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January eleventh begins as it would any other day: a world enveloped in peaceful darkness, quietly numbed by the last remnants of sleep. Mockingbirds return to their nests after a long night of calling out for love, the San Francisco fog rolls over the bay like a cold blanket, and the waves of salt—ever-changing from the tug of the sinking moon—lap like a dedicated dog at soft pillows of sand.
Likewise, Ryland Grace wakes up as he has every morning for the past three weeks: screaming.
“Please! I don’t know where– ACK!”
The final threads of his nightmare are sliced through by a current of fiery pain as he flies to sit up with more strength than he has. His partially severed abdominal muscles howl their complaints, and he collapses onto the three pillows carefully arranged behind his back, breathing as deeply as he can through his nose. He almost throws up, but somehow gets his stomach to untwist itself without having to fumble for the emesis bag clipped to the side of the bed. Vomiting right now would be a very poor choice—if he strains too much, there’s every chance he could tear straight through the hard-won regrowth of tissue in his torso and herniate, even with the abdominal binder.
The attempt at settling his heart rate brings on a fit of wet coughs. Each expulsion of air feels like tiny, hot knives prodding the healing scar running from his sternum to just above his navel, while a hammer slams into his fractured ribs for good measure. Ryland hacks away until a thick mouthful of mucus comes up, getting caught on his chapped lips and dribbling down his chin. He brings a shaking hand up to wipe it onto the front of his shirt, too tired to care about how gross that is. Unbidden tears leak down his face as a surge of helplessness left over from reliving his kidnapping surfaces above the pain.
Through blurry vision, he turns his head to inspect the other side of the mattress: it’s unoccupied, which he’s both disappointed by and simultaneously grateful for. Despite all of his family’s insistence against it, waking up like this is just as humiliating as it was when he first started doing it back on Christmas Eve. Dropping off with Colt or Court all but wrapped around him has been the only real way he’s gotten any restful sleep, but Ryland hates that most mornings his brothers are forced to watch him go through this agonizing routine.
It makes sense that Court wouldn’t be here—he and Claire have gone back to living in their own apartment ever since New Year’s. He misses them a lot, but knowing that the burden of his care doesn’t have to fall on their shoulders eases some of the guilt he’s been holding onto since coming home from the hospital. The fact that Jody’s not around is also not surprising; she’s been working her butt off to make up for all the time she spent away while he was in that coma.
Colt being gone, on the other hand, is a little shocking. Ryland is normally able to hear him moving around the house unless he’s taking the rare nap, and if he’s not busy with chores, he’s basically glued to his side. His dedication to meet his every need (sometimes before he realizes he has a need to be met) has been eating away at him for the past month and a half. Even though he’d been drugged when it happened, he can’t get the horrifying sound of that bat cracking across his brother’s spine out of his head. Colt had been seriously injured, too, and sometimes Ryland wonders if he’s putting off taking care of himself just to keep him comfortable.
Of course, if he could do something about it, he absolutely would. But as it stands now, he’s pretty much entirely dependent on Colt for basically everything. And though he tries to make up the best he can for it with meager apologies, Colt refuses to hear any of it—just smiles and tells him not to worry. It seems to escape his twin that not worrying about him is something Ryland is physically incapable of, even if he is bedridden.
He’s tried telling him that he doesn’t need so much help. Colt ignores him. He’s tried pretending that he’s not in any pain. Colt sees right through him. He’s tried, even, to just act like he’s asleep so that Colt can have even a small break. This always results in him crawling beside him on the mattress and speaking softly to him until he actually does fall asleep.
And the worst part of it all? Deep down, if he’s being fully honest with himself…Ryland enjoys being doted on like this. Not because he thinks everything he’d done for Colt after his fall was transactional, but because it…makes him feel good. Ugh. Unfortunately, yes, it does make him feel appreciated, comforted, cared for. He truly can’t recall any other time in his life when anyone has spoiled him this much.
He still doesn’t really know how to reconcile it all, especially because everyone in the family swears that it isn’t any trouble, even though he’s sure it must be. He remembers very well just how exhausting it had been to work eight hours at school only to come back to his apartment and find Colt in the middle of another anger spiral, or laying on the floor because he pushed himself too hard, or sealed inside the bedroom because he was so ashamed. Ryland had felt utterly useless watching his only family member sink so deep into the darkness that even if he had been able to take care of himself, he wouldn’t have bothered. So, even though it meant only getting about four hours of sleep a night, Ryland had done everything in his power to make sure Colt knew just how loved he was, broken spine or not.
Things got easier as his brother’s recovery went on. His smiles and laughter returned alongside his strength. Ryland relished those moments more than he would ever say, because for the first time since college, he and Colt had a valid excuse to spend some quality time together the way they used to when they were kids. Yes, his back hurt from sleeping on the couch. Yes, he had a ton of bruises because he was so tired he kept tripping over his own feet. Yes, he ended up sick with the worst flu of his life that winter because his immune system was shot from not focusing enough on his own needs. But whatever. If Colt was comfortable and happy and safe, he would take all of that a thousand times over.
Being on the other side of all of it, though…it’s almost unbearable. He’s really starting to get why it had been so hard for his brother during those early days.
His body hurts. His right shin and knee and pinky finger all ache from the cold. The scatterplot of scars on his torso itches relentlessly and pulls with every tiny movement. If he breathes too hard, it sets off the ugly cough the pneumonia left him with, which ignites every inch of his chest in painful spasms. His mouth is constantly parched from all the tramadol he’s on, of which he’s far past toeing the line of dependence. The heart attack sapped what little strength he had left, and now he can barely sit up at the table to eat his bland dinner with Colt and Jody before he starts to get short of breath. He can’t grip his own fork right because of the splint, won’t be able to put any weight on his bad leg for at least another month, can’t even dress himself if someone isn’t helping.
He hates—
No. Hate isn’t the right word. He despises it. Loathes it. Detests the fact that in the span of little more than forty-eight hours, all of his autonomy was stolen from him. Two days. That’s all it took for his life to be reduced to a bed and a dependence on the pity of others. He’s thirty-two, for crying out loud, and a teacher. His entire job is to take care of his students, and he can barely hold up his own stupid phone to respond to the emails his laundry list of subs have been sending.
And on top of all of it, he’s become increasingly more terrified each time he wakes up screaming that the scars his kidnapper left him with aren’t just physical. The idea that his mind—the one aspect of himself that has any value, and the only thing he’s been able to rely on when all else failed—could be broken? That’s maybe the scariest part of it all.
Because, if he had to lay bare his soul and speak plainly of what he thinks, he wouldn’t be able to truthfully say that he should be trusted to go back to work. Even if his body wasn’t as messed up as it is, his kids need a teacher who won’t break down if someone slams a locker too loud, or wears peppermint-scented perfume, or touches him by accident.
More tears of grief well up in his eyes, and he makes no effort to stop them from rolling down his face. This is it. This is my life now. He has no power, no control, no purpose or means to fulfill it. That little fact hurts more than all of the torture combined. All he can do now is lie down and wait for his body to fail him the way it should have in that basement.
There’s a knock on the door, and then it swings open. Colt enters with a bouquet of daffodils in his hand and a smile on his face. His expression drops as soon as his eyes fall on Ryland, and then he’s rushing over to kneel down beside him.
“Hey, hey. What’s wrong? Is something hurting?” he asks, setting the flowers on the nightstand in place of grabbing a tissue to wipe his face.
Everything. Everything hurts, and everything’s wrong.
He shakes his head, unable to stop the small whimper that escapes his throat. “I’m ruining your life.”
“What? No, you’re not,” he mumbles softly, “C’mere.” He slips his arms beneath Ryland’s back to lift him up, then slides behind him so his head is leaning on his chest. “Shh, shh. You’re okay.”
The way his brother’s hands wrap around him and manage to avoid all the places that hurt only makes him cry harder. He hiccups around his tears, just barely suppressing another coughing fit, before stuttering out a pathetic, “S-so-rr-y-y.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, Ry,” he whispers, pressing a kiss into his hair and the plush fox Claire gave him to his chest, “If you need to cry, you cry, man. Let it all out. I’m not going anywhere.”
For some reason, Colt giving him that permission unlocks the floodgates, and soon he’s a wet puddle in his brother’s arms. The corners of his mouth pull down with so much force that he’s unable to say anything else approaching coherence, just moans as the waves of pain roll through him like a thunderstorm. The whole time, Colt holds him tightly to his chest, brushing away the hot streaks and murmuring reassurances and planting his lips everywhere in his hair he deems necessary to make Ryland feel better.
When there’s no more water left for him to expel, and he has a fragment of his breath back, he cranes his neck to look his twin in the eye. Instead of finding a face of pity or concern, Ryland is greeted by a warm smile beaming down at him.
“You wanna talk about it, or do you wanna be distracted?” he asks quietly, fingers pushing back his bed-mussed hair from where it had fallen into his eyes.
Ryland swallows back more snot. “I j-just want it t-to be over. W-want my life b-back.”
“I know,” Colt hushes, squeezing him as tightly as he dares, “I know. This sucks. Trust me, I get it. And it feels like total bullshit when people tell you it gets better, but there’s a reason they say it.”
Ryland ducks his gaze down in hot shame. “M’being childish.”
“No, you’re not. You’re being completely fucking reasonable about it, Ryland. In fact, you’re doing way better than I did when I couldn’t walk. You know how many times I sobbed myself to sleep while you were at work ‘cause I didn’t want you to see?” He swipes a thumb over a stray tear, smile unwavering. “All. The. Time. You’re not scared to show that you're hurting. I wish I was like that– it’d probably have made it a lot easier.”
“I just–” his breath hitches, and Colt gives him another patient squeeze. “M’dragging you down. You quit your job ‘cause of me.”
“I took a leave of absence to take care of my sick brother, who just went through a bunch of unimaginable shit and almost died,” he corrects firmly, “and my fiancée is my boss. I’m pretty sure I’ll work again. And don’t you dare think that me doing some stupid fucking motorcycle jump is more important than you. Nothing is more important than you, Ry.”
But Colt can’t see the future, and he’s ignoring what’s blatantly obvious in the present: “W-what if– what if this is it? For the rest of my life– of your life?” That thought is terrifying, but each day it’s grown closer and closer to being reality.
Colt just tucks his chin over Ryland’s head. The vibrations of his next words rumble inside the back of his skull. “Then I guess you’ll just be stuck with me forever, ‘cause I’m not giving up on you. And that’s not gonna happen, Ry. You’re getting stronger every day, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”
“You’ll get sick of me,” he insists.
“Nope,” Colt counters immediately, “Not possible. You’re gonna get sick of me.”
“S’not fair. To you or Jody. You’re starting your family, you’re gonna have a baby, you shouldn’t—”
“You’re my family, Ryland. Them’s just the facts, no ifs, ands, or buts.” He tilts Ryland’s head up with his fingers so that he’s looking at him again. “Listen to me. Jody and I talked, and we want you to move in with us. Not just until you’re better, but for as long as you need. She’ll probably be pissed that I’m bringing it up without her, but we’re planning on moving into a bigger space anyway. Like, I’m talking an actual house, with a yard, and a real nursery, and a room for you.”
He swallows again, that familiar burn of guilt bubbling inside his chest. “S’too expensive, and I have an apartment, Colt. I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking me, stupid. I’m telling you. You’re done living in that shitty studio where the hot water doesn’t even work half the time. And money’s not an issue for us; Metalstorm set us up with a ton of savings, we just started getting the streaming checks for Juniper’s Valley, and you don’t even want to know how much Thieve’s Cant is gonna make now that people know the Moreno name. We’ve got money to burn, Ry, and I wanna spend it on the people that matter.”
Ryland’s eyes start to sting again. He does his best to push back against it. If he was feeling more…stable, he might have gotten on Colt’s case for flaunting his newfound financial status, but right now it sounds…wonderful. It’s too kind, especially with what he’s putting them all through, but he can tell his brother isn’t going to back down.
“You have to let me pay the medical bills, though,” he tries, but Colt just chuckles, shaking his head.
“No Ry, you’re still in a ton of debt from my medical bills.”
“Colt—“
He throws up his hands in surrender. “I know, I get it, but you’re, uh– you’re gonna need to talk to Court about that one. ‘Cause he…kinda, maybe, might’ve already paid for everything?”
“What?”
Colt gives his already-messy hair a thorough ruffle. “Yeah. Something about inheritance money from some guy he worked with? I don’t really know, he was being super vague about it. But he took care of it while you were still in the ICU, didn’t even give me and Jodes the chance to contribute. Says it’s time you got some actual health insurance, not the shit the school put you on.” He leans his cheek on the top of Ryland’s head. “Look, Ry, the point is: don’t worry about it. We’ve got it all covered. Only thing you need to be doing is resting up.”
He would keep protesting, but his crying spell has left him too exhausted, and…he has some business to take care of.
“Colt?”
“Yeah, bub.”
“I need to pee.”
Colt doesn’t let him feel bad about the request, instead leaning all of Ryland’s weight against his chest before sliding out from behind him and slowly laying him back down. He rolls the chair to the side of the bed, then carefully goes through the motions of transferring him into it with practiced ease. The movement hurts anyway, especially because last night’s pain meds have tapered off. Colt apologizes for it, even though it’s not his fault.
Ryland’s arms are still too weak to push himself (and even if they weren’t, the splint on his hand and the scars on his chest make the action agonizingly painful), so Colt is the one driving them. They dock by the bathroom in the hall, and his brother does the exact same process in reverse to get him onto the toilet, before helping him out of his pajama pants while averting his gaze. Not for the first time, it gets Ryland thinking about all the times he’d done the same thing for Colt while he still couldn’t walk—though his brother is plenty strong enough to lift his entire weight, whereas Ryland had to rely on him basically clinging to his neck to get the job done.
“I was at PT earlier,” he chats casually behind the door, “They say I’m doing good. Finally cleared me for the actual gym, so I’m thinking I might pick that back up tomorrow, maybe. There’s that bagel place right next to it– if you want, I can pick something up for you after.”
“Sounds good,” he replies without really listening. The gym has never been Ryland’s thing, but the idea of actually going outside makes him a little green with envy. Not that it matters—he’s already shivering enough having moved away from the warmth of the bed, and he’s in no mood (or condition) to brave the mid-January weather right now.
“Are you gonna be good for a couple minutes? I need to change the sheets real quick.”
Ryland gives him a noncommittal noise of affirmation. He prefers the privacy, anyway; Claire had unfortunately been very right about the pain meds slowing things down, even if he has been mostly subsisting on a diet of soup and soup-adjacent meals.
True to his word, Colt is back in record time. Lifting Ryland to the mattress elicits a sigh of relief from him; his brother must have thrown the fresh sheets into the dryer before changing them, because the heat radiating off of them is heavenly on his aching leg and back.
Colt wastes no time in sealing him completely inside a cocoon of fleece blankets. “Toasty?”
“Mmm. Thanks.”
“Just doing my job, boss.” He throws up an exaggerated salute, before reaching over toward the wall and sliding the rolling bedside table over Ryland’s lap.
It was a sweet gift from Jody—and a smart investment. It lets him read, use his laptop, and perform basic anti-boredom tasks without straining his neck or arms. Back when she and Court were staying with them, Claire used to leave him little prank models of scenes using various things she’d find around the house. He’d wake up only to be greeted by an intense sci-fi battle made out of pencils and socks, or a quaint village constructed out of popsicle sticks. She’d always walk into the room with a serious look on her face, and ask the critics present (Ryland, and sometimes Colt or Court) for critique on her work.
But Claire’s not here anymore, and it seems she took most of Ryland’s energy with her. Today, he’s met instead with his typical water bottle in the cupholder, and a glass full of some kind of thick purple drink.
“That’s a blueberry-banana smoothie,” Colt tells him proudly while he climbs onto the other side of the mattress, his own glass in hand. “Figured I’d shake things up a little, since you weren’t feeling great. And it’s good for the heart, too; it’s got flaxseed and spinach and a nice helping of yogurt.”
“Gotta protect the heart,” he mumbles, trying not to eye it too suspiciously. Honestly, the thought of eating anything makes him nauseous again, but he knows it’ll only get worse if he tries to take his meds without food. He grabs the glass with his left hand, intensely aware of how the small weight causes it to shake.
Colt gives his shoulder a gentle pat. “Best part about ya, bud.”
He gives his brother a flimsy smile before bringing it to his lips. Ryland doesn’t mention how he’s picked up on the fact that if he can drink his breakfast, it means Colt won’t have to help feed it to him. It’s a thoughtful gesture, even if it does bring him a small amount of frustration over his inability to eat by himself.
It tastes…well, it probably tastes how it should. He doesn’t really care either way.
“Good?” Colt checks with barely-concealed anxiety, only relaxing when Ryland gives him a small nod (not all of his little experiments have gone well). He still sips it slowly—it’s probably the least-bland food he’s had in a month, and he still doesn’t quite trust his stomach to not eject it if he drinks too fast.
Once they finish breakfast, Colt takes his glass (which is still half-empty after he lost all remaining interest in eating) and disappears through the door, returning shortly with a handful of hygiene products. From his pocket he removes Ryland’s pill organizer, each section labeled with the day of the week and time, stuffed to the brim with various medications.
He helps him through the pills first, taking a moment to write down the time on his phone. “We’ll see where that gets you after PT,” he mumbles more to himself than to Ryland, “gotta work you a little harder today, we’re increasing the rep count.”
Ryland swallows back a moan of dread. No matter how gentle Colt is with him, the exercises are always painful, at least to some degree. He knows he needs to do them if he wants to regain function, but it doesn’t make the anxiety in his stomach settle any easier. Really, it doesn’t matter much to him if the muscles end up freezing—it’s not like he’ll be able to walk on his own any time soon, and the effort of enduring the pain severely outweighs his desire to try at all.
Colt hands him the incentive spirometer from the drawer on the rolling table, before adjusting the pillows so that he’s supported sitting upright. This part’s not so bad anymore, even if it makes his chest ache. He tries not to let himself feel too pathetic over how proudly Colt looks at him when he’s successful in getting the little ball inside to hover on the target area.
His brother sits on the edge of the mattress while he completes the exercises. “Jody’s mom called me last night,” he says absentmindedly, “Apparently, her dad’s ticked that I didn’t ask for his blessing before I proposed.”
“Why?” Ryland asks between breaths, “She’s not, like, chattel.”
Colt shrugs. “I mean, Les wasn’t crazy mad, at least according to Alice. And she told me not to worry about it, ‘cause Ben, Ollie, and Mabel are ecstatic. Guess I picked the right ring or something—apparently they’re loving all the pictures she sent ‘em from the beach.”
“Such a romantic. Still can’t believe you didn’t tell us you were gonna do that, though.”
He gives Ryland’s hair yet another ruffle as he exhales again. “Didn’t want to have to deal with all of Court’s questions, didn’t trust that little pipsqueak not to spill the beans, and you, my good sir, are doing drugs on the daily. I wasn’t sure whether you’d remember if I told you, and no offense, Ry, but you can’t keep a secret even when you’re sober.”
Ryland rolls his eyes at him, even though he privately thinks that’s pretty fair. He’s apparently said a lot of embarrassing stuff by accident while high off his rocker, most of which he can’t really remember.
He sets the spirometer aside. “You guys set a date yet?”
“Yup,” Colt grins, “Next week.”
Ryland’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head. “What?!”
Colt laughs. “Relax, Ry. That’s just the court date. Neither of us really wanna wait to make it official, you know what I mean? But don’t worry,” he hops off the bed and begins preparing for the next part of the physical therapy, “we’re still gonna have a ceremony, just not for a while. Jody wants her family there, and she wants it to happen after baby’s here. Plus, if we’re gonna do it right, I need my best man to be up and walking.”
He gapes at him. “You…you want me to be your best man?” he asks, voice small.
“‘Course I do, you’re my best friend.” He says it so casually, like it’s obvious. “But that means you gotta get better. Do you wanna do legs or chest first?”
Ryland, once again, has no idea what to do with this information. He should feel grateful that Colt wants him there, but the only emotion he can identify right now is a vague kind of numbness. His brother is postponing what should be one of the happiest days of his life because of him. How does Colt not see how messed up that is?
“Ry? You with me?”
He blinks hard, and forces the most convincing smile he has at his disposal onto his face. “Chest.”
Colt helps him to raise one arm at a time above his head, moving slowly but using enough pressure that it pulls slightly at the healing scars peppering his upper body. He lets out a wince on the fourth rep when he feels a sharp tug on his sternum incision.
“Ohh, motherfudger,” he grits out, eyes screwing shut.
“You got this, Ry. Six more, just breathe through it,” Colt is using the exact same tone his own physical therapist defaulted to while he was practicing his steps on the parallel bars. “Pain meds’ll kick in soon.”
By the time they finish, Ryland is sweaty and panting, even though his brother was the one who did most of the work. Colt offers him a sip of water before they get into the leg raises, which arguably suck twenty times worse.
Colt braces two hands under his left leg, slowly lifting it off the mattress as Ryland bends his knee at a slight angle. He clamps his jaw shut against the strangled noises trying to escape him, until Colt pushes farther than he’s expecting and a cry of pain comes out before he can stifle it.
“Ah! Ah! Stop, stopstopstopstopstop!” His lower quad has gone taut, muscles clenched involuntarily against the stretch and agitating the deep knife wound on his thigh.
Colt freezes, but he doesn’t release his grip. “Breathe, bud. We gotta get that blood circulating,” a loud moan, “I know, I’m sorry. You can hate me all you want, but we have to. Try and relax into it.”
“Can’t,” he hisses.
But his brother is unshakeable, as always. “Yes, you can. It’ll get easier the longer we stay here.”
How in the world was Colt able to do this for so long??? He remembers him being frustrated about his own physical therapy, but it had never occurred to Ryland just how much it must have hurt each session to force his body to do something it staunchly protested. He might feel more sympathetic about all the pain he’d had to go through if his own wasn’t so agonizing; it’s like tearing himself apart every morning.
“Please,” he spits out, desperate to end it now. This isn’t even his injured leg, and yet it feels like a fire is erupting under his skin.
Colt just shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Ry, I can’t. Ten more seconds.”
Ten more seconds might as well be years, but unfortunately, Colt is right: both about why it needs to happen, and that it does, in fact, get easier the longer it goes on. By the end of it, he’s gasping and sweating through his shirt, his entire lower half feeling like jelly when his brother finally rests his foot down on the mattress.
“You’re kicking ass today, Ry,” he tells him, “Held it for thirty seconds. That’s huge.” He takes a damp cloth from the table and wipes at his brow while Ryland just lays there, devoid of all remaining energy. “How are you doing pain-wise?”
He groans. His body aches, and now his face and neck are pooling droplets of sweat, dripping down his back and making his skin itch in addition to all the sore muscles. “Feel so gross.”
Colt brings his water back, which Ryland urgently chugs like he’s been left out to dry in the Sahara for a week. “Okay. Lets get ya cleaned up, see if you need some extra trammy later.”
The first order of business is brushing his teeth. With his finger still stuck in the splint until he’s cleared for its corrective surgery, Colt has taken the mantle of doing this for him, as well as any other tasks that would require him to use his fine motor skills. He sits Ryland back up at a forty-five degree angle against the pillows, then takes his time working softly at the plaque before helping him rinse out the flavorless toothpaste. By the time the job is done, he’s finally able to feel the blessed numbness of the pain medication beginning to soften the edges of his discomfort.
Colt leaves briefly after that. Ryland can make out the low rumbling of the dryer, followed by the sounds of running water from the sink. His brother comes back and sets a steaming bowl on the table, then drapes one towel beneath his chin and wets another with the warm water. A small sigh escapes him as Colt presses it to his face and jaw, relishing the heat it brings to his skin.
Colt sticks his tongue out while he applies the shaving cream with gentle fingers. “Gonna make you nice and pretty,” he mumbles with great focus, dragging the razor down his skin carefully. His brother has gotten pretty good at maintaining his facial hair the way he likes, but he still holds up a small mirror for him to check his work once he’s patted everything dry. “How’d I do, chief?”
“S’fine,” he breathes, before letting out a small yelp when Colt surprises him by fluttering his fingers under his chin. Ryland glares at him, but his twin has an idiotic grin stuck on his face. “You can’t keep doing that every time, Colt.”
“Just gotta make sure I didn’t miss any spots,” he lies, then presses a small kiss at the corner of his jaw. Ryland rolls his eyes when Colt starts rubbing his beard over his cheek like a cat, but makes no attempts at moving away. “Mm, I did do a good job. Smoother than a stubbly baby’s butt.”
“Don’t know why you do that,” he mumbles, suddenly very embarrassed by his clinginess, “I must smell like crap right now.” This just gets him another series of smooches all over the side of his face, and despite himself, a tiny ghost of a smile forms over his lips.
“‘Cause I love ya,” Colt smirks, “and don't worry; you’ll be smelling like a field of roses soon.” He starts to head off toward the door again to put away his supplies, but hesitates right before the threshold. “Hey, Ry?”
“Yeah?” he sighs, leaning his head back against the lavender-scented pillowcase.
“You deserve this. All of it. Actually, you deserve way more than this. You’re the best person I’ve ever met. I hope you know that.”
Ryland grins at him, which seems to satisfy Colt enough to continue forward. As soon as the door latches, his faux-happiness slips off his face like smoke.
I’m really not, he thinks to himself, and I really don’t.
This—what he's doing to his family right now—it’s not fair. To any of them. And the longer it goes unaddressed by the household, the worse his guilt compounds, until he’s all but shrinking away under the shadow of his own shame. All he wants in the world is to just get out of this stupid bed by himself, go back to work, show everyone that their worry is misplaced. That he’s actually completely fine. That he can handle it all. That he is capable of living a normal life again.
He can’t do any of that. Instead, he’s forcing all of his personal problems on the people he loves the most, and they have enough things to worry about without him weighing them down. He knows that’s what he’s doing, even if they refuse to admit it. They probably think they need to protect him from that truth, and honestly? If Colt or Jody or Court or even Claire came in and laid it all out for him, it probably would destroy what little sanity he has left.
He should’ve died in that basement. In that car. On that table. He should be dead. Seemingly, his body must agree with him, if the way it’s punishing him for continuing to breathe is any indication. And a part of him…jeez, you know what? Yes. A part of him wishes he did. It would’ve been awful for his family to have to go through that, but at least they wouldn’t be saddled with all of this.
Colt is tough. He could’ve dealt with it, even if he doesn’t believe that, and he’d have Jody with him. It probably would have sucked for her, too, to lose a friend like that, but at least neither of them would be alone. And it’s not like Court would have missed much, if things had gone that way. Claire wouldn’t have even gotten the chance to know him at all, so she’d probably make it out relatively unscathed. His students would be quick to forget, too young to understand what death really means, and his coworkers and friends would move on after a while, too.
As it stands now, he’s hurting all of them. Every single day. Ryland will never forgive himself for that, but if he says anything about it to any of them, he’d be assigning them yet another burden to carry just to make him feel better.
“Ry?”
There’s a hand on his shoulder. He opens his eyes—he hadn’t even realized he’d closed them. Colt is smiling softly over him, two towels slung over his arm.
“Mm?”
Colt moves his fingers to splay over his scalp. “Meds kicking in?”
Judging by the way his thoughts have gone all soupy, and his mouth is once again dry as dust, the answer appears to be yes. He nods, which just makes his brother’s expression melt further into affection for reasons he still doesn’t understand.
“Let’s get you nice and clean, and then you can take a nap, yeah?” he plies, ever patient, even though Ryland knows he doesn’t deserve it.
“Mm’kay.” He has no more energy to try fighting Colt on the matter, left only with a hollow emptiness settling inside his chest.
He lets his brother scoot him over to the other side of the bed, watching with detached interest as Colt pulls back the sheets and lays a water-absorbent mat over where Ryland had just been laying. He drapes the entire thing with the towels before moving him back on top of it, letting out a satisfied hum as he reviews his work.
Colt removes his button-down and abdominal binder with careful hands, revealing the last remnants of the bruising his tormentor left him with, and all the ugly half-healed scars accompanying it. He covers him with a warm towel while he works to undress Ryland’s bottom half. He has to go slowly around the splint on his leg, but at this point, he’s an expert. He slides the plastic of the cast protector up so that the fiberglass is completely covered from any stray moisture, then moves the towel down to keep him decent. He slowly peels away the bandages sprinkled across his upper body, and then he’s washing the grime off his skin from the shoulders down.
“M’sorry.”
Colt chews on his inner cheek. “What did we say about—”
“I know, I know,” he sighs, “But just ‘cause m’not allowed to say it, doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”
Silence lapses. His brother’s expression droops. Another wave of guilt washes over him.
“You act like it’s so hard to love you.”
Ryland shuts his eyes, unable to think of anything to respond with that’s not, ‘isn’t it?’
“I get it. You’re in pain, you’re tired,” Colt continues as he rubs the washcloth over his chest, voice hovering soft and low, “I’d be more worried if you weren’t, honestly. I know how hard that is. How impossible it seems. Nothing about what happened to you was fair, but it’s also not your fault, Ry.”
“M’the reason he hurt you,” he whispers, feeling himself quickly approaching the edge of another spiral into darkness. “Y’never would’ve been there if it wasn’t for me.”
“No, I never would’ve been there if it wasn’t for the asshole who decided to hurt my brother. All of this is on him. All of it. But you know what is your fault?”
Ryland sucks a breath through his teeth, bracing himself to hear what he knows they’ve both been thinking. “What?”
He feels a warm hand cup itself over his cheek. “The fact that I’m still here. If it wasn’t for you, that kid would be growing up without a dad, and Jody would’ve never seen me again. You pushed through all that pain, even though you knew it might kill you, because you are a good person. A brave person. You saved me, Ryland. That’s what you did, and not just in that basement. You’ve been saving my stupid ass our whole lives, and you act like that’s nothing. It’s everything.”
Ryland forces himself to open his eyes. In the dim glow of the lamplight, he’s just able to catch a glimmer of a tear running down Colt’s face. He’s gazing down at him with a look that Ryland can only interpret as pure, unadulterated love. The kind so powerful you can feel it across an endless distance—the kind that, for some inexplicable reason, he’s been gifted as a birthright.
Colt leans down until his chin is resting on Ryland’s nose, inhaling deeply, like if he breathes him in hard enough, he’ll be able to hold even more of his brother than he already is. “You know what I think? About getting to do all of this for you? I think I’m lucky. Maybe you won’t believe it, but I do. Making you feel good…it makes me feel good. To know that you're safe, and comfortable, and not in pain– that’s the only thing I honestly give a shit about. Throw the rest of it out, I’m good as long as I’ve got you.”
His thumb comes up to brush away a tear Ryland hadn’t even realized had rolled down his face. He wads the hem of Colt’s sweatshirt up in his hand—the closest he can get right now to holding him back—and releases a fraction of the pressure in his chest with a shallow sigh. There’s the gentle caress of lips against his forehead, and then Colt sets the washcloth back into the bowl and takes Ryland’s face in both of his hands.
“You’re everything, Ry. You’re my whole world.” Ryland ducks his gaze out of embarrassment, but then Colt sweeps his thumbs over his cheeks and says, “Listen to me. You need to hear this: You are kind. You are brave. You are smart. You are funny. You are loved.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles, extremely ready to move past the platitudes.
“I need to hear you say it back. C’mon. You are kind.”
Ryland swallows back the lump in his throat, trying his best to believe the words as he repeats them. “M’kind.”
Colt beams. “You are. You are brave.”
“I-I’m brave.”
“That’s right. You are smart.”
Ryland manages a wet smile. “M’very smart.”
Colt lets out a loud chuckle at this, carding his fingers through his hair. “See? And funny.”
“M’funny,” he repeats.
“And Ryland? You are loved. You are so, so loved.”
His breath hitches in his throat, corners of his mouth twisting downward. The tears flow freely, and Colt catches them all. Ryland nods, eyes closed, searching for the strength required to say it back and mean it.
“I…am…loved,” he whispers, so quiet he almost can’t hear it, “M’loved.”
Colt slides his hands behind his neck and tucks Ryland’s head into his shoulder. “You are. You are loved.”
A choked sob leaves his throat, unable to reconcile the kindness of his brother after everything he’s put him through. His brain gets stuck in that loop, desperate to fit it all together in a way that makes sense, failing miserably. “M’loved…m’loved…m’loved. M’loved.”
Colt says it with him, over and over and over again, until it stops sounding like words and folds itself into an impression of the truth. When Ryland’s tongue starts to go numb, and the syllables begin to blur together, his brother rests his head back on the pillow and washes away the muck clinging to his skin. He wishes there was a way for him to do the same to his mind.
Heat seeps into his body as the medication finds its foothold, making his limbs grow heavy on the mattress. Colt lays his head into an inflatable basin, and takes his sweet time pouring cups of warm water over his hair. Ryland feels himself melting into the bed as his brother works the shampoo into a rich lather, the scent of ocean salt floating into his nose with each gentle caress.
He wraps his head in a towel when he’s finished, then sets to work to apply the scar cream, replace the bandages and binder, and dress him in a fresh pair of pajamas. Ryland is basically a useless puddle as his brother slides his arms through the shirt, though Colt doesn’t seem to mind. He fastens the buttons without a word and moves on to slipping the pants over his good leg, before securing the velcro of the oversized fabric around the splint. Then he tops the whole thing off with a pair of thick woolen socks to ward off the chill of poor circulation to his feet.
“Comfy?” he asks as he tucks the blankets up to Ryland’s chin.
Ryland doesn’t even have the bandwidth to open his eyes anymore, just exhales a soft “mmmmm,” as he’s enveloped completely by heated fleece and soft sherpa.
“You look a little flushed there. Cold or hot?”
“…perrrfffect,” he mumbles, tongue heavy in his mouth, “s’warmmm…”
A cool cloth gets draped over his forehead, chasing away some of the excess heat from the tramadol. The light gets turned off, his glasses are removed from his nose, and the soft melodies of the record Claire got him for Christmas begin to fill the room.
The bed dips beside him. A pair of strong arms and legs curl around him, and then the pleasant sensation of fingers drawing lazy shapes across his scalp arrives. He turns his cheek into Colt’s shoulder with a drowsy sigh.
“Y’know why I like dopey Ry?” he hears Colt murmur in a soothing, rich voice, “Dopey Ry’s a little cuddle machine. Lets me wrap around him like a koala bear.”
“…koalasss…” he echoes, not really listening.
“Maybe you’ll see some in your dreams. Nice, fuzzy koalas, all chilling in a tree, eating some eucalyptus.”
They sleep up to twenty-two hours a day. That’s basically what I do.
“…mmm…m’a koala…”
“You sure are, pal. My little koala,” Colt presses another kiss to his forehead, evaporating what little tension is left in Ryland’s muscles. “Sweet dreams, sleepyhead.”
–
“Colt? I brought some– Oh my God!”
Ryland was at his side in a matter of seconds, taking his face in his hands and turning it toward the light. Colt just groaned from where he lay on his stomach on the hardwood, in too much pain to try to shove him away.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Fell,” he provided unhelpfully. He sniffed around the blood crusting over his nose.
This was fucking humiliating, to put it lightly. He’d just wanted to take a normal shower, without the chair, like a normal fucking person would. And, in his defense, he’d been mostly successful. He’d managed to make it without any mobility aid all the way up until he stepped out of the bathroom, slipping over the slick surface literally just as he was reaching for the damn walker. He’d collided with the ground so hard that he’d been all but paralyzed by a surge of writhing pain shooting up his back, his face and left knee throbbing from where they’d gotten in between gravity and the floor.
Well. At least his towel stayed on.
“Okay, okay,” he heard the noises of Ryland taking deep breaths above him, probably trying to steady himself from the shock of seeing his twin splayed out like a corpse right in front of the front door. “Do you think you hurt your back? Like, do I need to call an—”
“No ambulance,” he spat, fighting not to unleash his rising fury at himself all over his brother, “Just– can you just fucking help me up?”
Then came the arduous and shameful process of somehow maneuvering Colt’s limbs in a way that wouldn’t strain his back. Ryland managed it—this was not the first time something like this had happened—and retrieved the folded-up wheelchair from the corner of his apartment. He winced in sympathy when Colt failed to suppress a yelp of pain as he all but lifted his entire weight into it.
“Sorry, I’m sorry, I know it hurts. Just breathe.” Colt wasn’t sure if that last part was meant for him or Ry. Either way, it didn’t help.
Ryland at least had the patience to help Colt into a T-shirt, settle an icepack on his fucked-up knee, and hand him a damp dishrag to wipe away the blood before continuing the conversation. Suddenly, the careful air Colt was used to being suffocated by disappeared.
“What happened.”
Colt stopped looking at his brother, feeling the heat of shame boiling under his skin. “Nothing. I told you, I fell.”
“How long were you on the floor for?”
Colt sighed. He really was not in the mood to be having this discussion right now. “I dunno, like…an hour, maybe?”
Ryland’s eyes practically popped the lenses out of his glasses. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because I don’t keep my fucking phone up my asscrack, Ry!” He didn’t mean to yell so loud, but he was already pissed off and in pain.
“I thought you were past this, Colt. I can’t keep wondering if I’m gonna find you dead every time I leave for work. You said you’d—”
“I know what I said!”
Ryland audibly gasped at his volume. He forced himself to take a deep breath, before mumbling, “It was an accident. I slipped. Couldn’t get to the walker or my phone. I-I tried, I swear, but I just– I couldn’t move.”
It had been terrifying, being glued to the floor. For the first ten minutes, he was convinced he’d somehow broken his back again, and was in too much agony to do anything but breathe through the pain. When he finally tried to get up again, his arms buckled beneath him, shaking the same way they did during those first few days after the accident. He spent another twenty minutes trying to stave off the panicked tears.
He couldn’t tell his brother any of that; he didn’t need another fucking thing to worry about while Colt was busy making the rest of his life a living hell.
But, as always, Ryland read him like an open goddamn book. “Look, I– I’m sorry for freaking out. I know it probably hurts. But you need to be more patient with yourself, Colt. The walker is there for a reason. Recovery—”
“–isn’t linear,” he finished for him. “Yeah. I know. Doesn’t make it any fucking easier.” He dragged a hand through his now-dry hair and made himself meet Ryland’s eyes, sighing, “I’m the one who’s sorry, Ry. You’re right: you shouldn’t have to deal with all this shit.”
“That’s not what I said.”
But Colt ignored him, anger melting into icy emptiness. “You have a career, and friends. You don’t need a cripple fucking up your life.”
Ryland placed a hand on his good knee. “Please don’t call yourself that. And you’re not ruining my life. I want you to be here, Colt. What kind of a guy am I if I don’t take care of my brother when he’s hurt?”
“But you shouldn’t have to.”
“Actually, I do. Kinda comes with the territory. I don’t know where you got it into your head that I’ll suddenly start resenting you for needing help, but I need you to squash it right the heck now. The only person who feels that way is you. You’ve made such huge strides these past couple months, you can’t just give up on yourself.”
He shook his head. “Ry, even if I’m able to walk again, my career is over. I can’t go back to stunts. I can’t even take a fucking shower without faceplanting.”
A small squeeze on his kneecap. “You have to stop comparing yourself to where you were before. Look at the progress you’ve made since yesterday. And you have the chance to completely change your life here; you get to decide what the rest of it will look like.”
“You mean within my limits,” he muttered.
“Everyone has limits, bub. I certainly do—I trashed my whole career because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. And you remember what you told me? ‘This is your opportunity to find something better.’”
He exhaled sharply through his nose, releasing the vice grip on his shoulders at the sound of his own words coming back to bite him in the ass. “This shits.”
“It does,” Ryland agreed, “but we’re gonna get through it together. I told you I was gonna be here until you get back on your feet, and I meant it. Literally. Just tell me what you need.”
Colt studied his brother’s face for a long time. Ryland had dark bags under his eyes ever since they flew back out to San Francisco, and his pale cheeks were just shy of sinking in. His school could only afford him so much family leave before he would have to take an unpaid sabbatical for the rest of the semester, so after his six-week unplanned vacation to Miami, he’d had to jump straight back into work.
He woke up every morning at five, cooked them both breakfast, finished up whatever work he’d fallen asleep over the night before, got Colt set up for the day, and then left for an eight hour shift with the least forgiving age group ever. After that, he’d bike home and deal with whatever nightmare Colt had created for him while he’d been gone, make them an obscenely healthy dinner, and try to pretend like this version of living was totally normal and sustainable. Chores were completed, encouragements made, and tests graded, until he eventually sent Colt off to bed while he stayed up until well after midnight completing his work.
God, he looked so tired, and that was undeniably Colt’s fault. It just– it was so easy, sometimes, to get caught up in the anger without taking a real look at its consequences. Ryland deserved more than that, but he would never say anything about it, the stubborn prick.
So Colt placed his hand on top of Ry’s, and told him, “I need you to take a break.” He saw his brother immediately move to protest, but stopped him before any words could leave his mouth, “Let’s order a pizza. Watch a stupid movie. Just, let’s pretend to be normal. For one night. That’s what I need right now.”
And then Ryland flashed him that stupid, sunny smile, and said, “Okay, Colt.”
“I don’t know how you did it,” he mumbles, cradling Ry against his heart as he sleeps like a sedated log, “You never let it get to you—all my bullshit. That’s a fucking superpower.” The only other person in his life he can confidently say has done the same is Jody, and he still managed to push her out.
He wipes a line of drool from his brother’s chin, heart as warm as the sun that he gets to do it at all. He’s endlessly thankful Ryland was able to finally conk out—he knew from the second he walked into his room this morning that today would be a bad pain day. He just hadn’t anticipated it being bad on two fronts: physical and mental.
Ryland is struggling. Colt can see it, even if his brother won’t bring himself to admit it. And it’s not the kind of struggle that can be solved by an extra blanket or painkillers. He’s drowning inside himself, the same way Colt was when he’d been the one barely pushing through the pain, but at least a broken back has a relatively straightforward path to healing. What Ry’s going through…all those scars, and shattered bones, and failing organs…it’s so much worse.
(Yes, he knows comparing pain is a losing game on both sides, but come on. His brother fucking died on that table. It’s a miracle he’s still here at all, and that happened after getting drugged and drowned and beaten and shot and carved up like a goddamn rotisserie chicken. What Colt went through doesn’t hold a fucking candle to that shit.)
“You’re so strong, bub,” he tells him softly, hoping it’ll reach him wherever he is, “Been through so much. And I’m sticking with you no matter how hard it gets, just like you did. I know you’re worried about me, but you gotta stop with all that. I’m not doing this alone like you had to, and I know my limits. Please, just let me take care of you, Ry.”
It’s true: Jody has been a godsend through all of this, even though she’s had to work her ass off on set to make up for all that lost time. And Court has been checking in every day since he and Claire moved back to their place; he’ll be here tomorrow so Colt can have a couple hours off. The staff at his school even set aside some time to start up a meal train after Jodes called them in November, and Dan’s planning on surprising Ryland with a nerdy care package since Colt had mentioned how bored he’s been. They have a system in place. They’re working together, all of them, to help his poor brother through it.
It still doesn’t feel like enough.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. Colt carefully removes the arm curled over Ryland’s chest and takes it out to check his messages.
Jodes <3
Hey babe how was pt?
chris says im doing good
gonna start only going in once a week
wyd rn
Jodes <3
On lunch
Can you call?
He shoots a glance down to Ryland: still lost in dreamland. Even though Colt misses Jody like air, he’s not getting in the way of his brother’s sorely-needed rest. He snaps a quick selfie and sends it through, before typing:
little busy atm
Jodes <3
You two are so precious
But god he looks tired
yeah he is
ry’s not doing great i dont think
2 panic attacks and counting
Jodes <3
That’s awful babes
Have you talked to him about the therapy?
not yet
i will later but i had to do some damage control
wont stop apologizing for “making” me do this
Jodes <3
:( sweet Ryland
Wish he wasn’t so hard on himself
same
hey dont get mad but
i told him about us getting a new place
idk if i sold it well tho
Jodes <3
Ughhhh I told you to wait colt
i know i know im sorry
it was the only thing i could think of to get him to calm down
Jodes <3
It’s fine I just wanted to be there
I take it he tried to fight you on it?
yeah unforch
i’ll work on it some more
anyway what did u wanna call ab
Jodes <3
Just the producers trying to kill me
The night shoot got moved to today
Probably gonna end up sleeping in the trailer
damnnnn
i miss u baby
its ok tho i get it
we still on for lunch tmr?
Jodes <3
I know I’m sorry
I miss u too and yes I’m good for lunch
C is coming over yeah?
yeah like noonish
im worried about him jodes
Jodes <3
C or Ryland?
both lol
but i mean ry
he keeps telling me he’s a burden
i rly dont get how he’s so smart but so stupid
Jodes <3
I’ve been doing some research
We really need to get him into therapy
Couple months after a trauma event is a make or break time
You really need to push the idea w him
i agree
gonna try once he’s up again
just don't want him to think he’s weak yk
or that we think that
Jodes <3
Lmk how it goes
Shit I gtg Ron is back and he’s about to make my life hell
Ily baby I’ll see u tmr
Give Ryland extra snuggles for me
lol will do
love you too jodes
😘😘😘
He sets the phone face-down beside him. The whole time he was texting Jody with one hand, Ryland barely moved an inch from where Colt is curling the other beneath his shoulders. He gazes at him for a long time, smiling fondly when he mumbles something about marsupials—he tends to have some pretty weird dreams from the pain meds.
Colt is very aware that the amount of opioids Ryland is on is pushing a potential addiction; with their family history of alcoholism, and his own experience struggling to kick the stuff after his spinal injury, it’s been a concern brewing for a while now. Ryland had asked to get moved to a lower dose about a week after they took him home, which Colt had initially taken as a good sign. But that optimism was squashed after only a few hours—his brother was in so much pain that he couldn’t even speak, much less sleep, eat, or do his exercises. It got to the point where the family was forced to make the call for him to go back to the higher dose, which had devastated Ry. Colt spent that entire week soothing his slurred anxiety spirals over how powerless he felt, while ignoring how similarly his own heart ached over it.
He’d spoken to a platoon of doctors, and they all assured him that the focus right now needs to be on keeping him comfortable; Ryland could very easily trigger a second heart attack if his body is under too much stress, and after all that trauma and surgery, keeping his pain manageable has to be the top priority. But they’d also told him that might mean a long-term dependence on the drugs, which is something they both are still struggling to accept.
Ryland is the strongest person alive to still be breathing after all those horrific things done to him. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s been scarred by it, but he is getting better, at least physically. Him staying on the pills is a compromise Colt is more than willing to make if it means Ry has the resources he needs to heal from it all.
(And, privately, he does think it’s pretty cute how clingy he is when he’s doped up. Ry’s always been like that when he doesn’t feel good, but back when they’d been kids, there’d usually be someone more equipped to take the torch, like Court, or whoever was on shift at the group home. Now, Colt gets his big brother all to himself most days, and he will be damned if this opportunity goes to waste. Ryland’s getting pampered whether he asks for it or not—and his insistence that he’s dragging his brother down is all the more motivation for Colt to give him the TLC he deserves.)
Colt considers himself to be the leading authority on all things Ryland Grace. Where he’s always been more of a quality time type of guy, Ry is hard and fast a physical touch person, which means his brother has himself an express ticket to Snuggle City every time he gets the chance. When he’s more sober, he might complain about his hair being messy from all the time Colt spends carding his fingers through it, but he’s always worn down eventually once he realizes it’s not stopping until he’s a goopy puddle of pure relaxation. And Colt is not too proud to shower him in little smooches every time he thinks Ry needs a pick-me-up.
He’s been told before that their closeness can come off as weird, but people who say stupid fucking shit like that have no idea what it’s like to be a twin. No, there is no fuck-ass ‘twintuition’ between them—he doesn’t know how many times he’s had to explain that to idiotic people who don’t understand basic biology—but there is a connection that runs thicker than the blood they share. Despite the fact that they are very different people with their own lives, Ryland will always be an extension of himself; in a way, keeping him comfortable like this is a form of self-care.
Colt feels Ryland press his cheek farther into the crook of his shoulder, and it’s almost enough to make his heart explode. If he could squeeze him any tighter without hurting him, he would, but instead he settles for dropping another kiss into his hair. This earns him a lazy hum and a tiny nuzzle into his collarbone, and fuck Colt feels himself burning from the cuteness aggression. Little sleepy habits like that will never, ever get old.
“Just a snuggle bug, aren’t ya?” he murmurs, care warming his voice until it’s near dripping with affection, “God, I love you so much, Ry. You’ve got such a big heart, and you’re so tough. You’re gonna get through this, no matter how hard it is. And I’m gonna be right here every step of the way, with all the blankets and hugs and soup you could ask for.”
He makes those promises on and on for the next hour, treasuring every second spent watching over him. There are small readjustments to the blankets, the refreshing of the cool rag over his forehead, the clean smell of his hair. Colt keeps his arms wrapped securely around him, infusing as much protection as he can while dragging his fingers up and down the nape of his neck.
Around 1:30, his phone starts to buzz with the alarm he scheduled, telling him it’s time for Ry’s mid-day pills. He silences it quickly, briefly wondering how late he might be able to push it so that his brother can keep sleeping, but when he turns back, Ryland is blinking up at him with a far away expression on his face.
“Hey, bud,” he beams, immediately returning to tracing little patterns over the crown of his head. “How’d you sleep? Any good dreams?”
Ryland stares at him blankly for a few seconds, before licking his lips slowly and saying, “…Colt?”
“Hey,” he repeats patiently. Sometimes his brain needs a minute after a good snooze. Colt has zero complaints to make—it just means the meds are doing their job.
Another moment passes as Ryland processes what he wants to say. “…mmm…s’it naptime?”
“You just took one, but you can go back to sleep after you eat a little something.”
Ryland frowns. “M’not hungry…jus’ wanna sleep…”
Colt does his best not to let his concern bleed onto his face. Ryland still hasn’t regained the weight he lost since the hospital, and he’s gotten less and less interested in eating pretty much anything with every day that goes by. Colt knows he’s tired, but sleeping seems to be the only thing he’s been wanting to do for the past two weeks, and he has an uneasy feeling that he knows why.
“I know, but you haven’t had anything since nine.” Ryland seems unconvinced, no longer looking at him. “I’ve got some soup in the fridge I can reheat. Chicken noodle,” he coaxes.
“M’okay…” he mumbles, eyes closing.
“C’mon, Ry. It’ll make you feel better,” he tries, but Ryland doesn’t respond. “Hey. I’m serious, I need you to eat something before you take your meds, bud.”
All at once, Ryland’s expression crumples, and tears spill over his lashes. He snakes a trembling hand out from under the blankets and hides his face, but Colt can still hear him choking back sobs.
“M’sorry,” he hiccups, “sorry, jus’– I don’– m’sorry—”
“Hey, hey. Shhh, you’re alright,” he soothes, one hand removing his and wiping away the tears. “Talk to me, bud. What’s going on in that big ol’ brain?”
Ryland turns his face into Colt’s chest, the sounds of his crying getting muffled by his sweatshirt. “M’so awful– you’re jus’ t-tryin’– n’ m’being a-a bad brother–”
“No, Ry, no,” he tells him softly, “You’re not a bad brother. You’re the best brother a guy could ask for. And even if you were being an asshole—which you’re not—you get a free pass here. I’m always gonna forgive you, even if there’s nothing to forgive.”
He can both hear and feel the series of wet coughs Ry lets out into the fabric through his tears. It’s kinda gross, but Colt doesn’t give a single shit, just rubs his back and keeps pressure on his sternum so his chest wound doesn’t flare up. His brother is able to catch his breath after about thirty seconds, but when he pulls back and sees the stain of mucus on Colt’s chest, his lips form that broken horseshoe shape again.
“S-sorry—”
“It’s alright. It’s alright, Ry,” he hushes, voice light as silk, “You can’t help it. I can clean it later, good as new.”
Ryland shakes his head, eyes screwed shut. “Don’ deserve you…”
“Who told you that? Whoever it is, I’m gonna kick their teeth in for being a big fat liar.” This elicits a tiny, wet huff of air. Colt tips his chin up with his fingers to see his face, red and puffy, and gives him a playful no-nonsense look. “Excuse me, was that a laugh? You’re not supposed to be laughing, you’re supposed to be sad.”
He watches Ryland’s mouth twitch, like it’s unsure what shape it should take, but he seems like he’s still on the cusp of breaking down.
Well. Can’t have that.
He braces the hand in his brother’s hair firmly behind his head, and skitters his nails wildly up and down the side of his neck. Ryland’s brain lags for about two seconds before it connects the dots, and Colt watches him do his best to suppress the rising giggles in his throat as he tries and fails to get away.
“Don’t laugh, Ry. Don’t you do it,” he teases, as a huge, stupid smile blooms across his brother’s face.
“Noooo,” he groans, closing his eyes and struggling weakly in his grip, “Coholt…” He presses his cheek down in an effort to trap Colt’s fingers against the mattress.
Colt takes mercy on him and switches to scratching behind his ear, still cradling his head. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, not sorry at all, “but I had to. Can’t have you upset, which means we gotta get to the bottom of this, Ry. What’s going on?”
“Prolly jus’…the stuff…makin’ me ‘motional…” he mutters, which Colt doesn’t believe for a second. But he did just sap up a ton of his brother’s energy, and he can tell by the way his words are running together that his brain is still under the thick fog of the tramadol, so he decides to put a pin in it for now.
“I’m gonna go heat up the soup,” he tells him, choosing to ignore Ryland’s groaning, “Are you gonna be alright for a few minutes?”
Ryland nods wordlessly, sinking back into the pillows. Colt takes a moment to tuck the blankets back around his shoulders and press his lips into his hairline, before retrieving the empty tumbler from the rolling table on his way out.
He tugs his sweatshirt over his head and tosses it onto the nearby counter, making a mental note to run it through the wash later. He waits until he makes it into the kitchen to let out a heaving sigh, one hand coming up to scrub at his eyes as he pulls out the tupperware from the fridge.
God, he feels fucking useless right now. Ryland’s not wrong about his medication’s side effects—he remembers feeling pretty shitty from time to time while he was still on his own opioids—but this…this is clearly something else. He can’t tell if it’s depression, or PTSD, or just all the fucking pain his brother is still in, but whatever it is, it needs to be addressed. He can’t stand watching him suffer like this.
But the thing is, even if he is able to convince Ry to see someone, there’s no guarantee that it’ll work. It might just make it all worse to have to relive what happened, and his twin has had enough of that with all the nightmares. Not to mention the obvious challenge of getting him physically in the room, which could very possibly result in a flare-up or trigger another chronic fatigue episode.
Colt is at a total loss right now, but he can’t just do nothing. Time to seek out some advice from a professional.
“Colt?”
“Hey Court,” he says quietly into the microphone, “Got a minute?”
“Always.” There’s a sound of movement on the other line; Colt can guess that he must have interrupted his brother in the middle of something, but Court has made it very clear that there is nothing in this world that will stop him from picking up the phone. “What’s up?”
“Just, uh…” Colt scans the spotless kitchen, struggling to find the right words to describe the issue, “Ry’s still having a tough time.”
“Tough, like, pain-wise?”
He busies himself with heating up their lunch so he can give his hands something to do. “I mean, yeah, but also as in…mentally? He was in the middle of a panic attack when I got home from PT this morning, and he’s had two more since then.”
A soft exhale through the speaker. “I see. I’m guessing he had another nightmare?” Colt hums to confirm while he stirs the pot. “Need me to come over there?”
“No, no, I think another person might be overwhelming. He’s, uh– he’s spinning out over his recovery. Like, I think he thinks that he’s not getting better quick enough.”
“Recovery takes as long as it takes,” his brother recites sagely. Even though he won’t go into detail about it, Colt gathers Court has had a lot of experience with his own injuries. “And this isn’t a normal situation. It’s not like he broke his ankle– he’s having to heal from a bunch of stuff all at once, with contradictory treatments. It’s just gonna take a while.”
Colt resists the urge to roll his eyes—this is all stuff he already knows. “Yeah, but he wasn’t like this before we brought him home. I think he’s getting frustrated with all the waiting, and…” He lets out another long sigh. “It’s the guilt, the– the ‘burden’ of having to be taken care of, y’know? And like, I get it: I felt the same way after I broke my back, but it mostly went away after a couple weeks, and I’m worried that this is just getting worse the longer it goes on. And I’ve told him every way I know how that that’s not an issue, and he’ll maybe calm down for like, a couple hours, but then he’s right back in that pit again. I guess I just– I don’t know what to do.”
“Colt, it sucks, but I’m not sure you can do anything other than what you already are. Has he given any more thought to seeing a therapist? Or at the very least a psychiatrist, maybe get him on some kind of medication?”
Right. Because telling Ry he has to take yet another pill is gonna blow over so easily.
“Not yet. I’m trying to wait until he’s stable enough to take it well. But the thing is, I don’t know how I should, like, do that. Like, how to go about it.” He’s gone over this conversation about a bajillion times in his head, but he just doesn’t see a way to have it that doesn’t end in his brother devolving into more heartbreaking tears.
Court is quiet for a moment, before saying, “Remember how I used to get you guys to take your medicine when you were sick? You didn’t like how it tasted, so I gave you ice cream and I let you put on whatever movie you wanted to watch until you both fell asleep.”
“Court, how does that have anything to do with this?” He feels his frustration kicking his volume up a notch, and has to take a second to breathe deeply through his nose. “I’m already giving him whatever he wants, except he doesn’t want anything.”
But Court just chuckles a little. “Look, I’m not saying it’s the same situation, but you try getting two miserable five year-olds with the flu to do something they don’t want to, just because it’s good for them. Turns out, you really can’t, unless you give them a ‘choice.’ Either you can stay in bed and sleep it off, or you can take the damn Nyquil and watch The Lion King on the couch with your brother past your bedtime—” He cuts off then, clearly realizing he let himself go a little too far with this analogy. “What I mean is: Ryland has no control right now. You need to give him some kind of stable ground to land on– and honestly, I think if it gets to be ‘his’ decision to get help, he won’t struggle so much with the guilt, because he’d be getting better on his own.”
Colt chews on the inside of his cheek as he processes what his brother is saying. He’s been so caught up in making sure Ry has nothing to worry about, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might be smothering him by doing everything for him. His own guilt surges inside his chest at the revelation—if that’s part of what’s going on, then Colt has been making everything worse this entire time.
“I…shit. Shit, you’re right, Court.”
“‘Course I am, squirt,” he quips, though the sarcasm is softened by his old nickname, “Not my first rodeo.”
Colt chuckles. “Thanks, man.”
“Of course,” he replies warmly, “Let me know how it goes. And I’ll be there tomorrow at eleven forty-five. Need me to pick anything up at the store?”
Colt thinks about this. He’d been planning on doing a grocery run later, but it’s looking like that’s not going to happen today. “Uhhh. Gatorade, maybe? Oh, and toilet paper, and maybe some sci-fi book or something for Ry since he’s been bored as fuck. But don’t worry about it if you don’t have time.”
“I was gonna bring some stuff over anyway. And I’ve always got time for you guys.” He says it so sincerely that Colt feels his face heat up. “Call me if you need anything else, okay? I love you both.”
It still makes his head spin, hearing those words said so easily after so long. “Love you, too, Court. Tell Claire I said hi.”
He finishes reheating the soup and grabs today’s get-well-soon card from the unread stack on the counter, which is tipping over like the Tower of Pisa with how many they’ve been getting every week. This is one of the parts of his caregiving routine that Colt is proudest of for coming up with: every day, Ry gets a new one to remind him of just how many people he’s got to support him.
He knocks quietly on the door before pushing it open with his foot. He’s immensely relieved to find his brother has gone back to dozing while he was on the phone, completely relaxed and sunk into the pillows. Colt can only hope he’s able to stay that way once he goes to wake him up again.
He sets down Ryland’s bowl and his refilled water onto the table, leaving his own on the nightstand to softly run his fingers through his hair. “Hey, bub. You with me?”
Ryland peels his eyes open with great effort. It takes a few seconds for them to really focus on Colt, glazed over as they are, but when he does—thank God—he doesn’t immediately break down into tears this time. “Colt?”
“The one and only,” he beams at him, “Feeling like you could eat something yet?”
“Sssssurrrre,” he drags the word out in the way that tells Colt he wasn’t actually listening. At least he makes no protest when he helps him to sit up, though he does shiver a bit when the blanket falls away.
He rolls the table over his brother’s lap and crawls onto his own side of the bed. He’s about to reach over and adjust the blanket for him, but he catches himself. If Ry is cold, he can do it himself. Another idea strikes him at the same time.
“Hey, Ry? Wanna see if you can eat by yourself? Might be good practice for your left hand.”
Ryland flops his head over to look at him through half-lidded eyes. He buffers for a minute, before slurring out, “m’lef’…? Uhhhhhhh…’kay.” Then he stares blankly at the spoon in front of him, like he’s not sure how it works.
Colt fights the urge to help him out, instead making a big show of his own meal to remind Ry of what he’s talking about. Ryland seems to get the hint, picking up the utensil awkwardly with his non-dominant hand and bringing it down in slow-motion to the surface of the broth. He manages to get a shaky spoonful up for about three seconds, before it all trickles back into the bowl.
He blinks at the empty spoon in confusion. “S’not working.”
“It’s okay. Give it another shot,” Colt encourages patiently.
He tries again. This time, the liquid splatters across the top of the table, and he frowns at it like it just told him it’s never seen Star Trek. After lagging for a long moment, he turns to Colt with furrowed brows. “Can you…um, sorry—”
But Colt is already setting his own bowl down and scootching beside him to help. “‘Course, man. It’s what I’m here for.”
Maybe it was a bit optimistic to think Ryland would be with it enough to complete the task on his own, but he figured he might as well try. And it’s more than a little relieving that he finally asked for help on his own—he’s taken to only doing that when he needs to go to the bathroom.
Colt waves the card he brought with him under his nose between bites. “Got another one for ya. You wanna read it, or you want me to?”
His brother smushes the side of his face into Colt’s shoulder, so he presses back into him to lend him some of his body heat. “Y’can read, please.”
Colt manages not to laugh at how he worded the request like an order, and unfolds the cardstock with the words ‘Thinking of You’ spelled out by elements of the periodic table on the front. He clears his throat dramatically, catching Ryland’s dopey smile out of the corner of his eye.
“Dearest Ryland,” he reads, free hand coming up absentmindedly to scratch at the back of his brother’s neck, “I hope the holidays have provided you with plenty of rest. Your students have been doing very well in your absence, though they ask after you every day. I’m so sorry to hear that you’ve gone on leave, as I miss you and our thought-provoking conversations between periods sorely. Those of us in the Three-Hundreds Hall have been thinking of you each and every day, and we are all praying for your speedy recovery. Please, do not hesitate to reach out to any of us for any reason. Warmest wishes of health for my favorite neighbor, Lydia Mauser.”
“She’s so kind,” his brother mumbles quietly, “s’my classroom neighbor…teaches english…”
No shit. Colt can tell she’s also probably up there in years, if the tiny cursive handwriting is any indication. He really had to squint to make it all out.
He sets it standing on the table before continuing to feed Ryland, who has given up on holding his head up by himself in place of leaning the full weight of his face onto Colt’s shoulder. It makes it a little challenging to not spill everywhere, but if that’s where Ry wants to be, then that’s where he’s gonna stay. They make it halfway through the bowl before he starts turning his face further into Colt’s bicep to avoid the spoon, but this doesn’t seem like something worth making a fuss over, so Colt begrudgingly lets it go. He gives Ryland his heart meds before digging in himself, the entire left side of his body pressed up against him and all but bracing him from falling over.
“Wanna try for another nap?” he asks when Ryland lets out a small yawn.
He shakes his head. “M’too tired t’sleep.”
“Heard,” he replies, when another idea occurs to him. “Hey. You know what this day needs? A movie.”
For some reason, the offer makes his brother light up behind glassy eyes. “‘Kay. What’re weeee…” he drifts off in the middle of his sentence, and takes a couple seconds before finishing, “…watchin’…?”
Colt slurps up the rest of his noodle—he did a pretty decent job with Mom’s recipe, if he does say so himself—before reaching for the remote. “Whatever you want. Whatcha in the mood for?”
“…mood for,” Ryland repeats, thinking hard. His eyes go unfocused for so long that Colt starts to think he’s about to pass out again (it would not be the first time he’s dropped off without warning), when he suddenly blurts out, “moooovieee.”
Great, so now that they’ve established that the movie they’re going to watch will be a movie, the next step is narrowing down the specifics. Given that Ryland has gone full space-cadet, the wisest choice will be something they’ve seen before, preferably with a tame plot.
“What about genre, bud? Sci-fi? Romance?” He cuts it off at two choices so Ryland’s mind will be able to catch up.
“‘Kay,” he replies with conviction, before a flash of clarity breaks across his face, and adds, “The one with the…weird music. The blue one.”
The blue one with the weird music. Which may or may not be either a sci-fi or a romance or both.
Colt shuts his eyes, trying to get inside the mind of a massive dork with the processing speed of Windows ‘98.
“Oh, are you talking about the opera lady from Fifth Element?” His guess gets confirmed by a pleased hum and a small nuzzle into the crook of his neck. Colt feels a swell of pride at being able to decipher his brother’s incredibly zooted description—what can he say? He really is the leading expert on Ryland Grace.
He pulls up Ry’s profile on the streaming service—Jody had got him set up with an ad-free bundle of a bunch of them, which admittedly they’ve all been benefiting from—and starts up the movie. He feels Ryland shift slightly beside him, then wince a little as the opening credits play.
“Colt?” comes his voice, quiet and sheepish.
“What’s up?”
“Um…” He sneaks a self-conscious glance at him before looking away quickly. “…no…”
Colt just manages to keep a frown from making its appearance. “Tell me what you need, Ry. Anything.”
“S’embarrassing…”
Oh, Ry. Doesn’t he know by now that Colt would do anything for him? “I’m never gonna judge you, bub. And right now, my job is to pamper you. Whatever you want, you’re getting it from me. Nothing’s too big.”
He considers this for a moment, eyes trained lazily on the TV. “Jus’…m’neck…ouch.”
“Your neck is sore?” Ryland’s lip quivers, but he nods. Colt flashes him the warmest smile he has. “Want me to rub it?”
When he nods again, Colt wastes no time in carefully maneuvering himself so that he’s sitting upright against the headboard with his brother laying on top of him, resting Ry’s head on his chest. He finally caves and swaddles him in the blankets again, before firmly pressing his thumbs into his traps. They’re incredibly stiff, a massive knot locking up just at the base of his neck, probably from having to sleep at such an awkward angle. He feels something squeeze at his heart at the realization that this has probably been bothering him for a while now, and he hadn’t said anything.
Ryland melts immediately into his touch with a small sigh. “You’re so nice t’me…”
Jesus Christ, the bar is in hell.
“Ryland, listen to me. What I said before, about you deserving this? I wasn’t kidding. Your neck is sore? I’m gonna give you the best damn massage of your life. You feel gross? I’ll wipe you down until you’re squeaky clean. You’re sad? I’m gonna hold you so tight you’ll be begging for room to breathe. I promise you Ry, there is nothing on this planet that I wouldn’t do for you.”
He feels the tightening of muscle beneath his touch at his words, like some kind of wall his brother has to erect to brace for an imaginary impact. Seeing him like this—barely a ghost of himself—it drags Colt’s mind back to the memory of how he found him back in that hospital bed: all the tubes and wires keeping him alive, the metal in his skin, the looming threat of permanent damage that not even he could save him from. And those words; those promises he made him that fell on comatose ears, the ones he feared he would never get the chance to fulfill, rise with it like a hymn:
“…You’re gonna be safe, and warm, and cozy, and nothing in this world is ever gonna touch you again. We’re gonna spoil you so bad, Jody and me. We’ll give you the bed with all those blankets that you love, and we’re gonna feed you soup just like Mom did, and we’ll watch whatever you want until you’re better. I’m gonna get you whatever you want. Don’t you worry about a thing, bub. We’ve got it all covered…”
“M’not worth it…”
The moment his brother recites those words like they’re an indisputable fact is the same one in which Colt feels his heart shatter. He takes in a shuddering breath, trying to force himself away from the sharp edge of grief, because right now, what Ryland needs is tenderness. He needs comfort. He needs warmth. He needs to be handled with gentleness. Care. Love. All those things he once gave to Colt.
He wraps his arms around his neck and pulls him into a soft hug, tucking the fluff of his hair beneath his chin.
“You are, Ryland. You’re worth more than all the people in this world put together. I’m so lucky that you’re in my life—that you’re still in my life…’cause I– I almost lost you, Ry. You were there– right there in front of me, and all I could think about was how…how if you left me here by myself, I wouldn’t…” He swallows against the tightness in his throat. “There’s not a world without you in it that I want any part of. And what I watched him do to you—” he sighs, pushing away the memory of his broken body on the cold concrete to focus on clearing away the tension in his brother’s shoulders.
“…let’s just say, you’re not the only one getting nightmares,” he continues, voice growing watery, “But you found your way back to me when you could just as easily have chosen to rest. There’s nothing I’ll ever be able to give you that’ll come close to making it up to you, but I’ll be damned if I don’t spend the rest of my life trying. And this? This right here? This is easy. Taking care of you is the easiest fucking thing I’ve ever done. Keeping you warm and cozy is easy. Helping you eat and shave and washing your hair is easy. Loving you is easy, Ry– it’s like breathing. I don’t even have to think about it.”
He hides the heat behind his eyes in his brother’s hair, hanging onto him like a lifeline as he fights to get ahold of his emotions. Ryland goes quiet for so long Colt begins to wonder if he’s fallen asleep again.
“…m’tired…”
Colt sighs. He should’ve known Ryland was too doped up to be having this conversation—
“…don’ wanna do it anymore…”
When Ry cranes his neck to look up at him, Colt is met with an expression of what he can only describe as pure exhaustion. The lines on his face are worn deep into his skin like impressions in clay, the same ashen shade hanging beneath his eyes.
“Do what, bub? Watch the movie?”
Ryland grimaces, corners of his mouth sagging with gravity. He sucks in a ragged breath, and whispers in a broken voice, “…be here.”
Colt gasps softly before he can stop it, his own sympathy tears welling to the surface. “You mean…?”
He feels the floor drop out from under him when his twin gives him a limp nod, a fresh stream of tears cascading down his face and dribbling onto his chin. Panic and guilt and about fifty other unpleasant-as-fuck emotions swirl inside Colt’s chest like a hurricane. When he’d said all that, he hadn’t realized– he didn’t know that Ry– that it was this bad—
“S-sorry– don’ know w-why—” Ryland is fully sobbing now, and he just looks so…small. Like Colt could fit him in the palm of his hand if he tried. How could anyone do that to him?
Ryland is the one who’s supposed to have the answers. He’s always bending down to lift others onto his shoulders. He charms people without even trying—without even realizing it. His kids love him. His coworkers love him. His family and his friends and even the fucking waiter at that stupid bar love him. He makes the world better just by being in it. And someone made him want to leave it?
Colt wiggles himself down closer and he just– he holds him. As much as he can, trying to carry even a fraction of the weight that must have been sitting silent on his poor brother’s chest this entire time.
“I’m here, Ry. I’m right here, always. You’re not alone. You’re never alone.” Colt is close to crying now, too. Every bone in his body aches at the thought that Ryland could believe for even a second that he’d be better off without him. “I– I know it feels heavy. I know that. It hurts. Of course it does. Right now it hurts. Right now’s not gonna last forever. I promise you.”
“Jus’–” Ryland’s breath hitches. Colt rubs gentle circles over his heart—his beautiful, fragile heart. “Nothing seems– It doesn’ stop. N-need it t-to stop. Please—”
“We’re gonna make it stop,” he promises, using the pads of his fingers to brush away the hot streaks, “We’re gonna get through it together, Ry. Just– just stick with me. I’m gonna make it better.”
“M’so useless,” Ryland bawls. Colt slides out from beneath him and turns to hold his face to his chest so that he has somewhere to hide his tears; a soft place to land. “H-he– he broke me—”
“You’re not broken, and you’re not useless,” he hushes, “You’re just hurting. That’s human. You are so normal for feeling this way after all of that shit. And we’re gonna get you some help, yeah? Gonna get you a place to put it all that’s just for you.” He plants his lips on his forehead, warmed by the medication, and cradles his head to his heart. “Hey. Thank you for telling me. Thank you. Admitting it is the scariest part. You’re so brave, Ry, and I’m so proud of you.”
“P-please don’ leave me,” he whimpers.
“Never,” Colt breathes, pressing their foreheads together and cupping his hand over Ryland’s cheek, “Never. I’m not leaving you, and you’re not leaving me, okay? You’ve got so many people who love you, and we’re gonna carry you to that finish line, no matter how far it is. Me, and Jodes, and Court and Claire. And Lydia Mauser.”
Despite all of it, a wet chuckle breaks through the sobs at Colt’s stupid fucking joke. He holds Ry’s face with gentle fingers, thumbs clearing the tears as they come, and then Ryland snakes a hand out from the bundle of blankets and holds him back. Colt takes it in his and kisses the palm that once bandaged his scraped knees, that taught him how to hold a pencil, that peeled back his fingers and showed him that the world could be more than a closed fist.
“It’s s’much,” his brother mumbles with a thick, scratchy voice, “jus’ feels like…like…I dunno…”
“Overwhelming?” Colt guesses. Ryland bites his lip as another droplet falls, nodding. “I’ve got a list. On– on my laptop. I’ve been looking into it, just in case. I found a couple people that are local, with all different backgrounds. We can go through ‘em together, and if you see one you like we can set up an appointment. Some of ‘em even do it on a video call, so you wouldn’t have to leave if– if it’s a bad pain day. Whatever you wanna do, Ry. I can even come with, if you want.”
Ryland sniffles, but his tears slow down. He takes a deep breath. “Can– can I see? The list?”
“How about a little later? You’re exhausted. Here,” he says, sitting up and reaching carefully across for his tumbler and the box of tissues, “drink some water. You’re probably dehydrated.” He holds the straw to his lips, and Ryland takes a few good sips while Colt uses his other hand to dry his splotchy face. “What do you wanna do right now?”
Ryland releases the bottle once he’s had enough, and rests his head wearily back onto the pillow. “Um…can we…movie?”
Colt slides his arm beneath his shoulders and pulls him closer, a real smile blooming across his lips. “Yeah pal. We can movie.”
He resettles him under the nest of blankets, body pulsing with warmth when Ry leans his head back on his chest. His brother is absolutely spent at this point, and it only takes about three minutes for him to start nodding off in his arms. Colt just snuggles him tighter.
“I love you,” he tells him as his eyelids begin to droop.
“…mmm…love…y’too……y’r so warmmm…”
Colt replaces the rag over his forehead, which seems to be all the motivation Ryland needs to let his eyes fall closed. He drops another gentle kiss into his hair. “Let go, bud. Just rest. I’ve got you.”
He watches dutifully as Ry drifts off again, whispering soft promises of tenderness and care that he will die before breaking. He puts the movie on low volume to help him sleep, but leaves it playing in case his brother wakes up again and wants to keep watching, fighting against the shock and trying his best to find the steadiness he needs to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to do.
Everything will be alright, Ry. I’m gonna take care of you.
–
Ryland wakes up from a dreamless sleep to the sounds of quiet talking, and the pressure of two bodies beside him.
“Welcome back, sleepyhead,” he hears Colt murmur, followed by the slow, deliberate splaying of his fingers in his hair.
“How’re you feeling, stinker?” comes a low voice from his other side.
He licks his dry lips, confused. “Court? What are you doing here?”
“Just felt like coming to see you,” he answers simply, pressing a soft kiss to his temple, “Needed some Ry time.”
“Oh.” He can’t really remember his and Colt’s last conversation, but he has a sinking feeling there’s more to it than his brother is letting on. “Is Claire here?”
“She’s at the apartment.” Court purses his lips, “She, uh– she brought a friend over.” He reaches into his back pocket at the puzzled look on Ryland’s face, and pulls up a photo of a tiny black ball of fur cradled in the hands of his niece, who beams brightly at the camera. “She found him digging through a dumpster behind the school, so now he's my problem.”
“But…aren’t you allergic to cats?”
Court lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Yup. Picked up a lifetime supply of Claritin from the store, and a couple other things for Raider– that’s his name.”
Ryland suppresses what would be a painful chuckle; his brother is wrapped around that kid’s finger. “You’ve gotta get better at saying no to her, Court.”
He drags a tired hand down his face. “Well, she originally wanted to name him Fuckface for some reason, which was vetoed.”
“You and your strays,” Colt quips.
“Shut up,” Court rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. He turns back to Ryland, fingers finding the back of his neck as his tone shifts to something more gentle. “Hey. Colt told me you weren’t feeling good. Wanna tell me about that?”
“Um,” he tries to sit up on shaking arms, wincing at the aching it brings. His brothers immediately support his back and rearrange the pillows behind him to take his weight. He knows it’s supposed to be comforting. It just makes him feel like an invalid. “Just, uh…not feeling great. I dunno.”
He has to fight back the rising guilt that surfaces from the patient looks on both of their faces. You’re so selfish, Ryland. Just be an adult.
“It’s okay, y’know,” Colt tells him, voice as soft as the blanket he pulls over his shoulders, “to not feel great, after all of this. No one can blame you for that. We’re here for you, and we want to help, but…we can’t do that if you don’t let us know what’s going on, Ry.”
“Whatever you say in this room will stay here,” Court adds, “And we won’t judge you for it. Any of it. You’re safe here.”
Ryland swallows hard, forcing his shoulders to relax in the effort to keep it together, at least on the outside. If he allows himself to talk about it, then it’s real—there’d be no more denying how bad it’s gotten, and no saving his family from sharing in the oppressive darkness that refuses to clear no matter how hard they try. But after everything he’s put them through, they deserve an answer, even if it’s not the complete truth.
“I guess I…I’m just…tired. All the time. Like, I can’t do anything, but I also can’t change it, so just–” he shrugs dismissively, “why try, y’know? If none of it matters anyway.” He doesn’t allow himself to meet their eyes, the shame of the admission beginning to circle his throat like a noose. Shut up. For the love of God, just stop.
“I’m sorry you’re feeling like that, bub,” Court says, “That’s a lot to carry by yourself.”
Ryland almost scoffs at the hypocrisy in his statement, but restrains himself.
“You guys shouldn’t have to deal with one more thing from me,” he says, keeping his voice level, “I’m already intruding on your life and ruining your sleep.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve probably slept better in the past couple weeks than I have in years, dude. You make a great body pillow.” As if to prove his point, Colt rests his chin on his shoulder. Ryland can smell his shampoo. “And you’re always gonna be a part of my life, so it’s, like, not possible for you to intrude.”
“And even if you walked out of all of that without a scratch, we’re still gonna worry about you.” Court does the same thing on his other side, and the two of them must read each other’s minds, because then they’re wrapping their arms around his chest and squeezing with a gentle pressure. “You’re our brother, Ry. It’s our job to look out for you.”
But nothing they can do for him will save him from the storm inside his own mind. “I’m sorry…”
“Permission to speak plainly, general?” Colt asks in a stupid deep voice. Court huffs from his left.
He chews on his lip, preparing for the next blow. “Yeah…”
Colt takes a deep breath. “Ry, I think these nightmares you’ve been having is your brain trying to tell you something. I’m not a doctor, and I’m not here to diagnose you, but I want to be honest about what I’ve been seeing. I think it’s time to seriously consider getting a therapist– and let me be clear: this is not me calling you weak, or broken. You are the strongest guy out there to go through all of that. And it doesn’t make you any less of a man to admit you need help after you get hurt. Hell, I’m still learning how to do that– in fact, I actually started seeing someone after all the Ryder bullshit.”
This gets Ryland to look at him. Colt never told him about any of that. “Really?”
He smiles softly, nodding. “Mmhmm. I had a lot of anger inside me, and it was eating me alive—kept thinking everybody was out to get me. Like, paranoid and shit. And you know what made me see a shrink?” Ryland shakes his head. “Because I knew that if I didn’t get help for it, I was just gonna push everyone away again. And I couldn’t go back to that, because being alone fucking sucked. I wanted to be the kind of man that Jody needed, and the kind of brother you deserved, so…yeah. I went to a therapist.”
“Did it…did it help?”
Colt trills air through his lips, letting the back of his head knock against the headboard. “I mean, honestly? Not at first. But I wasn’t really trying all that hard during those first couple sessions. Guess I just…didn’t think it would really work, so I didn’t put in the effort. But the longer I stuck with it, the easier it got. I just had to think of it as, like, PT for the mind,” his brows pinch together, “Or, I guess PT is like therapy for the body– Wait. You know what I mean.”
The old Ryland would laugh at that. This one doesn’t. “I just don’t…” he sighs, “I don’t know if I want to talk about it to a stranger.”
“You know that’s what they get paid to do, right?” Court asks, “Like, they go to school just to learn how to listen. Their job is to make you feel better, like any other doctor. And, Ry…” he shoots a glance over at his twin, “you never really talk about what happened to you before we got there. Which is fine,” he adds quickly, “but you’re only poisoning yourself by keeping it inside.”
“We’re worried about you, bud,” Colt continues for him, “It’s obviously hurting you, and we hate seeing you like that. Right now should be about healing, not fighting with yourself over whether or not you deserve to be taken care of.”
Court squeezes him again. “You do, by the way. You deserve to be treated with kindness, kid. You deserve it anyway, but especially right now. Recovery is hard, and you’re already in a lot of pain. The cuts, the leg, the cough—”
“The fucking heart attack—”
“The fucking heart attack,” Court agrees, “All that surgery you had. The surgery you still need to have…Ryland, you almost died.”
“You did die,” Colt whispers quietly, his hand moving back to its place in Ryland’s hair, “Medically speaking, you died, man. Of course you’re not gonna just bounce back from all that, Ry. Nobody could, but you need to stop being so hard on yourself. It’s our job to worry about the life stuff—yours is to rest.”
Ryland feels his lip tremble at the weight of their words. It’s all so heavy, and no matter how many hours slip by as he lays here, nothing is getting better—if anything, it’s getting worse. “…it’s so hard…”
They both hold him tighter, yet impossibly gentle. Court kisses his temple again, the same way he did every night to get him and Colt to sleep while he watched over them. “I know. But that’s why you can’t waste your energy on feeling guilty. We’re here, doing all of this, because we want to make it easier for you. Lighten the load.”
By carrying it all for you. Look at what you’re doing, Grace. Do you really think handing off the hurt to them is going to fix what’s broken?
He needs to say something. He needs them to let him pay his own penance. He just– he needs it to be over already.
He exhales a shallow sigh through the sharp sting of his lungs, searching for any kind of answer that might satisfy them enough to get them to let it go. “Guys…honestly, it’s been really difficult, not being able to do all the stuff I used to. I miss being able to take a shower, and walk, even just going outside. And I–” he shuts his eyes in a pathetic attempt to shield himself from the pity in theirs, “I miss my kids. God, I miss them so much. And the cards have been great, but it’s just…not the same as being with them. I never got to tell them goodbye, and by the time I’ll be able to work again they’re gonna be in eighth grade, and I won’t get to teach them anymore.” This part, at least, is true.
“Oh, Ry…” Colt mumbles, burying his face in his hair.
He lets out a dismissive chuckle. What little he just confided is nothing compared to what’s brimming under the surface, but if Colt keeps talking to him in that voice, he’s not sure he’ll be able to keep it locked in the cage it belongs in. “It’s fine. I know it’s dumb.”
“It’s not,” Colt says firmly, “You love those little rugrats.”
“Colt, I–” he cuts off at the sound of his voice breaking, an unexpected rush of emotion escaping his white-knuckle grip. “I don’t– I can’t go back to work like this. I can’t even keep it together for more than a few hours, and– and they need someone stable. Not some blubbering idiot who’s gonna freak out if someone brushes his shoulder.”
He feels his twin tense beside him, face twisted in a blurry frown. “You…you’re scared of people touching you? Do you not want us to—”
“No, no. Please don’t–” his breath hitches, “Don’t stop. I need– I need this, or else…”
I might come apart completely, if you’re not holding me together.
They press closer. He lets them lean into him enough that they’ll believe it’s working, but underneath the warmth of their bodies, his blood has turned to ice. “I hate that I can’t even sleep through the night if one of you isn’t with me. But you need to be with Claire, Court. And Colt, you should sleep with Jody, she’s your partner.”
“Ryland, if you need someone with you, that’s okay,” Court tells him gently, “And you know those two actually spend the night with each other, like, all the time, right?”
“Yeah, they were kicking me out constantly during Christmas,” Colt huffs, though it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t mind. “Girl’s night was a thing, like, at least twice a week. And I’m off the hook tonight; Jodes is staying on set.”
Court nods as some kind of thought comes to him. “Hey. Why don’t the three of us do something like that tonight?”
“You mean, like a…a sleepover?” Ryland asks.
Colt seems to really take to the idea. “Yeah, yeah. We can watch a movie or something. Talk about the girls we like.”
Ryland and Court both look at each other with a withering eyeroll, but their smiles give them away. Then his older brother lifts his eyebrows and asks, “Does that sound alright, Ry?”
He shifts a little, grimacing at the series of pains it ignites. They probably don’t trust him to be by himself—this offer is really just one more obligation he’s forcing them to take on. “If you guys want to...”
Apparently, the tone he used is convincing enough, because then they both nod, and at the same time say, “Of course.”
“Um, but do you think,” he turns to Colt, trying to find the energy required to maintain the illusion, “Can I see the…you said you had a list? Did I dream that?”
Colt is already reaching over to the nightstand and grabbing his laptop. “‘Course. I have a whole google doc with their specialties and reviews and everything.”
Court leaves him with a smooch on his hairline to go make dinner as they go over it all. Colt has them all organized into categories, with informative blurbs on their backgrounds beneath their pictures. Ryland lets his brother scroll through the names, reading each one carefully and trying to suppress the shame compressing his heart.
“The biggest thing I want you to think about is finding someone you feel comfortable sharing it all with. Do you have a preference on gender?”
Ryland chews on this. “Is it weird to ask for a guy?” He’s not really sure if that qualifies as some kind of misogyny.
Colt shrugs, then navigates to where he’s already grouped the men on the list together. “There’s a reason Jodes is seeing a female OB-GYN. You pick whoever is gonna make you feel safest.”
They begin reviewing each by their experience with different treatments, Colt encouraging him to be honest about what he thinks of every candidate.
“I like Leclerc,” Ryland mumbles half-heartedly, “The stuff on nature-based grounding seems interesting. But I’m not sure if I’m a huge fan of having to go in person, just ‘cause I might not have the energy on the day.”
“That’s okay,” Colt continues swiping, “What about Dr. Komorov? He does a program on addiction. Might be helpful once it’s time to get you off the pills.”
He lets out a noncommittal hum. “It kinda seems like he focuses more on alcoholism– wait. Who’s that?” he asks, pointing to a photo of a man with glasses and floppy salt-and-pepper hair, smiling brightly at the camera. If he squints, he thinks he can just barely make out the back of a wheelchair behind him.
“Dr. Ricardo Garcia. Specializes in treating patients after trauma events. Looks like he does a lot of work with people who become disabled later in life. And he takes video calls. You like him?” Colt looks up, a hopeful gleam in his eye.
Ryland studies the face on the screen carefully. He seems…trustworthy, for some inexplicable reason. Like someone he might get a beer with. “I do, I think.”
“He gets great reviews. Good listener, relatable. He also does family and couple’s counseling, apparently.” He clicks on the hyperlink to the provider page and pulls up the calendar. “He’s got availability next week. Want me to schedule an appointment?”
“Does it have to be so soon?” he asks too quickly.
Colt takes his hand, careful not to agitate the splint. “We don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for, Ry. But I really think this is a good first step.”
He traces a finger along the callused lines of his brother’s palm. “I know, but I’m not sure if I’m ready yet.”
“It might not work out the first time,” Colt cautions, “Took me a couple tries to find Dr. Lokken. But you won’t know unless you try. You don’t have to do the full hour. How do you feel about twenty minutes for the first one?”
“Seems kinda short, Colt.”
“I know, but we gotta take care of your heart, Ry. I don’t want you overexerting yourself, you’re already at risk for chronic fatigue.”
Ryland allows his face to fall into his brother’s hair, unable to find it within himself to really care either way.
Colt is quiet for a long time, before he says, “I’ll make you a deal: we can go in person for the first one, and if you like this guy, we can switch you over to doing a video call from bed and see if you wanna go for longer. That way, you’ll be in a familiar space, and you can end it early if you need to. How does that sound?”
Ryland can tell this must have been on Colt’s mind for a while, considering how uncharacteristically prepared he is. He put in all this effort on the off chance that it might make a difference, and while he privately doesn’t think it will, Colt deserves to have some of the anxiety taken off his shoulders.
“Deal.”
A small amount of light returns to Colt’s eyes when he acquiesces. His brother helps him fill out the intake form, which is when it hits him just how many of his symptoms are considered clinically worrisome. Colt coaches him through all of it, though admittedly he doesn’t allow himself to be completely honest about the worst of it.
He gives him a tiny fist bump when it’s over, pride shining in his eyes. “You’re so strong, Ry. I hope you know that.”
“I don’t know why you keep saying that,” he ducks his gaze away, heat rising to his face, “Look at me, Colt. I can’t even sit up on my own.”
“Didn’t stop you from saying it when it was me,” he counters, “And I’m not talking physical strength. It’s, like, inner strength. To wake up each day and make the choice to keep trying, even though it hurts.”
“I’m not sure if I could do any of that if it wasn’t for you,” he tells him sincerely, leaning in when Colt puts his arm around his shoulders.
“You know I’d do anything for you, right? I mean it. I know I said it all the time after the fall, but I never really got to show you how much it meant to me that you were there; you could have just as easily kicked me to the curb for being a total douche. But instead you rubbed my back, and swaddled me like a baby– Ryland, you actually wiped my ass. I’m not just gonna forget that.”
“Yeah,” a small grin breaks through, “neither am I.” Colt gives his hair a thorough ruffle for that.
“I saw how hard it was for you, though,” he says after a moment, expression sobering, “how tired you were, back when it was just us. And I know I didn’t help that, sometimes…I still haven’t forgiven myself for all the stupid shit I said.”
“You were in pain,” he replies softly, “I’d never hold it against you.”
But Colt just shakes his head. “That doesn’t make it okay, Ry. I acted like an asshole to the only person in my life who gave a shit about me, and you just…let it go. A lot of people would have given up on me. I gave up on me. But you didn’t. And there wasn’t even anyone you could lean on back then; not like there is for me now. I can tag out pretty much whenever I want, so you’ll just have to forgive me for smothering you, ‘cause I’ve got a shit-ton of stamina.”
Ryland studies his face. He has to admit: Colt looks incredibly put together. There are no bags under his eyes, he has a healthy color to his skin, and he seems well-rested. None of which Ryland could say about himself almost four years ago.
“You don’t smother me. I…I don’t hate it, y’know,” he confides sheepishly.
Colt’s eyes bug in shock. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he blushes softly, “I just hate how much you have to do for me. It feels like I’m…like I’m taking advantage of you.” Colt immediately goes to object, but Ryland doesn’t give him time to, “But I like it, Colt. Getting to spend time with you, I mean.”
They lapse into silence again. Ryland feels another wave of shame wash over him.
But then his brother tells him, “I love doing all of it for you, Ry. Washing your hair, and changing your bandages, and keeping you warm and stuff. You’ve been through enough hard shit. You shouldn’t have to be in any more pain, and it’s my job to make sure you’re not. But you know what my favorite part is?”
“What?”
“Watching you drift off in my arms. ‘Cause I know…I know sometimes you’re scared to; giving up control like that, not knowing if you’re gonna wake up screaming. Makes me feel like I’m doing something right—that you feel safe enough with me to let me take over so you can rest. And you know how much I love dopey Ry, ‘cause he’s putty in my hands. And he says some wild shit, too.”
“Oh my gosh,” he mumbles, hiding his embarrassment in Colt’s shoulder.
“Aw, come on, Ry,” his brother teases, “You’re fucking hilarious when you’re high. And then you get all sleepy, and sometimes you do the grabby hands at me so I’ll come over and give you snuggles. Ugh, it makes me wanna squeeze you ‘til you pop. And don’t get me started on how happy you get when it’s me and Court. You get this blissed-out look on your face like you’re just in paradise, especially when we start doing this.”
He begins dragging his nails over Ryland’s scalp, sending warm tingles down his back and forcing his muscles to relax into the pillows on reflex. He hears Colt laugh at him, but darn it if he’s not right.
“If you keep doing that, I’m gonna fall asleep.”
“That’s the point,” he says warmly.
There’s a knock at the door, and then Court walks in with three steaming containers of tupperware balanced in his arms. He smiles when he sees them like that, before passing out their dinner and sitting to Ryland’s left.
“This is baked salmon, and…what I think is quinoa?” he tells them, giving it a try. The look on his face signals that it lives up to his standards. He turns to give Ryland a bite; it’s pretty good, actually (if mostly bland), and Ryland considers himself to be an expert on quinoa at this point. Colt seems satisfied by it, too, because he practically inhales it.
But as the meal goes on, Ryland is becoming increasingly more aware of the pain running through his body, cracking across his nerves like dull lightning at every slight shift. He’s fairly certain they’re a couple hours past due for his next dose of tramadol, but he knows that the pain will be inevitable anyway once he finally kicks the drugs, so he resolves to just breathe through it.
He leans against the headboard while Colt goes to put away the dishes, feeling sweat begin to bead on the back of his neck. It’s not as bad as it was during that first week at home, but it certainly is nowhere close to being pleasant.
“Ry?” Court asks quietly. He gets the sense that he might have missed him saying his name a couple times.
He forces himself to open his eyes and meet his brother’s gaze, giving him what must be the least convincing smile in history. “Hmm?”
“I asked if you’re alright,” he repeats, concern hedging his tone, “Your color’s a little off.”
“Yeah, um– yeah. Think I—” he breaks off when a sharp pain tweaks at his chest scar, setting off a chain reaction of spasms across the rest of his body. The muscles in his back tense, close to bucking off the mattress, as if his nervous system might somehow get left behind if he pushes hard enough. “Ah—!”
Court is over him in a second, a gentle but firm hand pressing down on his chest. “Stay still for me,” he instructs in a calm voice, “I’ve got you.”
Ryland tries to do as he’s told, but the tugging in his torso only allows him partial success. He feels his shallow attempts at breathing splitting him down the middle from the inside out, radiating through each fracture and scar in time with his pulse. The scientist part of his brain knows that it’s way too soon for him to be feeling the effects of opioid withdrawal, and this little spell of agony is more than likely just a flare-up. The lizard part of his brain, on the other hand, is desperately screaming at him to do everything in his power to get it to stop, up to and including downing the whole freaking bottle.
Another surge rolls through him, and he can’t suppress a strangled moan from crawling up his throat. There’s the sensation of cool fingers slotting over the side of his neck, forcing a shiver to seize at his back. Then his chest hitches, and before he can stop it, another round of rattling coughs begins to tear through his chest.
“Breathe for me, Ry. Just breathe, like this,” Court tries his best to guide him. In. Out. In. Out. When that doesn’t work, he yells in a much louder voice, “Colt! Where the hell are his pain meds?!”
His twin flies into the room not even two seconds later, panic written all over his face as he fumbles with Ryland’s pill organizer. “Hang on, I’ve got ‘em.”
He bends over the opposite side of the bed from Court, waiting for the fit to die down so Ryland can open his jaw enough to swallow the tablets. He almost gags on them, but manages to get ahold of his writhing stomach enough to take the offered sip of water. One pair of hands supports his head back to the pillow, while another is already working to wipe the sweat from his face.
“I’m so sorry, Ry,” Colt tells him in a guilt-laced voice, “I forgot to reset the alarm this morning. I’m so sorry.”
“Shoulda– said something– sooner—” he chokes out between coughs, the fire inside his torso burning so intensely that the words are barely there, “n-not– your fault.”
The pain is so horrible that every clench of his muscles feels like he’s ripping his stomach open all over again. The scar there has barely closed, and the overwhelming force from each cough pushes against the fragile tissue in blinding agony. The sensation is on par with the terrifying pressure of drowning, and he feels just as powerless as he did when that man was holding his head beneath the water. He shuts his eyes against the involuntary tears, wishing for all the world that he could escape from the prison cell that his body has become.
I can’t– I can’t do this anymore. Please, God, just let it be over. Just let it end already.
At some point, one of his brothers manages to get the mask of his nebulizer over his face, though centuries seem to pass before the blessed medicine finally takes hold. Even after the coughing subsides, the sharp twinges linger in his lungs, over his shallowly-healed wounds, inside his fractured bones. But that pain is nothing compared to the desire to disappear from it all—if his heart were to give out now, it would be a sweeter respite than all the tramadol in the world could provide.
Court’s forearm removes itself from his chest, his palm finding his forehead in its place. “Think you’ve got a bit of fever there,” he mutters.
Ryland can see Colt flinch in shame from the corner of his eye as their older brother disappears through the door to get a fresh washcloth, and somehow, that’s worse than all of the physical suffering combined. His twin is trying so hard, never faltering in his efforts to soothe his misery, and what kind of a selfish person is he to witness that and just do nothing?
So he feebly takes Colt’s hand in his own, flashing him a tiny, brittle smile. “It’s okay,” he grits out, “Just a mistake.”
“Still though. I should’ve been more on top of it. I’m sorry.”
He pulses his fingers as best he can around the splint. “Think you’re forgetting all the times I fudged up your med schedule.” He winces a little at a sharp sting at his chest, causing his brother to tense up with him. “I’m okay,” he croaks, “Just– need a second. I’ll be okay.”
Colt reaches over to the nightstand and grabs the fox Claire gave him, pressing it softly to his sternum. “Is that better?”
“Yeah,” he sighs, appreciating the way his brother instinctively holds it there for him rather than trying to maneuver his arms around it, “Thanks.”
“I do my best.” He removes the mask and lays down beside him, careful not to jostle the mattress too much, and rests his chin on Ryland’s head. “Wish I could take all of it away, though. A person like you doesn’t deserve any of this pain, Ry. It’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry you have to do all this.”
“Uh-uh. Anything you need, you just ask. I’ll take care of it. There’s nothing too big or small, bud.”
Ryland considers this as he feels the muscles in his bad leg clench. “Could you, uh–” he clamps his jaw down when his bad knee seizes up, breathing as deeply as he can and still stirring up another series of spasms in his lungs anyway. “Do the– the hair stuff again? Just– I need a distraction.”
Colt’s nails waste no time expertly scritching at his scalp, allowing for a fraction of relief to break through all the aching. Court comes back and lays a cool cloth over his forehead and one under his neck. Ryland exhales as some of the heat on his overstimulated skin abates, mumbling a dry attempt at a thank you to both of them.
Court sits back against the headboard once Ryland finally settles and gives him a knowing look. “You know what I think you need? Some quality time with your favorite little shit.”
Ryland certainly makes no objections to this as he pulls out his phone to open up FaceTime. It only rings twice before it connects, and Claire’s face takes over the screen.
“Nobody died,” she says immediately, which puts a concerned look on his brother’s face. Then she points the camera at her new pet, who’s bending over a bowl to lap at something.
“What happened?”
She tilts it back to herself with a withering eyeroll. “Oh my God, did you not hear me? Nothing. Everyone’s fine. Raider is being a very good boy, yes he is,” she baby-talks, which plasters a massive smile on Ryland’s face. “He told me he misses the old fart with the grumpy attitude.”
Translation: Claire misses the old fart with the grumpy attitude.
“Did you eat dinner yet?” Court asks as he tries and fails to hide a smile.
“Yup, we both did.” She flips the camera around to show him a carton of vanilla ice cream on the coffee table. “This little gentleman has impeccable taste.”
“Claire, you can’t feed cats ice cream. Dairy isn’t good for them.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I…okay, I may have googled some stuff.” He bumps his head back on the wall when she starts giggling at him. “Hey, did you get your homework done?”
Colt and Ryland both look at each other, eyes crinkling in tandem. Even though Court still won’t admit it outright, it’s pretty obvious how he sees her, if his serious tone is any indication. Ryland remembers him asking them the same question every day after school.
“Nah, Raider ate it.”
“Gotta do your homework, kiddo,” Ryland tells her firmly, slipping the teacher-voice on like a glove.
He sees her eyebrows shoot up. “Is that Uncle Ryland?”
“And Uncle Colt,” his twin leans over his shoulder, snatching the phone away from Court and pointing the camera at them instead. “And don’t listen to him, pipsqueak. He’s on drugs. Homework’s overrated.”
“Colt!” he and Court admonish in unison, but Claire just laughs again.
“Guys, I’m kidding. I did it right after you left. Not saying I did it well, but I did it.”
Ryland suppresses a small cringe from his ensuing chuckle. He really needs these meds to kick in, like, yesterday. “How’s school? Any trouble with your classes?”
“Mostly just math, but only because Mr. Lambert put me in the back of the room next to these two girls who will not shut the fuck up—”
“Claire,” Court warns, but Ryland is very used to the cursing at this point.
“Sorry. But yeah, history’s good, I’m doing alright with the english stuff, even though I can’t really read Mrs. Mauser’s handwriting. Ms. Lee says I have a ‘natural talent’ for music, whatever that means. And I’m killing it with science.” She beams proudly, and Ryland feels himself go warm for a reason other than the fever.
“How are the subs? Are they keeping their hands off my stuff?” Claire had reported back that one of them was caught messing around with his Jacob’s ladder, and had almost burned himself before one of his more responsible kids told him to cut it out.
“Not as good as you,” she replies sweetly, even though he’s sure his half-lucid ramblings over Christmas were probably nowhere near as coherent, “And I’ve been keeping an eye on ‘em. But I still think Ms. Cromwell’s a bi– a b-word.”
“Make any new friends yet?” Colt asks over his shoulder, “Not of the feline variety?”
Claire sighs dramatically. “I’ve made enemies. Someone’s gotta keep that Abby girl in line, and apparently that’s me. Like, believe it or not, nobody wants to hear you talk about horses twenty-four seven, some of us are actually trying to learn…But Olivia and Rehka are nice. They let me sit with them at lunch today.”
“They’re good kids,” Ryland tells his older brother quietly, “Olivia’s one of my brightest, and Rehka’s a real social butterfly.”
“Oh, and there’s this boy I met in art class—”
“Who?” Court asks immediately. Ryland and Colt share another look.
“His name’s Peter. He taught me how to make an origami swan, and he’s a year older than me—”
“What’s his last name?” He turns to Ryland with a very serious expression, “Do you know any Peter?”
He levels his gaze at him. “Court, you cannot stalk a middle schooler.”
“Yeah, Six, relax. He’s not, like, flirting with me or anything.” Her brow creases. “I think. Actually—”
“Okay!” Colt cuts her off before Court’s face can get any redder, “Glad to hear it’s going mostly well, pipsqueak. And don’t worry about not fitting in, you’ve got a lot of time. But if that Abby kid gives you any trouble, you just sic Raider on her, y’hear?”
She smiles brightly again, and points the camera down at her lap, where her new fuzzball has decided to curl up for a nap over legs. “He’s very ferocious. Like a little lion. I’m gonna train him to attack Six when he pisses me off.”
Court takes the phone back with another eyeroll. “Hey. I’m thinking about spending the night here. Are you gonna be okay by yourself over there?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ve got a vicious beast to protect me. You’re still gonna take me to school tomorrow, right?”
“I’ll be back before you wake up. Call me if you need anything. And I want you in bed by nine– don’t stay up watching cartoons again. And don’t let the cat in my room.”
“I can make no such promises,” she quips, then quietly adds, “Goodnight, Six. Love you.”
Ryland watches a series of emotions flash across his brother’s face while he fights to get it under control. He lands on a soft smile, followed by an even softer spoken, “Love you, too, kid. Goodnight.”
Colt and Ryland are both grinning like idiots as he slips his phone back into his pocket, and a gentle blush creeps its way onto Court’s face when he notices. He ruffles Ryland’s hair again, before laying the back of his hand over his cheek with a frown.
“Still too warm,” he mumbles, “How are you feeling?”
Ryland takes stock. Getting to talk to his niece was actually a pretty good distraction while he waited for the tramadol to take effect. He can feel the rising static in his muscles from the pain meds, but he’s really not bothered by the heat of his skin—kind of the opposite.
“I’m okay.” As if on cue, his body betrays him with a small shiver.
Colt, of course, takes immediate notice, and moves to the pile of blankets on the foot of the bed. “That’s it. Time for a Ry-sized burrito.”
He and Court proceed to quite literally roll him up like a tortilla, so that he’s completely encased from the neck down in fluffy sherpa. They leave the fox folded in his arms in case he needs to cough again and his bad leg propped up on a foam wedge, then slide an airplane pillow over his shoulders so that, when he inevitably falls asleep later, he won’t strain his neck from sitting up. The rags on his face and neck get refreshed, the lights are turned off, and the humidifier is turned on while Court goes to grab something.
“You comfy, Ry?” Colt asks, bringing his fingers back to his hair, “Let me know if it gets too hot in there.”
“S’great, Colt. But can I have some water?”
He grabs his tumbler and brings the straw to his mouth. The cold water quenches the dryness in his throat to where he doesn’t feel quite so much like he’s swallowing gravel, which is really the only complaint he has at this point.
“Look at you, finally asking for stuff,” Colt mumbles fondly as he sets it on the breakfast tray over his lap. He puts an arm over his bundled up shoulders and leans into him. “I know how hard that can be, sometimes. Thank you, Ry.”
Ryland flashes him a tiny, embarrassed smile. “Feel so spoiled right now.”
“Good. That’s exactly how you’re supposed to feel.”
“Hope this is what it felt like for you.”
Summer thunderstorms were normally a peaceful, if rare, sight for Ryland—he loved watching the raindrops bead together on the glass of his windows, the ambience from outside leaking in to provide a soft blanket of white noise that interrupted his typically scattered thoughts. Usually, he’d spend those mornings sipping his coffee and reading a book, or solving a crossword on his couch.
Right now, though, the dark clouds looming overhead were just a reflection of the turbulence rolling inside his apartment, listening to his brother’s miserable moans from the bedroom. There had been a significant drop in barometric pressure around 8:00 in the morning, and as soon as the storm hit, the plate fixated on Colt’s spine began to throb from the swelling of the sensitive nerves surrounding it.
Ryland entered the dimly-lit room to find his brother splayed out over the duvet, face pinched and jaw tight. He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers through his messy hair.
“I’m so sorry, bub,” he whispered softly, “I know it hurts. I know. What do you need from me right now?”
“…ughh…I need you to kill me,” he groaned.
Even though Ryland knew he didn’t really mean those words, hearing the pain in his voice squeezed at his heart anyway. He reached for the prescription bottles in the drawer of the nightstand, measuring out two gabapentin and an oxycodone into his palm.
As soon as his brother laid eyes on the pills, he grimaced. “No opioids—”
“Colt—”
“I’ve seen too many people hooked on that shit, Ryland. I’m not doing that.”
“You’re in pain, Colt,” he sighed. “They don’t just pass this stuff out for fun. You have a prescription for a reason. Take the fricking pills.”
His brother opened his mouth to argue, but immediately shut it when his back seized again. Ryland rubbed at his bare chest until it finally passed. Once it was over, he gave him a stern look, only softening when Colt begrudgingly nodded in stubborn compliance.
He helped him through the pills and a few sips of water before setting him back down gently on the mattress, careful to move slowly. He winced when Colt suppressed another low noise anyway, unsure if his presence was just making it all worse for him. “Do you want me here, or do you need some alone time?”
Colt opened his eyes then, watery from the pain. Despite the obvious discomfort it brought him, he reached out until his fingers brushed against the tops of Ryland’s knuckles. “I– please don’t go. Just—”
He cut off when another round of spasms began, involuntary tears escaping down his face as he cried out. Ryland brushed them aside with his thumbs. “I’m just gonna grab the TENS real quick, and then I’ll be right back.”
He retrieved the device as fast as he could. Maneuvering Colt into a sitting position to place the electrodes on his back elicited another loud series of strained sounds to drag themselves from his throat, but it was clear that once Ryland turned it on it provided immediate relief. He’d also taken the time to grab a heat pack from the bathroom, which he carefully slid underneath him before laying him back down.
“Better?” he asked, pulling the duvet up to his chest and crawling beside him on the bed.
Colt let out a small sigh and nodded, eyes closed. “Y-yeah. Thanks, Ry. Sorry for yelling.”
“Don’t apologize, bud. You deal with the pain however you need to. I’m right here.” Even though Colt was nowhere near as touchy of a person as Ryland was, he still let him curl beside him to place a gentle hand over his heart.
“This is all my fault.”
Ryland looked up. Colt was staring numbly at the ceiling, lost somewhere far away.
He took his brother’s hand and pulsed it tightly, trying to infuse enough stability into his voice to get him to believe it when he told him, “No, it’s not.”
“It is, Ry. There’s a reason they’re coming after me so hard to not press charges.” He sighed, voice heavy and tired, “I should’ve checked the rigging. That’s literally the first thing I should’ve done, and I didn’t, because I was busy thinking with my dick and not my brain.”
Ryland resisted the urge to point out that falling off of a twelve-story building was dangerous as is, even with stunt training. Instead he said, “It was an accident, Colt. And don’t talk about Jody like she’s just some fling. You loved her.”
“No, I had a fucking boner for a girl I was hooking up with for two months. That’s not love. It was just sex and bad decisions, and look where it got me.” His words were lined with the kind of bitterness that completely undermined his point. Ryland knew his brother too well to believe any of it.
“You said she was, and I quote, ‘the girl of your dreams.’ You don’t talk about someone you’re just hooking up with like that. And okay, maybe you could’ve been a little more focused in the moment, but you weren’t the only one up there. Someone should have seen it, and they didn’t, and that’s not on you.” He sat up, forcing Colt to meet his eye. “You know who I’m choosing to blame? The jerk that made you go back up there in the first place.”
Colt shook his head, wincing from the movement. “Ryder’s an asshole, Ryland, but he’s also the reason I could keep the lights on. He did shit like that all the time– and does it really matter? I’m the one having to live with the consequences. And now you are, too.”
“Hey. Enough of that. You’re not forcing me to take care of you, Colt. I’m doing this because I want to. Because I love you.” He laid his cheek back on the pillow, pressing his chin into the crook of his brother’s neck. “And I’m not gonna let anybody make my little brother feel bad, even if it’s you. You’re already in pain. You have to stop beating yourself up for the things you can’t change.”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
He said it quietly, but the words struck Ryland like the lightning blooming outside.
He brought his fingers back to Colt’s hair. It was longer now. His frosted tips were beginning to fall into his eyes like a curtain, hiding his face from the rest of the world the same way Colt hid his broken body. Ryland pushed it back tenderly, knowing he was probably hurting too much to do it himself.
“Rest,” he replied plainly, “Heal. That’s your only job right now: getting better. And I know you think that means doing nothing, but as the person in the room with the doctorate in microbiology, I can confidently tell you that’s not true. Your cells are working hard to repair the damage, and they need energy to do that. It just takes time, but the worse you are to yourself, the longer it’ll be.”
Ryland expected him to immediately bite back over his tired lecturing, but Colt just turned his head to the side until their noses brushed.
“I know,” he whispered, voice tiny, “it’s just…it’s so hard.”
He cupped his palm over the side of his brother’s face. “That’s why I’m here,” he told him softly, “To make it easier. Make the pain go away.” He tilted his head until their foreheads touched, shutting his eyes. “You deserve to be held gently right now. To be made comfortable. Kept warm. Let me do that for you, Colt. Please.”
He was exceedingly relieved when his twin finally gave him a microscopic nod, and mumbled, “Okay, Ry…”
Colt said nothing else as Ryland swaddled him in two more blankets, or when he helped him through a protein bar and some yogurt because the oxy always made his stomach upset. He even let Ryland brush his hair and teeth right there in bed so he wouldn’t have to move.
It wasn’t until he crawled under the sheets and wrapped himself around his little brother to watch the latest season of Love Island that he spoke up again, voice soft and slurred by medication, “…thankss…Ryyy…”
Ryland pressed his lips to the corner of his jaw, pleased to hear the contented hum that it conjured. “Anytime, bub. Need anything else? Sip of water, maybe?”
“…mmm…s’niiiice…” he mumbled, clearly blissed out and not really listening, “…llllove ya…”
“I love you, too. More than anything.”
Colt flopped his cheek onto his shoulder and nuzzled it like a heat-seeking missile. Ryland cradled the side of his face to keep him there, turning the volume down when he saw his brother’s eyes grow heavy.
“Go to sleep, Colt. I’m right here.”
“You have no idea how good it felt, Ry. Being pampered like that…I needed it, more than I think I even realized.” He guides Ryland’s ear to lay over his chest. He can hear Colt’s heartbeat. “And, y’know, a part of me is grateful that it happened, even though that’s kinda weird. It…it kept me close to you. Showed me what’s really important in life.”
Ryland leans further into him with a sigh. “Y’know, I really liked having dopey Colt with me, too. Mostly ‘cause it was the only time you’d actually stay put– I almost tied you to my bed a couple times.” Colt laughs, and he allows himself to soak up the warmth of it like sunshine.
Court walks back in then, setting a ginger ale with a straw down on the tray next to the water. “Sorry that took so long, guys. Couldn’t find the thermometer.”
He uncaps it and slides it beneath Ryland’s tongue, and he’s suddenly struck by just how much it reminds him of their childhood. After their mom died, Court became the default caregiver when one or both (it was usually both) caught a bug. He had only been thirteen when he took up that mantle, but Ryland remembers how much pride he took in the role—and, strangely, how good he’d been at it. And right now, being cocooned in a ton of blankets with a cool rag on his face and his brother’s hand combing through his hair, it…it kind of does make him feel like a kid again.
“Hundred point three,” he reads once it starts beeping, “Not too bad.” The look on his face would suggest that he feels otherwise, but as far as fevers go, it’s pretty measly.
“Relax your asshole, Court.”
“Colt, you have absolutely no right,” Ryland fires back, “I’ve seen you age a decade in the past month. You’re gonna pass for Gandalf soon.”
“Great, maybe I’ll catch up to you in a few—”
“Boys.”
They both immediately shut their mouths at the finality in their older brother’s tone. This lasts for about five seconds. Then the three of them dissolve into soft laughter over how familiar it all feels; a three-part harmony nearly lost to a two decades’ long framata, only stopping when Ryland starts coughing again.
“What are we watching, big guy?” Colt asks once it passes and he’s diligently provided him with several sips of water.
“Something with no plot,” he requests. “Don’t wanna have to think right now.”
“Oh, I’ve got a good one.” Court takes the remote from Colt’s hand and presses himself just as close as his twin is to Ryland’s other side. He scrolls for a bit with an expression of great focus. “You guys used to love this one.”
Ryland and Colt share matching grins when he finds My Neighbor Totoro. Though he usually prefers to watch Ghibli with the subtitles, Ryland makes no protest when Court chooses the dubbed version; he’s definitely about to lose his ability to read soon, and he wants to be able to enjoy it for as long as possible.
They both pull the duvet over themselves and squish next to Ryland as the opening music plays. Colt helps him through a few sips of ginger ale, which lasts him only until the bathtub scene. By then, Ryland’s body might as well be pinned to the mattress by steel weights—even if he wasn’t wrapped up in the blankets, he couldn’t find the energy to move if he wanted to.
“I remember you two taking a bath at the same time,” Court mumbles, his right hand splaying across the back of Ryland’s neck in a rhythmic pattern, “Me and Mom were always soaked by the end of it.”
“I take zero ‘sponsibility.”
Colt sticks his tongue out at him, before ruffling his hair with renewed vigor. “Takes two to tango, Ry.”
Court looks over his head at his twin. “You know that’s how we started calling you squirt, right? Once you figured out how to shoot the water out of your hands, we were done for.”
“H’still does that,” Ryland comments, more of a casual observation than a jab.
Colt rolls his eyes. “Where do you think the name 'stinker' came from?”
Ryland smushes his cheek all the way down on the neck pillow and gives him a very pathetic look. Colt caves immediately, leaning down to pepper his forehead in kisses that leave his skin tingling with warmth.
“Guess I’m noseblind.” He studies him carefully, before saying, “You know, I think you just got some color back. Hey Court, wanna help me out here?”
“Gladly.”
They lock their arms around him and plant a series of smooches all over his neck and face. After only a few seconds of this treatment, Ryland has melted into a giggly puddle in between them, not even trying to get away, and certainly not paying attention to the movie anymore. It sends blissful flutters down his back as he relaxes into the pillows with a drowsy smile, just soaking up the affection like a sponge.
“Told ya,” Colt smirks fondly once they deem the kiss quota satisfied, “Like putty in my hands.”
“Mmmm,” he informs them, sinking down against where they’ve slipped their arms behind his back. This earns him a gentle hand running through his hair and another rubbing circles across his chest, evaporating the lingering soreness as the tramadol well and truly takes its hold.
He’s proud to say he makes it all the way until the bus stop scene before the weight of his eyelids begins to overpower him. Ryland is distantly aware of the sounds of quiet rain and the careful repositioning of his body to a more horizontal angle, though the world has gone fuzzy around the edges. It’s followed by the redraping of the washcloth over his forehead and the soft pressure of a hand over his heart.
“Goodnight, Ry,” floats the warm voice of Colt, “We love you.”
“So much,” says Court.
He tries to say something akin to I love you, too, but it comes out as a lazy river of consonants barely supported by the heaviness of his tongue. He thinks they understand anyway, because soon, two sets of fingers are back at his scalp.
“Shhhhh…just sleep……right here……not going anywhere………got you……………safe now…………………”
–
Colt does not make it to the gym the next morning.
Instead of his usual 5:00 alarm, he wakes to the peaceful sounds of Ryland’s snoring. One arm is shoved beneath his pillow, the other curled over the fox plushie on Ry’s chest, rising and falling in time with his brother’s breathing. He’s pretty sure he drifted off sometime before the movie ended, and is a little surprised to find an extra blanket tucked around his shoulders that was not there the last time he was conscious.
He carefully turns over and grabs his phone from the nightstand, next to an insulated mug of coffee that’s still hot to the touch. The time on his screen tells him it’s a little past 8:00, and there’s a text from Court that he has bacon and eggs waiting for him in the microwave.
Colt takes the coffee (which has been sweetened by the perfect amount of creamer) and rolls out of bed quietly. He discovers that his sweatshirt had been washed and dried sometime in the night, and now lay folded on top of the coffee table. He slips it on to shield himself from the cooler temperature of the rest of the apartment, then pads to the kitchen and makes himself a plate.
While he nukes his breakfast, he takes his phone out and scrolls until he pulls up Jody’s contact. She picks up somewhere between the third and fifth rings, her tired face taking over the screen.
“Good morning, my love.”
She smiles. Her hair is plastered to her pillowcase—the call must have been her alarm. “You’re up late today.”
“So are you,” he grins, “What time did you guys wrap last night?”
“Oh, you know, only three in the fucking morning. I am really missing caffeine right now.” She rolls to her side, camera just six inches from her face and crowded by the edge of the pillow. The sun paints her features gold, somehow washing out the dark bags she still hasn’t slept off, and Colt finds himself wondering how she manages to be so sleep-deprived while looking so divine. “I’ve got a quick production meeting around ten, but the monkey suits took mercy on us and gave us the rest of the day off.” She inspects the screen carefully, before asking in a more serious tone, “How’s he doing?”
Colt sighs and takes a sip, before confiding, “Well, yesterday chewed both of us up and promptly shat us out. He slept through the night though. Hopefully he’ll be conked out for a while.” He inhales a steadying breath, watching her expression sober in a mirror of his own. “Jodes…we finally talked. Not sure how much he remembers, but he, uh…he’s in a bad way. Told me he doesn’t wanna be here anymore.”
This gets her sitting up. “You mean—”
He nods gravely. She clutches her chest, evidently feeling that same phantom of pain for him that Colt did yesterday as tears pool at her waterline.
“Oh, Ryland…” she breathes, “God, you know, I was worried about that. It’s pretty normal, apparently, for people who live through the shit he has. But still,” she swallows, and a stability returns to her gaze, “that’s fucking awful. What did you say?”
“I told him we’d get him help. He’s got an appointment with a trauma therapist next Wednesday. We’re gonna get him through this.”
“We will,” she agrees. “But how are you doing with all that?”
“It’s, uh…” He trails off, feeling the same prickle of heat in his eyes that he did yesterday afternoon, “I’m…dealing. Trying to be a shoulder for him, y’know? But it’s just– hearing him say all that…that he doesn’t think he’s worth it anymore…It’s like a stab in the heart. Like, that’s my best friend– my brother. Seeing his brain torturing itself like that, after everything…” A small tear crosses his cheek and falls into his coffee. He doesn’t bother wiping away the track in its wake. “I just– I feel fucking powerless here.”
“You love him. We love him, so much. It’s not fucking fair– God, I don’t know what I’d fucking do if Mabel said something like that to me. Do you want me to come over there? I can cancel the meeting—”
He shakes his head. “No, no. I think if he finds out you dipped out of work, it’ll just make him feel guilty. Let’s just get lunch and come home, spend a little quality time with him and Court. Give him some normalcy, y’know?”
She nods at this, and he feels something in his chest loosen. “Well, Dan gave me that D&D stuff to give to him. Maybe that’ll cheer him up a little. Or we could do, like, a family brainstorm on the crossword or something, if he’s feeling up to it.”
He’s about to thank her, when suddenly, a loud moan bleeds through the door to the guestroom.
“Shit, Jodes, I think he’s having another one– I gotta go. I love you baby, I’ll see you later.”
“Fuck, okay. I love you, too. Bye babes.”
Colt drops his phone on the counter and bolts into the room to find Ryland twisting against the mattress, his eyes moving wildly behind their lids. His left hand digs into his neck as though he’s choking, his right clawing at thin air. Colt bends over him to remove his nails from his throat and places his forearm over his chest, trying to stop him from ripping through his midline stitches. He can feel his rapid heartbeat pounding through his ribs, counting the seconds and praying that his pulse holds until he can get him to calm down.
“…can’t…please– st– stop!”
“Ryland! Stop, stop– it’s Colt! I’m right here. You’re having a nightmare. Wake up for me.”
Thankfully, Ryland stills, a long moment passing before his eyes flutter open. They take a second to focus on Colt, but when they do, they quickly fill with terrified tears. Colt sits on the edge of the mattress—the same way he’s been doing for the past three weeks—and supports his weight to bring him into a hug.
“I’m here Ry. I’m right here. You’re in the apartment. You’re safe,” he whispers as he rocks his brother’s shaking frame back and forth. Ryland buries his face into his shoulder, sobbing against him. “It was just a nightmare. You’re okay.”
“H-he got me, he got me again—”
“Shh, shh. It wasn’t real, I promise. You’re safe. No one’s gonna get you. I’m not gonna let ‘em.” He trails his palms up and down his brother’s back as he heaves, rubbing more firmly when Ry stops crying so he can cough. The sounds of his ragged gasps of air rip straight through him. Colt grabs the fox, which fell to the floor sometime during his thrashing, and shoves it between both of their chests. “Try and breathe for me, bud. Slowly, through your nose. That’s it.”
After a few minutes, Ryland manages to get ahold of his fit, pale and trembling from the energy it stole. Colt lays him back down, his head sinking into the pillows, and wipes away his tears with practiced fingers. He takes his pulse, thankfully calming down now, then brushes a grounding hand through his sleep-mussed hair.
“You okay?” he asks like an idiot; the answer is clearly fucking no.
“S-sorry,” he rasps, wincing at a cramp in his ribs. Colt rubs the site with his free hand, desperate to soothe the pain for him, even if just by a margin. He can feel them jutting out beneath the cotton of his pajamas.
“Want some tea for your throat?” Ryland nods. “Alright, give me a sec.”
He makes quick work of steeping the chamomile blend, and also heats up a plate for Ry with the egg whites and turkey bacon Court prepared. As he balances it and his own meal in his arms, his eyes fall on the photo album the family gave his twin for Christmas. Colt takes it under his arm.
He gets Ry set up at the rolling table, handing him the leather binder while he works at cutting up his breakfast into bite-sized chunks.
“So, I was thinking maybe we could print out some more pics for that before I go meet up with Jodes. She’s off for the afternoon,” he chats, trying to infuse casualness in his tone. But when he looks up, he sees Ryland staring silently at the cover, pointer finger tracing the gold lettering on its front. “Ry? Did you hear me?”
“What? Oh, yeah. Sounds good.” His words leave him quietly, like they had to travel a long distance to make it out of his mouth. Colt feels a surge of nervous energy pulse in his chest.
“Court’s gonna be here around noon,” he tries, “He made breakfast, actually. Guess cooking is something they teach you in assassin school.”
Ryland just lets out a muted hum in response. He doesn’t say anything for the rest of the meal, only finishing a quarter of it before he’s pushing the plate away, but he does release a small sigh each time he takes a sip of the tea. That’s something, at least.
When they finish, they go through the painful process of getting Ryland to the bathroom, and then right back in bed. Colt clears the table quickly, giving him his medicine before going to wash the dishes in the sink. He scrounges around in his mind, desperately trying to come up with literally anything he can do to pull Ry out of the rut he’s stuck in. That’s when his gaze runs over the stack of cards, and an idea comes to him.
“Hello, you’ve reached the front desk for Grover Cleveland,” crackles a chipper voice, “My name is Millie Sanford. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”
“Uh, hi,” Colt says quietly, suddenly realizing he did not think about how he wanted to phrase this before the phone picked up, “My name is Colt Seavers, and I’m—”
“Oh, are you Ryland’s brother?” she asks immediately, voice shifting away from its customer-service mode and into a more genuine tone, “How’s he doing? Is he coming off medical leave?”
Colt isn’t really surprised that this woman he’s never spoken to before somehow knows his brother on a first-name basis; Ry’s always had a way of drawing people into his circle, even if he insists he’s awful at talking to people he doesn’t know. And he thinks he remembers Jody mentioning something about the staff having a ton of questions back when she’d first called them from the ICU, though that memory is kinda hazy from emotional turmoil and lack of sleep.
“Um, yeah. Yeah, he’s my brother, but, uh– he won’t be back for a while. Still recovering from the heart attack, unfortunately.”
A soft gasp from the other end of the line. “He– he had a heart attack?”
Shit. He thought they all knew that. “Uh, yeah,” he stammers, “but the doctors were able to fix it while he was on the ventilator—”
“Oh my God!”
Jesus FUCKING Christ, Colton, SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH.
“Is he okay? Oh my God. Oh God.” She sounds genuinely panicked, and he thinks he can hear other people whispering around her. Not good.
“He’s alright– well, not alright. But he’s home now. Recovering.”
“…is that– you said his brother?” comes a new voice, clearly masculine. “Hi. Colt, right? Sorry, this is Gary Pinsker, I’m his next door neighbor—God, I can’t believe I happened to walk in on this. Um, is he with you? Just, we’ve all been so worried. Nobody knows anything except that he just…suddenly stopped coming in, and now he’s on leave.”
Colt pauses. He can hear a ton of shuffling and muffled talking now, and while he really didn’t mean to fuck up his brother’s privacy like this, it’s starting to seem like these people are really freaking out over him. And Ry’s probably going to tell them eventually anyway, once he gets back to work…
“Okay, okay. How many people are there right now?”
A lapse of silence while they count—because apparently they have to count.
“Eleven. All teachers and staff, but I think I see more coming,” Gary tells him. “Is he there? We’d love to speak with him.”
“Um, he’s in bed right now.” More muted chatter. Colt takes a breath. “I– we didn’t realize they never told you, but, uh…Let me put it this way: he’s gonna be stuck in bed for a while. Ry isn’t– he still can’t walk for a couple weeks. He’s…he’s really hurt, actually.”
“Oh, dear. Please tell sweet Ryland we’ve all been thinking of him,” says an older woman’s voice, “and that his students are asking after him. Have you been getting the cards?”
This puts a small smile on Colt’s face. “Ohhhh, yeah. We’ve been getting the cards. Thank you guys, by the way. For that and the food—I had no idea you didn’t know he wouldn’t be back for the semester.”
Even more muffled talking. Colt knew Ry had some friends at work, but he hadn’t known just how many people at that school cared this much, and apparently how out of the loop they all were.
“That’s awful.” Millie again. “Did– sorry, you don’t have to answer this if it’s personal, but was he in an accident?”
“Um…no? He, uh…” Colt chews on it, before caving completely and just giving them the same story he’d told the police, “He got mugged. Some gang, we think, but he doesn’t remember much. They…they got him pretty good. By the time my fiancée and I realized something was wrong, he…you know what? I’m not gonna sugarcoat this. He almost died.”
A collective gasp comes through the speaker. He thinks he hears someone crying. Fuck. Should I not have said that?
“But Ry’s a fighter,” he adds quickly, “always has been. He pulled through. We brought him home a couple weeks before Christmas, and I’m taking some time off work to take care of him. He’s still recovering from his surgeries, so he’s bedbound right now. But he’s getting better, it’ll just take a while.”
“God, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Gary tells him, which Colt doesn’t doubt for a second, “Is there– can we do anything?”
“Yeah, actually.” Finally, they’re getting around to the whole reason he called. “He’s sorta been in the dumps recently, and I think he could use a little support. He really misses his kids, and I was wondering if maybe there’s a way he could see ‘em? Like, surprise him.”
Immediately, the speaker is flooded with several trains of conversation:
“–the sub today—”
“–think it’s Cromwell, but—”
“–eighth period just has reading hour—”
“–fuckin’ Cromwell—”
“–push our quiz to Thursday—”
“–last thirty minutes—”
“–move the desks—”
This goes on for a while. Colt lets them hammer out the specifics while he puts away the dishes and finishes his coffee, a small amount of pride blooming in his chest.
“Colt?” Gary’s back again. “We think we could set up a video call today, if Ryland is up for it. Does three-thirty work?”
Colt breaks out into a massive grin. “Yeah, I think we can make that happen. Probably we’ll have to cap it at, like, a cool fifteen, but yes. Thank you guys. You have no idea what this means.”
“We’re happy to help. Someone will send out an email with a link soon. We’ll see you then.”
He gives his address to Millie, and then there’s a series of goodbyes and well wishes before the call drops. With a new spring in his step, he practically floats back to the guestroom, trying to curb his expression before he knocks so Ry is none the wiser.
His smile drops as soon as he walks into the room. He catches the tail-end of his brother quickly wiping at his eyes with his sleeve, face red and puffy. Ry ducks his gaze as Colt perches on the mattress, sniffling quietly.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Ryland blatantly lies.
He scootches closer and takes his uninjured hand. “Talk to me, Ry. What do you need?”
When Ryland finally looks at him, there are fresh tears beading up on his lashes, and his mouth is twisted in a painful grimace that tugs at Colt’s heart. “It’s just– it’s nothing. Nothing’s wrong. That’s the problem,” he whimpers.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” he sighs, shooting a glance over toward where the photo album lay open to the picture of the family on the front stoop. “I don’t– I thought I was doing better, after last night, but…” Another droplet falls.
Colt puts an arm around his brother’s shoulders and guides his cheek to rest in the crook of his neck. “You think the nightmare’s what did it?”
Ryland shrugs. “I guess I thought I was past it, b-but then—” His breath hitches, and he can’t go on.
“It’s just time, Ry. That’s all. And I know you’re gonna hate hearing it, but recovery isn’t linear.” A small grumble. Colt lets out a breathy laugh. “Yeah, it sucks, but it’s true. Some days, you’re gonna feel like you’re making massive progress. Other days, you’ll feel like you’re falling ten steps behind. That’s just the healing process– it takes as long as it takes.”
“I just– I wish it could just be over. I-I don’t know if– I’m not sure how long I can—”
He cuts off again, but Colt knows what he was about to say. A heartbreaking sob wets his shoulder. He presses his lips into Ryland’s hair as he pushes back against his own tears, knowing they won’t help.
“You’re in a tough spot right now, I know. But I swear to you, Ryland, it really does get better. And I’m not just saying that. You just gotta make it ‘til Wednesday, that’s all. And I’m here for you, bud. Always.” Just like you were.
“I already told you, I’m fine, just—”
“No, Colt, you’re not.” Ryland crossed his arms and hit him with a devastatingly teacher-like look.
Colt immediately shrank beneath it, fire rising to his face. Then his intestines writhed again, and before he could even think to let out the yelp of pain, he was already barfing up what little was left in his stomach into the tiny trashcan. The straining of his muscles made his back seize up, and it was all he could do to keep the damn thing clutched in his fingers, now white from how hard he was gripping it.
By the end of it, his ears were ringing and he couldn’t see straight—he was pretty sure he was on the verge of passing out right there on the couch. He collapsed backwards breathlessly and let the trashcan—now a third of the way full with his own pale-yellow vomit—knock limply against the cushions.
He felt the weight of it removed from his hand. After a few seconds, a cool, wet sensation appeared against the back of his neck, soothing the burning of his skin.
He peeled his eyes open, and with a voice so pathetic even he wouldn’t have listened, rasped, “You have to go to work.”
“I don’t ‘have’ to do anything,” Ryland countered firmly from where he was squatting on the coffee table, “And I’m not leaving you like this.”
Colt rolled his eyes, and immediately regretted it when it triggered another wave of vertigo. “You can’t just—”
“I can. They already called the sub. If I show up now, I’ll look like an idiot.” He held the back of his hand to Colt’s forehead, brow creased the way it did when he got results he disagreed with. “You’re burning up, Colt.”
“It’s just a stomach bug, Ry. I’ll kick it in a day or two.”
“Great, so in a day or two I’ll go back to work.” He rose to his feet and disappeared into the bedroom, before returning with two pillows under his arms and Colt’s water bottle in hand.
Colt leaned his head on top of the couch and let out a low groan. “You’re really not letting this go, are you?”
“Nope,” he replied simply, fluffing the pillows and arranging them with precision over the couch. “C’mere. Lay down.”
At this point, Colt didn’t even try putting up a fight. He let his brother guide him carefully down to the cushions, one pillow under his neck, and the other beneath his knees to take pressure off his spine. He did, however, let out a withering grumble when Ry thrusted the straw toward him.
“M’just gonna throw it up,” he whined.
“You’ve been doing that since four in the morning. You need to stay hydrated. Drink the dang water.” Ryland raised his eyebrows to signal he would hear no further argument on the matter.
Colt let out a heaving sigh, but he did what he was told. It unfortunately did help to wash away the acrid tang in his mouth, though he was pretty sure he’d be regretting his choices within the next thirty minutes. His hand flew to claw at his stomach as it cramped again, face pinched and eyes screwed shut.
But pretty soon, his twin was lifting his arm up and replacing it with a heating pad. He felt his abdomen relax in increments as Ryland pulled the throw off the back of the couch and tucked it under his chin, then topped the whole thing off with another cold rag draped over his forehead.
“Ugh…how’d you get so good at this?” he mumbled, watching Ry close the curtains to dim the room.
Ryland sat in the armchair beside the couch, leaning in to drag his slender fingers through Colt’s greasy mop of hair. “I work with middle schoolers” he replied, quieter now, “And I know you, Colt. I know what you like when you’re sick.”
Colt really didn’t know what to say to that, especially because he didn’t think he deserved the softness in his brother’s voice after acting like such a baby about it all. So instead he said, “Here’s hoping I’m not contagious. Otherwise you and Chris are gonna hold a serious grudge.”
“You’re not going to physical therapy with a fever, bub. You need to take it easy.”
Colt craned his neck to look him in the eye, ignoring the dizziness it brought to stare him down. “I have to do my exercises, Ry. I can’t afford to fall behind—”
“You won’t,” he promised, a ghost of a smile playing at his lips, “I’ll reschedule. And taking a day off won’t kill you. Give your body the break it’s asking for.” He nudged him to lay his head back down. “Don’t stress about it. You’re putting in the work, and it’s paying off…I’m proud of you, by the way.”
Colt scoffed. “Why?”
“For putting in the effort. For not giving up, even though it’s hard. Just– I keep thinking back to a couple months ago, when you couldn’t even stand on your own. Now you’re getting around with just the crutches. That’s huge.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, and he genuinely meant it, “it is.”
A couple months ago, he probably would’ve shot back with a pissy comment about how the whole thing was pointless. Now, though? There was a light at the end of this long-ass tunnel, and it was finally within reach. He was only a matter of weeks from being able to walk unassisted, which meant it was only a matter of weeks until he could get a piece of his old life back again.
It…it wouldn’t be the same. He knew that. But he also didn’t think he wanted it to be. Crashing with Ryland had made him realize just how much of his life had been swallowed up by stunting for Ryder. He’d been willing to ignore it all for the sake of his career, but there’s no denying the heavy toll it took on his personal life.
In a way, this whole thing might actually have been a blessing in disguise. He and Ry had celebrated their birthday together for the first time in five years that August. They got to have Wednesday night binge-watching sessions again like they did before his brother left for college. They’d even taken a road trip to visit their old hometown.
Colt missed that. He’d been missing it for years, and he never even realized. It was more than a little fucked that it took him breaking his back to recognize it, but now that he did, he had no plans of losing it. It was why he’d made the decision to stay in San Francisco once he would be able to move out of Ryland’s place; after everything his twin had done for him (and the way he’d basically gone scorched earth with everyone else), there was no chance in hell he was going to drift away again.
“Hey, Ry?”
“Yeah, bub.”
“I love you.”
“You’re delirious,” he quipped, but Colt could hear the smile.
“Shut up.” He snaked an arm out from beneath the blanket and fumbled around for his twin’s free hand, identical to his own. “I’m being serious. Thank you. You’re the best brother a guy could ask for. So yeah, I love you. Deal with it.”
Ryland stooped down to press a kiss into his hairline, then rested his forehead on top of Colt’s. “No need to thank me. And I love you, too.”
“Look at me,” Colt says after a full two minutes of quiet crying. Ryland lifts his head and peers at him through bloodshot eyes. “I know it feels impossible right now, like you have no control. Maybe you can’t walk yet, or shower, but you know what you can do?” He smiles—a warm, genuine beam of light shining directly at his brother’s tearstricken face. “You can forgive yourself. You just went through something traumatic, Ry. You need to be patient with yourself—it might not get better overnight, but it will get better, I promise you. The only way you can mess that up is if you give up on yourself, and I’m not gonna let that happen.”
Ryland’s lip quivers. “It’s n-not fair.”
“No,” Colt agrees, “no the fuck it’s not. It never should’ve happened, but it did. Now we heal. We’re gonna heal and we’re gonna do it for however long it takes.” He pushes back a lock of hair from his forehead, and Ry automatically leans into the touch with a broken sigh. “It won’t be easy. You’re probably gonna stumble a lot. That’s normal. But every time you fall, I’m gonna pick you back up and dust you off. So if it gets too dark in there, you just call my name, and I’ll turn on the flashlight. Just tell me where to point it.”
Ryland studies him, pale and trembling and barely a shell of himself, but somewhere in there he seems to come to some type of conclusion. He nods. “I need– can you just hold me?”
“Of course.”
He climbs onto the bed beside him, folding around him like a magnet so that he's between Ryland and the headboard with his brother’s head pressed into his chest. He pulls up the duvet around both of them, and begins rubbing at the space above his heart to ease the tension hidden in the muscles. His other hand cards through his hair in a slow, methodical rhythm. He can finally feel his brother relax when he begins rocking them both back and forth, planting his lips across his scalp and the sides of his gaunt face.
“Court’s gonna be here soon,” he whispers, “And Jodes and me are gonna come hang out after lunch. And guess what, Ry? The whole rest of the day gets to be about you. All of it. Today you’re the center of the universe, and tomorrow, and every day after. You take all the time you need, pal. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Thank you,” he replies, voice wet and husky, “Thank you, Colt. Thank you.” He places his hand meekly on top of his.
“I love you, Ry. You make the world better just by being in it.”
Ryland sighs in the way that means he doesn’t believe the words, but clearly, he’s too tired to argue about it. “We should probably do the PT before I fall asleep again.”
Colt pulses his hand. “Nah. Today’s a rest day. Recoup so we can hit the ground running tomorrow.”
Ryland puts up no fight over it. Colt can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing. He chooses to see it as the first one, and continues to snuggle him to his chest until his meds kick in. After a good twenty minutes, he feels the tension in his brother’s back begin to slip away, and he unfurls himself so that Ryland is laying back on top of the plush mattress. He sets the photo album on the nightstand, takes Ry’s glasses off for him, and flicks the lamp off.
“Colt?” Ry asks, eyes groggily squinting in Colt’s general vicinity. The apples of his cheeks are just slightly pink, though whether that’s from the medication or the crying, he can’t tell.
He kneels down closer so he can see him better. “Yeah pal?”
Ryland blinks slowly, one eye at a time, then furrows his brow. “S’this…are you real?”
“I’m real,” he promises softly, “Not a dream.”
“Feels like it…”
Colt combs a hand through his hair. “That’s just the medicine, remember? It’s helping you relax. It’s a good thing, it’s making sure you don’t strain your heart.” He grabs the water off the table and gives Ry a few sips, wiping at his chin with his sleeve when some drips down it. “There you go. You need anything else?”
Ryland shuts his eyes to think about it. Colt waits. After thirty seconds, his brother’s jaw goes slack and a tiny snore rumbles out of him. Colt bends down with a fond smirk to tuck the fleece blankets around his shoulders, and is immediately rewarded with a quiet, “hmmm…” He leaves him with a final kiss between his eyebrows.
He gets himself ready to meet up with Jody after that, fighting the urge to text her about postponing it until next week. He’s just lacing up his boots when he hears the front door click shut, the familiar deliberate footsteps of his older brother echoing off the walls and stopping somewhere in the kitchen. Colt walks out to find Court setting down about six bags of groceries on the counter.
Like a sixth sense, Court spins around to face him before he can even open his mouth to form the word hello. He smiles warmly and wraps his arms around Colt, lingering just slightly too long in the embrace to keep up the act of nonchalance. “Morning, squirt.”
Colt lets the stiffness in his shoulders drop and hugs him back just as hard, burying his smile into his brother’s chest. “Thought you were only bringing toilet paper,” he says once they pull away, “what is all this?”
Court is already moving to put the contents into their proper places. “Just saw you guys were missing some stuff, figured I’d take care of it.” He passes him a six pack of blue gatorade, then pulls out a gallon of milk, a carton of ice cream, more coffee creamer, and at least ten various frozen cuts of meat.
“I don’t think we have room in the fridge for this, Court.”
Apparently, Court doesn’t hear him, because he flings the refrigerator doors open to reveal a completely empty series of shelves. It’s a stark contrast to the pile of old tupperware containers and half-finished frozen dinners that had been there last night.
Did he…did he clean it? When the fuck would he have done that?
His brother expertly arranges the food to his satisfaction, while Colt carries the household products to their rightful spots in the bathroom and closet. He smiles when he sees that Court bought another set of the expensive shampoo and conditioner he’s been using for Ry’s hair—it’s a fancy brand, and it gets great reviews on the caregiving forums he’s been lurking in since December. Court had also thought to grab more of the lavender-scented laundry detergent, which admittedly Colt might have been going a little crazy with for Ry’s sheets.
By the time he makes it back to the kitchen, Court has finished unpacking the food, and is now folding up some kind of silk clothing.
“Got him some new PJs,” he explains, showing Colt the starry print on the pant legs, “Thought maybe he’d like something a little more personal. And look what else I brought.” He grins as he passes Colt a paperback.
“The Hobbit? God, I haven’t read this in years.” He gives it back, not missing the look of pride in his brother’s eyes as they track over the embossed lettering. “It’s a good choice, but I don’t know if Ry’s got much energy to read right now.”
Court sets the book on the counter, expression sobering. “How’s he doing today?”
Colt reflexively shoots a glance over his shoulder at the guestroom, though he really doesn’t have to; he knows Ry will be off in dreamland for at least another hour. “Had another nightmare. Thought it might be better to skip the exercises and let him catch up on rest.” Court nods his agreement. “Oh, but I did have an idea of how to make him feel better.”
“Oh?”
“I called the school, and they’re setting up a video call with all his kids.”
Court’s eyebrows raise simultaneously with the corners of his mouth. “That’s…actually, yeah, that might really help a lot. Have you told him yet?”
Colt grins. “Nah, I want it to be a surprise, so keep it on the DL.” He checks the time on his phone. “Shit, I gotta go. We’ll be back around two, call’s at three-thirty. Do you need anything before I—”
Before he can finish the sentence, Court is swallowing him up in his hulking arms and squeezing tightly. “Just this,” he mumbles quietly, and then Colt feels the smallest of pecks on his ear. He’s pretty sure his entire face looks like a baboon’s ass by the time he pulls back, but that doesn’t erase the idiotic smile forcing its way onto his lips. Court ruffles his hair for good measure, then says, “Don’t drive like a fucking idiot this time.”
Colt doesn’t even wait for a host at La Taza, just finds their usual table and parks himself facing the window so he can enjoy the way the light catches in Jody’s hair. While he waits to spot her ‘71 Ford Bronco in the parking lot over his shoulder, two glasses are placed on the table in front of him by their usual server, Julian, who immediately fills them with ice water.
“Haven’t seen you two in a while,” they chat, the authenticity in their tone a welcome reprieve from the Bay Area’s typically hollow customer-service voice, “Y’all been shooting internationally?”
Colt returns their smile the best he can, repressing the anxiety the question conjures. “Nah, we’ve just had some family stuff going on.”
Julian furrows their brow. “Oh. Good or bad? Or some secret third thing?”
“We’ll go with the last one,” he replies, thankful when he spies the silver of Jodes’ car pull up to a space.
Julian gives an indifferent shrug, then smiles at Jody as she walks in. Colt stands to pull her chair out for her, showering her in roughly twenty-dozen kisses in the time it takes for her to sit.
“Heel, boy,” she pushes him off, though it’s pretty obvious from the way she’s flushing that she doesn’t actually mind the attention.
He takes her hand across the table and squeezes it. “How are you, my love? How was the meeting?”
“Oh, please don’t make me talk about work right now,” she sighs, “I feel like I’m in Severance. It’s like the most suffocating, senseless bureaucracy I’ve ever dealt with, and I never get to leave.”
“How about you break into that self-care stuff Ry got you when we get home? Have a spa day. I could practice my foot-rubbing skills.” He wiggles his eyebrows, incredibly aware of how ridiculously he’s leaning into the part of trophy husband.
Jody chuckles, but then her grin morphs into a serious line. “How is he?”
He feels his own smile crumple as he studies the droplets of condensation beading up on the body of his glass. “Honestly…fuck, Jodes, I’m really fucking worried. The way he’s been talking…”
She leans in to where he’s forced to meet her eye, and when he does, he’s met with a warm smile and a patient gaze. “Do you really believe he’s going to get through this?”
He almost balks out of his chair. “Of cour—!” he remembers himself, and curbs his volume, “Of course I do.”
Now it’s her turn to pulse his hand. “Then you have nothing to worry about. Because he will get through it. The only way he doesn’t is if he thinks we think he’s hopeless.”
“Which is never going to happen.”
“Which is never going to happen,” she agrees, “So take a breath. I see you itching to pull out your phone and call him. Courtland’s got him, babes.”
He takes his hand out of his pocket (he hadn’t realized it had drifted there) and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “What would I do without you?”
“Die, probably,” she grins, then seals their lips together from across the table. It probably goes on a little too long considering how public it is, but what-the-fuck-ever. He loves his fiancée—his pregnant fiancée—and he plans on making sure she knows it, PDA be damned.
Their conversation has drifted toward safer, more stable topics by the time the food gets to the table (a chicken pesto sandwich for him, and shrimp linguini for her; same as always). They chat about possible neighborhoods to consider, the upcoming court date, potential baby names—a small glimpse of normal breaking through the clouds of fuckery they’ve all been dealing with since November.
“I dunno, I think we should wait to find out,” she tells him, taking a moment to finish her seltzer, “My parents did, and they got an even split.”
“Jodes, I think you’re underestimating the sheer force of the Grace gene. We both know it’s gonna be a boy.”
She tosses a wadded up napkin at him, which he reflexively catches in one hand. Jody manages to conceal her impressed look with a hasty eyeroll. “Your brother is a scientist. You know that’s not how that works. And I wouldn’t be too sure, cowboy—all my cousins are girls. My brothers are the odd ones out.”
He leans back in his chair with a smirk. “I guess we’ll just have to wait ‘til July to see which one of us is right.” She fake-glares at him, their conversation pausing briefly. He takes her hand again, more serious this time, “Hey. You know I don’t really care which it is, right?”
“Of course sweetheart. But I think you’re missing out on a glaring possibility here.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “And what would that be?”
“Could be both,” she whispers as she leans in, eyes sparkling with mischief, “if we have twins.”
“Oh, fu—”
“Colton, relax,” she pinches his cheek, “we’ll know in two weeks. And we’ve got a lot of time to prepare, if that’s the case.”
He swallows back the anxiety. Admittedly, even though the thought of two little monsters running around the house scares the shit out of him, he’s certainly not opposed. For him, being a twin meant having a built-in best friend, and he imagines that after a while they would start entertaining each other the way he and Ry did. Or they might end up hating each other for erasing their sense of identity. Fuck.
He doesn’t allow himself to linger on the thought for too long, though, instead signaling for the check once he realizes it’s already 2:15. They pay, walk out together, and steal a moment beneath the awning, before setting off for home in their individual cars.
Once they arrive, Colt quietly makes his way toward the guestroom, Jody padding quickly behind him with some kind of decorative box in her hands. He knocks softly, then pushes the door open to see both of his older brothers on the bed; Court is reading to him and quietly doing a pretty good Gandalf voice. Ry is dozing under his arm, dressed in his new pajamas and favorite cardigan. Colt shoots his gaze over at the muted screen: they’re watching…what looks like Paddington 2?
He jerks a thumb toward it, mouthing what the fuck?
Court just shrugs at him and points to Ry, responding with a silent ask him.
Damn. Maybe I should try some of that tramadol.
Just as Colt and Jody are moving to close the door and let him rest, Ry shifts in his sleep. After a few seconds, he’s blinking up at Court, and Colt can just barely make out a mumbled, “Colt?”
Court smiles and runs a hand through his messy golden locks. “So close, stinker.” He juts his chin over toward the door.
Ryland squints, then breaks into a tiny, lazy smile at the sight of them. “Hey guys…” he yawns, “how long…?”
“We just got home, darling,” Jody croons, coming to sit on the edge of the mattress to give him a hug and a smooch on the cheek. “How are you?”
Ryland’s smile flickers. “Did Colt…?”
She shakes her head, taking his hand. “No details,” she assures him, “just that you’re in a bit of a tough spot mentally. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”
He sighs, sinking impossibly far into the wall of pillows Colt had meticulously arranged behind him. “I don’t want you to worry about me, Jody. You’ve got enough on your plate with the studio—”
“Ryland,” she stares him down with stern but patient eyes, “You’re my family. I reserve the right to worry about my family,” her gaze softens, “But like I said, we don’t have to talk about it right now. Actually, I have something for you, from one Mr. Tucker.”
She picks up the box and presents it to him with a proud flourish. Ry looks confused when he first opens it, but a flash of clarity quickly takes over as he grabs a couple of the items and holds them with his good hand to the lamplight.
Colt sits next to Jody and inspects the contents as he pulls them out of the box. Ry’s got a large mug in his hand that he can barely support the weight of, with the words ‘EDUCATION IS IMPORTANT, BUT D&D IS IMPORTANTER’ printed on the front. He puts it on his lap before he can drop it by accident, then takes out what looks like a pill organizer. Instead of the days of the week, it’s labeled with the words ‘Cantrips’, ‘1st Level’, ‘2nd Level’, and so on. It doesn’t make any kind of sense to Colt, but the look on his twin’s face as he examines each item tells him Dan made a good selection. There’s a blanket, some kind of gel pack, a pair of fuzzy socks, and a set of heavy dice, all in the theme of Ry’s nerdy dragon game.
An actual, true smile has bloomed across his face when he finishes going through it all. “This is so thoughtful of him. I don’t think I have his number, could you please tell him thank you for me?”
She beams at him. “Of course, my love. He asks about you all the time, by the way.”
“Maybe he could swing by some time. The two of you can dork out,” Colt suggests.
“Yeah…” Ry sighs, but there’s just something about his face or maybe his tone that seems off. Colt watches that familiar detached shade cloud his gaze—it’s the same one that’s been coloring his features since they brought him home. Seeing his misery rising back to the surface is like a punch to the gut: even when surrounded by comfort and family, Ryland might as well be miles away.
Judging by the tension present in Court and Jody’s silence, it’s obvious they notice it too. Court replaces an arm around his shoulders, massaging his bicep with a gentle strength that’s probably uncharacteristic of a CIA-trained killing machine. Jody slots her fingers in his and squeezes his hand.
Colt settles a hand on his knee. “What’s wrong, bud?”
He watches his twin use a conscious effort to force the corners of his mouth up. “Nothing, nothing. Just tired.”
Colt hates this. He can literally see what keeping this performance up is costing him. Ryland has always been stubborn, especially when it comes to admitting he needs help, but this is not the moment for the tough guy act. This is the part where a wall is formed, and it should be the kind built from bricks carried by all four of them to keep out the danger. Instead, it’s a tomb that Ry has put up between himself and the rest of the world.
“Let me guess: this is a Groundhog Day situation?” Jody asks. Ryland nods. She smiles like the war raging in his brother’s mind is the most natural thing in the world. “Fucking same. You would not believe how many bloody times we were reshooting this one sequence last night—the lead would not let it go. Almost had my sound guy quit on the spot.”
Something about her words seems to lighten the mood. Jody climbs beside Ryland and smushes her shoulder into his as she tells him a horror story about how five different PAs kept trying to give her coffee last night. It manages to put a small smile on Ry’s face. Colt fidgets, desperately wanting to keep unpacking what’s going on, but a quick time check tells him he needs to go grab his laptop for what he hopes will be a pleasant surprise and not a guilt-inducing one.
He shoots Jodes and Court a look, which they return with their own. He slips quietly out of the room for his computer, pulls up the Zoom link, and is immediately met with a screen full of tiny faces all talking over one another. They all erupt into even louder chatter at the sight of him. Colt smiles and gives them a small wave. He can see a few faculty in the back of the room, trying to mediate the rowdy group of preteens. One middle-aged guy walks to the front and manages to get them to settle with a quiet coyote symbol.
As soon as he opens his mouth, Colt recognizes his voice as Gary’s. “Alright, everyone. I know you’re all excited, but there will be no talking over each other. We raise our hand if we have something to say.” One kid in the middle of the crowd raises his hand. “Yes, Adam?”
“That’s not Mr. Grace!” he shouts and points toward the front, where Colt guesses his face is being projected on the whiteboard or something.
Colt chuckles softly. “No it’s not, kid.”
Another kid speaks up without warning, slightly precocious, “Then why do you look like him?”
“Rehka, what did I just say?”
“Sorry Mr. Pinsker,” she replies, even though she clearly isn’t.
“I’m Mr. Grace’s brother,” he answers patiently, “Has he taught you guys about genetics?” They all nod enthusiastically. “Does anyone have any siblings?” A ton of hands go up. Huh. He could get used to being listened to like this. “Did you know that means you and your brother or sister have half of the same DNA? Well, Mr. Grace and I are identical twins. That means we share one hundred percent of our DNA. That’s why we look the same.” He remembers Ry explaining that to him once, back when they were around these kids’ age.
Another hand comes up, this time from a small one in the back. “How come Mr. Grace is still gone? Does he have the flu or something?”
Fuck. He probably should have guessed this was going to come up, and Colt is not about to make the same mistake he did earlier and scare a bunch of children.
He keeps his expression cheerful and says, “Mr. Grace isn’t sick. He just had to go to the hospital for a bit. But don’t worry, he’ll be back next semester.” This gets him a loud drone of disappointment, which he privately thinks is really sweet. “He tells me all the time how much he misses you guys, though. And he’s very thankful for the cards. Do you want to see him?”
A chorus of yeses explodes from his speaker. He turns the volume down a couple clicks.
“Okay, okay guys!” Gary puts his hand back up, and they quiet down again. “Remember what we talked about earlier: we stay respectful, we go one at a time, and please watch the language.” He turns back toward the camera and gives Colt a questioning look, a small flash of anxiety crossing his features. Colt shoots him a reassuring thumbs up.
He pushes the door open. Court, Jodes, and Ry are all chatting, but they look up as he enters.
“Hey, Ry? I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you,” he grins. Ryland looks confused, until Colt sets the computer on his lap.
“Surprise!!” sings the choir of high-pitched voices from the speaker, followed by a ton of greetings all lapping over each other.
Ry breaks out in what is easily the biggest grin he’s worn since he came home, eyes bulging in disbelief. Colt can see a bit of a shine in them as he takes in the screen, his eyebrows raised in shock.
“Wh– hey guys! Oh my gosh, that’s…that’s a lot of you. Wow. Oh my gosh.”
“One hundred and fifteen of ‘em,” Gary supplies. Ryland’s smile goes even wider as he sees all the faculty parked in the back of the room. “We had a couple absences.”
“How did—?”
“Oh, it was a coordinated effort,” he gestures to the camera. Ryland looks at Colt, and he gives him a wink. “How are you, Mr. Grace?”
“I’m– well, I’m great right now. Fantastic. I can’t believe you guys did all this, holy cow.”
A hand shoots up from the sea of bodies.
“Yes, Olivia?” Ryland all but sings.
She pushes up her glasses and beams at him. “Did you see the card me and Rehka made you?”
The girl beside her (the one who didn’t raise her hand earlier) pipes up. “Olivia helped me draw the solar system. It’s scale-accurate,” she tells him proudly.
“I did see that,” he chuckles, “Thank you– all of you. It made me feel a lot better. I miss you guys so much.”
“We miss you too!” they all chant.
Another little girl holds up a large piece of paper. “Me and Amelia made you a poster! Basically everyone signed it.” She stands and picks her way to the front of the class to show him. A very crude drawing of what Colt assumes must be Ryland with a beaker in his hand comes into focus, surrounded by tiny signatures scrawled in marker to the point where there’s almost no white space left. “Can we put it on the wall?”
“Of course, kiddo.” Ry’s voice has gone just a touch watery as he examines it carefully. “Wait. Where’d you get that photo of me?”
“It’s not a photo,” she corrects, “I drew it!”
“What? No way.” Colt feels his chest go warm as a piece of the old, coy Ryland shows its face. “You’re pulling my leg. That’s clearly a picture.”
She giggles. “I’m gonna put it up next to the periodic table.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. Have you all been good for the subs?”
A mixed response: some of them nod vigorously, others grumble stuff that doesn’t quite make it to the microphone. Colt thinks he sees Claire rolling her eyes from the back of the room.
“Mr. Grace, why did you go to the hospital?”
Ryland flinches, clearly not prepared for that blow. Jody settles a hand on his good knee, and Court rests one on his forearm.
“Sean. What did we say about personal questions?” Gary is already making his way over to put a stop to his protests, but about half of the class is waiting with held breath for their teacher to answer.
Colt leans in, keeping a smile on his face. “Oh, you guys should’ve been there. Mr. Grace got ambushed by a ton of ninjas. He fought ‘em all off with only one hand. It was super brave.”
Some of the class look like they don’t believe him, but most of them laugh. He feels Ryland slip his hand into his, squeezing out a silent thank you. He pulses it right back.
The kids continue to show him their drawings, their grades, their projects for the upcoming science fair. Ryland listens to each one carefully, engaging with a lighthearted air that lifts a portion of the worry off of Colt’s shoulders. They tell him over and over again how much they miss him, ask him what shows he’s been watching while he’s been gone, talk about all the drama characteristic of a middle school’s gossip ring. Eventually, the questions drift into general class topics, and Colt gets to see his brother slip back into teacher-mode as he explains the differences between animal and plant cells.
It goes on until the bell rings. The kids exit with bright smiles and several more well wishes as they bottleneck out of the door, leaving a small handful of faculty behind. Gary and a few others linger closer to the camera, taking him in as the door shuts.
“It’s good to see you, dear,” says an old woman, “We’ve all been thinking of you. The school isn’t the same without you, Ryland.”
“Thank you, Lydia,” he replies, softer now, “I can’t believe you all did this just for me.”
“It was no trouble– actually, I believe it was your brother’s idea?”
Ryland turns to Colt. He nods his confirmation proudly and slings an arm over his shoulder. “All in a day’s work.”
“You look pale, dear. Have you been eating enough? Sleeping well?” she asks sincerely.
“Well, they’ve got me on some pretty heavy-duty stuff right now, so I don’t really get a choice there,” he answers, and Colt can tell he’s trying to play it off as casually as he can. “Don’t worry about me, guys.”
“You should’ve said that a month ago,” another teacher quips, dressed in a pressed pantsuit. “We didn’t know what to think. Adam barged into my class like the world was ending. We thought…”
She trails off. Everyone on this side of the call knows what she was going to say. Ryland exhales a long sigh, wincing slightly as a small wheeze comes out with it.
“Yeah…it, um. It wasn’t pretty, I’ll tell you that much.”
“We respect your privacy,” Gary tells him, “we don’t expect any details, obviously, but your brother did say something about you being bedbound? Is there anything we can do?”
Ryland blushes. “Oh, no, no. This was more than enough. Thank you guys.”
“Of course, sweetheart. We’ll let you rest, but please do let us know if there’s anything you need.”
“Expect more matzo ball soup. Liam’s been testing out a new recipe– might as well spread the love.” Gary winks. “Get well soon, Ryland. We miss you, man.”
The rest of them give their goodbyes, and the call ends. A small moment of quiet falls over the guestroom.
Then comes the sound of a ragged inhale, followed by a choked sob.
“Oh, sweetheart. What’s wrong?” Jody curls closer around Ry, who’s busy trying to hide his sudden bout of tears behind his fingers.
A surge of guilt hits Colt like a sack of bricks. He reaches over and takes one of his hands away. “Sorry, Ry, I thought that would help—”
Ryland ducks his chin to his chest, expression steeped in shame, his breath hitching. “No– I’m just– so selfish—”
Court tenses beside him, slipping a hand behind his shoulders. “Why do you think that?”
“Bec-cause I—” his voice has grown so thin he can barely form the words, and then they come tumbling out of him all at once, “They all want me back, a-and I don’t want to do this anymore—”
The sentence cuts like a knife. It tightens the muscles around Colt’s throat to the point where he almost can’t breathe. He squeezes his brother’s fingers as his own tears bead on his lashes, unable to find anything to say. Jody, on the other hand, immediately leaps into action. She plucks a tissue from the box on the nightstand and delicately wipes away his tears as they fall, never letting her expression falter.
“Darling, we love you so much. We’re right here.”
He shakes his head. “He broke me– M’just an– an invalid now—”
“You are not a burden, Ryland,” Court soothes, voice settling at a gentle, low frequency. “You’re our family, and this is what families do: they support each other. There is nowhere else any of us would rather be than right here with you.”
A broken, high-pitched whine leaves his throat, his face twisted in all the pain he’s been hiding for what must have been weeks at this point. Court and Jody lean him fully back into the pillows, and Colt moves to press his fox into his chest before it can even think to spasm and hurt his poor brother even more.
“Let it out Ry. You don’t have to keep this in anymore. Let us carry it.”
As soon as Colt says it, Ryland loses complete control. The noises that rip out of him don’t even sound human; closer to a drowning animal’s, or a tire quickly losing its air.
“I’m sorry–” he bawls, “m’so sorry. I d-don’t…I don’t wanna wake up tomorrow–” The tears gush down his cheeks, over his stubble, drip onto his neck. “J-just– want it to stop—”
They all press around him as his frantic gasps overcome him, but Colt can tell from the looks on Court and Jody’s faces that they’re all thinking the same thing:
This is really fucking bad.
Ryland starts pitching between coughing and sobbing, left too breathless for words. Colt feels himself reeling from it a second time, desperate to take it all away and tortured by the knowledge that he can’t. Ry is shaking like a leaf. Jody is quickly running out of tissues. Court looks like he’s about to break his teeth with how hard he’s clenching his jaw.
It’s so utterly fucking unfair. All of it. It makes Colt want to put a hole through the drywall. It makes him want to blow up that warehouse. It makes him want—
It makes him want to kill that bastard all over again.
Colt folds himself over and buries his face into his shoulder, arms embracing him with as much love as he can give, which has no finite number attached. “You’re not broken, Ry. You’re our family, and you’re in pain, and we’re here to take care of you. We’re not going, we’re not angry– we love you—” He pauses when his own tears spill over and begin to wet his shirt, before continuing in a trembling voice, “I know you– that you’ve been holding onto this for so long. It’s time to give it to us, okay? It’s okay if you’re too tired to try right now. We can do that for you. You just have to let us.” He swallows painfully. “Please. Please let us.”
He pulls back just until he can see him again, cradling his head in his hands. The muscles in Colt’s face ache in sympathy at how hard the corners of his brother’s mouth are turning down. Ryland keeps crying at full force, but he nods.
Jody has moved on to using the pads of her thumbs to keep his cheeks dry, while Court leaves briefly to grab another box of tissues. With her free hand, she tugs the blanket back up to his chin. “Everything will be alright, my love. It may not feel like it right now, but it will. And until it does, we’re not going anywhere. I don’t care if I have to tell you that every two minutes, or two seconds, I’ll say it until you believe it.”
They support him through another round of coughs. It thankfully ends before the need for the nebulizer, but Colt can see how much it hurts him from the pinched expression on his face. Ryland is white as a ghost, save for the red splotches on his cheeks and nose, and almost vibrating from the stress the fit is putting on his muscles. Colt and Jody keep at least two points of contact with him until his breath comes back. By the time Court has returned, Ry’s sobs have turned to nearly inaudible whimpers, each hitch threatening to push against the scar on his stomach. Colt discards the fox to brace a spare pillow over his abdomen to keep the incision from splitting apart, but he knows the pain is still there.
“You’re hurting,” Court observes. He speaks with a measured voice, but the puffiness of his eyes betrays the illusion. He settles a hand on his ankle, expression melting into something impossibly soft. “Tell me where.”
“Evr-y-ywher-re—” The sheer fragility of the word burns like a cauterizing rod in Colt’s chest.
“I’ll grab his rescue dose,” Jody whispers into his ear, “and something for the anxiety. Keep him as calm as you can, yeah?”
He nods gravely, and she disappears through the door. Court massages Ry’s left calf, while Colt takes her spot on the mattress and tries to guide his breathing away from the looming threat of another heart attack. He uses a hand to wipe his face clean, then makes his twin drink to replace all the water he’s losing. When Jody comes back, she supports his head and feeds him a liquid version of his meds from a small plastic cup.
“That’s it, sweetheart. It’ll work soon, just try to breathe.” The smile she gives him carries the warmth of the sun.
Another grueling five minutes pass before Ry’s breathing finally shifts out of hyperventilation territory. Colt takes his pulse as his lungs begin to expand in a deeper, more consistent rhythm: his heart rate finally seems to be climbing down from the ceiling. He massages the left side of his chest anyway; there’s no way that spell of emotion didn’t agitate the sore muscles over it.
Ryland lets out a strained sigh at the touch. “M’so sorry…m’sorry…”
“No sorries, Ry. You did nothing wrong, just relax,” he tells him gently. His brother is the picture of pure exhaustion, completely drained now.
“You’re safe here, stinker. You’re safe, I promise you.” Court retucks the blankets tightly over his feet to stave off any possibility of Ryland catching a chill from his poor circulation.
“I-I don’t know– w-what to do,” Ry gasps.
Colt switches to dragging his fingers across his twin’s scalp with a feather-light pressure. “For now, you just rest. Let the meds do their job.”
Ryland stares up at him behind clouded, bloodshot eyes, that familiar medication-induced glaze beginning to take root. Colt leans down to press a kiss onto his temple, and allows himself to linger there, the smell of Ry’s shampoo filling up his nose.
“You are loved,” he whispers, voice low. “You are smart, and funny, and brave, and kind. You are all of that and so much more, Ry. And you don’t have to believe any of it right now, but I need you to know that we do.”
Ryland swallows. Colt uses a soft touch to press him further into his pillowfort, and though he makes no objections, he does try to follow it up with another slurred apology. They all hush at him. Colt can see the gray haze of his medication beginning to pull him under, and lets out his own sigh of relief when he feels his brother finally relax the tension in his shoulders.
Jody lifts the pillow from his abdomen and replaces it with a heating pad, then takes great care to reswaddle Ry in a mountain of blankets. It seems to help anchor him, his eyes finally closing. Ryland’s breath gives one more tiny stutter, before he succumbs to a sedated sleep.
The three of them stay there for another ten minutes, saying nothing. Colt watches the rise and fall of his chest, praying that the drugs are enough to soothe his pain and return the energy his sobs stole. He keeps his fingers combing through his mussed hair the whole time, until something in the room shifts, and they all climb off the mattress slowly.
The walk to the kitchen may as well be a funeral procession. Court collapses into a chair at the table, Jody braces herself with straight arms on the counter. Colt stares out the window: thick gray clouds are rolling over the sky, sealing away the sun. For whatever reason, that feels right to him.
“He wants to die,” Court says. Soft. Distant, like he doesn’t want to hear himself. “He’s just…staring at the ceiling and waiting for it to happen. Christ—”
“He doesn’t want to die,” Colt replies flatly, “he’s just running on empty. It’s…it’s passive. He won’t do anything about it, but he’s not gonna fight to stay.”
He doesn’t break his gaze away from the incoming storm, but he can hear the sound of Jodes pulling out the electric kettle and filling it. After a moment, a pair of arms crosses around his middle and guides him into her orbit.
She leans the side of her face against his chest. “I don’t…” she sighs, then more firmly says, “It’s a bad idea to leave him alone right now. Someone needs to be with him at all times, which means an actual schedule, and shifts, and—”
Colt shakes his head. “Jodes, you have to go to work. And Court needs to take care of Claire.”
His brother grips the edge of the wooden table like a vice, eyes steely. “We can do both. It’s possible. And Jody is right: he can’t be by himself, it’s not safe. The kid’ll understand– hell, she’ll probably want to help.” He checks his watch. “I need to go pick her up, but we’re coming right back here after, end of discussion.”
Colt chews his lip, close to breaking skin. He gives him a silent nod, watching numbly as his brother grabs his jacket and locks the door behind him.
“Babes, sit down. C’mere, sit.” Jody pushes him to the vacated chair and takes the one beside him. “We are going to get through this. We just need to be on our game here.”
He takes the hand she offers him, warm and soft in his grip. “The, um, the monitor. The one Court gave us for Christmas. Do you think…?”
She nods seriously. “It can’t hurt. And he doesn’t need to know about it.”
“Just for safety, y’know? In case he wakes up and one of us isn’t right there, or if he– he tries to—”
The rest of his air leaves him unceremoniously. Jody reaches a hand up and wipes away a stray tear from under his eye. He’s fighting with everything he has to keep a handle on it, but he knows he’s dangerously close to slipping. There’s a flash from the window, and a crack of thunder, and Jodes pulls his face onto her shoulder, and suddenly he can’t hold on anymore. Quiet, choked sobs wrench themselves from his throat, all the fear and helplessness and grief rising to the surface and spilling out in painful waves.
Without any kind of warning, an image fills his mind: Ry laying on that freezing floor, only five feet away from him as his life seeped away. The feeling of the zip-ties cutting into Colt’s wrists as he tried and failed to get to him, and somewhere in his head the knowledge that if he lost him here, a part of himself would go with him. The begging, the pleading, the bargaining. His other half. His mirror image. His brother.
His brother dying.
He did die. He remembers the vertigo of receiving that news back in the hospital from the person holding him together right now. The same strangled moans of anguish ripped through him then as he stared through blurry vision at his limp, pale body, not even strong enough anymore to breathe on its own. The terror of the revelation stealing the air from that awful, mechanical room for five days. The uncertainty that he would ever get to hear the warmth in his voice again, the sound of his laughter, the tune of his smile. That he was already gone—just waiting for Colt to let him go, too.
That’s what he’s doing now.
He can’t fight Ryland’s mind for him. This is not an opponent that can be taken down with a tightened fist. The victim and aggressor are one and the same.
But Colt saved him once. He can do it again.
“He’s a fighter. He’s strong. This is just the hard part, but…but we can get him through it. I don’t give a shit how long that takes, it will happen. I’m not losing him again.”
She plants a gentle kiss on his cheek. “No one is getting left behind.”
He closes the space between them by pressing the bridges of their noses together, trying to sync his breathing with hers.
“No one gets left behind,” he echoes, forcing himself to believe it. He has to. It’s the only way.
–
A WEEK LATER
“Colt, I can’t move.”
This does not deter his brother in the slightest; if anything, it only motivates his mother-henning further. His hands readjust the blankets draped over Ryland’s legs for the seventh time this morning, then pick up another from the reserve on the bed and secure it around his shoulders.
“Gotta keep you warm,” he mumbles, smoothing the whole thing over where he’d tucked the pillow across his abdomen.
“For the one minute it’ll take to get to the car?”
“You were literally just shivering, Ry, and—”
“Yeah, ‘cause this house is freezing—”
“–I know for a fact that your leg is hurting. And it’s seventy-two degrees in here. Forty-eight outside. I’m not risking that scar ripping.”
“Colt—”
“End of discussion.”
He says it so firmly that it almost makes Ryland flinch. Even though he’s not going to admit it, the prospect of going outside in the January cold does worry him, but it’s a pebble on the mountain of what’s coming after. He isn’t sure what to expect from this trip, and more than a little worried his body is going to abruptly fail him after its extended disuse.
He must make a face, because suddenly Colt is kneeling down to his level, his tone softening. “Hey. Look at me.”
Ryland meets his eye, trying not to give away how fast his heart is beating.
“I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, okay? I promise. You say the word, and we’re outta there, no questions asked. And I don’t want you acting like a hero, either. If you feel sick, or the pain is too much, or even if your battery’s just drained, you tell me.”
Ryland nods seriously, even though he privately thinks his brother is being slightly overprotective. Colt breaks into a smile, checks his work one last time, and, apparently satisfied, takes the handles of the wheelchair.
They’re greeted by the smell of some kind of herbal blend as soon as they emerge from the guestroom. Jody appears from the kitchen, two travel tumblers of tea in each hand. She gives Colt a smooch before setting one of the drinks into the cupholder Court had jerry-rigged on the left arm of Ryland’s chair.
“No coffee?” Colt asks her, his voice just north of a whine.
“Nope,” she chirps, “It’s officially banned from this flat as a form of psychological warfare.”
Ryland chuckles; it’s actually pretty fair given that two of the three permanent residents in the apartment aren’t allowed to drink it. “Seconded.”
She turns to him, warmth radiating from her smile. “You ready?”
He nods again, though he’s not sure how convincing it is. “Ready.” Right as the word leaves his mouth, a muffled honk blares from outside.
Colt scoffs. “Guess that’s our cue.”
As soon as he opens the door, a gust of wind cuts across his face, and (unfortunately) Colt might be a tiny bit within his rights to have been concerned about the temperature. He still relishes the fresh air after being cooped up for so long, though; sometimes it’s hard to remember that the world isn’t just a king-sized mattress in Colt and Jody’s apartment. He exhales a sigh that feels like it’s been buried inside his chest since he left the hospital. The air comes out in a thin cloud.
Colt’s GMC is parked practically on top of the sidewalk, and the second they come out of the threshold, Court is running around to open the passenger side for them. He and Colt hoist Ryland as carefully as they can into the already reclined seat—also lined with at least three blankets, and padded with pillows.
“Heat’s already blasting for you, stinker,” he tells him proudly as he buckles Ryland in.
Ryland rolls his eyes, which would probably be more effective if he wasn’t drowning in fleece. “Jeez, the both of you…”
“Can’t be helped, I’m afraid,” Colt shoots back as he climbs into the other side, “You’re not allowed to catch a chill. Brothers’ orders.”
Meanwhile, Court is doing a very convincing impression of Colt, meticulously fixing the blankets back into place. He pauses to cup a hand to the side of his face.
“You’re gonna do great, Ry,” he says, smiling softly when Ryland leans into his palm, “But don’t push yourself too hard, alright? We don’t need a repeat of New Year’s.”
Ryland grimaces at the memory. Trying to stay up with the rest of the family until midnight had seemed like an innocent idea at the time, but he definitely regretted his choices when he spent the next five days in bed feeling like his entire body was made of concrete—chronic fatigue is no joke.
“I’ll be fine,” he replies, and tries to believe it himself. He must do a passable job, because Court gives his hair one last ruffle before shutting the door between them, flashing Colt a thumb’s up from the rearview once he’s packed away the wheelchair in the bed of the truck.
“Relax, Ry,” Colt mumbles as he turns on some kind of soft indie mix and pulls out of the parking lot, “Maybe you could take a snooze on the way there.”
“I am relaxed, and it is literally only fifteen minutes away.”
“That’s enough for a power nap.” He presses a palm onto his left shoulder, thumb running up and down where his collarbone would be if it wasn’t swallowed up by the fabric and one of his twin’s oversized Indiana Jones sweatshirts. “And it’ll be twenty minutes in the room, plus however long we gotta wait—and trust me, there is always a wait. And then at least another fifteen on the way back, assuming there’s no traffic—”
“You’re spiraling,” he groans.
Ryland expects some kind of snappy retort in response. Instead what he gets is a long sigh.
“I just–” he cuts off, and takes a convenient moment to check his blindspots, “I just need you to be okay.”
“I am okay,” he insists, and this time, it’s not a half-truth. “I’ve got you.”
Colt grins at that, a small trace of shine reflected in his eyes. “Yeah. You do.”
He’s grateful for the blanket shield as Colt wheels him toward the lobby doors, but Ryland has to draw the line once they’re inside; the place is plenty warm, and very much occupied. He manages to wiggle out of his cocoon while his brother checks in at the front desk, finally getting the chance to take a sip of the tea Jody sent him off with. He blames the heat in his face on the steaming drink in his hands when he notices some random guy staring at him.
It’s easier to ignore once Colt comes back, a paper cup of coffee in hand. He settles into the nearest chair and stretches out his back, but freezes once he realizes Ryland has clocked his little secret. “Don’t tell Jodes.”
He smirks. “Happy wife, happy life.”
Colt hadn’t been lying about the wait: it takes almost twenty minutes of anxious fidgeting before the door to the therapy room opens in a slow, mechanical motion. Dr. Garcia rolls himself into the lobby, dressed in a muted green sweater and dark-washed jeans. The smile he greets them with is an identical copy of the one posted to the provider page.
“Ryland?” he asks, though it’s not exactly a hard guess to make. “I’m all ready when you are.”
Colt rises immediately, but instead of grabbing the handles, he steps in front of him and braces both hands on his shoulders. “You okay? We can still leave, if you’re not ready.”
Ryland swallows back the lump already forming in his throat. “I guess I’ll never know until I try.” He places his left hand over Colt’s right. “I’ll be good.”
“I’ll be right outside the door the whole time. Holler if you need anything, I mean it. And I’ve got the meds locked and loaded as soon as you’re finished.”
Ryland gives him a flimsy smile, and then his brother is pushing him through the doorway and parking him next to a leather couch. Colt messes with the blankets over his lap again, apparently not quite ready to leave him to the company of a stranger.
“I take it you’re the brother?” Dr. Garcia asks, pressing a button on the wall to shut the door behind them.
Colt finally looks up, putting on that classic Seavers charm with practiced ease. “Colt. What gave it away?”
Dr. Garcia shrugs. “Just a hunch. Don’t worry,” he adds as he wheels himself a comfortable distance across from Ryland, “We haven’t had any accidents in at least two days. Personal record.”
He’s smiling, but something in his eyes is quietly and firmly signaling that it’s time for Colt to leave them to it. His brother seems to pick up on this, though it looks like it takes a great deal of effort for him to cross to the door. He gives him one last thumb’s up, then shuts it behind him. Ryland feels his absence like a cold wake.
Dr. Garcia rubs his hands together, his warm grin never faltering. The left side of his face scrunches up like melted plastic; the burn scar there seems to run down the entire side of his body, and one of his eyes appears to be just slightly out of alignment.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ryland. I’m Dr. Ricardo Garcia, in case that wasn’t obvious. Now, I know we have limited time here—”
“Sorry about that,” he deflects immediately, “Just, my brother is worried about chronic fatigue.”
Dr. Garcia puts his hands up. “Hey, I get it—I’ve been there myself, actually. Anyway, why don’t we start with you telling me a little bit about yourself?”
Okay. Easy enough.
“Well, I’m a seventh grade science teacher over at Grover Cleveland Middle.”
“I thank you for your service.”
This gets a tight chuckle from him. “I used to be a scientist, though. I have a PhD in molecular biology from Stanford.”
Dr. Garcia lifts his eyebrows, clearly impressed. “That’s a big career shift. What made you change paths?”
“It’s…a long story. I used to have some, uh, anger problems. Kind of had a blowout over something stupid a couple years back. But I honestly prefer teaching—keeps me young, y’know? Or, it did, before…”
He trails off, that familiar ache in his chest shrinking his lung capacity at the thought of his classroom. He hasn’t seen it in three months, but if he allows himself to think about that too hard, this session will be over before it even begins.
His therapist doesn’t appear to be fazed, however. “So what made you decide to start therapy?”
Ryland stops looking him in the eye. His gaze falls instead to the scarred battlefield of his body, concealed beneath the blankets. Court cleared him to tell most of the story, just keep the end of it vaguely tucked under the excuse of trauma-induced amnesia. It still takes him a good ten seconds to answer, the words sitting like a rock in his stomach.
“I was…I was kidnapped. A-and…tortured.” He has to fight to maintain a level of clinical distance as he timidly adds, “I almost died.”
“I see.” A part of Ryland wishes Dr. Garcia would just take the pity-route with this, but it’s pretty evident by his tone that he’s already turned to the role of the patient listener.
He swallows back the nausea—the sooner he gets it out, the sooner he can leave it behind. “I was getting drinks with a friend, and I don’t really remember how it happened, but I was drugged, and taken. The guy, he– h-he—”
He feels the pressure in his chest building from a lack of oxygen, the sickening splitting of his chest, the crack of his leg. The cold of the room. The scent of mint. The sound of dry, hollow laughter. The knowledge that he is going to die. In the span of a measly thirty seconds, he’s a hyperventilating mess in his chair, hands clutching at the pillow Colt left him with to try and brace against the spasming himself. The pain only fortifies the memory of its origin.
“Sorry, s-sorry,” he sobs, burying his face in his hands.
“You don’t have to apologize. It’s alright if you’re not ready to get into it yet. I get it: we’re still strangers. But I want you to know that I understand how hard it can be, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up for it.”
“Th-thanks, Dr. Garcia—”
“Please, call me Rocky.” He uses one hand to roll himself closer, and another to pass him a box of tissues. “See? Now we’re not strangers anymore.” Ryland plucks one of them out and dries his eyes, before Rocky continues, “If you think it’d make it easier, I can tell you a little about myself.”
He wipes at his nose, nodding silently.
Rocky gazes at him with a patience that he privately doesn’t think he deserves. “I was born in Puerto Rico, but my family emigrated to the mainland so I could go to school here. I studied over at Caltech for my masters in mechanical engineering, and when I graduated, I was contracted by the state to work on a nuclear power plant—legally, I can’t tell you which one, but I can say that I was trusted with designing a new kind of reactor.”
This gets Ryland’s attention immediately. “Wait, wait– so why the heck did you become a therapist?”
He chuckles, “Yeah, that wasn’t originally part of the plan.” His expression sobers, but he’s calm when he says, “There was an accident; some of the materials we used in the cooling system failed, and the core overheated. The facility exploded. I was the only survivor, but obviously,” he gestures to his wheelchair, “not unscathed.”
“I’m…I’m so sorry,” Ryland whispers, feeling tears well up for a different reason, “That’s…”
“Really fucking unfair? I completely agree. The blast blinded me in one eye, burned over forty percent of my body, and the force of the explosion fractured my spine. It took me years to achieve the level of function I now have, and for a lot of that time I blamed myself. I felt like all of it was somehow my fault, that my crew’s deaths happened because of me. And, of course, I was fully able-bodied prior to that, so having to readjust my lifestyle to accommodate my disabilities was maybe the biggest challenge of all.”
Ryland’s gaze falls down to his own wheelchair in aching empathy. He still won’t be able to even try walking for another three weeks, but suddenly, his injuries don’t seem so bad. If he were in Rocky’s position…he’s not sure what he would do with himself.
“How…gosh, how in the world did you get through all of that? I don’t…”
“We’re stronger than we think. But honestly, I don’t think I would’ve gotten through any of it without my spouse. They supported me through all of it, even when I didn’t want them to. And they told me something that I think you might need to hear,” he wheels himself closer until their knees are almost touching, “You have to learn to accept the kindness of others.”
Ryland’s hands find the softness of the blanket Colt had tucked over his legs. The family isn’t even letting him pay for these sessions, or any of his medical care, for that matter. And tonight, Jody and Claire are planning on making a heart-safe vegetable and chicken bake for dinner to celebrate his first round of therapy, and then they’re all going to sift through the mountain of get-well-soon gifts from the staff and students at Grover Cleveland.
It’s such a simple sentiment. Really, it is. He just…isn’t used to being on the receiving end of it.
“Can I–” his breath hitches, “Can I give you a hug?”
Rocky wastes no time in wrapping him in a warm embrace. Ryland realizes belatedly that this is the first time he’s allowed anyone other than his family to touch him since leaving the hospital, and as soon as that thought hits him, he starts sobbing again. Rocky only pulls away briefly to hand him another tissue, before bringing him back into his arms.
He narrowly avoids triggering what would presumably be an insanely painful—and humiliating—coughing fit. By the time they break apart again, it’s all he can do to lean back carefully into the reclined seat, breathing shallowly. He can feel the edges of fatigue already beginning to creep into his aching body.
Rocky studies him carefully; it’s clinical, but devoid of any readable judgement. “We can take a break, if you need.”
“No, no,” his attempt at waving him off makes a spike of pain shoot through his ribs, and he sucks in a sharp wince through his teeth. “I’m okay, just took a lower dose of my pain meds this morning. Wanted to be, y’know, coherent.”
“I understand the thinking behind that, but I’d like to suggest you don’t do that in the future,” he puts up a hand before Ryland can respond, “Trust me, I’ve seen all kinds. I can meet you wherever you’re at. And the mind and body are a lot more connected than most people think—you can’t treat one without the other. We can put you down for a video call for next week, if that would be easier for you.”
“I don’t know if—” he starts, but stops himself. Don’t be rude, Ryland.
But Rocky seems to read his mind, “You’re not going to offend me with the end of that sentence.” His smile comes back, along with a small glow in his right eye. “But when I asked you why you wanted to come see a therapist, I wasn’t talking about your physical injuries. Am I right in assuming you’re still pretty early on in your recovery?”
Ryland gives him a sniffly nod. “Only about a month and a half.”
He quirks an eyebrow. “You say it like that isn’t a long-ass time to be stuck inside. And I want you to know that what I’m about to say isn’t coming from my role as a medical professional; it’s coming from someone who’s been exactly where you are now. You will go fucking crazy if all you do during this time is stare at the ceiling and ruminate on what happened to you. So I’ll ask you again: why did you decide to come here?”
Ryland has to take a moment to consider what it is he’s actually searching for. His mind wanders back to that evening last week, when he’d been faced with everything he’d lost, and confessed way more than he’d meant to to his family. The heartbroken expressions on each of their faces had only been salt in the wound, and he knew in that moment that he’d arrived at a critical juncture: it either gets better now, or it never will.
“Because,” his voice is back to its familiar watery consistency, “because I’m…tired. Of all of it. I– I wake up everyday and it all hurts, and sometimes the drugs make me forget why. And when I remember, it's like being back there all over again, but I can’t escape, because the thing that’s forcing me to think about it is my own body. The only time it goes away is when I’m sleeping, but there are still these nightmares, and it just–” Another tear slides down beneath his glasses. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep going like this.”
“That’s a pretty good reason.” He says it like a person commenting on the weather. “And I know the feeling. This might sound obvious, but physical pain and low mood can create a kind of negative feedback loop. The worse you feel, the worse you feel. But the good news is that what you’re doing right now is the first step toward breaking that cycle.”
He lets out a wheezy sigh. “I know. But every time I try to talk about it– well, you just saw what happens.”
Rocky reaches out a hand and settles it on his good knee. “That’s alright. I’m not asking you to relive that trauma before your brain has had the time it needs to process it. This is all about getting to know each other—think of it like a HIPAA-protected first date. We can work our way up to all that later. But for now,” he reaches over to the coffee table and grabs a piece of paper, “I have a bit of a homework assignment for you.”
He gives Ryland the sheet. There’s a list of general prompts in bullet points, all asking about ordinary things.
“When you feel up for it, I’d like to encourage you to keep a log of your day. You can write it down or do a voice recording, but you don’t have to show it to me. And none of it needs to be qualified, either—all I ask is that you be honest, good or bad.”
“That’s…that’s it?”
Rocky chuckles. “Pretty much. You think you can handle that, Doctor?”
He studies the paper for a quiet moment. It seems like kind of a silly exercise, just talking about what he had for breakfast, or what music he listened to; none of that seems like it’ll help his crappy mental state at all. But it’s also something that falls completely within his comfort zone and capabilities, and he’s quickly becoming aware that his reserve of energy is close to empty.
“I think so.”
“Great.” He checks the sleek silver watch on his wrist. “Looks like we’ve only got about eight more minutes before your brother’ll be breaking my door down. What would you like to talk about?”
Somehow, they randomly end up discovering a mutual love of musical theatre, and spend the rest of their time discussing the brilliance of the broadway version of Cats versus the absolute horror fest that was the live-action film.
“Colt actually played Rum Tum Tugger when we were in high school.”
Rocky snorts in disbelief. “Really?”
He nods gravely. “Yup. The theatre teacher stole him from the football team because she found out he could do a backflip. His coaches were not thrilled, but it sorta sent him down the path to being a stuntman. He’s actually a pretty decent singer, and a great actor, even though he doesn’t think so.”
Rocky gives him a knowing nod. “You guys are pretty close, huh?”
Ryland lets out a small trill of air. “Not always. But we’ve been through a lot together. He’s my best friend.”
“Well, he certainly cares about you a lot, if the amount of questions filling up my inbox in the past week is any indication.”
“Ugh, I told him not to do that,” he groans, “I’m so sorry, Rocky. Colt can be a little overprotective, sometimes.”
Like literal clockwork, his therapist’s watch starts beeping to signal that the session has come to an end. At the same time, there’s a knock on the door, before it swings open to reveal his twin with an armful of the blankets he’d discarded earlier. He’s kneeling by Ryland in a second, eyes frantically scanning his condition. “Are you—”
“I’m fine, Colton.”
Colt blatantly ignores him and starts to reswaddle him again. Ryland rolls his eyes, but if he’s honest with himself, it does help him warm up a bit, and he’s too spent at this point to try fighting him off. He catches Rocky hiding a smile behind his hand out of the corner of his eye.
They head back to the front desk to schedule the next appointment—it’ll be digital, per Colt’s insistence—though Ryland is barely paying attention at this point, too focused on the building throb of his core and dull ache of his leg. He knows for a fact that Colt notices his muffled winces; that little suspicion gets confirmed when he shoves Ryland’s meds under his nose the second they make it back to the car.
Colt watches him like a hawk as he takes them, then holds up a water bottle in one hand while his other flicks Ryland’s seat heater on to its highest setting. It isn’t until he’s spent another two minutes messing with the pillow supporting his back that he finally relaxes back into his own chair.
“So. How’d it go?”
“It went…well?” He’s never seen a therapist before; he’s not entirely sure how he’s supposed to be feeling right now. “I guess it went by kinda quick. We talked about a lot of stuff.”
“Like what?”
Ryland can almost smell the anxiety wafting off of him. “Just, like, the basic getting-to-know-you stuff. Like where I went to school, what I do for work, that kind of thing.”
“Oh.” He furrows his brow. “I thought I heard…nevermind.”
“You were listening?” Ryland pictures his brother with his ear cartoonishly glued to a water glass up against the door. “Pretty sure that counts as a HIPAA violation.”
“No, no. I just thought I heard you crying,” his voice has an almost indistinguishable shake to it, “I wasn’t trying to, but…yeah.”
“Oh,” he repeats, “Um…yeah. You did.”
There’s an awkward moment of silence. Ryland can't tell what his brother is thinking; he can’t really see him from his supine position, and Colt keeps turning his face away to look at his mirrors.
“How do you feel now?”
Objectively, he knew that one twenty minute session with a person he just met wasn’t just going to magically fix everything, but a part of him is a little disappointed. He’d been expecting to at least lay a baseline with Rocky about what actually happened to him, maybe discuss some coping strategies, but it’s looking like that conversation will be postponed by a couple weeks, at minimum.
But…it was nice getting to talk to someone who didn’t treat him like a teetering house of cards ready to topple over in the breeze. He likes Rocky, he thinks. He’s…approachable. And, unexpectedly, Ryland finds himself relating a lot to his story. In a weird way, he’s kind of grateful for the reminder that bad things can happen to literally anyone, and most of the time without any warning. If Rocky could get through all of his own trauma, maybe Ryland can, too.
“More…normal, I guess.”
Colt sneaks a glance at him over his shoulder. “You seem…lighter. But you look kinda wiped.”
Understatement of the century. They’re just under an hour since leaving the house, and apparently, that’s all it takes for his tank to become empty. The breakthrough pain from the lower dose and his episode in front of Rocky took more out of him than he was ready for, and now he’s really wishing he had just listened to Colt and taken a nap on the way there.
He shuts his eyes, and lets his head sink further into the pillow. “Mm. Feels like someone tied dumbbells to my eyes. Don’t think I’m gonna make it back to the house conscious.”
A steady hand settles on his good knee. “Try and sleep, bub. Meds are gonna kick in soon.”
Ryland doesn’t need to be told twice. He shifts in microscopic increments until he achieves maximum coziness, basking in the warmth of the seat like a lizard. The gentle, mechanical rumbling of the engine acts as his rocking chair, the winter wind blowing across the city his white noise machine.
When he wakes up again, he’s not in the car. As he comes to in the guestroom bed, he might believe the whole excursion was a dream, if it weren't for the lingering tiredness tugging at his limbs.
He turns his head to the side. Empty, but he can hear the sounds of muffled conversation bleeding in from the living room. He looks to the other side: his water, a plate of oyster crackers, and his phone sit on the nightstand. He reaches out weakly to check the time, eyebrows raising when he sees that it’s almost 5:00. He slept for nearly six hours.
He swipes up without thinking about it until he finds the voice memos app, tapping record and laying it on his chest, just thinking. The sheet of paper Rocky gave him is apparently not here, and he can’t remember exactly what was on it, but it’s not like anyone is going to listen to this.
“Um, hi.” Hi? Who am I saying hi to? “I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to talk about.” He pauses, like someone else is going to continue this one-sided conversation for him.
“I guess…okay, today was my first day of therapy. It went alright, I think. I mean, I don’t really know. The whole thing kinda kicked my butt, but I don’t think I’m having any chronic fatigue, soooo…” he shrugs to himself, even though no one will see, “I guess that’s positive. What else…uhh, I got another card this morning, from Gary and Liam. They were definitely not lying about the soup—apparently there’s an industrial-sized container of it in the freezer. They also gave me a fifty dollar amazon giftcard, which honestly is way too much—I mean, I don’t know how much caterers get paid, but Gary and I make pretty much the same amount. I’m gonna send him an email to thank them, once I figure out where Colt put my laptop.
“He doesn’t want me working. I get why, but at least writing emails is something I can do, as long as I don’t stare at the screen for too long. But Colt is, like, the world’s most vigilant nurse. I think he thinks he’s annoying me with that—sometimes he does, especially this morning with all of the blanket swaddling—but I actually…don’t mind it that much. I guess…I keep thinking a lot about what I did for him after his fall. He needed a lot of help back then, probably not as much as I do now, but seeing him in all that pain…it just– it did something to me. He was in such a bad spot, and I just wanted to make him as comfortable as I could. I mean, he got on my case all the time for coddling him, but hey– he never complained about it when I knew he really needed it. He told me the other day that he actually enjoyed it, and now that I know what it’s like to need that kind of help, I have to say it’s not unwelcome.
“And the good thing is that he’s not taking care of me alone. I’ve been kinda worried about burnout for him, but it seems like he’s doing alright with the care routine…I just wish he didn’t have to worry about me like this. It’s…hard, to not feel like a total invalid, sometimes. It’s probably what he felt like when he broke his back. But I guess it’s just another thing we have in common.
“Still though. I want to be able to do things for myself sometimes, y’know? Oh my gosh– I miss taking showers. I haven’t been able to do that because of the leg splint, but the idea of the hot water makes me want to drool. I think we’re gonna try for a quick one next week, though, so I’m looking forward to that. But mostly, all I do every day is sleep, eat, sleep, and sleep. I didn’t know it was possible to feel this tired after doing pretty much nothing.
“It’s…I’m frustrated. Every day is the same, and nothing is getting better…Okay, logically I know that’s not true, but that’s what it seems like. The opioids make time get all mushy, and even with the dose I’m on, everything still hurts, and I’m the boredest I’ve ever been but I also don’t have any energy to do anything. It’s a little easier when I have the TV going as background noise, but there are only so many movies a guy can watch before his brain starts to melt. Honestly, if Colt wasn’t with me as much as he is, I think I’d have lost my mind out of sheer understimulation.
“Having someone around is nice, though. And…” he flushes a bit at the admission, but it doesn’t make it any less true, “they’ve all been a lot more…affectionate with me. Lots of hand-holding, scalp massages, little kisses. Maybe I don’t have that great of a poker face, but I think they all put it together pretty quickly that I like that kind of thing. Colt’s basically become my nap-buddy. I don’t mind, though—he’s always run warm, and I’m always freezing. He’s like my personal space heater. I’m gonna buy him…I dunno, a yacht or something, when all this is over.
“Him and Jody are actually planning on buying a house soon, and they want me to move in with them fulltime. That feels like something I should probably say no to, but…” He lets out a long sigh. Who cares? Just say it. “I’m scared to be by myself. It’s not just the medical stuff, even though the idea that I could have another heart attack is terrifying. It’s also…I keep having these flashes of what happened, like– like I’m back there. Sometimes I forget where I am, and I don’t—”
He stops when his throat closes around the words. If he keeps circling this subject for too long, it’ll suck him back to that place like a whirlpool, and then he’ll really be risking chronic fatigue.
“Maybe that’s something I can unpack with Rocky next week. I don’t know.” He scoffs. “There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know. I guess I don’t really need to have a plan right now, since everyone else is taking care of that for me. I’m trying to see that as a gift and not an insult, but it’s hard. Especially because they’re right: I probably shouldn’t be doing much besides resting.”
He lets a long moment of silence drag on, watching the waveform level out to a straight line on the screen. A part of him wants to just delete this recording, but that begs the question: why is he doing it in the first place? Is it even helping? He certainly doesn’t feel ‘better’ by any sense of the word. But there must be a reason Rocky asked him to do it. Maybe to combat his boredom. Maybe so he can track his own progress as their sessions go on. Or maybe—
“I have a goal for myself for this week: I am not going to say the word ‘sorry’ once. I am going to let them spoil me to the moon and back, and I am going to enjoy it for what it is, and I am going to accept their kindness. Because I–” He takes a deep breath as a single, quiet tear runs down his face.
“Because I deserve it. Because I have been through something awful that no human being should ever have to go through, and I am both the sickest and most injured I have ever been in my life, and I’m so tired I can barely think half the time, but I’m still here. I’m still here.”
You are kind. You are brave. You are smart. You are funny.
“I am loved,” he whispers, and this time, it doesn’t get stuck in his throat. It fills his mouth with honey, warm and sweet on his tongue.
He ends it there, shutting his eyes and settling back into the pillows as a small smile works its way over his lips. “I am loved,” he repeats to no one but himself, “I am loved.”
“You are.”
He snaps them back open: Colt is standing in the doorway, pride and affection radiating off of him. He comes to sit beside Ryland on the mattress. Ryland opens his arms, and his brother immediately closes the distance between them in a gentle embrace.
“Thank you, Colt,” he whispers into the crook of his shoulder, “for not giving up on me. And for being here, for saving me, for taking care of me even when I’m a mess.”
Colt tightens his grip and buries his face into the side of his hair. “Well. I had a pretty good teacher.”
“I love you.”
His brother inhales a shaky breath. “I love you, too Ry. And I’m always gonna take care of you, bub, mess or not. We’re a team, you and me. Whatever you need, just ask.”
“Colt?”
Colt doesn’t budge even a little, perfectly content to keep holding him like this. “Mm?”
“Can you put the heating pad on my feet? They’re kinda cold.”
Ryland feels the press of a kiss onto his temple. Colt grins down at him as he lays him gently back on the mattress. “Coming right up.”
His brother crawls beside him while his toes begin to thaw. Ryland inches his way closer as carefully as possible, before Colt curls up around him with a warm, giant bearhug. He thinks he hears him mumble “snuggle bug” into his hair, which makes him flush, but also smile. They lay together for a while, though he doesn’t make any effort to keep track of how long.
Right before he’s about to squeeze in another nap before dinner, he catches the door opening silently out of the corner of his eye. Claire creeps through the dark of the room, pushing the rolling table with her.
She freezes when she sees him still awake. “Damnit, I wanted it to be a surprise.”
Colt snorts beside him. Ryland grins at her, completely tuning out the inappropriate language. “What have we got here, kiddo?”
She reaches over to flick the lamp on. The light spills over a diorama made of pencils and clay, depicting what he immediately recognizes to be his classroom. There’s a bunch of desks, his whiteboard, and all his mad scientist knicknacks scattered toward the back of the room. She even managed to put together his solar system using a combination of beads, straws, and pipecleaners. And right at the front is a little drawing of him and all his students.
“Rehka drew that,” she supplies, beaming. “Any critique from the board?”
“Excellent composition,” Colt muses thoughtfully, “though the color scheme is a bit habberdash.”
“I strongly disagree. The artist’s intention was clearly to represent an impressionistic still-life. The piece we see here is a reflection of truth rather than a stylized interpretation,” Ryland copies the stupid critic-voice with probably too much ease.
Claire laughs at them, then plops down on Ryland’s other side. “What can I say? I was inspired.”
“You ladies need any help with dinner?” Colt asks, although he doesn’t really sound like he wants to leave.
“Aunt Jody said you need to, and I quote, ‘sit your fucking arse down before gravity does it for you.’”
Ryland smirks at his brother. “I see where you get it from.”
“Yeah, well, it’s fucking rich coming from her,” Colt rolls his eyes, but there’s more awe pitching his tone than true annoyance.
“How about say it to my face next time, cowboy?”
Jody and Court appear from the doorway, each balancing multiple plates in their arms with the dinner Lydia sent for them. Colt breaks into a massive smile at the sight of her, instantly scooching closer to Ryland so she can come sit beside him—he even fluffs the pillow for her. She settles next to him to give him a small kiss as a payment.
“Glad to see you’re finally up again, stinker,” Court says as he lays the breakfast tray over his lap and places his plate on top of it. He perches on the foot of the bed to briefly squeeze his good foot. “You were out cold when you got home. I had to carry you inside bridal-style.”
“That tramadol, man, it’ll get ya,” he replies in place of his initial instinct to apologize. Good first start.
Court smiles at that. “You’ve always been a heavy sleeper,” he comments fondly, “Nice to know some things never change.”
“Yeah. I guess they don’t.”
It certainly seems that way as Ryland takes in the room. His family has effectively formed a semi-circular wall around him while they eat their meal together, built out of a kindness he’s still struggling to rely on. But looking around the guestroom at all of them, he thinks, maybe, that it might have gotten a little easier to breathe since this morning.
We’re getting through this. For the first time in weeks, it actually sounds true.
January eighteenth ends the way a night always does. The moon takes the place of her counterpart, full and bright. The ocean changes itself with a freedom that only something that grandiose can have. The vibrant colors of the bay area are dimmed beneath the twilight, and birdsong begins to fill the air.
For most normal families, this would be the time to part ways until morning; a trivial goodbye that grows just north of habitual when a person knows what tomorrow promises.
For this one, however, goodbyes are not something taken for granted. They stay together, and every second of that togetherness is one treasured with the understanding that no one is ever really promised anything. It is spent under the first-hand knowledge that, in a matter of moments, or the span of a single innocuous decision, it could all disappear.
Ryland Grace does not disappear tonight. Neither does Colt Seavers, or Jody Moreno, or Courtland Gentry, or Claire Fitzroy. They make this moment—one of comfort, warmth, and presence—strech out for as long as they can, and it is good, and it is easy, and it is peace.