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“Up and at ‘em, bud.”
Ryland groans into his pillow. The obnoxious voice above him doesn’t seem to care.
“Now, Ry. It’s already six.”
“Frick off,” Ryland replies, sleepy and slurred.
The next thing he knows, he’s being lifted into the air. He snaps into a slightly greater state of awareness at the sudden, unexpected buoyancy, and hears a startled yelp tear from his throat.
Before he can figure out why he’s floating, or gain any control over his limbs, his socked feet are touching the floor and a pair of broad, callused hands are holding him upright by his shoulders. He wobbles, tipping forward and back a couple of times, before he finally blinks the sleep from his eyes and stares at the blurry blob in front of him.
“Blurgh,” he says.
His glasses are pressed into his hands, and he blearily fumbles them on. The smug face of Courtland Gentry comes into focus, and he resists the urge to glare at him.
“It’s too early,” he complains.
“Wheels up in an hour,” Court says. Ryland groans again.
“I don’t see why I need to be there,” Ryland complains, turning around and digging through the small duffle of his personal belongings in search of a t-shirt and non-smelly pair of jeans. Stratt already told him she’d bought him a suit for the meeting, so he doesn’t need to worry about cleaning up until later.
“You’re the chief scientist on the project,” Court says.
“Exactly! I’m just a body in a lab, not a diplomat.” Ryland throws on a novelty t-shirt a few of his students bought for him for teacher appreciation week a couple years ago. It has a cartoon avocado drawn on it with Avogadro’s constant written across the chest.
“Just shut up and get on the plane, Ryland.”
Stratt knows by now to have drugs and an extra coffee waiting for him before takeoff. She doesn’t even bother with a greeting, just shoves the pills and cardboard cup into his hands and motions for the pilot to prepare for departure. Ryland catches sight of Court’s grimace as he downs the pills.
“What was that?” he asks, almost sounding nervous.
Ryland shrugs. “They’ll knock me out for the flight.” He takes a swig of coffee, humming when it’s exactly how he likes it—a splash of milk and two sugars. He absently wonders when Stratt memorized his coffee order, and then realizes with a jolt that he knows hers, too.
Ryland glances over at Court, who has a stormy, concerned expression on his face. It’s basically his new baseline whenever it comes to Ryland, these days.
“Relax, old man. I just get motion sick. This helps.”
Court doesn’t look assuaged in the slightest, but he accepts the excuse.
Ryland is out like a light before they’re even at altitude. When he wakes, he’s drooling on Court’s shoulder as they descend over Manhattan. He straightens slowly and tries not to look out the window.
Stratt is sitting across the aisle, in a deep discussion with Dimitri. Neither of them pay him any mind as he reaches for the water bottle conveniently placed in one of the cup holders near him and chugs the whole thing. Court is perfectly still beside him except for the gentle, rhythmic tapping of his index finger against his knee.
Their meeting at the UN Headquarters isn’t until 9 AM local time, so they have a couple hours to get some sleep in the hotel they’ve been placed in before they have to look their best and stand in front of a committee of world leaders to explain why they deserve even more funding and legal leeway.
Stratt places Court and Ryland in a room together, and Ryland can’t help but feel like they’re kids again, excited for a rare family vacation and fighting over who gets the bed by the window.
“You can have it,” Court says, as soon as Ryland brings it up. “I need to be by the door.” He’s all business, and it knocks the wind from Ryland’s sails a bit. They aren’t kids anymore, and they never will be again.
They haven’t been since Court held a gun to their father’s head.
While Court is showering, Ryland digs his phone out of his bag, pressing it to his ear as it rings.
“Ryland! Hey, what’s up? Everything okay? Shit, wait, you’re not cancelling on us, are you?”
Ryland smiles, relaxing at the sound of Colt’s voice, happy and unconcerned through the receiver. “No, not cancelling. Just calling to say hello. And letting you know we’re in the hotel, safe and sound.”
“Happy to hear it. Oh, hey, Jody wants to say hi—”
“Hello, Ryland!” Jody chimes from close enough to the receiver that she must be sitting right next to Colt. Ryland’s chest warms.
“Hey.”
“Okay flight?” she asks. Colt laughs in the background.
“I was unconscious for all of it,” Ryland says.
“He gets stupid motion sick,” Colt says. “Sometimes, I can’t believe we’re related.”
“You look identical,” Jody replies, deadpan.
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Colt argues.
“Well, anyway.” Ryland’s interjection is clumsy, but he presses forward before Colt can call him out on it. “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
Ryland had called a few months ago, after he’d found out Jim was Court—and after Court had taken him completely by surprise and decided to stay on as a member of his and Stratt’s newly combined security team—and told Colt about the whole thing. Court hadn’t explicitly signed off on it, but he’d also been too emotionally wrung-out at the mention of Colt to get properly angry at Ryland for spilling the beans, so he’d gotten off easy.
He’d neglected to tell Colt that Court was coming with him to New York when they’d made plans to meet up for dinner after the UN meeting. He wants to say it was strategic, to prevent anyone from bolting last minute, but the truth of the matter is that it had been plain cowardice.
It’s one thing to tell Colt that their older brother who killed their dad and then died himself was actually alive and working with Ryland at his new shady government job. It was another thing to spring a surprise visit with said brother on him, when Colt still had very mixed feelings about the whole thing.
Colt had seen it, when Court killed Dad. Ryland had been nearly unconscious at the time, half-drowned and curled up in Colt’s lap, shaking with cold and near-death. All Ryland had seen was some vague shapes and the splatter of blood, the sound of the pistol loud in the acoustics of the bathroom. Colt, on the other hand, had witnessed the violence with perfect clarity.
He’d never completely recovered from the disappointment of learning that Court wasn’t the man he’d always thought he was: endlessly kind, if not occasionally demanding. Colt was grateful that Court had saved Ryland’s life, but he’d never agreed with his decision to kill their father in cold blood.
Ryland viewed the situation with a bit more nuance. Their father had been a cruel, miserable man. Ryland wholeheartedly believed the world was better off without him. He doesn’t like that Court is a murderer, but he trusts that he’d never do anything he didn’t feel was necessary. And he knows Court would never hurt an innocent.
He’s only mad that Court had to get thrown in jail and separated from his brothers for twenty years.
“What’s up?” Colt asks, and Ryland takes a steadying breath.
“You know how they don’t send us on these trips without our security? The risks are higher when we’re near major cities, so it makes sense.”
Colt heard all about the attempted assassination at the Yulin Naval Base. He knows why non-remote locations are more risky, and therefore less preferred, for the members of the Petrova Taskforce.
“Ryland—” Colt’s voice holds a warning, a high-pitched anxiety that Ryland knows means Colt’s already figured out what he’s about to say.
“I was going to bring Court with me,” he says, to deafening silence. “To dinner, I mean. Tomorrow.”
Colt doesn’t respond. Ryland worries his bottom lip.
“Uh… You still there?”
“We’re here,” Jody responds. “I think he just… needs a minute.”
“I’m sorry, Colt. I didn’t mean to spring this on you, I just—”
“You knew I’d feel weird about it.”
Ryland picks at the threads on the too-soft comforter of the bed closest to the window. Outside, the streets of Manhattan blink awake under a cold, summer night sky. It’s the peak of July and the high today was in the mid-sixties. They’re running out of time.
“Yeah,” Ryland says, quietly. Colt sighs.
“Look, I—Shit, Ry, I don’t know. I don’t not want to see him, I just…”
“I know.”
“But you don’t. You’ve always thought he hung the moon and the stars, even after—” Colt makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. Too quiet for Ryland to make out, Jody mumbles something. There’s a rustling sound, and then the distant noise of a door sliding open and shut, the brief chatter of midnight traffic bursting through the air before snuffing out again. Colt continues, “I know you trust him. And I’m glad he’s not dead. Of course I am. I just…”
“You don’t trust him.” Ryland feels small, more than he has in a very, very long time. He feels like that same kid, curled up on the cold tile and hacking up half a lung’s worth of water, hair sticking to his sweat-slick forehead. He can practically feel Colt’s shaking hands rubbing over his back, panic entwined in each brush of his fingers over sopping cloth and skin.
“You didn’t see him, Ry. He looked—Fuck, he looked just like Dad.”
Ryland stares out the window. A billboard across the street flicks between a few different ads. One of them is mostly a black screen with bold, white lettering that reads, THE END IS HERE. Ryland swallows down the familiar, snapping bite of terror.
“He looks like Mom, now,” Ryland says, gently. He hadn’t noticed the shower shut off a minute ago, and he doesn’t hear the soft creak of the bathroom door opening, doesn’t notice the new presence filling the room, silent and mournful. “He has her nose. And her chin. I’d forgotten what she looked like, until I saw him again. I mean, sometimes, I see Dad in him, but… They couldn’t be more different, Colt.”
Colt doesn’t respond immediately. Ryland doesn’t pressure him.
“I—I’ll see you tomorrow, Ry.” Colt chuckles, some of his usual cheeriness shining through. “I’ll see both of you, I guess. Jesus.”
Ryland smiles. “You will. Give Jody my love.”
“Will do. Night.”
“Goodnight, Colt.”
He sits there for another moment, watching the cars pass far below on the street. It’s peaceful, though tainted by the melancholy of childhood reminiscence. For the first time, though, it’s not all bad.
That peace ends abruptly when Court clears his throat, sending Ryland leaping a foot into the air and off the bed, a grating screech erupting from somewhere high up in his chest. Court chuckles, though his eyes are sad enough that Ryland knows he overheard at least some of his phone call.
“You’ve got to stop sneaking up on me like that,” Ryland grouses, and Court shakes his head.
“We’ve got to improve your awareness.”
Ryland rolls his eyes.
“…How is he?”
Ryland doesn’t ask what Court means. “He’s good.” He toes at the threads of the carpet under his feet. “We’re getting dinner tomorrow, after the UN thing. He and Jody flew up just to see me.”
Court hides his face in the low shadows of the room. “That’s nice.”
“I told them you would come with.”
Court freezes, but Ryland barrels onward.
“The reservation is for four, so. It’d be really nice if you joined us. Also, I’d need a security detail anyway. Stratt’s orders.” Technically, Ryland had only gotten her to sign off on the little excursion by telling her Court had already agreed to come along. In his defense, he’d been pretty confident he could convince him; and, really, it’s on Stratt for never bothering to follow up on his claim. Rookie mistake.
Court just sighs, sitting down heavily on the corner of his bed, giving Ryland a tired, amused look. “Can’t believe you managed to convince everyone you were the saintly brother,” he says. “When it was obviously Colt.”
Ryland grins, a bit crooked. Court caves, nodding with another small sigh.
“Okay.”
For the first time in longer than he can remember, Ryland falls asleep knowing his family is right there beside him.
The UN meeting is long and grueling, but Ryland gets to talk about science for most of it and isn’t deferred to for any of the more politically aligned diplomatic conversations, so it’s not half bad. He hates the administrative side of his job, but Stratt has a tendency to drag him around with her like a pet and force him to do important things.
She lets him leave afterward with a sharp look and a single instruction.
“Behave.”
Court nods, answering for him. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“See that you do.”
Ryland would feel more insulted at them talking about him like he’s a child in front of his face if he wasn’t so excited for dinner. He made a reservation at a nice Italian place that went viral a few years back for their absurdly sized meatballs. His students had spent at least three weeks that school year talking about how badly they wanted to visit.
He and Court arrive a bit before the reservation time and are seated at seven on the dot. The menu is short, which is one of Ryland’s least favorite things about fancy restaurants. He orders an iced tea and Court gets water, and they munch on complimentary bread as they wait for Colt and Jody.
“Nervous?” Ryland asks, as he slathers a third piece of bread with a generous amount of butter. Court, who took the seat beside him, bristles.
“No.” His answer comes too fast. Ryland just raises a single brow at him, and Court lets out a short, frustrated breath. “I’m fine.”
“Okay.” Ryland doesn’t push, instead decides to ask Court what he thought about the UN’s proceedings that day. Court just shrugs.
“I don’t really care,” he says. Ryland snorts.
“Somehow, I don’t buy that.”
There’s something in Court’s posture that Ryland reads as annoyance. It’s been there all day, most obviously when they were standing in the meeting hall, listening to a bunch of world leaders drone on and on about policy and tax dollars.
“The UN is a bunch of overconfident pencil-pushers with inflated egos who think they know what’s best for the rest of us. They don’t know that real change means feet on the ground, means putting their weight behind something instead of just talking about it.” Court takes a sip of his water, hunched over and visibly brooding into the low light of the restaurant. “But at the end of the day, that’s all they are: privileged old men in suits.”
Ryland isn’t sure how to respond to that. He’s known to be a bit of a cynic at times, but he doesn’t hold a candle to Court. “And women,” he adds. Court huffs again and takes another sip of water. Ryland thinks his whole tortured soul look would be more convincing if he had a beer, instead.
Court’s gaze snaps up a moment later, zeroing in on the entryway where two familiar figures have just stepped inside and started looking around. Ryland watches as his face goes through a few different emotions before settling on careful indifference, spine ramrod straight in his chair.
Colt spots them after a moment, waving off the hostess as he and Jody make their way over. He smiles at Ryland, who gets up out of his seat to offer them both hugs, praying it’ll diffuse the tension. Court stays where he is, watching the exchange with an unchanging expression.
Colt returns Ryland’s hug easily, though he’s obviously distracted. Jody, bless her, seems just as prepared as Ryland to help reduce the conflict of the evening, and plays along as if nothing is amiss.
“How are you? How was your meeting?” she asks, hugging Ryland fiercely. They’d always gotten along really well, and Ryland is thankful that Colt got his head screwed on straight enough to get her back.
“Oh, you know. Lotta administrative hooey. But not bad, overall. Stratt got our main policies through committee, so we’re all pretty happy.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! I don’t presume you’re at liberty to share the details…?” Jody’s curiosity burns in her eyes, clear as day, and even Colt seems to stop his weird staring at Court’s manufactured indifference to listen in on any and all details Ryland might divulge. He shakes his head.
“Nah. All top-secret.”
“You’ve gotten pretty good at keeping secrets lately, huh?” Colt hedges, and though it has the cadence of a joke, the cut of his gaze is unamused. Ryland feels the air grow thick between the four of them, noticing the furrow in Court’s brow and the tension in Colt’s shoulders. He and Jody exchange a worried look.
Fortunately, the waiter chooses the perfect moment to swing by and ask them for their orders. As soon as the kid whisks off back to the kitchen, Ryland pulls Colt’s focus from Court with a question about his latest film.
“You just finished wrapping, right? Where were you filming again?”
“Last week, yeah. We were in, uh… North Carolina. Chapel Hill.” Colt still sounds a bit distracted, but he does light up at the mention of his work. Despite the difference in their careers, Ryland and Colt had always had the magnitude of their passion and dedication in common.
“How’s post going?” Ryland presses, directing the question toward Jody.
“Oh, you know. We’re on a condensed timeline, so it’s been stressful. The studio wants the first trailer out by next month.” She rolls her eyes. “I tried telling them that these things take time, but…” She shrugs.
Colt softens, nudging her with his shoulder. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
Jody doesn’t look very reassured by his statement, though she does appear charmed. “Yes, well.”
“Oh! Hey, Ry, I had something I wanted to ask you about.” Colt’s sudden shift in demeanor is a bit of a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. Beside Ryland, Court seems to sit up straighter. “So, ever since I dropped by your classroom to pick up your stuff last year, I’ve gotten a few calls from the school.”
Ryland frowns. “They shouldn’t be calling you.”
“No, no! It’s nothing bad!” Colt looks excited, unable to stay still in his seat. Beside him, Jody is smiling softly. “A few of your old students have wanted to reach out, but they didn’t know how to contact you. Apparently, there’s a bit of a backlog of letters and gifts for you just sitting in the office. They let me pick ‘em up about a month ago if I promised to get them to you. They’re sitting in our office back home.”
Ryland doesn’t know how to respond. Pressure starts to build up behind his eyes, and he blinks rapidly to dispel the sensation, to moderate success. “O—Oh,” he croaks.
“Those kids adore you, man,” Colt continues, oblivious to Ryland’s emotional plight. Or maybe he’s completely aware of it and doesn’t care.
“It’s no surprise,” Jody chimes in. “You’ve always been the more charming brother.”
“Wh—Hey!” Colt protests, and Jody laughs. Ryland joins in, relieved at the sharp turn away from sincerity. He glances over at Court, who, to his surprise, is actually smiling. When he notices Ryland staring, his face drops back into something neutral.
“I saw that,” Ryland says, elbowing Court gently in the side. Court is unmoved, grunting once in acknowledgment and taking another long pull from his glass of water.
“Saw what?” Colt asks, looking between the two of them. He doesn’t seem angry anymore, just genuinely curious and a bit uncertain.
Ryland turns his attention to Jody when he says, “Secret softy, this one. Has been since we were kids.”
Jody laughs at the offended look on Court’s face, and Ryland, upon turning to see it, joins in. Even Colt seems amused.
“That is false,” Court insists. Ryland shakes his head.
“No, it’s not. I remember. You’re a total sweetie.”
Colt snorts, and Ryland feels the tension slowly bleeding from the air. Maybe, he thinks, things will be alright, after all.
Their food comes, and Colt, Jody, and Ryland continue to chat about anything and everything, though it’s mostly about various films they all love. Court sits beside Ryland, stoic and silent as he eats, but clearly tuned into the conversation.
Ryland doesn’t miss how he’s clearly on guard, still (technically) working. He keeps glancing toward the door and around the room with a subtlety that Ryland has only picked up on after months of being around him twenty-four/seven.
But there’s an elephant in the room, silently stalking them like a threat Court is meant to sniff out and disarm. Ryland can feel it standing against his chest, the pressure increasing with every curious, conflicted glance that Colt shoots across the table.
They’re nearly finished with their food when Ryland decides he’s had enough.
“Alright,” he says, breaking off the discussion he’d been having with Colt and Jody about their favorite sci fi novel-to-film adaptations. Three gazes all snap to him, the same mixture of anxious and curious on each of them. “We can’t just not talk about it.”
Colt sniffs, not looking Ryland in the eye. “Not talk about what?”
“Colton.” Ryland’s voice is short, the way he gets with his colleagues when they say something stupid, the way he always tried not to be with his students. He’s always had a lot more patience when dealing with kids, he’s found. They tend more toward pure curiosity in their failures to grasp concepts than just plain incompetence.
“What?” Colt is on the defensive, bristling. Jody frowns at him, but doesn’t interject. “No, really. What is there to talk about? It’s been twenty years. What else is there to say?”
“You’re not relieved?” Ryland asks, patience running thin.
“Of course I am! I just—” Colt screws his face up, clearly fighting some internal battle that Ryland can’t even begin to guess the depth of. When he speaks again, it’s with his gaze trained, for the first time, fully on Court. “One day, you were there, and the next, you weren’t. Our whole lives flipped onto their heads, and you were just gone. No matter how many times we called, or requested to visit, you didn’t—”
Colt turns his hand into a fist, wrapped around his fork. He squeezes his eyes shut, tight, and Ryland thinks he looks a lot like the scared little kid he’d been that day on the bathroom floor. “The last time we saw you, you’d just been given thirty-six years. You could’ve argued self-defense, but you didn’t. You let them take you away from us, leave us to the system. Next thing we hear of you, you’re dead. Do you have any idea what that—”
Colt cuts off, his angry-soft whisper falling to something even quieter, doused in grief. “We learned to live without you. But that doesn’t mean we were better off that way.”
Court looks visibly shaken, the same way he had when Ryland said a similar thing to him back on the ship, months ago. Ryland glances between the two of them, the stalemate they’ve reached now that Colt’s run out of things to say and Court has run out of suppressable emotions. He doesn’t know how to fix this.
He isn’t sure it’s something that can be fixed.
“I’m sorry.” The words are soft, mumbled toward the woodgrain of the table, but not less sincere for it. Court looks tortured, his hands clenched into fists in his lap, though his eyes are all sad. There isn’t a hint of any danger or anger in his face, nothing of the man who probably has a body count that could fill a phone book. He’s just lonely, Ryland realizes. He’s been lonely for a long time.
It’s not an easy habit to break, Ryland has to imagine.
“I’m just trying to protect you. Both of you.” Court glances up, finally, eyes flitting from Ryland, to Colt, and even briefly landing on Jody. “And—and the people you care for.” He doesn’t shy away from eye contact anymore, gaze imploring and intense in a way that Ryland has no defenses against. “I will always do everything I can to keep you safe. For a long time, that meant keeping my distance.”
“And now?” Colt’s voice is surprisingly even, his head held high as he meets Court’s gaze. Ryland feels something like hope spark in his chest.
Court doesn’t appear to deliberate before he responds, with the tiniest smile, “Things are different at the end of the world.”
Shoot, Ryland thinks. You said it, Cory.