Chapter Text
When Colt had his accident, his whole world had come crashing down around him. The career he had worked so hard to build now lay fractured just out of his reach. A broken back was a death sentence to any stuntman. How was he supposed to defy death when he could barely sit up in bed?? The physical pain was somehow only second to the anguish at the prospect of having to give up the thing he had so fiercely fought for. To think his career had been ended by a safety failure. Jody had been there with him from the beginning, worrying and fretting as soon as he had come out of surgery. Ryland had come crashing through the hospital doors only hours later, a veritable ball of stress. The call had come to him in the middle of the night and he had gotten on a plane. Ryland, his baby brother of 12 whole minutes- who got sick on elevators- had gotten on a plane to see him faster. Probably spending money he didn’t have to do so. If he wasn’t already in so much pain Colt would have started tearing up at how much it meant to him. At how much Ryland had meant to him.
The first week out of surgery had been a haze of morphine induced struggle. Colt needed help with everything. Going from daredevil stunts to needing assistance sitting up made shame curl hot in his gut. It was a shame he was quickly having to learn to swallow down and accept. Those first days he desperately held the hope that once he got home things would be better. That he could start doing things for himself again, however slowly that might be.
However, it became apparent very early that this was not the case. His range of motion was completely destroyed. Once Colt was out of the hospital, he had to settle into a new routine of learning to live again between physical therapy appointments and his inability to work. In between finding his new normal, another emotion had set in: anger. Ryland hadn’t left his side for more than an hour or two at most. It was summer at the time so he hadn’t had to use his limited vacation. Ryland had done his best to take care of Colt. He cooked for him, kept his apartment clean, even embarrassingly, had helped him bathe when he was in too much pain to do it on his own. Even though Colt knew that Ryland was doing this out of love because, fuck, Colt sure as hell couldn’t do any of it by himself right now…Colt was annoyed as hell by it all. The more Ryland did for him- the more he tried to help- the angrier Colt became at his own incompetence.
He had pushed away Jody first. It was easier with her. She could only be on the end of so many rejected calls and texts before becoming worried. When she showed up at his door only hours after her most recent plea, he had told her to leave. Body coiled for a fight he couldn’t bear. He had been cruel to her then, pushing her away. For all the regret he felt though, the overwhelming need to be left alone had by far eclipsed it. Jody could only take so much before she took his advice and left. Ryland had tried not to push him too much then. He knew that he was hurting, even as he told Colt that he had been a jerk to Jody. That he should go to bed and apologize in the morning. And fuck, he just didn’t want to be babied anymore. It wasn’t that he was nice to Ryland either. He had been nothing but a grade A asshole for weeks. That was part of the deal though, Ryland had seen his bad sides before and wasn’t so easily swayed to leave. After all, what were brothers for?
It was raining when he finally managed it. The skies above LA had decided to produce a thick blanket of rain to sooth away the burns of a too hot summer. The soft pitter patter of droplets on the roof was normally something Colt had found soothing. When he was still a child, knees littered with bandages and heart full of hope, the rain was one of the only times he had found himself sitting still. It wasn’t because he couldn’t do anything outside. He could, and often did as there was so much to do if only he could manage to get Ryland into his raincoat and boots. More often than not, Ryland would curl up by the window and read on those rainy days, enjoying the way the petrichor filled his lungs while his mind ran wild with whatever book he was engrossed with at the time. These times when Colt got too restless, Ryland would read to him. Something about it, about the cadence and care in Rylands voice at those times would settle his restlessness and he could indulge in what world Ryland had engrossed himself in.
This rain was nothing like that. Colt and Ryland hadn’t read for each other in years. Colt wouldn’t even let him offer even if something in him ached to be soothed.
Ryland had just come home from the grocery store. The fridge was running bare and he had insisted on walking down the street to the supermarket. As it stands, he was dripping all over the kitchen in his mockingly bright yellow rain jacket. He had had a near identical one as a child and was thrilled upon finding a similarly adult sized one. Ryland was telling him about some new recipe he wanted to try while putting away groceries he probably couldn’t afford in the fridge. Water continued to run off his jacket, small tributaries leading to the growing puddle on his floor. It irritated him. There was something about it. The expanding puddle from the too bright rain jacket and the care he didn’t deserve. It was too much. He would never be whole again and here was Ryland yammering on about the fat structure of different cheeses in a lasagna.
“God Ryland, would you please just shut up for five seconds!” Colt groaned from the couch, letting his hands fall in front of his face from where he was laying. “You’re getting shit all over the floor.”
“Did I do something wrong?” Closing the fridge, Ryland turned to better look at Colt “I’ll clean it up…Or did you not want lasagna? I could make something else.”
The deliberate patience in Rylands voice only served to irritate him more. He didn’t get it. Of course he didn’t get it. Ryland with his curious mind and fear of anything reckless would never get it. The riskiest thing Ry ever did was unleash his sense of fashion with those dumb science pun shirts. How could he ever get his pain? How could he understand that everything made him angry these days.
“It’s not about dinner. I just want you, for once in your miserable life, to shut up!”The sound ripped itself from Colt’s throat louder than he had intended. But damn if it didn’t feel good to start letting his anger out for once. This finally was something he could actually do. “I don’t care about the stupid science shit, okay! Can you please just leave me alone.”
“ I know you’re in pain Colt, but you don’t have to be a jerk.” Ryland said, voice surprisingly strong. Ah, Colt had begun to strike a nerve. Perfect. He could work with that, rile his brother up to match his anger.
“Why do you even care about it, huh Ry?” A dry chuckle escaped him “ You have never done anything meaningful with your gift. Who gets a doctorate from Stanford to become a middle school teacher?”
“Teaching is meaningful, Colt! These kids. They- They’re the future. I won’t apologize for where I am.” Fighting to keep his voice from rising too much, Ryland leveled a glare at his twin.
“NO, Ry! You left your field because you’re a coward! You have always been a coward! People don’t like one paper and you run? You're afraid of everything that might actually have meaning and I’m just sick of it, okay? I’m sick of you! I’ve been sick of you since we were kids and I had to protect you all the time!” Somewhere during his rant Colt had risen from the couch to crowd into Rylands space. He was panting with the effort of crossing the small distance, voice growing louder with every desperate verbal punch. “ You’re not my brother! No brother of mine would just give up like that.”
All at once it was as if the life had drained out of Ryland. The anger he had been building in his spat with Colt quickly melted away to be replaced by a deep well of hurt. Shimmering tears began to gather along his lashes, threatening to spill.
“You can’t mean that, Colton. You’-” Rylan’s voice drops to a whisper. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do, Ryland.You’re not my brother anymore. I’m Colt Seavers now, yeah? So get out and leave me alone!”
No sooner had the words left Colts mouth than had Ryland made his way out of the apartment, door slamming behind him. Leaning on the counter for support Colt listened to the sounds of his brothers retreating footsteps with a sick sense of victory. Watching Ryland’s face crumple had felt- in some awful way- good. He had a place to direct his anger and fuck if someone was finally as miserable as he was. Now he wouldn’t have to be mother henned all hours of the day and night. Hobbling to the fridge Colt pulled out his first beer since before the accident.
He knew that he wasn’t supposed to drink with the cocktail of medicine he was taking, but he needed this. Needed to lose himself from the way his life had collapsed in the wake of his injury. One beer turned to three and the third soon turned to five. The world was blurring together at the edges and the rain hadn’t yet stopped its barrage. For the first time in months Colt had found himself alone.
Hobbling back to the fridge for his sixth and final beer, Colt’s world begins to tilt. The sudden loss of traction sends him sprawling to the kitchen floor. The pain of the fall knocks the wind out of him. Even though he knows logically that the doctors had fused his spine- had put a cage around the newly fused vertebrae- that this means he could not re-damage the structure; this does not stop the pain and cloying fear from thundering through him. For several blinding moments the agony of it is all consuming. For what feels like eternity colt lays on the floor of the kitchen and fights to regain his breath and oh…He’s fallen on the puddle that had been left behind by Ryland’s too bright rain coat. He had been in such a hurry to leave that in his haste he hadn’t cleaned up the water. And here was Colt, lying in the remnants of their fight drunk and unable to get up. He needed… He needed Ryland.
“Ry?” he called out, slurred voice echoing against the empty halls.
For once there was no one to answer. Colt was alone.