Work Text:
Work at the shop had been mundane, normal. New break lines for one customer, a broken axel on a Honda, several tires changed and one mystery problem that had taken the better part of the afternoon to sus out with a Kia.
Its steady work, good work. Work that lets his mind quiet just a bit, all that matters is his hands between metal and grease. Sweat dripping down his back, the early summer heat of San Fransico a constant presence.
It’s the kind of day that Casey had come to enjoy in a way he never thought possible. For so long he had thought days like these a far away dream. Something reserved for functional people, normal people. People who don’t have days waking up feeling like half a human being. Days where the twitch in his hands and the creek of leather is the only thread tying him to reality. It can feel like flying closer to the sun, praying to a god he doesn’t believe in that his wings will keep holding.
Some days they don’t, but when he falls out of the sky the sun reaches for him instead now. It drags him back and he finds himself pressed close to Ryland. Finds that even with melted wings and burned skin someone is there to put a soothing balm over his blisters.
But on days like this, on days where the mundane becomes the rope mooring him, he doesn’t have to worry about melted wings or an itch under his skin. Instead, he thinks about Ryland, about the clock hands nearing 5. When Casey can clock out and pick the other man up. Maybe even what they are having for dinner.
Its carbonara night.
The only sounds filling the space between them is the low purr of the Malibu’s engine and Rylands voice as he talks about his lessons, his kids and anything else that catches his attention. Parking is just the same too, so is the way they take the stairs unhurried, shoulders bumping, fingers brushing, pinkies interlocked. The quiet words Casey finds to tell him about a fritzed wire in the Kia that had taken him longer than it should to diagnose.
But mundane days doesn’t change someone at their core. Soft touch and adoring words don’t overwrite a nature so deeply ingrained in every fiber of his being. It doesn’t wash away the violence that still lies like a sleeping beast just under the surface.
That’s why he knows, the moment his foot touches the top step, he feels it in the air like a voice whispering warnings in his ear. At a glance nothing is out of place, the hallway walls are still a faded yellow. The light buzz just the same. But something twist in his gut, ugly and poisonous as he takes in the air that feels too still.
Ryland doesn’t notice, takes a step away from the stairs where Casey has stopped mid step. Hand buried in soft wool he doesn’t let Ryland take another step. Theres a question in his eyes, as his talking comes to a halt. But Casey isn’t looking at him.
Their door mat is crooked, slightly pushed away from the door.
“Casey?”
A dark scuff mark mars the bottom of the door, like the toe of a boot was pushed against it.
“What is it?” Ryland glances between their front door and him a couple times, face scrunching up in confusion.
“Something wrong?” Ryland doesn’t see what he sees, but Ryland trusts him. Enough that Casey’s silent request of wait and stay is met without question. Casey feels how the beast stirs from its slumber as he walks on silent feet the 3 paces to their door. Feels its anger like a dark river as he crouches, inspecting their lock and finds minute scratches in the metal.
New scratches.
The leather creak as his hands clench down on the handle. Slowly, deliberately he pushes on it, resistance meets him.
Its locked.
It doesn’t sooth anything, he can feel it. In his bones he can feel it. Whoever this is, they are still in there. Still in the apartment, waiting in the shadows of their sanctuary.
Someone who is very good at what they do.
Making it look like nothing is out of place.
Casey looks back at Ryland, tries to will him back down the stairs in silent staring competition. It doesn’t work of course. Casey tells himself that its fine, that he doesn’t know if someone else is waiting down there too, if he missed something coming in. Having Ryland close enough to protect is better.
Theres a slight jingle of keys, the click of a lock disengaging and the door swings open. Casey can see into the living room from here, everything is still, quiet. The lights are off, but he hadn’t expected them to be on. He doesn’t have to think about it as his hands curl around wood. More than ever, he is glad for Rylands tendency forget or misplace things. Worn softball bat the teacher had accidentally brought home months ago, becoming a permanent fixture by their front door. Like a new piece of décor that’s there, but you don’t really see.
One step, two- There.
Casey spots the man that isn’t actually hiding. He’s in between their kitchen and living room, standing on the invisible line separating the two. There’s no obvious weapon in his hands. They hold eyes for a second, a second where the guys face twitches into confusion, like Casey wasn’t who he expected.
Like he was waiting for Ryland.
Casey lunges, the blood roaring in his ears might as well be the beast itself. He feels that protective rage, the one that wants to tear this man to pieces for thinking he can encroach upon their home. For lying in wait for, for tainting their peace.
Casey clips the intruders shoulder and front, wood ghosting against cloth. They guy is fast and Casey hears him curse, watches his hands reach behind himself. The bat swings back up, this time it connects with a dull thud and a crack. Satisfaction fills him at the thought of broken ribs.
The guy stumbles, but stays standing one hand grasping the bat to immobilize it. A glint of dark metal has Casey pushing closer. Abandoning distance in favor of control. Like this it becomes a tug of war, several blows are exchanged. Theres blood on his teeth as metal connects with his head. A barrel in his face, a shot rings out, it misses. Barely. Casey is distracted enough by the ringing in his ears that he can’t block the next kick. It sends him sailing backwards. The sound of wood clattering against the floor. They had moved back towards the door at some point. Casey feels how their shoe rack collides with his back, digging into his spine as his head bounces off their dry wall. Black spats dance across his vision and he feels disconnected from reality.
When everything comes back into focus, it is to a boot on his chest and a gun to his head. His ribs and lungs scream as he tries to claw at the leg keeping him down. He sees how his anger is reflected in the face looming above him. The intruder’s voice is a low rasping sound.
“Who-“
But the question never gets finished as wood connects with his head sending him tumbling to floor. The sound almost as loud as the earlier gunshot. The gun is released from his grip, landing at Caseys feet. Caseys chest feels lighter and air surges into his lungs. The metal is cold against his fingers as he picks it up and points it at their intruder. Ryland half shielded at his back, a smear of dark blood on the bat still clutched in his shaking hands.
His own hands are steady, as he presses the slightest bit on the trigger, but not yet shooting. He simply keeps it aimed on the writhing body in front of them.
“Who are you?” Its Rylands voice, angry in a way Casey has never heard before. Theres a slight tremor to it that still betrays just how shaken he is.
Their intruder freezes, pained groans and curses dying at the sound of those words. Or maybe its at the sound of Ryland. The man whips his head around, blood running down his face and matting hair. Besides him Ryland makes a choked off noise, he takes a step back. Casey doesn’t dare take his eyes off the intruder, so he can’t see what expression Ryland is making.
“Ryland.” The name sounds like desperate prayer falling from the man’s lips. A hoarse gasp of hope, pain, relief, sadness.
Ryland himself makes a noise that’s halfway between a gasp and a choked off exclamation. It petered into something like a high keen, not unlike the sound of a wounded animal. A foxes cry.
“What the fuck- You- No-” Theres a sharp inhale before the first statement is repeated with even more feeling. Casey can hear it, the terror, disbelief, grief- “What the fuck.”
Casey looks, really looks, at the man bleeding on their floor. With the hallway light his features become clearer. Theres a familiar slope to his nose, to the angel of his jaw. Its like the man is a physical manifestation of déjà vu. Casey doesn’t know this man, has never met him before. But somehow, he can still see the ghost of the teenage boy. The one sandwiched between a pair of identical faces in a frame that Casey can see from here. Hanging on the wall in their living room among a handful other pictures.
The ghost that still haunts Ryland. The one that Casey can see day by day, story by story, is getting easier to live with.
Now here that ghost is, alive and breathing and not really a ghost. Its not a trick of the eye, it’s not a case of mistaken identity. Because while the teenage boy has grown up, there’s a certain way those eyes look, a jut of the chin that matches the one Casey sees every night when he goes to sleep, the one he wakes up beside every morning.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” Misunderstanding- The word rings out into the room like a bad joke.
Misunderstanding is putting it lightly Casey thinks. The hysterical laughter that’s bordering on a sob from Ryland, makes his chest hurt. Something ugly and protective. Casey wants to remove the man on the floor for tearing into the barely healed wounds. For ripping up the stitches they had carefully laid together.
“You broke into our home.” Ryland steps forward ward, bat hanging limp at his side.
“I- Yes.”
“You attacked my boyfriend.” Ryland is waving his none bat hand around, agitated and tense. Despite that, Casey can’t help but preen under the word boyfriend.
“Your dating him?!”
“THAT’S WHAT YOUR WORRIED ABOUT!”
“Yes- No- Maybe?”
“Unbelievable.”
“Can your boyfriend maybe lower the gun?”
“I don’t know Courtland, did Colt and me have to mourn you!?”
* ☾ ◯ ☽ *
Ryland can’t believe this. How could he? The brother he thought had died almost a decade ago broke into their apartment, held a gun to Casey’s head, and is now bleeding on their floor. He doesn’t even want to think about the bullet hole he can see from here. The panic slowly being consumed by anger. Nor that tiny little voice that wants nothing but to go shake Courtland and make sure he’s real. The one that’s been missing his older brother since his apparent not death.
“Why are you here? Why now?” Its so much easier to latch on to the anger, to let it coat his words.
“You disappeared, I got worried.” The response is weak and pathetic and feels more like a slap to the face then an explanation.
“I disappeared- I DISSAPEARED-“ He should swing the bat again, maybe that will knock some sense into this situation. But he doesn’t, because Ryland isn’t a violent dog that bites for no reason. He bites with reason. Bites the academic world who thinks it can laugh at him. Bites Colt when he thinks 7 minutes is enough reason to play overprotective, bordering on controlling, older brother.
He should bite now, for once he feels he has more than enough reason to bite.
Maybe go so far, as to say he has the right to bite.
Not when Casey stands besides him all ridged and sharp edges, calm in a way that Ryland hasn’t seen before but makes his chest tight and heart hurt.
It is and isn’t the man he spent months on the road with. It’s the man that Casey barely talks about, the one that’s seen bloodshed. The one Ryland sometimes has to hold as he cries deep into the night. The one whose hands never shake and whose eyes are hard as the steel of the Malibu.
Ryland thinks that in this moment, if he were to ask. Casey would pull the trigger.
It is as terrifying as it is breathtaking in a way that is almost impossible to describe.
Ryland also knows in this moment, he’ll never ask that of Casey. Not just because the man on the other side is Courtland. But because Ryland refuses to let a brush paint this man in anymore red than he already is. So Ryland breaths, deep and rattling. Eyes closing and hands clenching. The wood of the bat is grounding as it digs into his palm. Then he lets go.
“Casey could you make some coffee while I get the first aid kit.” He’s moving towards the bathroom before the words are fully out. The sounds of the kitchen is answer enough to his request. Mercifully, Court doesn’t say anything.
The red box is where it always is. Court is standing awkwardly in the room, blood dripping off his chin and onto their floor. The lights have been turned on and their front door closed. Bullet hole still in their wall.
Headwounds bleed a lot, and this one is no different. A red trail follows them to the living room, to the couch. Ryland can’t help but grimace at the smear of red now on their upholstery. Its not that it’s a nice couch it’s a shitty second and thing with creaking springs and mystery stains on both sides of the cushions.
A Doctorate doesn’t make him a medical Doctor, but he does know some first aid. Court should probably see an actual Doctor.
Its only once 3 cups of coffee are cooling on the table, once a rag has been dragged over the blood trail. Once gauze and bandages are being packed back in their little red box.
“Does Colt know.” Ryland knows the answer. He still needs to hear Court say it.
“He doesn’t.”
“He should.” It gets him no response, and so Ryland just closes the box with more force than necessary. The plastic making and ominous creaking in response to the rough handling. He aches for a cigarette.
“Why did you shoot at Casey?”
“I thought he broke in.”
His hands tremble against red plastic, “Of course you did.”
It’s easy to ignore the coffee, to ignore Court, to rifle through his jacket pockets with an increasing sense of urgency. Its only as breathing becomes harder and the shaking has traveled to his whole body that he finds the small carton.
Its nice out on the terrasse, there’s a slight breeze. The first cigarette disappears into ash and sharp smoke before Ryland realizes he’s lighting the second one. This one goes slower, steady drags as he lets the feeling swirl in his lungs and drown out the noise in his head.
By the third one the terrasse door creeks open and the warmth of another body fills the empty space besides him.
The tears come next, silent except for when the droplets hit the concert. Not entirely sure what part triggers it. Maybe all of them at the same time. How do you mourn a man that’s alive?
How do you let go of that kind of grief, how do you prevent it from smoldering into anger?
Casey’s hands are warm, and his arms is a nice place to have a breakdown in. Especially now, out here on the terrasse as the sobs finally rip themselves free of his chest. As the third cigarette is left to burn out on concrete and 3 cups of cold coffee sits in their living room.