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It starts with breathing.
It’s the sort of thing their family would probably categorize as a Malcolm thing, catching some insignificant detail, tugging on the loose thread, and unraveling even the most ingenious schemes with the bored efficiency of a mini Sherlock Holmes. His little brother has perfected that particular dead-eyed stare that announces I am surrounded by fools, and yet they are mine to shepherd. And, somehow, he manages to look endearing whilst doing it - most of the time, that is, the rest of the time, it puts the fear of God in Reese - so, understandably, he’s a little concerned when he’s the one noticing something first.
Living in this house trains you in certain survival skills. The creak of the refrigerator door that means Dewey is pilfering leftovers. The soft, rumbling snores of their mother drifting down the hall, acting as a background score as they slip out to watch TV. The whisper of a rooftop tile shifting under a guilty weight. All valuable sounds when you’re trying to track down stolen belongings or gain ammunition for the next sibling skirmish. But still, Reese has never been the atunned one. Not like Malcolm. Not like Dewey, in his own feral, eldritch way.
He tells himself it’s just a Reese thing. He’s been in fights; he knows the difference between breath that means this hurts and breath that means this is going to get me arrested if I don’t stop. Maybe that’s all this is - a learned instinct for the edges of fear, pain and panic - later, he’ll discover that it is a Reese thing, just not in the way he imagined.
Because over the past three months - not that he’s keeping track - there are nights when Reese snaps awage and hears breathing that is simply wrong. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just these off-tempo hitches, small deseperate gasps, like someone drowning politely. He’ll turn his head and find Dewey starfished across the mattress like an upended walrus, and Malcolm curled into a tight coocoon facing the wall, both of them sleeping with infuriating innocence.
Reese will lie there, trying to identify the source - running through the usual suspects: house settling? pipes? ghosts? Dewey attempting a new form of nocturnal communication? - and then the sound dwindles, or fades entirely, leaving him with nothing but a prickle across his spine. By morning, he forgets. The next night, nothing happens. Life lurches forward.
But then another month passes - one month and two days, not that he’s counting - and it happens again. And again. And again. And now, it’s starting to gnaw at him. What began as mild annoyance has been fermenting into curiousity, and from there into some stranger emotion he hasn’t found a name for - something with teeth, something that sits heavy in his chest whenever the breathing falters in the dark - and Reese, who can tell the difference between a punch that that bruises and a punch that breaks, is beginning to think this difference in breathing means something too.
He just doesn’t know what.
Yet.
***
As usual, it’s Dewey that tips the scales.
He’s caught the chicken pox - spectacularly so - and it blooms across his skin in red, angry constellations that look grosser than the potato stamps in low-budget horror props or the dermatological magazine spreads that Reese uses for toenail clippings. Reese is fascinated, can’t help but be fascinated, by the way each red welt seems to sprout like stubborn weeds shouldering through cracked pavement, multiplying by the second.
Malcolm is less charmed, quietly swearing under his breath even as he strips the puke-stained sheets, brushing Dewey’s hair back with a gentleness that contradicts every muttered complaint. His forehead creases, his mouth pulls thin, and he tells Reese to call their mom, voice strained with irritation and worry in equal measure.
Reese does, and then everything becomes motion. Their mother storms into the room in a flurry of frizzy hair and righteousness. She vents a whole arsenal of I-told-you-sos, her voice sharp with the kind of panic she refuses to acknowledge, filing orders at them like a drill sergeant: disinfect that, soak this, don’t touch anything with your bare hands unless you hate your future. Only when she’s burnt through her initial blaze, does she deflate, smoothing her hair with a prim little gesture before announcing, with the solemnity of a judge issuing a sentence, “Well, Dewey’s got this bed. So you’ll both have to share.”
Reese opens his mouth, outraged - protests ready, weapons polished , arguments lined up like dominos - but, Malcolm just rolls his eyes, trudges past Reese, already over it, and collapses into Reese’s - their - bed with the resignation of a man twice his age. “Doesn’t matter,” Malcolm mutters, halfhearted, as he burrows in, “you can’t get chicken pox twice,” which earns him a snap from their mother about don’t test your luck. Malcolm mutters back something about how science disproves luck, but still cocoons himself like a grumpy larva preparing for metamorphosis. Reese would know, he’s read the The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Dewey about a bajillion times.
Reese hesitates. Not long, not meaningfully - but long enough to recognize the shift - the battle is over, the new normal has arrived. He climbs in after Malcolm, careful not to elbow him, and settles into the uncertain warmth of sharing space. It’s mostly a decent night, all things considered; they wake the next morning the same way they always do, without ceremony, without talking about the way their legs had ended up tangled or how Malcolm had been the little spoon, tucked nearly against him like it was instinct. And so it goes.
Nothing happens the next night. Or the night after that.
Well, nothing in the emotional, earth-shaking sense. Dewey still throws up with the predictable rhythm of a broken metronome every three hours - Malcolm’s words, not his - until Malcolm, pissed off and sleep deprived shoves an anti-nausea tablet down his throat while Reese pins Dewey’s flailing arms and threatens dire consequences if he so much as thinks about crying. They check fevers in the dull blue light between midnight and dawn, dab ointment on every patch of blistered skin, and complain about it all in exhausted stereo. It’s tiring, irritating in the usual ways, the kind of shared misery that feels too routine to count as an event. So Reese mentally files it under nothing.
And then - on the third night - he hears it.
The same soft, odd breathing that’s been haunting the edges of his awareness, but this time it’s closer. Much closer. Right by his ear, brushing warm across his cheek in careful, uneven bursts.
He goes still. Entirely, instinctively, utterly still.
He turns slowly, careful as if the sound might scatter like a startled animal. And even though he already has an inkling - because even he isn’t that stupid - he tries to deny it. Surely it’s some kind of demon perving on Malcolm. Or a prank Dewey set up. Literally anything other than the obvious.
But when he rolls over, the breathing is louder, closer - right there - and yes, unmistakably coming from Malcolm.
Little gasps. Small, broken catches of air.
Reese’s first, instinctive thought is that Malcolm is jacking off or something equally horrifying (and, in the same breath, horrifyingly fascinating), and he’s seconds away from yelling when he notices the rest: Malcolm’s body is rigid, utterly motionless, hands knotted in the blanket like he’s hanging on for dear life. No movement except the breathing.
So, that’s a no to the jerking off, then, Reese thinks, before jerking upright, leaning over him. Which means there’s only one conclusion. Malcolm goes even stiffer and cold under his shadow, but Reese catches just enough of his face to confirm his suspicions; the glint of tears trailing down.
“Malcolm,” Reese says, grabbin at the bird-thin wrist that are trying to hide his face. “Are you crying?”
It’s a stupid question. Retrospect will insist this for years. But it comes out of him automatically.
“No.” Malcolm’s voice is sharp, painfully clear - like a radio tuned perfectly, despite the storm - Reese thinks, suddenly, of all the times he’s barged into the room, Malcolm jerking from wherever he’d had his face buried, but speaking lucidly, too lucidly. Reese had always assumed Malcolm was hiding something; he just never imagined it would be this.
“That’s a horrible lie,” Reese mutters, trying to sound comforting and only half-succeeding. “And this is coming from me.”
Malcolm doesn’t laugh. If anything, he curls inward harder, like he’s trying to turn himself into a singularity. Reese forcibly turns him over, expecting a pillow to the face, a kick, a snarl, fuck, baring of teeth—anything. But, Malcolm doesn’t resist, not even the faintest of twitches.
And the moment when Reese finally sees his face - really sees it - something sharp and electric jolts through him. Malcolm’s eyes have always been a pretty, glassy blue; swimmers-pool blue, reflective and irritatingly intelligent. But with tears streaking down, clinging to his lashes, they look almost luminious. Ridiculously, unfairly bright. Like someone had taken all of Malcolm’s brilliance and cracked it open, letting the raw glow seep through the fractures.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Reese says, voice clumsy and uncertain. He’s never practied this sort of thing; making Dewey stop crying usually involves a throat or bribery, and Dewey’s still not out of the crybaby phase, anyway. “C’mon. C’mere.”
It’s awkward - absurdly, painfully awkward - but he pulls Malcolm towards him, and Malcolm collapses into his shirt with a muffled sob, as though someone had cut cleanly through his puppet strings.
It occurs to Reese, distantly, that he hasn’t seen Malcolm cry in a long time. Not surprising, really. There’s an unspoken rule in their house: once you get out of the crybaby phase, you don’t cry. You can’t. If you do, it means someone’s gone too far. If you’ve made a Wilkerson cry, that’s it - game over - you’re the villain of the week, maybe the month.
Crying isn’t a privilege once you’re older; not even for schemes - and the schemes are the only times they can weaponize it - but even then, everyone knows real crying when they see it. And when someone cries for real: Mom takes it seriously, Francis takes it seriously. Everyone takes it seriously.
Because crying, real crying, means something broke. It means the person who caused it is worse than scum, lower than anything lurking under the trailer out back.
No one makes them cry.
The thought sparks something ugly and immediate in Reese. Rage rises like a struck match, and he wants to shake the names of the culprits out of Malcolm’s ribs. If someone hurt him - if someone pushed him this far - Reese wants them to pay for it.
He hesitates, suddenly wishing Francis were here. Francis would know what to say; he and Malcolm are the ones with words. Reese is…not. But Francis isn’t here, and Reese is the only one awake and aware in the dark with Malcolm trembling against him.
So he just pulls Malcolm in closer, tucking him against his chest like he’s trying to fold the boy into safety.
“M’sorry,” Malcolm whispers into his shirt.
The apology hits Reese like a punch. Malcolm rarely apologizes - none of them do, not sincerely - but his voice is small, cracked, honest in a way that Malcolm should never have to be, and it twists something deep in Reese’s chest.
“Y’know, for a brainiac, you’re really acting like an idiot,” Reese says, but the words come out too soft, lacking any bite. “Why the hell would you apologize for crying?”
It drags up a memory he has worked very hard to bury: Malcolm on the sofa, sobbing on their mother because he was terrified he wasn’t meeting expectations. Reese had kneeled there, horror boiling in his throat, watching his little brother collapse under the weight of something invisible. They pretended afterward that it had never happened. Easier that way. Easier for both of them.
But the same sick, helpless feeling claws at him now.
“I’m ruining your shirt,” Malcolm mutters, a weak attempt at logic.
“It was Francis’s shirt,” Reese says, threading a hand through Malcolm’s hair. “We all know it’s been places worse than your snot.”
Malcolm lets out a tiny, hiccupping giggle at that, and Reese counts it as a victory - small, but real - and then attempts to clear his throat, lest it come out half as broken as he feels.
“Now,” Reese begins, awkward as hell, “I don’t suppose you’d like to talk about it.”
He hates this. Not Malcolm crying - though that sucks enough - but being the one responsible for emotional…whatever this is. His instinct is to pretend this never happened, sweep it under the mattress with all the other too-loud, too-real moments. But something gnaws at his ribs, refusing to let him look away.
“I’m surprised you’re not punching me,” Malcolm says, sounding faintly bewildered.
“Dude,” Reese sighs, “even I know when you’re trying to change the topic.”
“Everyone hates me,” Malcolm says suddenly, quietly, and far too calmly for the words he’s dropping like a stone into Reese’s chest. “There’s not a day where they don’t. I ruin everything. I’m too much, I’m pretty sure me being dead is, like, everyone’s biggest wish list.
“Mal—” Reese starts, because every time he thinks he’s reached the limit of how cruel Malcolm’s brain can be to itself, the kid manages to dig deeper. People talk about how brilliant of an asset his mind is, but all Reese can think is that it’s the never-ending villain of the story, and Malcolm is its favorite target.
But Malcolm is already unraveling.
“It’s true,” he continues, voice wobbling only at the edges. “I’m always yelling, or correcting someone, or making things harder. And people look at me like I’m…like I’m some kind of problem they have to put up with. Mom says I stress her out. Dad doesn’t even know what to do with me half the time. And the kids at school—” His breath stutters, hitching, “—they don’t even try to hide it. They say I’m annoying. That I’m unfunny and horrible. Or a freak. Or a know-it-all. And I am. I know I am. I don’t try to be, I just—I don’t know how to not be.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his face harder into Reese’s shirt as if the darkness there can swallow the words back down.
“It gets so—so much sometimes,” Malcolm says, voice going thin, “and I don’t know what to do with it. I can’t yell all the time. I can’t be angry all the time. So I just…lie here.” He gestures weakly to the bed with a trembling hand. “And I cry it out. Quietly. Or, well, at least I try to. Because if I cry loud someone will hear, and then it becomes a thing, and I don’t want it to be a thing.”
Reese’s heart feels like someone’s put it in a vise.
Malcolm keeps going, words tumbling now, stripped of all the sharp edges he usually hides behind. “I tell myself I have a storage of tears. Like a tank. And once it’s empty, I can stop for a while. I can go back to normal. To being…apathetic. Or whatever it is people like better.” A shaky breath. “I know it’s stupid. I just don’t want to bother anyone.”
Reese can’t speak for a long second. His throat feels like sandpaper and barbed wire. He wants to shake the world for making Malcolm feel like this. Shake the school. Shake their parents. Shake whoever taught his little brother that he was the problem just for existing.
(He has a dreadful feeling that he played a part in this, too. And isn’t that a kicker? Perhaps rock bottom has a basement, after all.)
But all he can do is pull Malcolm closer - tight, tight enough that Malcolm squeaks a little - and hope it says something words can’t.
“Malcolm,” he manages, low and rough, “that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
It’s not elegant. But it’s honest. It seems to work, too, because thankfully instead of pulling away, he feels Malcolm’s fingers tighten in his shirt like he’s scared of letting go.
“That’s…not healthy,” Reese says at last, when the silence is too loud with their breathing. The words feel clumsy, hypocritical even, falling out of his mouth like something he should’ve swallowed. But Malcolm doesn’t scoff, doesn’t roll his eyes, doesn’t even twitch - just stays folded small against Reese’s shoulder - and that, more than anything, tells Reese how bad this really is.
“It works, doesn’t it?” Malcolm mumbles. He gives a loose, tired shrug, cheek pressed into Reese’s shirt. Reese can’t argue - not when he’s still savoring the dull throb in his knuckles from beating the hell out of some kid yesterday afternoon - perhaps they’re all doomed to this ball and chain.
“I’ll beat all of them up,” Reese vows, fierce and sincere. And he means it. “Everyone. Anyone who even thought something messed up about you.” He launches into detail, rattling off about dead squirrels and old soapboxes - Dewey might have ideas, Dewey’s imagination is terrifying - but somewhere mid-rant he notices the quiet. Malcolm’s breathing has gone slow and soft.
He’s fallen asleep.
Reese huffs, gentle this time, and brushes the hair out of Malcolm’s face. Rest, genius. Just rest.
***
They don’t talk about it the next morning.
Or the next afternoon. Or the evening. Or the day after that. Or the week after that. Reese is fine with the silence - grateful, even - though a small part of him wants to poke at the memory like a bruise, just to prove it’s real. But he knows how fragile that moment was, how one wrong nudge could send Malcolm bolting back behind all his walls. And for once - maybe for the first time since they were toddlers - Reese wants to be something steady.
He gets his revenge, of course. On the neighborhood kids. The kids at school. The Krelboynes. The teachers. The neighbors. The cashier who looked at Malcolm weird. Even their parents, though that last one ends in the mother of all groundings.
Worth it. Completely worth it.
And then one day, Reese pushes open the door to their bedroom and finds Malcolm curled on the floor, knees pulled to his chest, shoulders shaking. Malcolm startles when he sees him, but he doesn’t run. His lip trembles; his face crumples like a damp paper napkin.
Reese doesn’t say a word. He just crosses the room, slides down the wall beside him, and pulls his little brother into a hug. They should do this more often. It feels…weirdly nice.
“M’sorry,” Malcolm whispers. It sounds wrong in his mouth - too honest, too raw - it curdles something sour in his gut.
Reese nudges his forehead against Malcolm’s. “Crying or not, I will still beat your ass.” Malcolm shoots him an outraged look, all offended and wide-eyed like a startled kitten. “What are you apologizing for, dumbass?”
“I wasn’t supposed to cry!” Malcolm snaps - or tries to - but it comes out thin and shaky. “I thought I got my monthly fix at least, but it’s only been fourteen days.”
“I’m not a brainiac, and I’ve never taken psychology, but I’m pretty sure you can’t control that, dipwad,” Reese says. He flicks Malcolm lightly on the forehead - softer than he’s ever managed before - more a tap than anything else.
Malcolm shoots him a look. It’s a feeble thing, watery and blotchy, his blue eyes even bluer for all the crying, cheeks flushed pink. But it’s still a Malcolm look - full of exasperation and reluctant fondness - and Reese can’t help but grin back like an idiot.
“Y’know,” Reese starts, digging for casual, “I’m kinda surprised you didn’t talk to Francis about this.”
He means it lightly - means to, anyway - but the truth sits low in his chest, warm and possessive. He loves Francis, idolizes him same as the rest of them, but this - this messy, personal thing Malcolm’s carrying - Reese doesn’t want to share it. For once, he doesn’t want to compete for their older brother’s attention. He just wants Malcolm.
“Wouldn’t even think of it,” Malcolm says immediately, and then rolls those pretty eyes of his. “I don’t think he’s got the emotional capacity for anything besides whatever Oedipal complex he’s got with Mom.”
Reese barks out a laugh, even if he has zero idea what an “Oedipal complex” is supposed to be. Malcolm will translate later - Malcolm always translates later. But even without knowing the reference, Reese can tell it’s an insult, real and sharp, and that - fuck - lights up something fierce in him. It’s a rarity. Malcolm rarely aims his bite at Francis. Francis may not be the golden child, but they do treat him like one. Malcolm especially, sometimes, Reese thinks Malcolm sees Francis as the pinnacle of what he could be.
But right now? Malcolm’s with him. That settles a roaring beast in Reese’s chest. Warms him straight through.
“I mean,” Malcolm continues, quieter now, almost shy, like he wants Reese to hear the whole truth, even though no one’s forcing him. “I tried once. Asking him for advice. Didn’t end well.”
“You did?” Reese asks, something sour flickering up, only to soften when he sees the adorably wrinkled expression Malcolm makes whenever he’s exasperated but trying not to show it. “When the hell did that happen?”
“The time I beat up that seven-year-old.”
“Oh, right.” Reese sighs, dramatic. “I’m still kinda impressed you snagged the thug title before I did.”
Malcolm gives him one of those tiny, soft smiles, sweet and crooked and so cute Reese could fold in half.
“Anyway,” Reese presses, leaning a little closer, “what’d Francis say?”
“He asked me how to reattach a head to a corpse,” Malcolm says dryly.
Reese chokes on air. “Francis is a murderer?” His voice jumps, baffled, half impressed, half betrayed that Malcolm didn’t tell him earlier. “I mean—he’s always been one unintentionally, I guess—”
“No, dude,” Malcolm snorts, rubbing at his eyes. “Francis doesn’t have the guts. He’d just start monologuing about Mom until the guy got bored and walked away. You know how he is.”
They both crack into grins, guilty, sheepish, and for Reese, a little triumphant, still relishing at the fact that Malcolm is talking about Francis without the usual glow of idol-worship. It’s like seeing a unicorn.
“If my deductions were right—”
“They always are,” Reese cuts in immediately.
Malcolm flushes. He knows he’s a genius, but he never pretends he doesn’t love being reminded.
“—uh, thanks. Anyway. If my deductions were right, this is what happened.”
He adjusts his position slightly, tone slipping automatically into something sharper, more precise, his version of a detective slipping on a trench coat so to speak.
“Francis stole a key. Not random luck - the fact he mentioned it was ‘hard to turn’ means he grabbed one of the old brass custodial keys. They’re only used for old woman’s purses and backrooms.”
“Now, he said he had a streak of beige dust on his sleeve. Beige dust in that school only comes from one source: the decaying acrylic-blend sweaters the janitors wear. That plus the industrial floor-wax residue on his pant leg—same polymer signature, I can smell it through the phone—means he was definitely in the backrooms.”
Reese is staring at him with big, reverent eyes.
Malcolm keeps going.
“And the smell I overheard his friends loudly complaining about? Bleach with a volatile metallic bite? That’s the chemical closet’s air profile. So Francis found something in there. Or, more accurately, someone.”
Malcolm looks up once, only to flush and look down when he catches Reese leaning into him, stars practically glowing in his eyes from how entranced he is.
“A skeleton—a human one, long dead. Probably a pervert janitor of sorts. So Francis, being Francis, immediately reframed the entire event as a moral quest.” He gestures vaguely, mimicking their brother: soft voice, tragic expression. “This poor lost soul deserves dignity—or, something like that.”
Reese wheezes a laugh.
“He gets a savior complex,” Malcolm continues, flipping open a notebook to cope with his fidgety habit. “Starts rambling about glory and endings and shit like that. Probably delivered an impromptu monologue, he always does that.” Malcolm smiles, all wide and dopey and Reese feels the sour feeling come back.
“And then?” Reese asks, perhaps a little too hurriedly.
“Well,” Malcolm says dryly, “skeletal joints lose structural integrity after prolonged desiccation. Cervical vertebrae are especially unstable. If you apply even a small rotational force—say, trying to pose the corpse for a dramatic farewell—”
Reese chokes. “Oh my god—”
“—the head comes clean off.”
There is a long, horrified pause on Reese’s line.
“So,” Malcolm concludes matter-of-factly, “Francis panicked, realized he’d just botched his own imaginary funeral ritual, and called the nearest person with a 168 IQ to ask how to reattach a human skull. Me.” Malcolm finishes with a small shrug, like this whole absurd deduction is the most normal thing in the world.
“I’ll never get tired of you doing that,” Reese says, awestruck. Then he pauses. “Wait—what proper send-off?”
“Y’know,” Malcolm says, matter-of-fact, “like the old days. You stick the corpse in a boat, pile it with riches, set it on fire, and push it out to sea.”
Reese nods solemnly. “Well, now I know how I want my burial.”
“Good to know,” Malcolm says lightly. “I’ll put your comic books in with you.”
“Thank you,” Reese says, genuinely touched. Then, softer: “But…if you didn’t go to Francis, why’d you come to me?”
“Well, technically, I didn’t come to you—”
“You know what I mean.” Reese elbows him gently. “I know you. You’ve got, like, thirty-seven different escape routes.”
“Forty-seven, actually,” Malcolm corrects, prim. “But you were close.”
“Point proven,” Reese mutters, but he’s smiling.
“Well,” Malcolm says, shrugging lightly. His uneven, bitten nails hook into Reese’s shirt, and Reese doesn’t mind—he’s always had an unhealthy thing with pain anyway. “You’ve got more heart than he does.”
Normally, Reese would shoot back. Something easy like that’s not hard or wow, shooting for the lowest bar possible, but Malcolm’s face is open in a way it almost never is—unguarded, soft, like he actually means it. And Reese knows he doesn’t mean it as an insult to Francis. Just…truth.
“Yeah?” Reese asks, voice wobbling in a way that makes him feel stupid. Like he might cry or something. “You’ve got more heart too, man.”
“Yeah, right,” Malcolm scoffs, rolling his eyes. “There are multiple people who’d disagree with you.”
“Well, they’re all idiots,” Reese says, and every syllable is solid, steady, true. Because Malcolm does have heart. More than anyone he knows. Malcolm’s got heart when he takes Dewey’s hand on the walk to school because Dewey’s face fell for half a second. He’s got heart when he was willing to bleed out so Francis could come home. He’s got heart when he sat with Reese after his whole crush disaster, helping him with cheer practice even though he was red-faced and grumbling the whole time. He’s got heart when he stays up late making escape plans for all of them, tired and bleary but determined.
He’s kind, even when he hates himself. Even when he doesn’t think he’s anything but sharp edges and bad temper and too much brain.
Reese swallows, the words burning their way up before he can stop them.
“Malcolm,” he says, raw, “you’re the reason I know what a good person even looks like.”
***
They don’t talk about it - not the crying, not the shaking hands, not the night they held on to each other like they’d drown otherwise - but Reese changes, bit by bit, like a dial turning imperceptibly toward something warmer.
He still punches Malcolm in the arm during arguments, still steals fries off his plate and hides his textbooks in the freezer. He still knocks over Malcolm’s cutlery for fun. But he starts doing other things too - things that feel new, strange, and stupidly soft.
He compliments Malcolm’s shirt, his humor, the way his brain works. He drapes an arm around Malcolm’s shoulder on the way to school. He ruffles Malcolm’s curls with a gentleness that feels like it belongs to someone else’s hands. And once - just once - he presses a quick forehead kiss to Malcolm’s temple, half-joking, half-not, and Malcolm freezes like he’s been caught in sunlight.
It’s growing tender. Far too tender. But Reese keeps going anyway. He’s impulsive, and he loves his brother, and he’s not going to pretend he doesn’t.
One night, while Dewey is still sick and the house feels muffled and slow, Reese and Malcolm end up sharing a bed. They’re curled together back-to-back, then back-to-shoulder, then somehow Malcolm ends up tucked against Reese’s chest like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“How long have you been doing this?” Reese murmurs into the dim.
“Two years and three weeks,” Malcolm whispers. His voice is thin, careful, threaded with melancholy, like a violin note held too long.
“Man,” Reese breathes, pulling him close, pressing Malcolm’s forehead against his collarbone, “you really committed to this.”
Malcolm doesn’t laugh. But he exhales, shaky and small, and Reese holds him until the night swallows every sound.
Dewey gets better, of course he does, and the house snaps back into its noisy, chaotic rhythm. They return to their own beds. But something has shifted, quietly, sweetly, irrevocably.
Sometimes Malcolm comes to him without a word, and Reese just opens his arms. Malcolm cries into his chest until he’s limp with exhaustion. Other nights Malcolm climbs into Reese’s bed, clinging with cold fingers before slipping back into his usual prickly self by morning.
And Reese…Reese is feeling more than usual.
He catches himself staring when Malcolm wears blue - Reese’s old shirt, stretched at the collar. Malcolm’s eyes look impossibly bright then, like something you shouldn’t stare at directly. He notices how witty Malcolm is when he’s tired, how soft his voice gets when he’s thinking. He notices how Malcolm peek-peeks through his fingers during moments, like some kind of tiny woodland creature, and Reese dreams about those hands - small, quick, clever - more often than he should.
But Reese doesn’t stop. He doesn’t go backward. He never has.
Even when jealousy creeps in - sharp and sour - whenever Malcolm lights up at Francis’s voice over the phone. Even when that jealousy melts into something warm when Malcolm wordlessly hands the phone to Dewey and settles back beside Reese with a controller. Even when Malcolm tutors him with gentleness that doesn’t soften the sarcasm but wraps it in something warmer. Even when Malcolm laughs at his dumb jokes like they actually matter.
Sure, they fight. But the fights are brief, hot sparks rather than wildfire now.
And then, one late evening, Reese comes home to an empty house. He kicks off his shoes and sprawls on his bed, enjoying the quiet. The door opens a few minutes later - Malcolm, slow and tired, shoulders slumped. He doesn’t even acknowledge Reese.
He just walks past him, climbs into his own bed, pulls the blanket over his head, and the sobbing starts. Not the quiet, shaky kind. These are wrenching, choking sounds, like glass scraping up his ribs and shattering in his throat.
Reese doesn’t hesitate. He jams a chair under the doorknob - instinctual, protective - and climbs onto Malcolm’s bed, pulling back the covers.
Malcolm’s face is blotchy and wet, his breath broken and ragged. Through the gasps he tells Reese what happened. Reese sees red - pure, blistering rage. “I’ll humiliate them so hard their grandkids will feel it,” he vows into Malcolm’s hair. “I’ll ruin them. I’ll make it the joke of their funeral speeches.”
Malcolm shudders, not quite laughing. His hands fist weakly in Reese’s shirt.
“Reese,” Malcolm whispers, voice cracking. “You’re…you’re probably embarrassed to have me as a brother. I get it. I’d be embarrassed too.”
Reese grips him tighter, pulling Malcolm fully into his lap, forehead pressed to his temple.
“Hey,” Reese says, voice rough, uneven, but steady with truth. “If anyone in this world should be ashamed of me, it’s you. You’re the smartest, strongest person I’ve ever known, and you still choose me. You still come to me. So don’t you ever say you’re embarrassing. Not when the only thing embarrassing is how damn proud I am to be your brother.”
“Don’t say that. You’re the best person I know.” Malcolm hiccups, and then goes still, then breaks, sobbing into Reese’s chest with a sound that is all honesty and all hurt, but also, somewhere in there, relief.
“Stevie must be getting worse then,” Reese says light, but holds him until the storm passes.
The moment softens and melts into something warm and yellow, pliant and forgiving, shrinking slowly as they draw closer together.
All at once it gets so loud. Malcolm’s hiccups have quieted, and now the world hums alive around them — Dewey yelling something about chasing the neighborhood kids, cicadas and crickets dueling in the backyard with high-pitched insistence, the drip-drip of the kitchen faucet, the steady tick of the clock on the wall. Everything sharpens. Reese can suddenly see the faint scar on Malcolm’s temple where the ceiling had fallen on him. He can see the glass-blue depth of Malcolm’s eyes, swirling, trembling.
Then the moment closes in on them.
Reese had dreamed of his first kiss for years—romantic April afternoons, amber street-lamps, girls with hair soft around their shoulders, lips sticky with bright lipstick, kisses that tasted like candy, raspberries, chocolate. He had imagined fireworks, sweet softness, golden afternoons, gentle lips gliding against his.
But this—this is nothing like that.
His first kiss isn’t against plush, lipstick-stained softness. It’s against lips rough with dryness, bitten raw and unkissed. It doesn’t taste of sweet candy or comfort food—it tastes of salt. Salt, as if the sea itself ran through Malcolm’s veins and spilled into his mouth, salt laced with iron-sharp tang of blood from his bitten lips. It’s harsh, abrupt, fierce; Malcolm’s fingers twist into Reese’s hair, pulling him closer, while Reese’s hands find purchase on Malcolm’s narrow waist, gripping so tight his knuckles are white.
They move together with that same reckless intensity they bring to everything else—raw and unfiltered, no thought but instinct and stubbornness. It’s wild, overwhelming, all consuming.
It’s nothing like Reese’s fantasies.
It’s so much better.
***
It becomes their thing—again—something they steal away for themselves in hidden corners, between sofa cushions, against kitchen counters. It’s theirs. Theirs. His.
And hoping beyond hope, Reese prays it lasts forever.
He’s not sure he could ever sleep properly again without the sound of Malcolm’s soft, unhurried breathing beside him.