Both Iris and Chloe have mascara smeared under their eyes as they miserably eat their chips. I sit opposite them in the booth, rotating my paper cup of coffee. I didn't expect McDonald's to be so full past three in the morning but this is London so of course it is; we're lucky we even got a table.

Waking up at one-thirty on a Wednesday to Iris ringing me to pick her up from a party in London weren't how I'd imagined my night going, especially when I start work at seven and sleep were already cut short. I'm still staying at Má's; it takes me over an hour to get to the warehouse.

Once I deem that they've sobered enough to understand me, I sit up and start, 'When I said you should stay at Chloe's over GCSEs, I meant so you could study. Not so you could go to a party in a city you don't know nowt about with no way to get home with complete strangers.' With at least two dozen drunk people stuffed into it, the hubbub in this McDonald's is loud enough that I don't have to soften my frustration. 'Those people were my age, you're sixteen. What the fuck were you thinking?'

Too ashamed to look at me, Iris just shrugs. She swirls a chip around in ketchup.

Chloe drops her head into her hands and the ends of her ginger hair brush the drops of mayonnaise on her tray. 'I've failed all my exams.'

'You ain't–'

Her eyes screw into mine with such intense pleading that I cut myself off. 'You've done this before.' If the tremble in her voice is owt to judge by, she's about to start crying again. 'How do you even manage it?'

'Don't ask him for advice,' Iris interjects. 'He's stupid. He did actually fail all his exams.'

I don't bother to correct her. With my results, I might as well have failed and she's right — I don't have any advice to give. Between Má, Iris, and Dominic, I hardly thought about my GCSEs until I were sitting with the first exam in front of me.

With a sigh, I cushion my tone. 'Look, I'm not gonna sit here and say you can't drink, but you have to be careful. You have to eat first — properly. And drink water. And don't go to parties with strangers in strange cities with no way to get home. How'd you even get alcohol?'

'We asked some bloke to buy it for us.'

'Don't take alcohol from strange men.' It comes out angrier than I intended and I recoil, sinking over my paper cup of coffee that's quickly getting cold. I stare into the milky circle as if it's a fortune ball that can tell me the outcome of all my options. Unfortunately, it ain't and I have the judge for myself. 'I'll buy it for you.'

The shock sobers them up almost entirely. 'Seriously?'

'You're fucking paying for it. Also keep it reasonable, I ain't buying you absinthe.'

After a moment of silence, they understand that the lecture is over and Iris picks up her burger again. Chloe, who has already finished her Mayo Chicken, pushes her tray away, rests her head on the greasy table, and falls asleep.

'Chlo–'

'It's okay,' I interrupt. 'Just finish your food.'

Iris chews slowly, the cold grease difficult to swallow. 'Thanks for picking us up.' She grimaces. 'Sorry.'

'It's fine.' When Iris still looks guilty, I round my voice to a gentleness that's more convincing. 'I'm your brother. It's good that you phoned me, really.'

She nibbles on her double cheeseburger. Before I can do owt about it, she's wearing melancholy like a heavy cloak and as unbearable as it is in the heavy atmosphere, she can't take it off. Though I know at least half of it is the intoxication — she has reached the stage of Sad Drunk — it don't change that my heart aches like it's directly drinking in the pain from hers. I would gladly take it; it's the only thing I'm good at.

'Do you think Dad would've liked me?' Her voice is a whisper but summat inside me dies.

'Of course.'

'More than Má?'

As if thrown in an ice bath, my arms break out with gooseflesh. The hollowness in my chest becomes cold even if the climate in this McDonald's is equivalent to a tropical rainforest with how full it is. 'Má likes you.'

Iris scoffs. 'She's crazy.'

'She's not c–'

'She's textbook fucking crazy.'

'You shouldn't–'

'Fuck,' Iris hisses, tossing the last bite of her burger onto her tray. 'Why can't you ever stand up for yourself? It's actually, like, exhausting to watch. You know, she's supposed to be your mum, not the other way around?'

I clench my jaw but don't say owt. My brain does its best to reject her words but therapy has already corroded the walls and they weasel their way in. Dr Qureshi has been asking about Má lately. Last session, he asked if I'd phone her if I were arrested, to which I said no, and if she'd phone me if she were arrested, to which I said yes. Maybe we really do have it the wrong way around.

Iris's glare burns through my skin when I refuse to look at her. 'I know you think I don't remember anything but I do. I remember you walking me to school every day even if it made you late every day. I remember you making me lunch and dinner. When Ông Ngoại lived with us it was you taking care of him. And when Má has her fucking mental breakdowns every other month, you drop everything to take care of her. Sure, it's noble or whatever but the worst part is that you're not even angry.

'Honestly, it's a fucking miracle you found a boyfriend like Ziri cause you'd be so easy to take advantage of — Oh, he stole all my money, but it's fine. Oh, he beats me all the time, it's fine though. Oh, he's a literal rapist murderer but it's fine. I can see you doing it right now! She's a kid, she's drunk. It's fine.

'Our family's, like, violently homophobic. And you just listen to it.'

The silence closes us into a room built with burnt rubber and titanium; oxygen runs out within seconds. Bitterness is the only thing left to breathe.

My eyes finally flick up to hers and they bore into mine so intensely that at least some of the anger must be targeted at me. 'It's not fucking fine.'

I take a sip of coffee, keeping it in my mouth so I can buy myself time to think. 'They're from a different generation, em ba. And they're Asian.'

'So are we.'

'Aye. But we're English.'

'So are they by now.' Iris curls her lip. Even she don't like me, even if it's for the opposite reason than the rest of the family. 'If I was a lesbian and they treated me like they treat you, would you be okay with it?'

I try to iron out my balled-up receipt as if the creases could ever be flattened, then look up. 'Are you?' I ask timidly.

'Well, no. Not as far as I'm aware.'

'It's okay if you are. Bi or pan or whatever.'

Iris arches an eyebrow and looks at me with such a judgemental teenage girl look that I'd laugh if my chest weren't hollow. 'I know that.'

I pick up my coffee and force myself to drink the rest of it though it's cold and burnt. I know that, she says it as if it's obvious whilst I spent most of my life hating myself for it and I'm still not fully able to embrace it. Would I feel that way too if I were born seven years later? Or am I just weak?

I force myself to swallow the last bite of my food. 'They're family, em ba. I have a duty to em first.'

'Everything you say is fucking stupid.'

Without response, I check the time on my phone. It's nearly four. 'I'm gonna get another coffee and then we need to go, okay? Or I'll be late to work.'

            'Miles, it's raining.'

Ziri's hands on my spine roll me from side to side, forcing me out of the sleep that took ages to sink into. My skin is clammy, my stomach adhered to the mattress, though as I wake up, I notice that the air is cool in a way it hasn't been for days. With my face buried in my pillow, I part only my left eye to see him beam down at me.

'It's raining,' Ziri repeats. 'We have to go outside.'

'Why?'

'Because we're alive.'

I check my phone and blindly shove it back on the nightstand; it slips onto the floor instead. Grabbing Ziri's pillow, I press it over my head. 'It's half four.'

'So we'll catch the sunrise.' His voice is far too chipper for this time of the morning. Ziri shakes me again. 'We have to go watch the sunrise in the rain, Miles.'

'Why aren't you asleep?'

'I'm not tired.'

I groan, the sound muffled by the pillow sandwich my head is in. I've been with Má for two weeks; it's my first night at home so I thought I'd finally get more than a few hours' rest but Ziri keeps shaking me awake every time I start to slip back into sleep.

'I am. I'm dead tired.'

'I will shove you down the stairs, Kilometres.'

Though I make an act of groaning and dragging my feet, by the time we're outside, my exhaustion has faded. There are no cars, no people — just the gentle rain and the peach sliver at the horizon. Every inhale tastes fresh and cold, welcome sensations after the heat of the summer.

Ziri sprints several blocks ahead, then stops in front of a corner café where the morning staff are preparing to open. While he waits for me to catch up, he jumps in the puddle over a manhole cover, splashing as much water as possible. When I'm a few metres away he springs back and crashes right into me. I'd fall if he didn't hug me so tightly. Once I'm steady on my feet, he pulls back and rakes my wet hair from my forehead. The rain clouds are thin, patches of blue showing behind worn cotton.

'Kiss me in the rain, please.'

At times like these, I'm grateful Ziri is only half an inch taller than me: it makes it so easy to kiss him. I could do it forever. His arms tighten around my torso, mine tight on the sides of his neck.

We make our way to the beach, the twenty-minute walk taking us nearly twice that with how often we pause to slow dance on a street corner. By the time we make it there, the rain has stopped and the sunrise paints the sky in gentle oranges. The sun glows with a golden halo that reflects on the left edge of the sea and, with The Brighton Wheel to our right, the scene is almost too picturesque to be real. The pebbles are slippery from the rain and we stumble across them to get closer to the water.

I hug Ziri from behind, moulding my spine to the curve of his, and cross my arms over his chest. Leaning back, Ziri holds onto them. Soon, he takes one and lifts it to his mouth to bite my forearm.

I twist it gently out of his mouth. 'Don't bite me in public.'

'There's no one else here,' he argues but don't try again.

With my chin on his shoulder, I study the faint mark of crooked teeth on my skin, the same mark that covers his own arm over and over again. I can't quite explain the feeling that stirs in me — tormenting at the same time as it's curative.

'If I was a worm, I'd let you eat me.'

I nuzzle my face into his neck. 'No thanks.'

'But you eat worms all the time.'

'Well, I don't wanna eat you.'

'So you don't love me,' he states.

I breathe a laugh, kissing the rain off his skin. 'I love you.'

A salty fog hovers over the waves that crash into the pebbles and sieve back into the ocean, leaving behind mounds of seaweed that fill the morning with their smell. Seagulls look suspended in the sky like a mobile hanging from the heavens. Their screeches echo over the water.

'Don't you think we should get married on a train?'

The question is so abrupt that I take a moment to process that he's speaking and another to process the words. My mind starts responses only to cut them off.

We haven't talked about it at all. I thought we had a silent agreement not to until we get a firm outcome on the bill, and it's still being debated in the House of Lords, and by the looks of it, will be for a while. Then it still needs to be approved by the fucking Queen, which feels unlikely to happen.

Ziri don't pick up on my cynicism. 'Think about it. We should get married on a train when it's going over the bridge in Summer. I mean, we can't get married in any religious place cause we don't share a religion. So we should get married on a train because Before Sunrise is like the first thing we bonded over and we don't have a lot of friends so we'd fit just fine. It's perfect. Don't you think we should get married on a train?'

'I feel like you're focusing a lot on the train part and very little on the getting married bit.'

'It'd be so convenient too cause we could just go on a honeymoon at whatever the end station was — unless the end station was Paris cause I don't wanna honeymoon in Paris — firstly, it's so cliché secondly Parisians are so stuck up with their accents and stuff like sorry if my accent "butchers the language" maybe you shouldn't colonize half the planet if you want to save the integrity of the tongue. Like British people will make entire comedy skits about how Americans have stupid words like fall and movie but what if you don't force people to speak your language? Did you ever consider that option?'

'I don't wanna honeymoon in Hastings,' I say, though I'm only participating as an act. A stone sinks into my stomach; all his little oddities over the past few weeks add up to a simple equation with only one possible answer.

Unaware of how I'm hardly listening, Ziri continues to ramble. 'Why are there sixty seconds in a minute? These are all made up why could they not just make a second a bit shorter so that there were a hundred seconds a minute? Also the letter Q is way too early in the alphabet. It should be XYQZ. Why is Q all the way up there?'

I pull him tighter against my chest as he starts to drift, as if by holding tight, I can stop him from being entirely lost, like he's a helium balloon. But even if you keep a helium balloon on a weight, it'll sink to the floor of your room eventually. I'm too tired for this. I can't hold onto both Má and Ziri at the same time without it tearing me in half.