Chapter Text
Ryland’s not overly fond of summer in Los Angeles. He likes the fog and the cool coastal winds of the Bay Area, where he’s established residence for the last four years. The sun also feels markedly less aggressive there; never has he been to Southern California and not returned home with peeling skin and a neurotic itch to monitor his moles for changes in shape or color. If it were up to him, he’d be peacefully tucked away at a secluded picnic table near his apartment, drafting lesson plans for the upcoming school year. Instead, he’s quite anxiously tucked away behind a film camera with sweat pouring down his everything, watching his brother prepare to get dropped off the top of a twelve-storey building.
And—sure, he’s hooked up to a professional-grade wire rig and nobody among the film crew seems the least bit concerned about the stunt, but Ryland finds himself rather acutely aware of the fact that there’s no crash mat just in case—and has it been mentioned yet that this is his brother? Sue him for crapping his pants.
It doesn’t help either that there’s an ambulance casually parked outside the building ‘in the event of a major accident.’ According to Colt, that’s simply standard procedure whenever high-risk stunts are involved. Why he ever thought knowing that would make Ryland rest easy over the notion of his brother taking a hundred-and-fifty-foot fall is beyond imagining. Union regulations dictating the necessity of paramedic presence usually only come about because some poor fool—or many poor fools—had to die before someone thought that maybe—just maybe—safety is a noble virtue.
To be fair, it’s not always like this. Colt often drags Ryland to film sets whenever school’s not in session, and most of the time, Ryland’s convinced enough of his brother’s safety to watch him do his job without feeling like his heart will be imminently joining the proverbial crap in his pants.
He’s seen Colt get hit by cars (at reasonable speed), set on fire, pushed through windows, thrown down onto hard furniture, blasted through walls—and even waterboarded. It’s not like being present for those things has been universally comfortable for Ryland, but they’re circumstances in which he knows Colt’s not in danger of instantly dying if something goes amiss.
Getting dropped twelve storeys, on the other hand? Yeah, Ryland’s not exactly jumping for joy over the idea of that. Any number of things could go wrong, nearly all of which would result in Colt’s death. Hence the damn ambulance lurking outside like an omen.
Ryland hugs the small wastebasket he was given when he arrived on set close to his chest. It was supposed to be a joke—Colt poking fun at him and his twitchy stomach—but the dizziness and pooling saliva under his tongue are making it seem like a potentially very real necessity.
“You doing okay, love?” Jody asks.
She’s sitting beside Ryland, in the camera operator’s chair, and she, like every other member of the film crew, looks entirely unfazed by what’s about to happen.
Ryland doesn’t know how she does it. She may have met Colt on a film set and seen him do a whole host of insane things typical of a stuntman for months before they ever became official, but just because she’s used to it doesn’t mean she’s actually unbothered by it, right? She’s Colt’s girlfriend. That’s got to make seeing him do insane things harder.
Ryland would like to think so, and yet she’s clearly as calm as ever.
He glares at the barren ground below Colt’s drop platform; it’s beginning to offend him now—how barren it is. “Why is there no crash mat?”
“It’s a bitch to edit out of the shot in post,” Jody says, like it makes total sense.
It does not.
In fact, that answer just serves to pique Ryland’s nerves more. “Isn’t it a bigger b-i-t-c-h to scrub splattered brains off the floor?”
Jody chuckles and lays a gentle hand on his shoulder. “He’ll be fine, Ryland. The rig always stops him before he hits the floor.”
“Unless it breaks.”
“It’s never broken before.”
Famous last words.
Ryland ducks his head over the mouth of the wastebasket, stomach roiling with dread. “I’m gonna be sick.”
Jody coos at him sympathetically, patting his back.
They only met for the first time last night, when she and Colt came to pick him up from the airport, but she’s already so kind and lovely to him, and she seems to have a keen understanding of his plight. Perhaps it’s the Brit in her. God knows most of the Americans Ryland’s been in the company of—aside from his students—haven’t been nearly as forgiving of his quirks, even when they do know him well.
Not for the first time, he wonders how a bonafide chaos junkie like Colt managed to woo such an angelic woman. Maybe she’s crazy too—just better at hiding it.
Static crackles through Jody’s radio, and then out comes Colt’s voice—inevitably mocking. “Is he seriously about to yack over this? I gave him that wastebasket as a joke.”
Ryland lifts his head to shoot an indignant glare all the way up to where Colt is standing on the edge of the drop platform. A team of rig techs flit around him like busy bees, fussing meticulously over all the straps, hooks, and securements on his gear.
Colt flashes a lopsided grin and lowers his sunglasses just enough to send an obnoxious wink down to Ryland.
Ryland rolls his eyes and pretends to gag. Which is a particularly dangerous game to be playing given the waves of nausea he’s been fighting for the past several minutes.
Jody plucks the radio from its stand beside the camera and responds, “be nice, Colt. God forbid you have a brother who cares enough to worry.”
Colt just flicks his sunglasses back up and continues to smile in that ultra-irritating way he does whenever he’s making a deliberate effort to get under Ryland’s skin. Unfortunately, it works every time.
Keeping his attention fixed on Colt, Ryland holds his hand out in silent ask for Jody’s radio. Jody places it in his grasp, no hesitation.
He raises the radio up toward his face. “You know, when you asked me to come hang out with you for a ‘fun week in Hollywood,’ I was not properly informed that it would involve me having to plan your funeral.”
Colt throws his head back with a hearty laugh—and even that has Ryland seizing up in his chair. Sudden movements made on a precarious little platform at that height should be illegal.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Ry,” Colt says into his own radio. “I’ve done shit like this a million times before. Only difference is that you weren’t there to witness it.”
“Were there crash mats under you during those million other times?”
“Usually.”
“Why not now?”
Colt shrugs. “It’s a bitch to edit out in post. That’s showbiz, baby.”
Ryland huffs out a curt, disapproving sigh. “Colton—”
“Not my name.”
Ryland doubles down. “Colton.”
Colt aims a threatening finger at him. “Say it again, and you’re getting the fattest noogie of your life when I get down there.”
“Ugh, the two of you are unbearable.” Jody snatches the radio out of Ryland’s hand before he gets the chance to retort and sets it back on its designated stand. “Honestly—I’m starting to doubt the thirty in front of your ages more and more with every passing second.”
There’s an awkward stretch of silence. Ryland sinks into his chair, a faint, shamefaced flush prickling in his cheeks. He stares into his wastebasket and twiddles his thumbs.
Eventually:
“Sorry, Jody,” Colt mumbles sheepishly through the radio.
And now Ryland feels compelled to apologize too, so he does. “Yeah. Sorry, Jody.” His voice cracks pathetically around the words.
“Mhmm.” She doesn’t answer beyond that, but there’s a soft smile that tells of her fondness tugging at the corners of her mouth as she leans forward to fiddle with the camera.
“Alright, quiet on set!” the director shouts over the chatter and bustle of the crew.
Within seconds, everything falls dead silent, and tension hangs thick in the air like tar. Ryland’s sure it’s supposed to feel more like anticipation or pleasant suspense, but what feels like an exciting prospect to everyone else only feels like foreboding to him.
Is he so crazy for feeling some type of way about purposely dropping a man off the top of a building? Because he’s starting to feel a bit crazy amid all the utter lack of concern from those around him.
His stomach is acting up again. He swallows down the rise of acid in his throat and glances warily up at Colt.
“Rig good?” the director says into his bullhorn, projecting his voice all the way up to the drop platform.
The team of rig techs give a collective thumbs-up and step away from Colt.
“Seavers, good to go?”
Colt gives a thumbs-up of his own and his signature, annoyingly dazzling smile. Which—okay, it’s not inherently annoying. Ryland actually finds his brother’s smile quite reassuring most of the time. As long as he’s smiling, that means he has no doubts about what he’s doing; it means he trusts himself and his team to execute a stunt without issue, and Ryland’s generally inclined to trust Colt too.
The smile is only annoying now because—who in their right mind trusts a team that puts budgetary concerns and convenience above a man’s safety? Where in the holy hell is the crash mat?!
Ryland shuts his eyes and coaches himself through a deep breath. He clutches his wastebasket tighter to his chest, to the point that he shakes. And the next time he looks up, Colt is dangling Mission Impossible-style over the drop point, the wire rig he’s attached to being the only thing standing between him and certain death.
Right on cue, Ryland’s gut twists. He only narrowly manages to hold onto his lunch.
The director calls action! and—wait, is Colt chewing gum? What in God’s name is he thinking? As if the drop isn’t risky enough, he has to add a choking hazard into the mix? What is wrong with him—
Colt drops, and Ryland has a heart attack. In fact, he doesn’t even watch, because he’s too busy hiding behind his wastebasket, holding his breath, and internally praying to whatever deity might listen.
It’s over in almost no time at all. The shrill sound of sliding wires on pulleys comes to a stop. Then the director calls cut! and the film crew erupts in cheerful applause.
Shakily, Ryland peeks over the lip of his wastebasket to find Colt yet again dangling over the drop point, only this time, five feet off the ground instead of a hundred-and-fifty. He’s grinning, totally pleased with himself, and sending out a thumbs-up to all that ask how he is.
As the ground team of rig techs flock over to help him down, he looks across the way to Ryland and quips, “what? Like it’s hard?”
Ryland, despite the pounding of his heart and anxious lightheadedness, makes a pissy face at the comment. “Don’t quote Legally Blonde at me.”
Colt pouts. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t want you ruining my favorite movie like you just ruined my favorite pair of underwear.”
Colt snickers and offers not one iota of an apology. In fairness, why would he apologize? It’s just another day at the office for him.
Once he’s got his feet down on solid ground, he strides over to greet Jody with a gentle kiss to her hair, then swoops around to yank Ryland into a headlock, scrubbing at the top of his head with his fist.
“Ah! Colt—get off!” Ryland squirms and flails in a futile attempt to free himself from Colt’s grip, his emotional support wastebasket tumbling off to the floor with a dull clatter.
“Oh, come on, Colt. Let him go,” Jody says, tone scolding but interwoven with amusement. She reaches over to pry Colt’s arm away from Ryland’s neck, and when Colt steps back with his hands raised in surrender, she takes care to fix the mess he made of Ryland’s hair.
Not that Ryland’s hair isn’t always kind of a mess, but it’s a strategic mess. Semi-organized. Colt making it look like an EF-5 tornado tore through it is not something Ryland appreciates.
It’s not like it’s unusual for Colt to tease him like this from time to time, but Ryland’s noticed a pattern since he started getting invited to watch his brother work on various movie sets. There’s something about being on the job that seems to trigger a sort of hyperactive juvenility in Colt; he becomes much more lively and bombastic than he ordinarily would be off-set. Ryland’s come to understand that it must have something to do with the way his work makes him feel. All the adrenaline highs and dopamine-chasing activities supply him with an abundance of energy that takes a good, long while to burn off. And with that boost in energy comes, naturally, an increased inclination to bug the crap out of Ryland.
Ryland would be making a calculated effort to bug Colt back right now, but he doesn’t want to get him in trouble with the director and producers by causing a scene. After all, Ryland’s only allowed to be here because Colt promised the crew that he’d behave and wouldn’t get in the way of anything.
So Ryland behaves. Valiantly and long-sufferingly. He can always slapfight Colt during a heated game of Monopoly later to make up for it.
“Hey—” Colt nudges his shoulder to grab his attention— “you’re good, right, Ry? I don’t need to flag down a PA to sneak you some Zofran or anything?”
Ryland stares up at him over the top edge of his glasses—which is technically counterproductive because now Colt looks all fuzzy to him, but it’s for the sake of an exaggerated effect of sternness. And it works.
“Don’t give me that judgy teacher look.” Colt grimaces. “You know I hate it.”
“Why do you think I’m doing it?” Ryland’s lips tick upwards into a deceptively sweet smile.
“Is my school-related childhood trauma a joke to you?”
“Yes.”
Jody snorts, and Colt just waves Ryland off with a dismissive gesture of the hand. Ryland smirks, self-satisfied. A small victory to tide him over until he gets to hoard all the money and bankrupt Colt ten times over at game night (this is usually how the slapfights ensue).
Some time later, Ryland is standing like a total lemon by the craft services table with nothing to do and no one to talk to—aside from the occasional crew member mistaking him for Colt (they don’t even look that alike! How does this keep happening?)—and he begins to wonder why Colt dragged him to set to begin with if he was just planning on running off with Jody at the soonest convenience.
Ryland’s not bitter. He knows how Colt is when he’s madly in love, and Jody is clearly a great person for Colt to be in love with. Regardless of what many might think of a pair of tight-knit identical twins, Ryland actually doesn’t feel the need to be in his brother’s business at all times. He likes seeing Colt happy beyond their siblingship. He likes that he and Colt have individual lives and separate interests, and that they can meet in the middle and still be definitively themselves.
That said, what’s a dorky schoolteacher supposed to do with himself on a film set while his brother’s off tiptoeing through the tulips with his girlfriend for—Ryland checks his watch—thirty-seven minutes? Because he sure as hell’s not about to go knocking on that trailer door. Tiptoeing through the tulips is an overly innocent-sounding euphemism for whatever they’re getting up to.
Moral of the story is: Ryland would prefer to be in familiar company instead of being left to awkwardly loiter around with only his pet wastebasket as a companion.
He puffs out his cheeks with a heavy sigh. It could be worse, he supposes.
He could be the director presently trying to gentle parent Tom Ryder’s enormous ego.
Ryland squints as he attempts to decipher the conversation from a distance. Ryder’s squabbling over something shown on the director’s monitor; his producer, Gail, is there too, nodding along and agreeing to every word he says. Meanwhile, the director is rubbing wearily at his forehead, looking about ready to give up.
Whatever Ryder’s yammering on about, it has something to do with the stunt Colt just did, which makes enough sense; Colt is exclusively Tom Ryder’s stunt double and has been for over five-and-a-half years. Everything he does is heavily scrutinized to maximize the perfection of a shot.
Ryland can’t say he understands what Ryder would be taking issue with, though. Colt was dropped from the top of a building—nothing fancy about it. Sure, Ryland wasn’t able to bring himself to watch him do it, but he’s pretty certain there are only so many ways to just… Fall a hundred-and-fifty feet. As far as he’s concerned, Colt’s alive, so he must’ve executed it flawlessly.
His heart starts to beat harder in his chest, a niggling sense of anxiety creeping back in, raising the fine hairs on the back of his neck.
They’re about to make Colt do another take, aren’t they?
Ryland’s not a lipreader, but he’s never been more sure of his lipreading abilities than he is now, when he sees the director cave to Ryder’s demands and lift his radio up to request Colt Seavers back on set.
Suddenly, all those nauseating nerves he’d managed to quell start firing all over again. His heart somehow both sinks into his stomach and lodges itself in his throat at the same time, and his chest feels too tight to breathe past without unreasonable effort.
It’s all he can do to hug his wastebasket and stew in his resurging dread.
A couple minutes pass, and Jody is back on set, followed soon after by Colt. Ryland wastes no time in skittering over to Colt’s side.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
The stunt coordinators Colt’s talking to give Ryland an odd look for interrupting their conversation, but they, mercifully, don’t send him away.
Colt takes it in stride, as he does with just about everything. “Ryder’s probably got his panties in a twist over my face. That’s usually why I get called to the monitor.”
Ryland’s brow furrows. “Your face?”
“Yeah.” Colt starts sauntering off toward the huddle around the director’s monitor, and Ryland scrambles to follow after him. “Sometimes he thinks it’s too obvious that a double is doing a stunt for him, and since part of his brand is ‘doing his own stunts…’” He shrugs. “What’re you gonna do?”
Tell him to shove it, Ryland thinks indignantly.
Colt may be perfectly accustomed to Ryder’s diva attitude, but Ryland finds it so off-putting that he’ll never not be set on-edge by it. Ever since Colt signed that contract with Gail Meyer nearly six years ago, Ryland’s not had one nice thought about Tom Ryder. He keeps his grievances to himself, because he doesn’t want Colt to get upset or feel like his career choices are being attacked—Colt has never been happier, so why would Ryland say something to spoil that?—but it’s times like these when Ryland really wishes he could say something to make Colt realize he’s being massively undersold and equally overexploited.
Ryland’s willing to bet real money that there was nothing wrong whatsoever with the first take Colt did. Ryder’s just paranoid on account of the fact that he decided to build a brand off of a quality he could never hope to deliver on and is beyond narcissistic enough to make those around him—Colt, in particular—pay for it.
As Colt passes by Jody, who’s stationed back behind her camera, he drops a flirty remark, to which she feigns ignorance and says, “sorry—what’s your name again?”
Colt is visibly delighted by the brief exchange, chuckling to himself with a grin so broad his eyes bow into happy little crescents.
Ryland rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling too. It’s one of his greatest misfortunes that Colt’s corny loverboy behavior does, in fact, happen to inspire a great fondness in his heart.
Before reaching the director’s monitor, Colt pivots on his heels to look at Ryland. He tips his head to the side inquisitively. “Can I help you, Ry? You seem awfully glued to my heels.”
Ryland pauses, blinks, takes a second to assess the proximity he’s placed himself in relative to Colt—realizes he looks like he’s aiming to merge into his brother’s skin, and promptly shuffles a few steps back. “Sorry,” he mutters. “You’re just… They’re probably gonna make you go again, right?”
Colt nods. “Almost definitely. Why?”
Ryland feels so stupid here. Colt obviously isn’t the least bit worried, yet here Ryland is: practically on the verge of a panic attack because the idea of his brother simply doing his job is too much to bear.
It’s never been like this before; there’s just a horrible sixth sense Ryland has that something is bound to go terribly wrong, and since he can’t discern what precisely is causing him to feel that way, he has no choice but to chalk it all up to one big nonspecific anxiety flare. After seeing an inordinate amount of truly crazy stunts that Colt’s done, a simple drop stunt should not be sending Ryland this deep into a worry spiral, but—oh, he’s deep, alright. Drowning, practically.
In hindsight, he definitely should’ve taken Colt up on that Zofran offer. Frankly, he could do with a fistful of Xanax too.
He very well can’t offload his neurotic nonsense onto Colt while he’s busy working and beg him not to do what he’s paid to do, so Ryland has no choice but to make up some bull-honkey on the spot.
He fumbles with his wastebasket, then abruptly shoves it out in front of him, toward Colt. “Spit out your gum, would you?”
Colt wheezes out a laugh. “What?”
“Gum. Now.” Ryland shakes the wastebasket insistently. “I don’t wanna have to write in your obituary that you choked to death because you inhaled a wad of tooty-fruity during a stunt.”
Colt clicks his tongue but otherwise doesn’t protest. He plucks the gum out of his mouth and drops it into the wastebasket. “It’s wintergreen, for your information,” he says. Then: “am I free to go, Officer?”
And now that Ryland really has no reason to be holding him up, he wilts and reluctantly shoos him along. Colt turns and leaves, but not before he reaches out to nudge the bridge of Ryland’s glasses back up to its proper seat on his nose—some absentminded, habitual gesture of endearment that he’s done for Ryland since they were kids.
Ryland barely ever notices when his glasses have slid halfway down his face. Colt’s always found it endlessly amusing.
With Colt wrapped up in deliberation at the director’s monitor, Ryland schleps himself back over to his designated chair beside Jody.
The next several minutes pass in a blur, partly because that’s how time always passes when Ryland’s mind sets itself on fire for no good reason, but mostly it’s because Colt and Jody get into a coy, flirtatious little back-and-forth over the radio while the stunt team is setting up the new rig configuration, and Ryland is deliberately tuning it out on account of the fact that he wants absolutely no part in it.
Again, he’s very happy for Colt, don’t get him wrong. He still—despite having developed a knack for nosiness after being exposed to pre-teen drama and middle school rumor mills for over four years—would rather not be privy to Colt and Jody’s ooey-gooey courtship rituals if he can help it. That business is all theirs to have to themselves.
As the set grows quiet and tense like it did the first time Colt took his swan dive, Ryland knows to start tuning back in. This time, when he dares to look all the way up at the drop platform, Colt is dangling backwards over his mark. Which is even more horrifying than the Mission Impossible fall position. The physics is all different, more delicate; it requires a more thoughtful approach to the drop velocity and a keener understanding of momentum to ensure Colt’s safety.
Ryland doesn’t not have faith in Colt’s ability to calculate those things out properly with his team, except… His completely unshakeable sense of impending doom is making it quite difficult for him to stay grounded in that faith.
He tells himself that Colt’s been doing this a long time—literally since a week after high school graduation—and while Colt’s sustained an injury or five from a slight blunder or miscalculation, he’s never made any kind of fatal mistake. Colt is good at his job. Very good. He knows what he’s doing, regardless of what Ryland’s anxiety has to say about it.
Colt will be fine.
Ryland clings onto his wastebasket and repeats the affirmation like a mantra in his head. Over and over.
Colt will be fine, Colt will be fine, Colt will be fine…
His stomach flip-flops around violently, nervous jitters burrowing into his bones.
He just keeps repeating his mantra.
Colt will be fine, Colt will be fine…
There’s no damn crash mat, but if it was fine before, it’ll be fine now.
Colt will be fine…
Colt drops.
But something is off, and Ryland knows it within a fraction of a fraction of a second. The sound of wires sliding on their pulleys is more shrill, strident, like they’re being drawn through too aggressively. And though he never got to see what Colt’s first drop looked like, he identifies in an instant that Colt is falling way too fast, and the rig is taking way too long to start slowing down.
In fact, the rig doesn’t start slowing down at all. Instead it comes to an abrupt stall at ten feet above the ground, and Colt’s body folds backwards on itself with a grisly, audible snap that echoes off the tall, glass walls of the building.
Ryland’s ears deafen instantaneously. He can see that Colt is screaming, but he can’t hear it. He can’t feel his heart in his chest anymore either; it may very well have tumbled right out onto the floor and crumbled to dust on impact. His blood runs cold enough to chill the marrow in his bones—and he really, truly, can’t hear a goddamn thing.
He feels a harsh, convulsive grip on his arm, and he thinks Jody might be hiding her face in his shoulder. If she’s crying, he can’t hear it, just like he can’t hear anything else.
His wastebasket is forgotten on the floor somewhere. He doesn’t remember standing up, but he’s on his feet. Everyone around him is, too. He’s vaguely aware of the chaotic flurry of movement happening on all sides of him as the set is thrown into utter disarray—but his eyes never once stray from Colt, who’s still hovering in the air, ragdolled with gritted teeth and tears streaming up his temples and into his hair. Ryland can’t look away. Though he thinks that, if he weren’t so dazed, he probably wouldn’t be able to look at his brother at all.
Ryland has a thing about crash mats. Ever since he had to carry a sobbing Colt on the handlebars of his bike to the local emergency room after he broke his arm toppling out of a tree when they were only nine years-old, and ever since he had to drive a very heartbroken Colt to that same ER after he broke his ankle trying to impress Suzy Peters in sophomore year, Ryland has had a thing about crash mats. Nearly every injury he’s seen Colt sustain could’ve easily been rectified by the presence of a crash mat.
But as it turns out, it doesn’t even matter that there was no crash mat this time, because the one thing that could’ve gone wrong without it that wouldn’t have immediately resulted in Colt’s death is the thing that went wrong.
The drop velocity was miscalculated. Such a simple error.
And now Colt is suspended just above the ground, as the rig is perfectly, unbrokenly designed to do, and he’s crying out in agony—
Because he’s the thing that broke instead.
Right then, a blinding beam of sunlight floods through the building’s many windows, casting a spotlight onto Colt’s limp body as he’s lowered onto a stiff backboard by the paramedics who've been waiting outside like vultures all day—like some cruel prank from the universe—and it’s in that precise moment that Ryland decides he doesn’t just find the LA summer sun unfavorable…
He hates it.