Work Text:
Ryland hadn’t wanted to come. He doesn’t do this kind of thing, the parties or the drinking. He doesn’t have time for it, between his own coursework and labs, and grading for the class he’s a TA for. But Colt does, and they both know that if Colt wants to push for something, Ryland will cave sooner or later. Colt had promised that he’d be with Ryland the whole night, that they could leave whenever he wanted to, so Ryland had allowed himself to be dragged to a birthday party for a guy he barely knows. Except Colt vanished into the crowd not even forty minutes after they had arrived with a slurred promise that he’d be back in a minute, one he’d broken almost immediately, and Ryland has wanted to leave for a while now.
He doesn’t know Tom outside of what he had been subjected to by his brother complaining about him, but Colt does, so Ryland was willing to accept that he probably wasn’t trying to kill him with the drink he had thrust into his hands. Colt had evidently talked about him to Tom as well, because Tom had greeted him as “Colt’s genius brother” and clapped him on the shoulder like they were friends— though the over-familiarity might have been because he was clearly already wasted six ways from Sunday. He had given Tom a thumbs-up after the first sip, only able to hide his grimace at the taste due to his and Colt’s childhood game of forcing each other to eat grosser and grosser things until one of them broke. Tom had been dragged back into the party, standing out amongst the throng with his striped housecoat and the air that he owned the place. Colt had warned him that Tom was a bit of a douche, and Ryland saw that he had been minimizing it. It’s not like Tom was a bad guy or anything— just the kind of guy to wear sunglasses inside. At night. Regardless of Tom’s douche status, it’s clear he has no idea how to mix a drink. One that tastes good, at least. Whatever is in his cup seems more like a failed experiment than something anybody was ever meant to drink, the taste somewhere between sour and bitter, and he can’t stomach any more of it. He’ll admit to a scientist’s curiosity, but he’s not at all drunk or curious enough to drink more of it and try to identify the other booze had been mixed with the low-quality beer the party was stocked with.
Ryland hadn’t been actively searching for his brother when he spots him in the backyard. Colt fills space in a way that Ryland has been familiar with for their whole lives, so it’s never been hard for Ryland to pick him out of a crowd. If Colt were to look into the kitchen window, he’d be able to see Ryland as well— he hasn’t moved from the spot Colt left him. Colt isn’t looking, though. He’s only paying attention to the blonde girl he’s with, leaning against the pergola like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. It probably is— Colt had already been halfway to wasted when he had abandoned Ryland, and he’s sure that in the last hour or two of this awful party, he’s only gotten more drunk. The girl is just as much of a mess as he is and they’re obviously having fun, if the way Colt’s throwing his head back in laughter is any indication. Ryland isn’t sure if the twisting feeling in his stomach is from what little he’s drunk or the way she and Colt are leaning into each other like they’re the only people here.
And Ryland isn’t mad about the fact that Colt has seemingly entirely forgotten that he’s here. Colt has his own life, his own friends, and he’s allowed to go to parties and get drunk and flirt with girls, and the people that pass Ryland are allowed to call him by his brother’s name when they invite him to join some drinking game, and Ryland doesn’t feel guilty for messing with Colt’s reputation as he turns them down because nobody is going to remember this night in the morning. If he were mad, which he’s not, it would be at the situation he’s been left in, not at Colt or the girl he’s with. The twisting feeling doesn’t go away though.
There’s no way that he and Colt will lose each other. But as Ryland watches Colt and the girl talk and laugh like it’s easy, he realizes that they’ve been drifting apart. Ryland is wearing one of Colt’s shirts and his glasses are tucked into a pocket, and they haven’t looked so much like identical twins since the day they were born, but this is Colt’s element and Ryland doesn’t belong here at all. They’re on such different paths that it’s hard to believe they’re related, let alone that they came from the same gamete.
He and Colt haven’t laughed like that in years.
Ryland should leave.
His head is pounding from the music that’s blaring from the other room, the house is far too busy and, consequentially, far too warm, and the few drinks he hadn’t intended to have are making it more difficult to think logically, and yes, that may be the point of drinking, but he’s never enjoyed the feeling. Everything is running together, and if he stays for much longer he’ll likely shut down. He has no idea how late house parties like these usually last— he’s rarely awake when Colt gets home, at the very least— but it’s creeping up on one in the morning and nothing seems to be winding down. He’s tired and he wants to go home. Colt, very clearly, does not.
Ryland pushes his way through the crowded kitchen to pour the contents of his cup down the sink. It feels like saying goodbye to a friend who stood by him all night. Colt can make his own way home, he decides. He’s an adult, capable of making his own decisions, and one of those decisions will be walking the few blocks back to their apartment at some point before sunup. He probably doesn’t need to, seeing as Colt has all but forgotten that Ryland’s even here, but he texts Colt to tell him that he’s leaving. If he waits another few minutes after the message delivers to watch Colt and see if he checks his phone, nobody around him is sober enough to comment on it.
The crisp air of late November is a relief Ryland hadn’t expected. He had gotten so used to the sweaty warmth of the house that goosebumps rise on his arms as soon as he steps outside. The front lawn is far emptier than the back, but there are still a few people milling about. There’s a girl kneeling in the grass, throwing up what appears to be mostly booze. It’s not a pleasant sight, and Ryland holds his breath as he passes her.
The problem with walking alone is that Ryland is left with his thoughts, and they run far wilder with the help of the alcohol in his system. Unsurprisingly, they travel back to Colt.
Three summers ago, they had taken a road trip along the San Francisco coast with the money their dad hadn’t thrown away onto booze. They had put some away first, of course. Colt hadn’t been sure if he wanted to go to college first or into the movie scene as soon as he could, but Ryland had planned out pretty much his whole life by that point, and step one was college. Colt had always insisted that no matter where he ended up, Ryland needed to be the one to graduate college, to get a master’s and a PhD and show the world how brilliant he was. But the money that hadn’t been split between them for college— because Colt would go, just not right away— had been allocated for this tour of San Francisco’s beaches.
There had been a trip as kids to a beach neither could remember the name of, so they decided to visit all of the beaches in the area until they found it. The thing about beaches and memories is that they often all blur together. There was nothing distinctive about the beach, no lighthouse on a rocky outcropping, no fish and chips shop, no tourist attractions. It had just been a strip of sand that disappeared into the Pacific ocean, one that they had figured they’d recognize when they arrived. They hadn’t. Ryland knew they had been to it, though. He’s certain that somewhere along their trip was that beach from their childhood, and they had eaten sandwiches on it, protecting them fiercely from seagulls that were far too brave and far too accustomed to human food. It might have been the beach that Colt finally convinced him to put his head underwater, where he hadn’t felt the need to struggle because his brother’s hands were in his, not on the back of his head. Or it might have been the beach where Colt had told him about a handful of articles he had read about stunting on sand, how too high or low tire pressure can cause you to lose traction and completely muck up your stunt, how you need to be able to read the sand and figure out how the ground will react before you’ve driven over it so you don’t end up in a soft spot you can’t get out of.
It had been good summer for the trip, hot and dry, hitting almost a hundred degrees some days and making them extremely grateful that they had repaired the busted AC before heading out. It made it easy to spend half the day in the water and be dry by the evening. The summer was just for the two of them, barely adults, sleeping in the back of their car or staying in whatever motels were the cheapest, eating far too much fast food, and spending their last summer before they had to start their “real lives,” as Colt had said, doing whatever they wanted. They had gotten a cake for their birthday, and it had been a small victory when Colt, who had always demanded vanilla, had agreed to Ryland’s chocolate. He had agreed to a lot of Ryland’s requests that trip, something that he is only realizing three years later at one in the morning as he shivers in his brother’s t-shirt, heading home from a party he had never wanted to attend. Ryland agrees to a lot of Colt’s requests too.
They didn’t used to be all the other had. They had been a proper family at some point when Ryland was so young that he can’t even remember it, a mom and a dad and their three sons. They might have been happy too, before his dad started beating his mom, before his mom left and those beatings landed on him and his brothers instead. For years, he and Colt had Court and their dad, and then Court had taken both himself and their dad out of the picture and they were driving as far as they could away from their shell of a house because home was beat-up Volkswagen Jetta, their apartment just off of the San Francisco State University campus, and each other.
Ryland has always been lonely, but at some point between that summer and now, there was a shift from loneliness with his brother to loneliness without him.
His mouth still tastes bitter when he wakes up, like he hadn’t brushed his teeth last night. Ryland knows that he did, he can recite his exact nightly routine, but he might be misremembering it. Routines blur together just the same as beaches and memories. His head hurts far less than it usually does after a night out with Colt— though on those rare occasions, Colt is lingering over his shoulder and egging him on. Colt might tease him for being a lightweight, but it would take more than the drink and a half he had last night for Ryland to get drunk. Not much more, but more nonetheless.
When he enters the main room of their apartment, his beeline for the coffee machine is halted by something that doesn’t quite fit in. His shoes sit on the front doormat, lined up with the edge the same way he always leaves them. Colt’s are there too, kicked to the side more haphazardly than usual. Ryland figures that would be due to the chucks propped up against them, both his and hers kicked off in a rush on their way to Colt’s room.
Ryland wonders when he stopped knowing his brother. He wonders if she’s going to know Colt better than he does.