Work Text:
The beat-up leather couch in Colt Seavers’ apartment was holding up half the applied science department, two theater majors, and a criminal amount of cheap pizza boxes.
Beer bottles clustered on the coffee table like a tiny glass cityscape. Rocky was tapping out a complex rhythm on his glass with a spoon, while Adrian, his partner, systematically folded empty pizza boxes into perfectly uniform squares. Carl was balancing a textbook on his lap, while Eva Stratt hovered near the kitchen with a glass of red wine, keeping track of everyone’s alcohol intake. Jody sat comfortably under Colt’s arm on the edge of the couch, while Tom Ryder was draped over the opposite armrest, his head resting dangerously close to Ryland’s thigh.
Ryland, sitting on the middle cushion, was trying very hard to pretend he wasn't hyper-aware of Tom's weight against him, but he didn't pull away. He couldn't. It was an unspoken rule between them, an agonizing, delicate equilibrium they’d maintained since freshman year: endless physical contact masked as casual banter, lingering glances passed off as exasperation. Everyone in the group knew it. But for now, the cold war of mutual unacknowledged adoration raged on.
Ryland cleared his throat, turning his attention away from Tom to address his twin. "Hey, Colt? Did Uncle Holland ever end up mailing you those old hard drives? The ones with all the digitized home videos from the house in Atlanta?"
Colt’s eyes lit up instantly. "Oh, man! Yes! He sent them like two weeks ago! I backed them up onto the TV's drive!" He immediately jumped up from the couch, grabbing the remote. "Wait till you guys see this stuff. Uncle Holland recorded literally everything growing up."
"Oh, this is going to be magnificent," Tom said, sitting up properly, though staying firmly pressed against Ryland’s side. "Please tell me there's blackmail material."
"So much blackmail," Colt grinned, navigating the menu on the flat-screen TV attached to the wall.
Ryland reached out a hand, though he didn't get up to stop him. "Colt, I swear to God, if the treehouse incident is on there—"
"The treehouse incident is definitely on there!" Colt laughed.
"Quiet, everyone, it's booting up," Stratt commanded, walking over to sit on the arm of Carl’s chair, her analytical mind instantly fascinated by the prospect of historical data on the Grace twins.
The TV screen flickered, blue static giving way to a warm-toned video dated OCTOBER 14, 2012.
A man’s voice—raspy, slightly panicked, and clearly out of breath—came through the TV speakers. "Okay, Holly, hold the flashlight steady. Don't drop it. That's a twenty-dollar flashlight."
"Dad, you're recording your own foot," a ten-year-old girl's voice answered.
The camera swung wildly, revealing a ten-year-old Holly with an exasperated expression holding a massive yellow flashlight. The camera panned down to two eight-year-old boys in identical red windbreakers in a backyard.
"Oh my god," Jody wheezed. "Look at you two!"
In the video, young Colt was attempting to jump off the roof of a plastic playhouse onto a pile of raked leaves. Young Ryland was standing beside the leaf pile with a clipboard and a small plastic stopwatch.
"Ready, Ryland?" young Colt yelled.
"Wait!" little Ryland shouted back, his voice high and shrill, holding up a finger. "The wind velocity just changed! The structural integrity of the leaf target is compromised!"
"I'm jumping anyway!"
"Colt, no—"
Young Colt leaped, completely missed the leaf pile, landed flat on his back with a loud THUD, and lay there looking at the sky.
On screen, Uncle Holland’s voice panicked: "Oh, sweet Jesus. Holly, don't tell your aunt. Colt, stay still, don't move your spine! Ryland, what does the clipboard say?!"
Little Ryland looked down at his empty clipboard, then at his brother. "It says he's an idiot."
The room erupted in laughter. Rocky slapped his knee in a rapid, rhythmic pattern. "Structural failure! Young Colt had no form!"
"I landed it!" Colt defended himself in the present day, pointing at the TV. "I walked away from that!"
"You cried for twenty minutes because a caterpillar fell on your nose while you were lying there," Ryland pointed out, a smirk breaking across his face.
"Details!" Colt waved a hand dismissively, wrapping his arm tighter around Jody, who was laughing so hard she had to rest her head on his shoulder.
Tom was leaning into Ryland's space, his shoulder pressing against Ryland's as he watched the screen. "You were a little nerd even as a child, Ry," Tom murmured, his tone dripping with fond amusement. "A clipboard? Really?"
"Data collection is crucial at any age," Ryland sniffed, though his cheek flushed slightly at Tom's proximity.
Colt skipped forward on the file directory. "Oh, wait, wait, check this one out."
The video shifted to a clip dated JULY 2014. The camera was panning across the Atlanta Science Center. Ten-year-old Ryland was standing in front of an interactive display on plate tectonics, talking at hyper-speed, his hands moving frantically as he pointed to the fault lines.
The camera slowly zoomed past Ryland’s enthusiastic lecture to focus entirely on ten-year-old Colt standing right next to him. Colt was staring blankly directly into the camera lens with dead, unblinking eyes, chewing on a plastic straw, looking like he was being held hostage by geology.
"Look at your soul leaving your body, Colt," Carl chuckled from his armchair.
"I was in that museum for four hours," Colt said solemnly. "Four. Hours. He explained the rock cycle twice."
"Sedimentary rock is fascinating and you know it," Ryland sniffed.
"Click the next one!" Jody urged, popping another slice of pizza.
Colt clicked to a file labeled HOMEWORK_WARS_2017.MP4. "Oh, this one is pure art," Colt announced proudly.
The video opened in the twins' shared bedroom. Thirteen-year-old Ryland was hunkered over a desk buried under textbooks, notebooks, and a calculator, gripping a pencil so hard his knuckles were white.
Thirteen-year-old Colt’s face filled the bottom left corner of the frame, holding the camera at a stealthy angle with an evil, mischievous grin. He zoomed in on Ryland's incredibly tense, twitching jawline.
"Hey... do you guys hear anything?" Colt whispered innocently into the mic, loud enough to ring across the room.
Ryland didn't even look up from his AP Physics homework, his pencil grinding furiously into the paper. "You know what I hear? The sound of you shutting the fuck up."
Colt blinked slowly into the camera, entirely unbothered, and responded in a tone of supreme, meditative confidence: "I don't know... seven?"
Ryland’s pencil snapped clean in half. He whipped his head around, his face completely pale with pure, raw confusion and unadulterated fury. "What the FUCK are you talking about?!"
"Seven," Colt repeated solemnly, holding up four fingers.
"THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!" Ryland shrieked, slamming his hands on the desk. "THAT WASN'T EVEN A QUESTION!"
In the present, the living room blew up. Tom threw his head back and wheezed, clutching his stomach, while Carl almost dropped his glass of water.
"You were psychological warfare personified!" Jody cackled, swatting Colt's shoulder.
"He did that for three hours," Ryland growled, though a reluctant smile twitched at the corner of his lips. "He just kept naming prime numbers whenever I tried to speak!"
"I broke your focus, didn't I?" Colt grinned, clicking to the next clip.
HOLLY_AND_THE_LAMP_2017.MP4. "Speaking of psychological warfare, watch this masterclass in surviving our cousin."
The screen flickered to the living room of the Atlanta house. Fifteen-year-old Holly was standing near the bottom of the staircase holding a shattered ceramic table lamp, her eyes blazing with fury. Thirteen-year-old Ryland was sitting calmly on the couch with a textbook, instantly recognizing the signs of an impending storm.
Holly whipped her head toward the stairs and roared: "Colt! Get your ass down here!"
From somewhere upstairs, thirteen-year-old Colt shouted back carelessly: "What?"
Holly's expression went lethal. "Don't 'what' me when I call you, you say 'yes ma'am!'"
A second later, Colt appeared at the top of the stairs, reluctantly stomping down the steps while glaring at his feet and mumbling under his breath: "You're such a bitch..."
Holly froze instantly, her eyes snapping onto him like a hawk. "What did you say?!"
Without skipping a beat, thirteen-year-old Ryland casually looked up from his textbook, pointed a pencil at Colt, and interjected smoothly: "Oh, he said 'I have an itch'?"
Colt immediately started violently scratching his shoulder with a deadpan face. "Yeah. Big itch. Horrible rash."
Holly stared at the two of them for three excruciating seconds before pointing a finger at Colt. "Fix my lamp or I’m throwing your Xbox out the window." She turned and marched into the kitchen.
In the present living room, Jody burst into laughter, pointing at Ryland. "The quick save! You didn't even flinch!"
"Sisterly authority required a unified defense," Ryland said with a modest shrug, though his lips twitched into a smirk. "If she killed Colt, I'd have no one to test my physics experiments on."
"I owed him my life that day," Colt agreed, raising a beer bottle. "Now check out the next one."
The next clip jumped to MARCH 2018. Seventeen-year-old Holly was standing in the kitchen wearing heavy-duty noise-canceling headphones (deaf). Fourteen-year-old Ryland was blindfolded with a thick black scarf tied tight around his eyes (blind). Fourteen-year-old Colt was sitting on a stool with silver duct tape firmly across his mouth (mute).
A box of standard vanilla cake mix, a carton of eggs, oil, and a mixing bowl sat on the counter.
Holly clapped her hands together, shouting cheerfully at maximum volume because she couldn't hear herself: "WELCOME BACK GUYS! TODAY WE ARE BAKING A STANDARD VANILLA CAKE!"
Colt, who could hear perfectly fine, aggressively started tapping Ryland on the shoulder. Ryland flinched violently, waving his hands blindly through the air. "Colt? Colt, stop touching me! Where is the bowl?!"
Colt frantically pointed at the bowl, then remembered Ryland was blindfolded. Frustrated, Colt grabbed Ryland's hands and slammed them down into the empty mixing bowl.
"Okay!" Ryland yelled, feeling around the edges. "I have the bowl! Holly, what's the first step?!"
Holly, staring completely blankly at the wall, yelled into the void: "RYLIE, POUR TWO CUPS OF FLOUR!"
Colt's eyes went wide. He vigorously shook his head 'no' and started aggressively slapping his own chest, then gesturing toward the box of cake mix.
"Why are you slapping yourself?!" Ryland panicked, feeling the wind from Colt's frantic arm movements.
Holly turned toward them, entirely oblivious, smiling brightly. "HOW IS THE FLOUR GOING?!"
Colt let out a muffled, desperate "MMMM-MMMM!" through the duct tape, grabbed the cardboard box of cake mix, and shoved it directly into Ryland’s face so hard Ryland's head jolted back.
"OW! Something hit me!" Ryland shrieked, blindly grabbing the box. "Is this the mix?! Holly, it's cake mix, not raw flour!"
"GREAT JOB WITH THE FLOUR!" Holly yelled back, nodding approvingly at the oven.
In the present, Eva Stratt rubbed her temples, though a rare laugh escaped her. "The breakdown of communication in that room is staggering."
"It was a complete operational failure," Ryland groaned, burying his face in his hands.
"I carried that team," Colt boasted proudly. "I was the glue!"
The video shifted to NOVEMBER 2018. The footage showed the hallway outside the twins' shared bedroom. Holland March, wearing a rumpled suit jacket and holding a mug of coffee, poked his head into the pristine room.
"Alright, room's clean. No trash, bed's made. Good job, boys," Holland rasped, turning to walk away down the hall.
The camera lingered on the doorway. The moment Holland's footsteps faded, fourteen-year-old Ryland turned around from his desk and held out an open palm toward Colt.
"Now can I have my ten bucks for expertly hiding your Playboy magazines?" teenage Ryland asked coolly.
"Pleasure doing business with you, nerd," fourteen-year-old Colt said, slapping a ten-dollar bill into Ryland's hand.
"Ryland!" Stratt gasped in mock scandal from the kitchen. "Complicity in contraband smuggling?"
"It was pure capitalism," Ryland defended himself smoothly, though he didn't dare look at Tom, who was looking at him with absolute, unadulterated awe.
"You took bribes?" Tom grinned, leaning in close enough that Ryland could feel the heat radiating off him. "You really are a dark horse, Ryland. I'm fascinated."
"I had to fund my lab equipment somehow," Ryland muttered, his heart doing a ridiculous flip.
Colt grinned, clicking to another file in the folder labeled OCTOBER_2021_GAME.MP4. "Oh, wait. Senior year football game. Observe Ryland in his natural, sporty habitat."
"I was dragged there against my will," Ryland muttered, slumping lower into the cushions.
The TV screen flickered to life, displaying a cold, wind-swept stadium under bright Friday night lights. The camera—held by eighteen-year-old Colt, who was filming while half-heartedly eating a tub of cold concession stand nachos—was pointed at the bleachers.
Marissa was bundled up in a massive oversized scarf, leaning against the railing next to eighteen-year-old Ryland, who was wearing a crisp winter coat and looking aggressively miserable about being outside in forty-degree weather.
Suddenly, a massive varsity football player in full pads and tight gold pants jogged past the railings on the track below, heading toward the end zone.
Marissa’s eyes locked onto him. Without missing a beat, she casually nudged Ryland with her elbow, nodding toward the field. "Wow. He has a nice ass."
Ryland immediately turned his head, adopting a tone of strict, highly principled moral superiority. "Marissa, let’s not comment on other people’s body’s—Jesus, you’re right."
Behind the camera, Colt let out a wheezing, cackling laugh, shaking the lens violently as he wheezed into the microphone. "I caught that on tape! I caught that!"
"Shut up, Colt!" Ryland snapped on video, turning around and frantically trying to swat the camera out of his brother's hand as his face burned bright red.
In the present living room, Jody choked on her drink, clapping her hands together, while Carl practically threw his head back with a loud roar of laughter.
"The absolute quickness of the pivot!" Jody wheezed, wiping her eyes. "From moral high ground to immediate objectification in two seconds flat!"
"Data is data," Colt declared solemnly, raising his beer bottle in a toast. "He couldn't deny the empirical evidence."
Colt then grinned, clicking to another file in the folder labeled HOLIDAY_CONCERT_2021.MP4. "Oh, wait. Senior year choir. Observe the grand finale."
"Oh, no," Ryland groaned, burying his face directly into the back of the sofa as Tom leaned over him to get a better look at the screen.
"Choir?" Tom repeated, his voice practically trembling with delight. "Ry, you were in choir?"
"Marissa made me do it for fine arts credit!"
The TV screen flickered to a packed high school auditorium decorated with plastic garland and oversized silver snowflakes. On stage, three rows of choir students, all dressed in either an all black dress or tux, were swaying in unison, performing a brisk, upbeat rendition of "Sleigh Ride." Eighteen-year-old Ryland and Marissa were standing front and center in the middle row, holding their folder covers with pristine, rigid choir posture.
As the song bounced toward its iconic instrumental bridge, the choir director frantically motioned toward the wings.
Instead of one student bringing out the wooden slapstick for the classic whip-crack sound effect, both Ryland and Marissa stepped forward from the risers simultaneously—each holding a massive, heavy-duty wooden slapstick.
"Wait, why are there two?" Jody asked, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. "Is it a duet?"
"It was a duel," Colt corrected proudly. "Mr. Henderson thought it would add 'theatrical flair.'"
On screen, as the orchestra hit the cue, Marissa snapped her slapstick shut right in front of Ryland's face with a deafening CLACK!
The sheer force of the wooden boards slapping together created a localized gust of wind that blew Ryland’s neatly parted hair straight back. On tape, Ryland didn't even break character; he just slowly blinked, adjusted his tie, and waited for his cue.
On the very next beat, Ryland lunged forward, tracking Marissa as she tried to duck away, and slammed his slapstick closed less than an inch from her left ear—CLACK! The sharp crack reverberated through the auditorium speakers, making half the front row of parents jump in their seats.
Marissa gasped dramatically, grabbing her ear on tape, and began weaving between the rows of singing choir kids. Ryland pursued her in deadpan, military-grade seriousness, chasing her around the risers while maintaining perfect choral posture from the waist up.
CLACK! Marissa snapped hers right at his knees.
Then, right at center stage, Marissa sprinted forward, launched herself into the air with a theatrical, jaw-dropping toe-touch jump, and snapped her slapstick together right at the apex of her leap—CLACK!—landing perfectly on the beat of the music.
The auditorium erupted in cheers.
"Okay, that was actually incredible," Carl admitted, raising his glass.
"Wait for it," Colt grinned, pointing at the screen.
On tape, Ryland sprinted to meet Marissa at downstage center as the music swelled into a romantic, lingering chord. Ryland dramatically threw one arm around Marissa's waist, tilting her back into a dramatic stage dip. He leaned in close, closing his eyes as if going in for a tender, romantic kiss—only to whip out his slapstick from behind his back and snap it violently shut right between their faces—CLACK!
Marissa popped up instantly, throwing her arms wide with a triumphant smirk as the song hit its final chord.
By that point, the choir director was laughing so hard he was practically leaning on his music stand for support, and the audience’s roaring laughter completely drowned out the alto section's final harmony.
The footage dissolved with a soft static jump, cutting to a dimly lit Waffle House at two in the morning in late December 2021. The camera was sitting propped up against a syrup dispenser on a Formica table littered with half-eaten waffles, hashbrowns, and discarded choir folders.
A group of high school seniors in cozy hoodies were crammed into the vinyl booth, celebrating their final concert before college. Colt’s face popped into frame briefly to adjust the camera lens before sliding back into his seat.
Ryland sat in the center of the booth, his hands wrapped tightly around a heavy white mug of black coffee, looking intensely stressed while staring at a paper napkin.
"I'm just saying," teenage Ryland muttered into his mug, "if the course load for Organic Chemistry I is structured anything like the syllabus I downloaded online, I'm going to need to optimize my study schedule by week two."
Across the booth, Marissa rolled her eyes hard enough to be seen from space. She suddenly stood up from her seat, slid into the narrow space behind Ryland, and threw her hands onto his shoulders, digging her thumbs into his rock-hard trapezoids with an over-the-top, dramatic sigh.
"Ryland, sweetie, darling," Marissa declared loudly, ignoring his wince as she gave him an aggressive shoulder rub. "You desperately need to get laid."
"Marissa!" Ryland choked, nearly spilling his coffee.
"I am dead serious," she scoffed, giving his shoulders another heavy knead as he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "That is the only reason you are this tense all the time! I mean, come on, that's what college is all about, right?”
Ryland scoffed loudly, ducking his head to dodge her hands. "I am going to university to get an education, Marissa. I'd much rather focus on my degree than whatever... chaotic social activities you're implying."
Marissa paused her shoulder rub. Instead, she leaned down, slapping a hand flat against the center of his chest, feeling the firm fabric of his shirt. She gasped in exaggerated, theatrical shock.
"Ryland Grace!" she gasped, looking down at him. "Have you actually been working out? Wow."
Ryland straightened his posture, adjusting his collar with a modest, albeit highly satisfied smirk. "New year, new me."
"Well," Marissa smirked, sliding back to hover beside the booth, leaning her hip against the edge of the table. "I'm sure that as much as you want to focus on your 'education', you should really listen to the words of the great Madonna. 'Express yourself, don't repress yourself.'"
"I am expressing myself!" Ryland argued defensively, gesturing vaguely toward his coffee mug. "Through academic discipline!"
"That's not expression, Ry, that's a cry for help," she shot back smoothly.
"It's ambition!"
"It's severe tension!"
"It's a high GPA!"
Marissa stared at him for three full seconds, a fond, wicked grin spreading across her face. "I'm sure you're gonna make some theater major very happy one day."
Ryland paused, blinking at her in pure, utter confusion. "A theater major? Why a theater major of all things?"
Marissa chuckled, patting his cheek affectionately before sliding back into her own booth seat. "Well, as someone who did theater for all four years of high school, they're rather loud and extroverted. It should balance you out just fine." She pointed a fork at him across the table, her tone dropping into deadpan seriousness.
"Seriously, Ry. I swear to God, if you come back from college and you're still a virgin, I am going to actually throw a bitch fit.”
On screen, teenage Ryland flushed crimson, opening his mouth to deliver a furious rebuttal, but Colt reached across the table and grabbed the camera, cutting the recording to black.
Ryland had both hands slapped firmly over his face, his ears burning a shade of red that was borderline incandescent. "Colt, delete the file," Ryland choked out from behind his hands. "I am begging you, wipe the drive."
"Not a chance in hell," Colt beamed, tossing the remote onto the table.
Sitting right next to him on the couch, Tom hadn't said a word.
Tom didn't tease him. He didn't offer a witty quip, and he didn't laugh with the rest of the room. Instead, Tom was staring at the now-black screen, his jaw set, a sudden, quiet stillness settling over him. He slowly turned his head to look at Ryland—taking in the way Ryland’s shoulders were tense, the way his cheek was flushed red, the way his posture sat so close against Tom's own side.
Tom’s eyes narrowed slightly, a subtle, sharp realization dawning in his chest as Marissa's nonchalant comment on screen echoed in his mind. Loud, extroverted theater major. He looked at Ryland, then down at his own arm draped over the back of the sofa behind Ryland's shoulders, a strange, electric quiet hanging between them that only Tom seemed to fully grasp.
"She literally called it four years ago!” Adrian exclaimed, placing the final folded pizza box onto his tower. "Loud, extroverted theater major. And here sits Tom Ryder, occupying your exact orbital space."
"She read your future in a Waffle House, Ry," Carl chuckled from his armchair. "You never stood a chance."
Ryland peeked out from between his fingers, glaring across the table at Carl and Adrian before chancing a brief, hesitant glance sideways at Tom.
Tom didn't address the group. He didn't even acknowledge Carl or Adrian’s comments, not even the continuous teasing from the rest of the group in the background. He just kept his gaze locked on Ryland, his expression unreadable, a faint, almost imperceptible grin touching the edge of his mouth as his thumb brushed casually, deliberately against the back of Ryland’s shoulder.
Ryland swallowed hard, his throat going completely dry under the silent weight of Tom’s gaze.
"I hate every single person in this room," Ryland announced softly to the ceiling, though he didn't move an inch, remaining firmly anchored to Tom's side as the quiet, suffocating, perfect stalemate between them pulled just a little tighter.