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Colt Seavers had always known when something was wrong with his brother; It wasn’t some supernatural twin connection, despite what people liked to joke about whenever the two of them answered questions at the same time or instinctively reached for the same object without looking. It was more ordinary and simpler than that, practically deeply ingrained within their minds.
He had spent eighteen years growing up beside Ryland Grace, and in those eighteen years, he had learned every version of his brother’s silences. He knew the difference between Ryland being distracted and Ryland being overwhelmed, knew when the quiet meant exhaustion and when it meant fear, and knew which smiles were genuine compared to ones existing solely to keep other people from worrying.
Ryland had always been brilliant at understanding the universe and absolutely terrible at understanding himself, and somewhere along the way, Colt had simply adapted around that fact like it was second nature.
So when the phone calls started becoming shorter, and texts shifted from rambling paragraphs about science theories and ridiculous professor stories into clipped one-word responses sent hours late, Colt noticed immediately.
At first, he tried not to overthink it – Ryland was in college for god’s sake. Specifically, Ryland was in one of the most intense molecular biology programs in the country while simultaneously working on approximately seventeen different projects, all of which sounded vaguely world-changing whenever he tried to explain them. Stress obviously came with the territory, Colt knew that, he really did.
But, there was something off about the rhythm of it all, something too sharp around the edges when he truly thought about it. Ryland sounded distracted every time they talked, like half of his attention was somewhere else entirely. He laughed less, slept less, and every conversation somehow circled back toward work, research, theories, and possibilities. It reminded Colt of watching someone walk farther and farther into the ocean without realizing how deep the water had become.
Then came the text that was finally settled into Colt’s chest like a stone:
‘srry, too tirwed to tslk, lobe u’
Well, besides the misspelling and embarrassing amount of time Colt spent deciphering it as if he didn’t do the same, it was how Colt found himself driving across three states on almost no sleep, with a duffel bag tossed in the backseat of his truck and enough gas station coffee in his bloodstream to be legally classified as dangerous.
He hadn’t called ahead, which would obviously defeat the point of a surprise visit. But, besides the point, Ryland probably wouldn’t have answered anyway. Colt justified the entire thing to himself by pretending it was impulsive, but deep down, he knew better. This was instinct – the same instinct that had spent their childhood pulling him toward his brother whenever something felt wrong.
The university campus looked exactly like the kind of place Ryland belonged in. The buildings were all glass and steel and sharp modern angles that reflected sunlight hard enough to hurt someone's eyes. Students hurried across sidewalks carrying laptops and overstuffed backpacks while conversations about exams and deadlines drifted through the air around them.
Everything smelled faintly like coffee, old books, rain-damp pavement, and exhaustion. Colt immediately felt out of place in the most predictable way possible – he looked like someone who had wandered onto campus accidentally while searching for a construction site: worn boots, a leather jacket, and bruises still healing along his ribs from a small, local stunt job gone wrong earlier that week. Meanwhile, every person around him somehow looked polished in a way Colt fundamentally distrusted.
Still, he couldn’t stop from smiling a little as he walked through the campus, because this was Ryland’s world.
Every stressed-out student, every cluttered science building, and every half-erased equation scribbled across classroom whiteboards – it all felt unmistakably like him. Colt could practically picture Ryland weaving through the crowds with a coffee cup in one hand and a notebook in the other, too busy mentally solving some impossible problem to notice he’d forgotten breakfast again.
The thought made him shake his head fondly as he checked the building number on his phone one last time before heading toward the biology department. He found Ryland sitting alone in an outdoor courtyard behind the building, completely oblivious to the existence of the world around him.
The table in front of him looked catastrophic: papers covered nearly every inch of space, stacked in uneven piles alongside notebooks filled edge-to-edge with equations Colt couldn’t even begin to figure out. Three empty coffee cups sat abandoned near Ryland’s elbow like evidence from a crime scene. His laptop screen glowed beneath sticky notes covered in frantic handwriting.
Meanwhile, Ryland himself looked deeply, aggressively exhausted. His hair stuck up in every direction from repeatedly running his hand through it, dark circles shadowed the skin beneath his eyes, and one knee bounced restlessly beneath the table while he scribbled something down with absolute tunnel-vision focus.
Despite all of the obvious stress, exhaustion, and the fact that Colt was already mentally planning several lectures about sleep deprivation, relief hit him so hard it almost hurt.
There he was – the same face, same concentration wrinkle between his eyebrows, the same Ryland.
For a moment, Colt just stood there watching him through the late afternoon sunlight, struck unexpectedly by how much he’d missed him. Not through the phone calls or texts, just him. The physical reality of his brother existing in the same space again. It had nearly been a year since they’d seen each other in person, and somewhere along the way, Colt had forgotten how grounding that felt.
Ryland didn’t notice his approach – which, honestly, should’ve been embarrassing for a guy supposedly studying the mysteries of the universe.
Colt walked directly in front of him, casually reached over, and plucked the pencil straight out of his hand. Ryland startled violently, nearly knocking over one of the empty coffee cups.
“What the–” he mumbled, looking up, and froze completely.
For one strange, suspended second, Ryland just stared at him like his brain genuinely couldn’t process what it was seeing. Colt watched recognition hit in stages: confusion first, then disbelief, then sudden overwhelming certainty.
“You miss me?” Colt said with an easy grin.
“Colt?”
“The one and only.”
Ryland blinked hard. “What are you doing here?
“Surprise visit.”
“You drove all the way here?”
“Technically, yeah.”
He narrowed his eyes immediately at his response. “Define technically.”
Colt shrugged as he spun his stolen pencil in-between his fingers. “I may have slept in a truck stop parking lot for four hours somewhere in Wyoming.”
Ryland stared at him in an exhausted disbelief for exactly two seconds before standing so quickly his chair scraped loudly against the pavement. Then, without warning or an ounce of hesitation, he stepped forward and wrapped both arms tightly around Colt, the force of it catching him off guard. He was never usually physical with affection – growing up, he’d always shown care indirectly: through shared snacks, fixed homework, late-night conversations, and random acts of quiet support that often went unnoticed by everyone except Colt.
But now he held onto him tightly enough that he could feel the tension running through him beneath the surface. Immediately, Colt’s expression softened into a calm grin.
“Whoa,” he muttered out, hugging him back automatically, “You really missed me, huh?”
Ryland laughed quietly against his shoulder, the sound tired and relieved all at once.
“You’re insane.”
“Yeah, but you’ve gotta admit you–”
“I did. A lot.” Ryland interrupted, his voice almost strained with a silent, choked cry.
“There’s the Ryland I know.”
When they finally pulled apart, Colt got a better look at him up close, and concern settled deeper into his chest almost instantly. Ryland looked thinner than usual, paler too, and the excitement in his eyes remained unmistakably bright, restless, and alive in that uniquely Ryland way. But it sat on top of a level of exhaustion that made Colt uneasy.
“You sleeping at all?” he asked immediately.
Ryland groaned softly and rubbed a hand over his face. “Please don’t start.”
“That’s a no, then.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look like a haunted Victorian scientist.”
“I am a haunted Victorian scientist.”
Colt snorted at his response. God, he’d missed this.
The rest of the afternoon disappeared surprisingly quickly after that. Ryland insisted on giving him a full campus tour despite Colt repeatedly informing him he absolutely did not need a detailed explanation of every science-themed building on-site. Of course, Ryland ignored him completely. He moved through the campus with an energy Colt hadn’t heard over the phone in months: talking rapidly about professors, experiments, ongoing research projects, and jumbled combinations of words so complicated that Colt occasionally lost track halfway through the explanation.
Still, he listened, because Ryland sounded happiest when talking about his work. His happiness wasn’t comfortable, and sure as hell not casual, but was something brighter than he could catch up with. He noticed how his entire posture changed whenever the conversation drifted toward his hobbies. The exhaustion remained, but underneath it lived this undeniable sense of wonder that made him seem almost electric.
At one point, Ryland had spent nearly ten straight minutes explaining some incomprehensible topic to him before he finally fully noticed Colt staring blankly at him.
“..and technically, if the reaction behaves the way we suspect, then theoretically you could create an entirely self-sustaining–” Ryland stopped abruptly. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“Not a clue.”
Ryland sighed dramatically. “Right. Sorry.” He then sheepishly rubbed at the back of his neck, struggling lightly as if he’d been scolded for the smallest mistake.
“I get excited.”
“I know.”
And Colt did know – that was the dangerous part.
Because beneath the excitement, Colt could feel something sharper taking shape, too. Ryland had always thrown himself fully into the things he cared about, but this felt different somehow, bigger. Almost like he was chasing something that existed just beyond everyone else’s understanding.
That's when Colt forcibly dragged him off campus for some real food and a chance for his own brain to reconnect and not explode in their faces.
“Coffee isn’t a meal, I thought you were smart?” he informed firmly while steering him towards the parking lot.
“It literally contains calories!”
“That might be the saddest sentence you’ve ever said to me.”
Eventually, they ended up at a tiny diner just outside campus, the kind of place with flickering neon signs and permanently sticky menus. The air smelled like syrup, grease, and bubbling tea in a weirdly comforting way. Ryland visibly relaxed the longer they sat there, the tension slowly easing from his shoulders as the conversation drifted away from academics and deadlines.
For hours, they talked about everything and nothing at the same time. Colt told heavily edited stories from small stunt jobs that made Ryland laugh despite repeatedly accusing him of having a death wish. Ryland rambled about odd roommates, almost arguments turned into fights, and weird campus drama involving rival research teams. Somewhere along the way, the conversation slipped naturally back into familiar rhythms, easy and effortless in the way only years of knowing someone could create.
At one point, Ryland stopped talking mid-sentence and just looked at Colt across the table. For a moment, time seemed to stretch oddly, like the diner’s low hum of conversation, the clinking of silverware, and the occasional hiss of the coffee machine had all faded into the background. Colt noticed the subtle shift first in Ryland’s expression: how his brow relaxed slightly, his eyes softened, and the faint upward curve of his lips that never quite made it to a full smile but said more than words ever could.
“What?” Colt asked, leaning forward, his eyebrows raised in that teasing way he always used when he sensed Ryland slipping into one of his quieter moods.
Ryland shook his head faintly, letting out a soft sigh that seemed to release more than just breath. “Nothing. It’s just – weird seeing you here,” he admitted, the words quieter than he intended, almost swallowed by the ambient diner noise.
Colt tilted his head, studying him. “Weird good or weird bad?”
“No, no, good,” Ryland said softly, staring out the window just before them, as if pretending to concentrate would somehow make admitting the truth easier.
A pause stretched between them, long enough that Colt could feel the weight of it pressing into his chest. It was softer than the usual conversations they had, but also somehow heavier at the same time.
“I just – I really missed you. I think I might’ve lost parts of my brain during these weeks,” he added on, his voice barely audible.
The confession landed in Colt’s chest like a gentle punch, twisting him in a way he hadn’t expected. The words themselves were utterly, stupidly simple, but managed to catch the way Ryland usually left unsaid.
“Yeah,” Colt muttered out, letting the silence linger just a moment longer, “I missed you too, Ry.”
Later that night, Ryland insisted on showing Colt the roof of his apartment building – a terrifying sentence to say to someone without context, but he quickly came to understand the true nature of what he meant.
“You just hang out on rooftops regularly now? Usually this dumb shit is my thing.” Colt asked as he climbed the narrow fire escape, squinting against the fading light.
“It’s quiet up here,” Ryland replied simply.
The rooftop sprawled above the city like a tiny island of stillness. Lights glittered below them, tracing streets and avenues, flickering from windows, and neon signs like constellations in a miniature view. The distant him of traffic mixed with the occasional shout of a late-night pedestrian, creating a subtle background noise in the moment. Above, the sky stretched wide and impossibly dark. It was scattered with stars so sharp and clear it almost hurt to look at them directly, almost as if someone had taken the world and sharpened its edges.
Colt soon settled onto the concrete, leaning back with a low, contented sigh. The cool surface pressed against his back, grounding him in the moment.
“Okay,” he admitted after a moment, his voice soft, “This actually isn’t so bad.”
“Told you,” Ryland said, sliding down to sit cross-legged beside him.
They sat in silence for a long while, neither speaking, but both could feel the calmness in the air, settling their own tension and running thoughts for the night. Eventually, Ryland spoke once more, his voice barely above a dull roar.
“Do you ever think about space?”
Colt groaned theatrically without even opening his eyes, stretching his arms behind his head.
“Oh my god.”
“I’m serious!” Ryland said, nudging him lightly.
“That’s your first mistake,” Colt muttered out, rolling his eyes.
Ryland nudged him again as Colt finally opened one eye, studying the stars that sparkled above them.
“Okay, okay. Sometimes,” he admitted after a long pause, pretending not to notice the pleased smile which lifted onto Ryland’s lips.
“It’s terrifying,” Ryland said softly.
“What is? My thinking?”
“No,” he spoke, tilting his head back to look upward again, his eyes reflecting a universe far larger than either of them could comprehend, “How big everything is.”
Colt considered the weight of that for a moment, letting the hum of the city below and the silent vastness above wash over him.
“I think it’s kinda comforting,” he explained, folding his arms behind his head. “Means our problems probably aren’t as massive as they feel. Makes them feel – smaller? Or, manageable.”
Ryland was quiet for a long minute, as if in slight disbelief his brother could say something incredibly smart for a second.
“That’s actually a very healthy perspective,” he muttered.
“Thank you,” Colt said with a grin, “I can be your next student and finally be wise.”
Ryland laughed, like he hadn’t laughed fully in days, and Colt felt the warmth of it spread through his chest. The simple joy of hearing Ryland’s laugh, sharing a moment that was theirs alone, was something like no other memory they had.
Soon, the laughter faded, leaving only the city streets and the slight murmur of bugs existing in the unending surroundings around them. But, Ryland’s voice came again, lower this time, trembling slightly with intensity.
“I think I’m close to something important.”
Colt turned his head, concern shaping his expression immediately. There it was again: the unmistakable intensity, that spark in Ryland’s eyes that always preceded obsession. Unease coiled in his chest. He opened his mouth, ready to say something, but before a word could leave him, a streak of light tore across the night sky.
Both froze, eyes tracking the silver-white line as it cut a deliberate, impossibly straight path through the darkness. It moved too fast to be a plane, meteor, or anything else that flew.
Ryland sat upright slowly, Colt following instinctively. The air felt incredibly still, the city sounds below muted somehow by the sheer confusing scene of what they had just witnessed.
“Did you see that?” Ryland whispered, almost in a tone that made him think he was dreaming.
“Yeah.”
“That wasn’t normal.”
“Nope.”
Ryland didn’t look away from the sky as he continued to stare long after the streak vanished beyond the horizon, and strangely, he was smiling.
“It looked–” he began, his eyes shining with something different.
“What?” Colt asked.
He shook his head faintly, blinking slowly as if he thought carefully about the next word he’d say.
“Nothing.” Ryland said.
But Colt, who knew him better than anyone, didn’t believe it.
The launch footage aired everywhere: at every news station, social media feed, and every screen Colt passed by. It all showed the same thing–the countdown, the spacecraft, and the mission that was supposed to save humanity.
Despite watching his brother depart without even a goodbye, the years afterward felt strange. At first, people talked about the mission constantly. Then, gradually there was less, and less.
And less.
Some night he found himself replaying old memories just to hear Ryland’s voice again: the diner, the college campus, and the rooftop. Always the rooftop. He could remember every detail with painful clarity.
But the night it happened again felt completely ordinary at first. A strange feeling settled beneath his ribs, subtle enough that he almost ignored it. It reminded him of the feeling he’d had years ago when Ryland stopped answering calls regularly. The feeling that had eventually driven him across multiple states on almost no sleep just to make sure his brother was okay. Colt had never been able to explain those moments logically. He just knew when something was pulling at him.
Instead of heading inside, he found himself standing motionless in the driveway. The keys remained loose in his hand while the night stretched quietly around him. The air was cool against his skin, carrying the faint scent of distant rain and empty roads.
Slowly, almost unconsciously, Colt looked up. The sky loomed endlessly overhead with thousands of stars scattered across the darkness. For a long minute, he simply stood there staring at them. He couldn’t have explained why easily.
Then, movement caught his eye.
A flash of silver-white light sliced across the darkness.
The object moved with impossible speed, cutting a path through the sky. It moved with purpose, carving through the stars in a way that made every instinct scream in his body for attention.
“No way,” Colt whispered.
The light continued moving across the sky, silent, steady, and beautiful in a way that made his chest ache. It seemed almost unreal against the darkness, like something that belonged in dreams rather than reality. But Colt couldn’t look away.
For one impossible moment, he could almost picture him: Ryland.
A laugh escaped him before he could stop it, the sound cracking in the middle of it.
“You really went far, huh?” he murmured, the words vanishing into the night without an answer.
The ship continued onward, gradually becoming smaller and smaller as it crossed the sky, disappearing beyond the horizon entirely. But Colt didn’t move.
More like, he couldn’t move.
He stayed exactly where he was, his eyes fixed on the empty patch of sky long after the light had vanished. For the first time since the launch, Ryland didn’t feel gone, but only far away. Still, impossibly far.