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No one would recognize what the years have done. He wears no childish athletic clothes anymore, and the signature red cap is gone. The gray suit he wears now is precisely tailored to his taller frame. His black locks, once wild, are combed precisely over his head. When he stands, his hands are folded in front like a soldier, and when he sits, he sits gently.
Green still knows him immediately.
He's standing at the front of the room. The man he knew as a boy is in the back. There's no loss to the glint in that man's eye, despite the situation they're in. This is how he knows it can't be anyone else. No matter how he tries, though, something keeps him from stepping forward.
Perhaps it's the old man lying in the casket in front of him that keeps him tethered.
Green isn't feeling much at the moment. His grandfather was old, and this day was a long time coming. The entire region seems more in pieces about it than he is, and it seems the entire region showed up for the service. Even people from outside of the region are here. Of course he has no idea who many of these people are, but he does know his grandfather's influence reached far and wide. The priest hosting the service sure had reminded everyone of that when he went on about how much the man had achieved as a professor, a philanthropist, a grandfather, a friend to the world.
Green's sister is blubbering beside him, and he's doing his best to comfort her. The old man was their legal guardian since they could remember, though he hadn't been around much to show for it. As for that man sitting in the back, the old man had seemed to dote upon him more. He and Green had been considered rivals since they were babies but it was clear where the professor's affections seemed to lie. Now something hot is bubbling in Green's chest. His breathing grows shallow, and his fists are clenching. His sister shoots him a concerned look but he's ignoring it.
He has so much nerve, he thinks, to show up after being gone for so long. You weren't here to mop his sweat on his death bed. You didn't bear the burdens Daisy and I bore when they said he had weeks to live.
"Yet, he still would have welcomed you back with open arms anyway! We were the ones who were here!" he screams out loud.
He immediately covers his mouth but the entire room, friends of the friend of the world, are staring at him, including that man.
Before more thoughts reach his brain, he stomps over to the back of the room, his face as red as his hair. Every profane name, every slur he can dream of, is yelled. The man just stares, occasionally closing his eyes in, what seems to be, contemplation.
"You still think you're better than me?"
"..."
Green steps back. He doesn't realize it but he had a firm grip on the man's shoulders.
What am I doing? His thoughts ask.
He also conveniently remembers that the man is deaf and wouldn't be able to hear the insults he just hurled. At most, he could read his lips, but his eyes had been closed. Did he just do it to block out what he was saying? Green's head spins and he feels nauseated. The room is still staring, and then there's a hand on his shoulder.
The man signs a response to his question. He must have read his lips enough for that.
"No."
Green calms down enough to sign the man's name.
"Red..."
Green does another uncontrollable thing and his cheeks are wet. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," he signs, for what seems like hours, and then pulls Red into a hug. He can feel tears from Red too, and when the sobs set in from both, it's all over. They are a wet, tangled mess. They both know why they're there and it's all that matters until they can wade through it.
"We can be rivals again later," Red will later sign, over a coffee table in an abandoned lab. "Today, we grieve as brothers."