Chapter Text
Colt’s not afforded a single moment’s peace when he arrives back at the hotel room from his two-or-so hours spent sitting sulkily at the bar downstairs and twirling a cocktail umbrella around a drink he barely even touched.
To be more precise, he doesn’t get so much as two seconds inside the room before he’s faced with the harrowing sight of a trashed minibar—littered with empty Skittles wrappers and mini alcohol bottles—and the distinct sound of retching emerging from behind the half-closed bathroom door.
Not for the first time that day, Colt is tipping his face toward the ceiling, hoping whatever deity that may be beyond it can hear his prayers for strength and patience.
In retrospect, he should’ve known Ryland would do something absurd in his absence; this is, after all, the same man who gladly took pills from some random dude at a frat party his second year of undergrad without knowing what the hell they were ‘in the name of science’ (a friend dared him) and was found capsized in a bush half a mile away from the house. Though Colt does harbor some semblance of fondness for the memory (it is, objectively, one of his brother’s funnier moments), the babysitting required to keep a high-as-a-kite Ryland safe is vividly recalled as a massive chore, especially given the fact that Colt hadn’t exactly driven up to visit Ryland on campus that weekend just to be his handler.
Whatever. He’s over it now. Bygones.
Somehow, though, Colt doesn’t think a piss-drunk Ryland on the worst day of his life will be any easier to handle.
Steeling himself for the night ahead, Colt goes to push the bathroom door all the way open, and he finds Ryland sat on the floor with his head dangling over the toilet bowl—which is filled with deceptively cheerful color—heaving and groaning in despair.
For whatever reason, his dress shirt’s unbuttoned all the way and heaped off of one shoulder, he’s missing a sock, and his suit tie from earlier is wrapped around his head like a douchey bandana.
Well then.
“Ry, what the fuck, man? You threw a party and didn’t invite me—?”
Ryland absolutely spews into the toilet.
Colt recoils a bit, lips curling and nose scrunching up in revulsion.
Right. Time and place. Perhaps he should table the humorous commentary for now.
He shuffles forward to crouch down beside Ryland, pulling his shirt back up over his shoulder and rubbing at his very sweaty back. “How in the hell did you manage to make yourself this sick in only a couple hours?”
Ryland’s words are slurred and just bordering on indecipherable as he says, “bad beer cheese.”
Colt wheezes out a laugh; he can’t tell if Ryland’s making a deliberate callback to Colt’s earlier joke about him hurling at the conference, or if he’s relying on his wasted subconscious to toss out whatever it can think to say in the moment.
Either way, Colt can’t help but poke fun at him about it. “Yeah, buddy, bad beer cheese sure does explain the technicolor Skittle-yack that reeks of cheap vodka from the mysteriously ransacked minibar.”
Ryland moans miserably into the void.
It takes a frankly monumental amount of effort to lug Ryland’s dead weight off the floor, and it takes an even greater amount of effort for Colt not to shout wild expletives when he sees that Ryland’s glasses—notably missing from his face—are presently going for a swim in the defiled toilet.
He turns and shuttles Ryland out of the bathroom before he’s forced to, in earnest, entertain the thought of having to fish them out.
“Hey, Ry, how much would you say you actually need your glasses to see?”
Ryland croaks, “why?” as he hangs limply off of Colt’s side and lets himself be dragged off toward the bed.
Colt shakes his head. “No reason.”
He lays Ryland down about as elegantly as he can manage with his brother flopping around like a wet noodle, then straightens up to scan the nearby area. He finds a wastebasket—lined with a plastic bag, thank God—and moves it over to the bedside. Just in case.
“Coooooolt,” Ryland whines. His arms are waving about clumsily as if to locate what his eyes would probably be able to find if he were to remember he can open them. “Coltooooooon.”
Colt grimaces. He hates it when people call him by his government name. His father was the only person to ever use it, and only ever to scold him for shit that didn’t make sense. Which was almost every time he spoke to Colt.
He’ll make an exception for Ryland, just this once, on account of him being so thoroughly blasted off his ass.
“What—” Colt dodges Ryland’s flailing hands as adeptly as he can, but he still earns an accidental smack on the shoulder and a bonk to the face for his efforts.
To prevent further mishaps, he plants a pillow down on Ryland’s chest, knowing his brother will feel compelled to cling to it in his shitfaced daze.
Without missing a beat, Ryland does cling to it, arms wrapping around it snugly.
Only then, does Colt accept the risk of sitting next to him on the edge of the bed. “What is it, Ry?”
Ryland sniffles. “They f—” he hiccups— “fired me.” He promptly blubbers into a mess of weepy sobs.
Colt frowns. It’s not like he wasn’t fully expecting this to happen, but there was still a tiny part of him that was sincerely hoping, for Ryland’s sake, that the situation would just blow over and life would move on.
“I’m sorry, Ry. That really sucks.” Smoothing the ridiculous tie-bandana and sweat-soaked strands of loose hair off of Ryland’s forehead, he asks, “how’d you find out?”
“Boss s’called.” Ryland’s words are really starting to run together now. The crying probably doesn’t help. “Said she loved m’work ‘n still wanted me erround, but there had’a’be conse—con—sevekens’s.”
Colt has to a stifle a snicker at the comically botched pronunciation of what he can only assume was meant to be ‘consequences.’ There’s a certain unintended hilarity in someone with as genius a brain as Ryland stumbling over words that once won him the second grade spelling bee.
The amusement is fleeting, however, as soon as Colt sees Ryland starting to squirm in a manner that looks suspiciously like a bid to toss his cookies over the side of the bed. Colt flies to grab the wastebasket, locking it into position just in time to catch the mess.
Ryland lets out an indignant wail, as if he doesn’t realize he’s done this to himself, and curls into a fetal position, cuddling his pillow for comfort.
Colt sets the wastebasket down with a labored sigh. At this rate, he might have to call a fucking mobile IV medic or something to come flood Ryland with fluids before he pukes himself into a dehydrated demise.
“I’ll go get you some water,” he says, and gets up to head back into the bathroom, where he’s dreadfully reminded of the other big problem that’s come of Ryland’s reckless binge-drinking.
Colt decidedly doesn’t think about it. He fills a glass with nice, cold water and upon returning to the bedside, forces Ryland—against the many whiny protests—to take a few good sips. He might just eject this, too, but on the off chance that he doesn’t, it’s a fair start to coaxing him out of his self-inflicted torment.
Minutes later, back in the bathroom, Colt is looming despondently over the rainbow nightmare ocean complete with a glasses-shaped island in the toilet. He side-eyes the complimentary ice bucket perched on the counter, pulls out the flimsy little plastic bag, and stuffs his hand inside to make use of it as a makeshift glove.
“You owe me a fucking thousand Nespresso machines after this, Ryland,” he mutters under his breath—and stoops down to go fishing.
~
Ryland sits scrunched up against the headboard of the bed, knees curled to his chest, blankets draped over his shoulders. His vision is fuzzy, but he can’t be bothered to reach the short distance to the nightstand so he can grab his glasses—which he doesn’t remember ever taking off or having enough bandwidth to fold up neatly and place on the nightstand in the first place, and yet they’re there somehow. He’s nibbling half-assedly on a granola bar Colt had shoved into his hand the second he woke up, and he doesn’t feel awfully keen on doing that at all as the roiling in his stomach continues to persist even after his three-hour long drunknap. He gets the sense, however, that Colt would be very annoyed with him if he doesn’t eat it.
He’s managed to snooze off the bulk of his inebriation, but there’s still a lingering swimminess in his head and overall buzz in his body that keeps his inhibitions semi-subdued. He knows this, because he’s currently thinking about things he’d ordinarily have the wherewithal to actively avoid thinking about.
He thinks about the humiliation of the day. He thinks about the fact that he nuked the career he’s toiled over for years to achieve. He thinks about how he must’ve looked in front of all those people—just a scared, egomaniacal child who can’t handle an ounce of criticism. He thinks about the horrible sense that he’s just doomed himself to aimlessness for the rest of his life. He thinks about how wholly pathetic he’s been in the aftermath, his inability to stay rational and composed like a normal person likely to haunt him for decades to come.
But above all, he thinks about Colt. Can’t stop thinking about him.
Colt doesn’t give himself enough credit, in all honesty, for holding Ryland close to his heart even though it must hurt something awful to feel the constant tug of him trying to escape. And now Ryland’s coming to understand that he hasn’t ever given Colt very much credit for that either.
Ryland’s always told himself that he and his brother were never all that close, and it was because they were too different from each other and woefully too similar at the same time; they’re both too much like Dad and neither are enough like each other. Ryland’s not often wrong about things, but he’s become certain that there’s an enormous miscalculation somewhere in that sentiment.
After all, Colt is here. He didn’t have to do that. Why should he have done that? Ryland rarely ever tells him about his work or his life, and when he does, he dumbs it down for his brother as if he can’t possibly understand it. He never sits down and has a plain, candid conversation with Colt for any reasonable length for time, and if he tries, he quickly sweeps the big stuff under the rug before he’s forced to feel anything.
By all means, Colt should’ve distanced himself from Ryland years ago. He’d have had every right, given that Ryland’s been doing that to him since they were kids. Off and on, and off and on, and off and on, over and over.
Surely, factoring all of that into the equation, it should be a fact that Ryland and Colt are not very close family.
But, in actuality… It seems like Colt’s always seen their relationship as perfectly close while Ryland’s never seen it for as close as it was.
Colt’s not here in spite of Ryland’s coldness. He’s here because he thinks there’s love to be had even for the coldness.
A part of Ryland, buried somewhere deep, deep down—probably at emotional bedrock—must’ve known this has always been the case. Nothing else explains why this day turned out the way it did.
Nothing else explains why he was so damn determined—blinded and desperate with it—to make his mark in that auditorium with Colt there as his witness.
“I wanted you to be proud of me,” suddenly slips right on past his sluggish defenses and out into the quiet open.
He wants to seize up, pretend he didn’t say anything at all, but he can’t muster the energy to do it. He’s too tired, too fed up with the circumstances and himself, and—yes—a shade too drunk to care.
Beside him, Colt stares. In his periphery, Ryland can see the hugeness of his eyes, the glint from the TV playing some crap Danish reality show on low volume across the room making them sparkle like stars in the otherwise dark space.
No doubt, he must be wondering if he heard Ryland right. He’s likely even questioning if he’s gone crazy and begun to hear things that aren’t there.
It’s a preposterous notion—Ryland Grace? Confessing something vulnerable without having to be strapped down to a table and waterboarded first? It’s unheard of.
Yet here he is, confessing something vulnerable without so much as a prompt for it. And he doesn’t stop there.
“I wanted to prove…” He trails off; it’s not like this is easy, after all. He closes his eyes, breathes deeply, wets his dry, cracked lips. “I wanted to prove to you that… All the time I spent being cold and indifferent and distant actually amounted to something.”
It hurts. Like, legitimately, physically hurts to say. There’s a terrible ache in his chest and an awful strain in his limbs—cords of muscle wound taut as if to brace for some obscure, unseeable impact. Nothing’s there, of course. It’s all in his head: an imagined threat that can’t ever reach him.
He sucks in another breath, choppy and uneven. His eyes sting. “I wanted to justify why it was somehow all okay in the end—you know, hey, I might’ve pushed away the one person who still gives a damn about me, but at least I became a big, hotshot, successful scientist with the career of his dreams. That’s something, right?” He scoffs at how bad it sounds out-loud. “Stupid…”
Silence falls over the room. Ryland’s gaze is set squarely on the granola bar wrapper he’s begun to fidget with, but he can still tell that Colt’s eyes have not left him. He must have a million different questions—since when do you give a shit what I think? Where is this coming from? Why are you telling me this? Who are you, and what have you done with my crappy wooden plank of a brother?—yet he’s not voicing any of them.
He remains resolutely silent, like he thinks any sudden moves or words would have Ryland becoming too aware of what he’s doing and cause him to retreat back to the safety and familiarity of unfeeling secrecy.
Maybe Ryland would do that. He doesn’t know. All he does know is that he’s pushed a humongous ball down a very steep hill in starting this monologue, and he’s not about to try and stop it in its tracks now.
“Honestly, I don’t think I would’ve said any of that crazy, antagonistic stuff to Scyther if you weren’t there,” he continues. “I just—knowing you were watching, knowing you were so invested in me and my work even after everything I’d done to hold you at arm’s length, all these years—I felt like… I had to really show you someone who can’t ever be brought down. Someone worth the investment you put in.” He sniffs, and haphazardly wipes his teary eyes and nose with the cuff of his sleeve. “I had to win, plain as that. Because if I didn’t, what was even the point of pushing you away to pursue all of this in the first place?”
Every word that leaves his mouth sounds more absurd than the last, but it’s true. It’s all true. When he really thinks about it, if he’d been alone as planned, he might’ve just conceded to Scyther’s criticisms—bitten his tongue and talked down his wounded ego to simply say, “thank you for the feedback; I’ll take it into consideration,” and gone back to the hotel to regret not fighting back—embarrassed but with his career intact. But Colt was there, and he so visibly and tangibly believed in Ryland, and Ryland wanted to prove he was worthy of being believed in like that—so he let his wounded ego do the talking, he fought back so he could take a win with his brother there to cheer him on. The pressure of the moment had been so heavy that he just collapsed underneath it all, unraveled at the seams, and let the worst of himself claw its way out for all to see.
“I wanted to be the best at this. I needed to be the best at this. I guess, in a sense, I was trying to justify everything to myself, too. But I think a part of me realized a while ago that the reason I didn’t feel like I fit where I was, doing what I was doing, wasn’t because I couldn’t fit, but because I didn’t want to. Because I didn’t enjoy it enough to want to. And in the end, all I did was look like a huge, miserable jerk. In front of my peers. In front of the world. In front of you.” His voice breaks a little on that last part, quiet and solemn. He wipes away another bout of freshly-brewed tears. “In reality, I didn’t justify anything, because it can’t be justified. Of course I have all the faith in the world in my theories and research, and—darn it, I’m right—but the fact of the matter is that I threw away years of my life and the most important relationship I’ve ever had for a career I didn’t even want.”
He can’t quite grasp why, but the admission that he never truly wanted the career he was practically killing himself to achieve since he was a kid has him gritting his teeth against a full-blown sob. He narrowly avoids letting it out, though his body is trembling with the immense effort it takes.
He’s loved science for as long as he can remember. He loved science before he even knew there was a word for the discipline of natural human curiosity. But at some point, his love for science twisted into some insidious obsession with being important; if he was going to spend his life being curious, he should be an important person who discovers important things, and the only way to be an important person who discovers important things is to be respected by the entire world. Curiosity would no longer be the drive but the byproduct of other people thinking he’s important and becoming inspired to make their own discoveries on his coattails.
Somewhere along the way, he lost sight of what it is he actually loved about science in the first place. This world of academic pomp and circumstance and elitist expectations and political savviness… How could he have ever thought that was befitting of who he was?
How could he have ever thought that was worth all the grief he’s been caused and caused for others?
He supposes he knows the answer but doesn’t much feel like acknowledging it. As it stands, it’s not often that he wants to ruminate on anything his father’s done to skew his worldview.
It comes down to pressure. He’s been pressured into becoming something he’s not, and he’s paid a hefty tax for it. He has no close friendships. No meaningful intimate relationships; in fact, he’s been so wrapped up within himself that he hasn’t gotten a chance to really evaluate if that’s something he even wants. He doesn’t do anything but work and take himself too seriously.
And he’s lost years and years of valuable time with his brother—because he was too busy being important.
“You didn’t throw me away, Ry,” Colt says after a long stretch of weighty silence. His voice is soft and tentative, filled with emotion that he’s never had trouble feeling freely. “I mean—yeah, you tried really hard to, but I was always there.”
Ryland presses his lips into a tight, fine line, nodding to himself.
Yes. Colt has always been there. And Ryland has been buried down too deep under his own sense of importance to notice.
For the first time since he woke up, he brings himself to look at Colt, who’s watching Ryland attentively from his spot on the other side of the bed; the image vaguely reminds Ryland of when they were kids. Very young, with parents trying to make ends meet. They shared a single bed from the ages of four to six, and Colt had a terrible knack for winding up with his head at the foot of the bed and his feet in Ryland’s face by sunrise. Ryland hated it and yet, when a second bed was finally added to their bedroom, they stayed sharing just the one for several more months, neither willing to part with the other’s comforting presence at night.
It’s hard to believe they were ever so inseparable…
Ryland manages a faint, sad half-smile, a single tear rolling slowly down his cheek. He doesn’t bother to wipe this one away.
Colt rolls onto his side, and the smile he gives is conversely warm. Content. “What career do you want?”
Ryland shrugs, chest expanding and contracting heavily. “I still like science,” he says lamely, because it’s the only thing he does know for certain. It’s not like he regrets getting his Ph.D or anything like that; he only regrets where it led him.
“Well, no shit, dummy. You wouldn’t be so brilliant at it if you didn’t. That isn’t the question. What do you—” Colt reaches over to poke a finger into the center of Ryland’s chest— “Dr. Ryland Grace, Twizzler-loving trivia expert extraordinaire and stupid pun t-shirt fashionista, want to do to take back your life from Dr. Ryland Grace, the high-strung, no-fun academic knobhead with an ego the size of Mars?”
Ryland’s a bit thrown by that. He blinks, opens his mouth to answer, realizes he has no answer, and promptly snaps it closed again. He begins twiddling his thumbs awkwardly as he mulls it over.
He knows he should be focusing more on the first half of the question, but he keeps getting hung up on the latter half.
“You really think I’m no fun?” he asks. The high-strung part he gets. The ego the size of Mars he definitely gets. But no fun? Surely he’s at least had a moment here and there that could be classified as fun.
Colt snorts. “Oh, buddy—the most fun you’ve been in six years was three hours ago, when your drunk ass tried to convince me your Skittle vomit surprise was from bad beer cheese.”
Despite himself, Ryland manages a laugh—a weak, weary little huff, but amused all the same. Maybe he shouldn’t be that surprised. After all, how fun could a guy wrapped up in self-importance reasonably be? It’s only… Moderately mortifying that the extent of his fun-ness since his undergrad years occurred in a fleeting spur-of-the-moment quip with his head hung over a toilet.
In all fairness, ‘Twizzler-loving trivia expert extraordinaire and stupid pun t-shirt fashionista’ Dr. Ryland Grace has rare moments like that too, but he also has a lot of other, significantly less destructive moments that he supposes can be considered fun. ‘High-strung academic knobhead with an ego the size of Mars’ Dr. Ryland Grace, on the other hand, is apparently only capable of being fun at rock-bottom.
Unfortunately, after giving it some thought, Ryland thinks that tracks.
But ultimately, to answer Colt’s question, he admits, “I don’t really know what I wanna do.”
His vision’s been tunneled in for so long on the one path he was convinced he needed to follow that he has no idea what else could possibly be out there for him.
“Well, you only just got fired after taking the academic equivalent of a massive shit on the world stage, so I think you have the right to be a purposeless wanderer for a bit.”
Ryland cringes and puffs out an irritated sigh. Way to drive it home, Colt.
“Sorry. Too soon?”
“A little bit, yeah.” Ryland may have been able to come to terms with the fact that a career in academia isn’t what he wants, but the embarrassment of the day’s misfortunes is still fresh and cuts deep.
“Sorry,” Colt apologizes again. Then: “hey, you could always come hang out with me in Miami. I’m actually not gonna be there for much longer, so you might wanna catch one of my shows while you still can.”
Ryland’s brow pinches with confusion. He turns to Colt with an inquisitive hum.
All of a sudden, Colt looks uncharacteristically shy. “That producer lady I told you about—Gail—she uh… I guess put in a good word for me at a big film studio. They approached me a few weeks back and asked if I wanted to double for some promising up-and-coming actor in a new movie set to start shooting late next month.” He shrugs in perhaps the most chalant nonchalant way Ryland’s ever seen him do it. “I said yes. So… I’m moving to LA soon.”
Oh… Ryland stares at him, and he can tell Colt’s trying really hard not to seem overly happy or pleased with himself; the struggle to contain a bright, beaming grin is so damn obvious.
“Wow, that’s—that’s amazing, Colt. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Colt only has to give him a pointed look, and Ryland understands. Of course Colt didn’t tell him. Ryland’s been busy being important. And then Ryland went and blew up his reputation and his entire livelihood, and there really wasn’t much of a good opportunity after that for Colt to say, ‘sorry your life is over, man. That stinks. But on the bright side, my life’s just gotten soooooo good!’.
Ryland would be lying if he were to say there wasn’t just the tiniest spark of envy in his heart. It stings, like rubbing alcohol on a hangnail. Colt really does have his life and his aspirations figured out, and he never has to wonder if he’s on the wrong path.
What Ryland wouldn’t give to feel like that, too…
“Well, I’m happy for you,” he says, and he means it, even if his heart is sore about it. “And you know what? Maybe I will come down to Miami to catch a show. I’ve always wanted to know if you were completely full of crap whenever you bragged about being able to jump a boat through a ring of fire with your hands tied behind your back.”
Finally, Colt lets the grin he’s been so diligently holding back spread all the way up to his eyes, dazzling in its enthusiasm. “You wish I was full of shit.”
Ryland rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t bother smothering the (only slightly) endeared smile creeping onto his face. As an afterthought, he remembers to wipe away the last of his tears. He’s done crying. He feels lighter.
From there, they start tossing miscellaneous conversation topics back and forth. ‘Catching up,’ in a way. Making up for lost time. Something of that nature.
They make fun of the campy nonsense of what appears to be a Danish version of Ex on the Beach playing on the TV. They talk about things they never got the chance to: anything from Ryland’s—admittedly kind of dry—grad school anecdotes, to Colt’s wildly disturbing near-death experiences during his stunt shows (Ryland isn’t fond of the fact that Colt apparently almost got decapitated one time and then didn’t frickin’ tell anyone about it).
And they reminisce about shared childhood memories, schoolyard woes, homelife tribulations…
“Dad always told me I should be more like you. You know—outgoing, athletic, lots of friends, never not with a pretty girl at your side…” Ryland says. “He never bought into the idea of research being a respectable or ‘manly’ career. He said that being married to a microscope is a pathetic waste of a man’s life, but if I was so insistent upon it, I’d better be the best there ever was.”
Colt scowls, and shovels a handful of peanut M&Ms he found among the wreckage of the minibar into his mouth. “Yeah well, Dad always told me I should be more like you, so I don’t think we should be putting any stock in the words of a deeply insecure man who neither knows shit about shit about his own sons, nor seems capable of making up his damn mind on whether or not he actually likes anything about us.”
Ryland huffs an amused breath and reaches into the M&M packet to steal one for himself. “I’d drink to that, but I think doing so would genuinely kill me at this point.”
Colt laughs like Ryland hasn’t heard him laugh in a long time. Such a simple joke, yet Colt is positively tickled by it.
Ryland thinks he must be drunk on something else to be so happy.
Later, in the wee hours of the morning, after their nonstop chats have largely petered off, they lie together, side-by-side, a calm sleepiness beginning to lull them off—and Ryland has one last thought on his mind that begs to be acknowledged.
“I can’t believe I called Scyther a waste of carbon,” he says to the ceiling. Everything else about that argument was bad enough, but it was probably the petty namecalling that was the final nail in the coffin for him.
Colt breathes a tired giggle. “No-no, I believe it was a staggering waste of carbon.”
Ryland winces. “I said ‘staggering’?”
“You said ‘staggering.’”
Well. Much as Ryland is thoroughly baffled by his own actions…
“I stand by it.” Because Scyther obviously wasn’t criticizing him in good faith; he earned that insult.
“Yeah, fuck that guy. Who even was he, anyway? He was really leaning into you.”
Ryland sighs. “Only the world’s leading scholar in astrobiology.”
Colt cackles at that, and Ryland can only huff in exasperation, even if he’s struggling to keep a smile under wraps yet again. “It’s really not funny.”
“Oh, lighten up, Ry. I’m willing to bet you’ll be running circles around him someday. Just you wait.”
“How do you figure that? As of today, I’m literally blackballed by the entire field.”
Colt hums thoughtfully, then says, “I have faith. You’ll see—one day, somehow, you’re gonna wind up in the same room as him again, and he’s gonna have to answer to you. Trust.”
Ryland scoffs. Yeah, right. But, in light of Colt’s sincere (and perhaps a bit baseless) optimism about Ryland’s future, he indulges the sentiment and concedes humorously, “I admire the delusion.”
Even later, when both of them are teetering precariously over the precipice of slumber:
“Hey, Ry?” Colt murmurs.
“Hmm?”
“Are you gonna regret this whole conversation tomorrow when you’re sober?”
Ryland smirks sleepily to himself. “No. I don’t think I will.”
~
Ryland doesn’t regret the conversation, but he sure as hell regrets the night.
He’s hunched over a plate of pastries, soft-boiled eggs, and cold meats with absolutely zero intention of eating any of them. For some ungodly reason, Colt had gotten them a table in the hotel’s breakfast hall right next to a window, where the sun is beaming blinding rays into the room—and the pair of sunglasses that he snatched from Colt that morning isn’t doing anything to alleviate the assault of light on his throbbing eyes. His head feels like it’s going to explode, his body is wracked with sweat and chills, his mouth tastes horrific, and his stomach is churning like it’s trying to make butter out of bile.
Meanwhile, Colt is happily obliterating his plate. He’s even gotten himself seconds. Ryland glares at him blankly from behind his sunglasses.
“You know, I was thinking…” Colt begins cheerfully, swallowing down the piece of Danish he’s been chowing down on. “You could actually be a middle school science teacher.”
Ryland doesn’t have an answer to that. He just groans and flops forward until his forehead thumps onto the table.
“Alright, alright~” Colt ruffles his hair dotingly. “We can talk self-reinvention later.”
“How about never?”
“That’s the spirit.”
~
A year and a handful of months later, armed with a freshly-minted California teaching license, Ryland is busy conscripting Colt to lug boxes of plastic planets and laboratory equipment around for him and fussing over the decor in his newly-assigned classroom at Grover Cleveland Middle School in San Francisco.
It’s a new kind of importance. And he fits.
End. ͙͘͡★