Chapter Text
Colt wakes up in a disoriented haze. His back hurts and he’s sweating and he doesn’t know why he’s awake but he knows whatever sleep he got wasn’t enough.
He feels like he did when woke up after surgery the first few times, drugged and confused, before the meds would bring him back down into a dreamless sleep. He did that a lot, for a long time, before finally waking into a miserable world where he didn’t even know if he’d walk again.
He can tell by the sick feeling in his stomach that he dreamt of Courtland, which has historically been an event that will ruin his entire day even if he doesn’t remember the particulars of the dream itself. The details are gone but the feelings linger: hands under his armpits lifting him to safety, careful fingers pressing bandaids to little wounds. Sirens and flashing lights and blood and a few letters he’s never been able to read again. He wants to forget. He imagines compacting the memories into a ball and throwing them so hard they disappear from sight completely. He’s done it so many times it’s rote. Easy. Familiar.
He wants, desperately, to roll over into Jody’s side and go back to sleep, but he tries and something won’t let him. Some directionless sense of alarm just like the feeling he had when they were twenty and Ryland crashed his bike and broke his wrist and Colt knew, somehow, before he even got the call, that something was wrong. Ten miles across town and he’d flinched and reached for the phone in the middle of a meeting, excusing himself.
Ryland is down the hall sleeping off his panic about Australia in the guest bedroom. He’s safe. Or he’s supposed to be. Colt’s sense of safety has been a bit disrupted lately and he finds that he’s really not going to sleep until he gets up and checks anyway, even despite the pain settled deep in his spine and the exhaustion dragging at his eyes.
He gently extracts himself from Jody. He unhooks their ankles, carefully unfolds her fingers from around his shirt and then presses her hand to his mouth for a count of three before he rolls over and gets up. She always was a heavy sleeper. He told her that once and she’d said, “only with you.” Which he’s thought about approximately every day since. It’s important to him that people feel safe around him.
Courtland creeps back into the edges of his consciousness again without his consent. He wanted to feel safe because Court made him and Ryland feel safe, and then Court was gone, and it was just him. So Colt needed to emulate the feeling of safety he brought them for Ryland’s sake in his absence, because he was the oldest, then, even just by a few minutes. So he did everything he could to make himself be like Court - he listened and he was gentle and he looked after Ryland as best he could while shoving down the grief he was drowning in.
He shakes off the thought the way he always does and steps quietly down the hall. He opens Ryland’s door just enough to see him starfished out on his stomach, neck craned at an awkward angle, drooling and snoring. Colt has to cover his mouth so he doesn’t laugh. Normally he’d leave him, but a few days ago he was facing the prospect of never seeing his brother again, and the terror of it has softened him. He rolls him onto his side and tucks an extra pillow between his arms so he doesn’t flatten out again, and gently straightens his neck. He crouches next to the bed and can’t help the kiss he drops onto his brother’s forehead, or the way he briefly droops until his head is against his shoulder for a little while.
When he was chained on the dock, frantically scrambling for more time, he’d been thinking of Jody, but mostly he’d been thinking of Ryland. Jody would have been devastated if he died. Ryland wouldn’t have survived, he doesn’t think. And then he’d lived, somehow, and faced the fact that his best option going forward was probably going to be jail. It would have been a repeat in their story, an ugly motif.
They don’t talk about Courtland anymore. Colt mostly can’t even think about him and never has, at least until he’d been facing his early death, or a life in prison, and he’d prayed and begged whoever might be listening to not leave Ryland alone. Not like this. Not again.
Now he listens to Ryland’s heavy-sleep breathing, his breath warm against Colt’s neck, his shoulder warm under his forehead, and he’s so unbelievably grateful for Ryland’s life. He always agreed with Court’s decision to kill their father. How couldn’t he when the tradeoff would have been Ryland? But it wasn’t until the dock, listening to Tom threaten Ryland, that he really understood it. He would have done anything. He would have killed, given up his life, would have died for the chance that Ryland would live. Against his shoulder, he whispers a quiet thanks to their older brother, vows to remember him more, to talk about him. Already he knows they’ve both lived their lives with so much fervor and energy and enthusiasm at least in part to make up for Courtland’s short, miserable life. The least they can do is acknowledge it.
Ryland snorts awake underneath him. “Creep,” he whispers. “Okay?”
Colt laughs quietly. “Yeah I’m good. Love you, Ry,” he says. Ryland hums, still half asleep. “Go back to sleep,” he tells him, and then he stays and watches while he does. He hopes Court would be proud of them. He hopes he’d be proud of Colt for looking out for Ryland, for keeping safe the life he’d given his own to save.
He’s shutting the door behind himself when he realizes that the bad feeling is still there. But Ryland is safe, and so is Jody. He had his hands on them, felt both of them breathing and held them both in his arms. He’s about to chalk it up to residual trauma and bad memories and then he turns toward the kitchen for the first time and the hair on the back of his neck stands up straight. Someone is sitting at his kitchen table in the dark.
He looks around for weapons and there are none. He left his phone in the bedroom, and he can see Ryland and Jody’s both charging on the counter across the room. Inexplicably, Jean-Claude is contently sitting at the man’s feet.
He steps forward, and the man looks up from his lap. Colt sucks in a breath.
Really, the reason he doesn’t think about Courtland is that he’s a coward. His absence and then death have impacted every decision he’s ever made, and everything he’s turned out to be. He’s gone most of his life missing an essential part of himself and pretending like it was fine. But it wasn’t fine. It was an amputation that never healed. He can’t think about it because the enormity of it would bring him to his knees. He has to keep moving.
So he doesn’t think about Court for his own sanity, and here is proof, because moments after a half-spoken expression of gratitude in his direction, his dead brother is sitting at his kitchen table in the dark, watching him through cautious eyes, spirit-summoned like a ghoul.
“No,” he says. He whips his head around, searching every corner of the house he can make out in the dark.
“It’s just me,” the ghost says. “You’re safe.”
Colt flinches at the sound of his voice, which is different with age but fundamentally the same in tone and structure and which makes the grieving child who lives inside his head want to crawl out his ears and into the stranger’s lap.
“I’m looking for unicorns,” Colt says. “It’s gotta be drugs again.”
The stranger says, “Colt,” and his voice has a tender thread that makes Colt want to collapse.
He doesn’t know what to do, or where to go. He wants to call for help, but if this man is dangerous he can’t let him get to Jody or Ryland, and if his resemblance is the fucked up coincidence it feels like, he definitely can’t let Ryland see. He wants to run and hide but he needs to protect, and his brain is fucking scrambled, and all of it is crossing wires until he’s just not moving at all other than to stare and panic silently.
The stranger stands up slowly and backs up against the furthest wall. He reaches up and Colt flinches, but he just hits a light switch and then the lights flicker on and it becomes abundantly clear that either he’s finally lost his mind, or he’s hallucinating, or dreaming.
The ghost watches from across the kitchen as he stumbles back and knocks a bookshelf. A hardcover smacks onto the ground like a gunshot in the silent house. He spares a thought to hope Jody is still sleeping deeply, to hope Ryland fell back asleep after he woke him up. The man across the room raises his hands, placating.
He’s very quiet. Colt watches him while his breathing picks up and feels something in himself fracture. He can’t make sense of it, like when Ryland tries to explain random scientific concepts like time dilation and Colt’s brain whites out like TV static trying to wrap his brain around it.
If this is Court, which it can’t be, then he’s been alive this whole time somehow, most likely somewhere bad, and either couldn’t or wouldn’t reach out to them. It makes the injustice of it worse even than he’d ever imagined. It makes him so angry his heartrate kicks up. It makes him want to rush across the house towards him and cry like a little kid. It makes him want to hide. He does absolutely nothing at all.
One of the bedroom doors opens.
“Colt?” Jody calls. It’s too loud. It’s going to wake up Ryland. “Ryland? What are you two doing awake?”
He’s relieved for a moment thinking it might really be Ryland standing in front of him and Colt is just having some kind of episode, but then Jody steps forward and freezes.
“Who’s this?” Jody asks. She’s trying to sound confident. He knows what she sounds like when she’s afraid now. He wants to reassure her and doesn’t.
The stranger flicks his eyes between them and then finally seems to realize he’s thoroughly broken Colt and gives in.
“My name is Courtland Gentry,” he says. It comes out awkward, like he hasn’t said it in a while. Colt hasn’t said it in a while either, but the syllables follow a smooth track in his head. Courtland Gentry, his brother. His first protector, and the person who loved him most in the world until he was taken from it.
“Hi Courtland Gentry,” Jody says. “What can we do for you?”
She keeps looking at Colt, and Colt keeps looking ahead.
“I’m just here to see the twins.”
“At two in the morning?”
“I heard about Australia and came as fast as I could,” the fear in his voice is so convincing, so real, that Jody’s shoulders drop from where they were tensed around her ears. Jody’s been feeling that panic, too, he knows. Felt it watching the video of the boat jump over and over again in the trailer, trying to convince herself that he was alive. He wonders if she felt the way he does now when he showed up then, returned to her from the dead.
“And how do you know them?” Jody asks. “Are you family?”
The stranger opens his mouth and simultaneously the second bedroom door does. Colt shakes his head, frantic, and Jody catches on too late and tries to block the hallway.
“Ryland,” she says, hands on his shoulders, but it’s too late.
Ryland freezes in the doorway.
Long seconds drag out like this.
“Christ,” Jody says, startled. “I’ve never seen them quiet for this long.”
It’s inappropriate as hell and any other time it would make Colt crack up. The stranger has no such qualms. He cracks a smile and it’s so familiar Colt’s breath hitches. Next to him, Ryland is fishmouthing like his brain is running ahead of his mouth.
“You should have seen them as toddlers,” the stranger says. His eyes crinkle at the corners with his smile and then the joy seems to fade, sucked out of the room with Colt and Ryland’s stunned silence.
“Alright, who’s going to explain what’s going on here?” Jody finally asks.
The ghost sighs.
“My name is Courtland Gentry. Ryland and Colt are my brothers. They’ve thought I was dead since they were fifteen years old.”
Jody sucks in a breath and reaches for Colt. He flinches away. Everything feels syrupy and slow with sleep deprivation and confusion. He doesn’t know what’s real, or what’s happening.
“What the fuck?” Ryland snaps. Jody blinks at Ryland swearing. The ghost flinches as the tension in the room breaks. Colt isn’t sure why he seems surprised- Ryland was always the fighter. Colt’s the one who runs away when things get hard, the way he is now, locked in his own head watching this unfold.
“Ryland,” the ghost says, gentle. Just like his brother Courtland, who was always so, so gentle. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”
“You’re sorry?” Ryland spits. “You were alive this whole time and you’re telling me you’re sorry?”
“It was the only option,” the ghost says. Ryland rolls his eyes. “You have to know I would never have left you but it wasn’t my choice.”
It’s this, finally, that makes Colt sink to the ground and put his head between his legs and wail a little bit.
He can feel the footsteps making their way across the floor more than he can hear them, and then there are hands on his shoulders.
“Colt, you’ve got to sit up, buddy. Your back,” the ghost says. He pushes at Colt until his back is against the bookshelf, gasping and heaving. The ghost carefully stretches out Colt’s legs for him and then kneels next to and over him and wraps him up in his arms.
He’s not used to feeling small but he feels tiny here like this. The ghost wraps an arm around the back of his head and tucks him under his chin, gets another behind him to rub a hand up and down his sleep shirt. He’s shielding him completely while he cries, the same way Courtland used to wrap them up when they were little and tuck them into him, so small, like he could keep them safe by keeping them covered. Sometimes as an adult he still covers himself in blankets when he’s upset to mimic the feeling. He hadn’t even realized why until now.
“Courtland?” he asks. He chokes on his next inhale and coughs into the chest he’s pressed against. A big hand smooths down his spine in response.
“Yeah, Colt,” his brother says. “It’s me.”
Colt whines, and the arm around his neck reaches to cradle his head instead.
“I’m so sorry,” Court says. “I’m so sorry, buddy. I’m sorry. I’m right here now.”
Colt lets himself cry, unashamed, and cling.
He’s peripherally aware of Jody creeping up nearby to wrap a hand around his foot, the only part of him she can reach without interrupting Court’s gentle cradle.
“So, what?” Ryland asks. “We’re all just fine with this? Nobody wants to ask any more questions?” His voice is cold. It breaks the bubble Colt’s been in since Court wrapped him up in a hug.
Court leans back to make eye contact with him and nods his head in Ryland’s direction. Colt reads it for the question it is, so easy even after all this time, and basks in the kiss Court presses to the side of his head before he lets him go. He’s cold until Jody tucks up against him instead, stroking his hair and wiping his cheeks.
Ryland’s got his back to the wall now, chest puffed up and an angry, mean look on his face. Anyone else might be nervous, but Colt’s seen that same look on Ryland’s face over a million petty fights that led to nowhere. It’s probably even less effective on Court, who surely remembers Ryland as a bossy toddler, hands on his hips just like now.
“You just thought you’d show up in the middle of the night?” Ryland says. “Colt’s fucking catatonic.”
“There was no easy way to do this,” Court says quietly. “If there was, I would have done it, but there wasn’t. When I got on the plane I had seen the news and I didn’t know if Colt was alive. I thought I was coming here to talk you off a ledge, frankly.”
Colt flinches.
“So if Colt hadn’t almost died you wouldn’t have come back? You would have spent the rest of our lives pretending we didn’t exist?”
“I have a lot to explain. I know that. But I thought of you both every minute I was gone. I never stopped thinking about you, and I never pretended you didn’t exist.”
“Sure felt like it,” Ryland snaps, “what with the way we thought you were fucking dead until an hour ago.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you if you let me,” Court says. Ryland rolls his eyes again. Colt hasn’t seen him this mean since he tried to push him away after his back injury and Ryland pushed back ten times as hard.
“Make it up? You didn’t miss a fucking school play, Court, you missed twenty years of our lives!”
Colt watches Court give up on reasoning with him and wrap Ryland up in his arms instead. Ryland shoves him once, hard, and Colt worries they’re about to fight each other before Court traps Ryland’s arms between them and squeezes him half to death.
“Ry,” Court whispers, tender and awed. “You got so big.”
The grief is so tangible Colt would fold if it weren’t for Jody holding him up. Connected as always, Ryland’s legs give out. Court catches his weight easily and lowers him into Colt’s waiting hands. Once they’re settled together, Court gets on the ground and wraps them both up like they’re five and not in their thirties, two fully grown men.
Their heads knock together against his chest like they always did.
“Court,” Ryland cries.
“Finally,” Colt huffs. He’s sick of being the only one crying.
Court hushes them both. He starts humming something that reminds Colt of childhood - fireflies and pillow forts and scraped knees - and Jody pats him where she can reach him, and -
Colt wakes up in a disoriented haze. His back hurts and he’s sweating and he doesn’t know why he’s awake but he knows whatever sleep he got wasn’t enough.
He opens his eyes to sunlight and an empty bed and a sick feeling in his stomach like he dreamed about Court. It’s extra strong, which means it was a particularly bad one, and he’s going to be miserable all day trying to push down his grief, which has grown stronger as the years have gone by rather than fading like he was expecting.
Abruptly, the dream comes back to him - Court in his kitchen, Ryland shouting, the three of them a mess of tears and grief and confusion. He’s spent most of his life pushing his grief down and finds that he can’t anymore. The dream felt too real, felt too much like what he most wants. The tears start slowly and then drown him a bit, and he curls up into the warm spot of sunlight on the bed and lets himself cry. For himself, and Ryland, and for Court, who didn’t show up in his kitchen last night because he died when Colt was fifteen years old and then missed every birthday and graduation and good day and bad day. He missed Ryland’s fall from academia and his profound love for teaching and he missed Colt’s best stunts and his worst one and he missed his Australian shit-show. He missed everything, all of it, and the whole time Colt pretended like he didn’t miss him and shaped his whole existence around his absence anyway.
He’s a few minutes into a good cry when it starts to feel like a panic attack and the door bursts open.
“Oh fuck,” Ryland says. “Jody! Court!”
And then his giant baby brother is on top of him, crushing the air out of him and wrapping him up in his arms.
“Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have left you alone. Shit, Colt, I’m sorry,” he rambles. Colt tucks his face into his shoulder and lets out a shuddering breath.
“What happened?” Jody asks from the end of the bed.
“I had to pee,” Ryland says mournfully. “He was out cold so I didn’t think he’d wake up. I’m sorry, Colt. I didn’t want you to wake up alone.”
Colt rolls them onto their sides and leans back so he can look Ryland in the eyes.
“It’s okay,” he rasps. “It’s okay. I just had this dream . . . I had this dream that Court came back. And he was just in the kitchen waiting for us.”
Ryland freezes next to him.
“Oh. Colt? That wasn’t a dream,” he says.
The bed dips, and there’s Court. He’s wearing a NASA sweatshirt Colt knows belongs to Ryland and one of his own pairs of sweatpants. He looks like every one of Colt’s birthday wishes. He looks like safety. He looks like his big brother, impossibly returned from the dead.
“Sorry, buddy,” Court says. He reaches a hand down to stroke over his forehead. Colt blinks at him dumbly. “Still here.”
“But if it wasn’t a dream how did I end up back in bed?” Colt asks.
Ryland laughs at him. “You fell asleep on the floor. We carried you in here and I stayed with you. Jody and Court stayed up.”
“Oh,” he says, and nothing else.
Court nods very seriously above him.
“Fuck,” Colt says.
“Fuck,” Ryland agrees. Jody laughs delightedly nearby. He can’t help laughing too. It feels so good. The sun coming in through the window warms his whole body. Ryland’s heavy weight is half pinning him down and Court is sliding towards their dip in the bed like they’re the source of some irresistible gravitational force. He laughs until his stomach hurts and a feeling like pure light moves through him. He’s whole for the first time in his life.