s fine and you’re hungry?”

Ali grimaced. “I was hungry.”

“Pull the other one, babe,” Yazid murmured.

Ali exhaled heavily, and squirmed closer. That was the worst part—in his dreams, it was like it actually happening all over again, and he didn’t know that Yazid would be fine. In his dreams, he didn’t know that Yazid hadn’t been killed then and there on the old flat floor. He hooked his leg around Yazid’s ankle, twisting them together as tightly as possible, and kissed his collarbone.

“It was Mum.”

“Yeah.”

“It was about Tony.”

Yazid hummed, blunt nails scratching gently at the base of Ali’s scalp in a soothing sort of motion. “Guessed that, too.”

They didn’t talk about Tony. Or rather, Ali didn’t, and Yazid left the subject well enough alone.

“He’s ill.”

“Ali, this is like pulling teeth, c’mon,” Yazid moaned, and Ali pinched him. “Ow!”

“You didn’t have to ask.”

“Yeah, I did,” Yazid said. He yawned before resuming that pleasant scratching. “So Tony’s ill.”

“Yeah. He collapsed at his flat yesterday morning,” Ali said. “They ran emergency tests. It’s…”

He trailed off.

Yazid made a faint questioning noise.

“It’s leukaemia.”

Silence. Yazid was slowly stroking his fingers over Ali’s shoulder, but he remained quiet, and Ali didn’t quite know what to do with it. Yazid didn’t typically do quiet, but then…

But then he and Tony had a nasty, evil history.

Eventually…”You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Tony has leukaemia.”

“Yes.”

“Tony f*****g Barraclough has leukaemia.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” Yazid said slowly. “Your luck is crap, Al. He’s like, what, the fourth person now?”

Ali laughed, a little hysterically, and Yazid tightened his grip and dropped a kiss into Ali’s hair.

“Violet must be upset.”

“Yeah,” Ali said. “She wants us to go and visit him tomorrow, and I told her to get bent.”

“Oh, Ali…”

“I’m not having you anywhere near him,” Ali insisted ruthlessly. “He’s a f*****g psycho and he nearly killed you and—”

“And he’s your brother, and she’s your mum, and right now, your mum needs you,” Yazid interrupted flatly.

“Tony can f*****g die for all I care.”

“Al…”

“Don’t defend him!”

Yazid snorted. “Yeah, okay. I’ll defend the guy who nearly be—”

“Stop it,” Ali interrupted. He couldn’t think about that day, especially not in the wake of the dream. He remembered it so vividly, and worse than the image was the memory of his own fear. The terror he’d felt when he’d come home to that police car parked up on the pavement and the flat doors all open along the balcony and the sombre face of the policeman standing outside the taped-off flat.

“There’s been an incident…” he’d said, and Ali’s whole world had just collapsed.

And it was Tony’s f*****g fault.

“I don’t want you in the same city as him, never mind my mum’s house,” he whispered harshly.

“So we’ll stay in a hotel.”

“I meant you stay here!”

“Nope,” Yazid said easily. “Your mum needs you and you’re already seething. You’re going to need me.”

“You’re not coming.”

“Er, yeah I am.” Yazid snorted. “Like a bad smell, me, there’s no escape.”

Ali swallowed. Yazid and Tony hadn’t seen each other since…well, if you didn’t count dirty looks given across the courtroom throughout the trial, since Tony had nearly—

“You have to go up there, Ali.”

“I don’t want to see him.”

“You need to go for your mum,” Yazid said. “She cried in that court, Al. God knows why, but she still loves Tony despite what he did, and you need to go up there for her.”

Ali sighed through his nose. “I know,” he muttered, “but I really don’t want you anywhere near him, Yaz.”

“So we don’t stay at your mum’s house,” Yaz said. “Like I said. Hotel, eat out the odd time. We could make a little trip of it. Anniversary’s in a couple of weeks, the proper relationship one, we could dress up and have dinner out like respectable people do.”

Ali finally found a genuine laugh, and pulled back enough to land a kiss on Yazid’s mouth. “Respectable? Coming from a man who thinks changing the sheets twice in one week is overdoing it?”

“Anything for you, gorgeous.”

Ali rolled his eyes in the darkness, and kissed Yazid’s cheek for good measure. “You’ll learn.”

“Keep dreamin’. Anyway,” Yazid continued, “I’m owed some time off from the restaurant, and you’ll be able to go on compassionate leave. They don’t have to know your brother’s a cunt. We’ll take a couple of weeks, yeah? It’s been ages since we got a break.”

“Going back up to Leeds does not constitute a break.”

“Hey, Leeds is great. Don’t tar the whole city because it’s unfortunate enough to have a crazy bigot living in it,” Yazid said, pinching Ali’s hip through his pyjama bottoms.

“Oh right, yeah—you’re from Bradford, that’s even worse.”

“I’m from Mosul, you racist imbecile.”

“Oh, shut up before I smother you,” Ali threatened, shoving Yazid—and then, deciding that that position would be preferable, forcing him onto his back and spreading out over him like a blanket. “There. Now shut your face and hug me.”

“Wow,” Yazid said, even as his arms snaked around Ali’s back and he did as he was ordered. “I feel so loved right now. I am basking in the warmth of your love. I am the most cherished man in the entire…”

“I said shut up,” Ali whined. He twisted his face to kiss Yazid’s bare skin. “I’ll think about going up to Leeds.”

“We could catch the train up for this weekend, then sort out a proper visit. Trial run kind of thing.”

Ali turned it over in his head, his mother’s choked, anguished voice on the other end of the line ringing in his head. No matter what he thought of Tony, their mother had never once stopped loving him. God only knew why.

And she was…

She was upset.

“Fine,” Ali whispered. His stomach rolled threateningly at the idea of going within a hundred miles of Tony again.

Of seeing Tony again—and not wanting to murder him with his own IV.