At first, Josh followed Alex around this strange and flooded house until he heard a noise from the other end of the building. A splash, of course. With all the standing water in the place, what other noise could there have been? It made him think of a horror movie he saw a few years back with Michael, and Raffa too. Their sister was always a horror-movie nut, and one of her favorites had as its premise that a family had to be completely silent lest the monsters come after them. Neither Josh nor Michael could quite wrap their heads around such a concept - after all, being absolutely noiseless, at zero decibels, was all but impossible - but for Raffa's sake, they parked their brains at the door during the viewing.

Tromping through the house as quickly as possible, Josh raced to the living room and found the source of the noise. An old mantel clock with a curved wooden surface had fallen into the floodwaters. He picked it up and noted, with a sad sigh, that the glass over the clock's face was horribly cracked, rendering it unreadable. Shame - it was a beautiful piece of machinery otherwise. He laid it on the nearby coffee table, the surface of which remained above the water for now, and patted his pockets before realizing he had no note-taking implements. Nothing to write a message to Luca's family letting them know he'd compensate them for this particular piece of damage. Even though he obviously had nothing to do with it, as the one who found the clock, he felt a certain responsibility.

Catholic guilt didn't really originate with the Catholics, did it? Though Josh was originally Jewish in more than just ethnic terms, he found himself wanting to use that other faith's term to describe the feelings running through his mind and soul. Call it Alex's influence. Not to mention Luca's, for there was a cross hanging above the front door with his (whitewashed) likeness sculpted on it. He fought his immediate instinct to turn away from it and spare himself the triggering. He'd spared himself for years as much as possible, but these days, he'd taken to confronting his traumas more head-on.

As Alex joined him in the living room, bearing an armful of charging cables which he was struggling not to drop into the water and destroy, Josh wondered if maybe Alex could take a few tips from him. Sure, the guy wasn't on the same metaphysical level as he, and he had to deal with a lot more psychological obstacles purely in the moment.

Josh held out his hands, and Alex gave him several of the cables. There he was, lightening his load a bit. Finally, he was a little more in his element. Alex, though, wasn't. The poor guy's hands were shaking. His feet being submerged couldn't be helping matters at all. And his brain was psychically spiking. Not nearly as badly as when they'd first teleported from Spellman, but the spikes were enough to make Josh think twice about trying to poke into Alex's thoughts.

"I promise, you'll be fine," he said. "As soon as we get these to your friend, I'll take you home and you can sleep this off."

"I'm not gonna be able to sleep," Alex said. "Not as long as Luca's in trouble. Or anyone else I know."

"This is what I meant," Josh said as he opened the unlocked door, "when I told you not to stretch yourself out too thin."

"I should know better." Alex followed him out, the water rising up to his knees now. "I'm already so bad at multitasking. I can really only do one thing at once."

"Actually, you're doing two," Josh commented. "Walking and talking. Oh no, make that three," he added as he saw Alex twisting and untwisting one of the cables around his fingertip. Alex flinched, realized what he was doing, and stopped. "No, no, it's okay," Josh said. "Your stimming doesn't bother me."

"Sorry. Force of habit."

"What, the stimming?"

"No, stopping stimming when people see me doing it. It just makes me so self-conscious, and I'm too much as it is..."

Josh held one finger to his lips. "Don't worry. You're among friends."

"Friend," Alex corrected him.

"Friend," Josh repeated. "Stim away, brother." He stepped up to the sidewalk and looked around at the flooded neighborhood around them. Aside from him and Alex and a helicopter not too far away, there was nobody to be sensed. "So...where do we go from here?"

Alex stared into the cable's business end as he said, "I don't know. I wish I did."

"Well, they can't be too far." The helicopter drew closer, and Josh, seized by an idea, stuffed the cables he was carrying into his hoodie pockets. "Hate to climb on your back again, but...could you take me up to the roof?"

"Don't lie." Alex opened his wings and shook them to get rid of some of the water that had soaked through his threads. "This is your favorite part of working with me, isn't it?"

Josh climbed on and watched as they rose up and the helicopter continued to approach. "One of these days, I'll grow my own and then I won't need you anymore."

Alex snickered and imitated a bell ringing, even twirling his finger around to add to the effect.