Chapter Text
This is all Colt's fault.
The man looks down at Ryland on the floor. He's breathing. Colt can see it. But his eyes are closed, and the carpet beneath him is dark, and he is not moving.
He's not moving.
"Now," the man says pleasantly, "we wait."
The next sixty seconds are the longest of his life. Colt has been in situations most people never experience. He knows how to manage fear. He does that for a living. He is very good at that. He has never, however, once been chained to a wall watching his brother bleed into a carpet, and he does not have a protocol for it.
When the man's boot connects with Ryland's ribs, Colt's whole body moves against the restraints. Involuntary. He can't stop it.
Ryland makes a sound that Colt feels in his back teeth. A short, broken exhale, like something collapsing. Then he curls. His eyes open, barely.
"Okay," the man says, apparently satisfied. He steps back. He checks his watch.
Colt finds Jody's eyes because he has to look at something that isn't the floor. She looks back at him, jaw set, eyes shining as she desperately tries to stifle sobs. She's holding herself very still in the way that means she's thinking, which he is grateful for, because one of them needs to be.
Stay with me. He tries to say it without saying it. It’s going to be okay. She nods, barely.
Ryland's phone buzzes against a stack of ungraded quizzes. He answers it immediately after seeing the caller ID.
"You're in a magazine," he says instead of hello.
"I know," Colt says, and Ryland can hear the smile in his voice.
"A big magazine." Ryland pushes back from his desk. His chair has a wonky wheel, and it catches on the rug, which he ignores. "Colt. They put you on the cover."
"I know, Ry."
"You look so cool." He means it genuinely, without irony, and Colt's laugh on the other end is the kind that means he knows that. "I've read the article four times. My kids are going to be so sick of hearing about this."
"How many of them have you told already."
It isn't a question. Ryland ignores it accordingly. "The Oscar category. Which, by the way, I called. Years ago. I said it to you specifically. I said Colt, it's only a matter of time-”
"And I said don't hold your breath."
"And I said-"
"You said scientists are always right eventually. They just have to wait long enough."
"Which is true," Ryland says. "Ask anyone."
They sit in that for a second. Outside Ryland's window, the neighbor's dog is barking at something. He watches a crumpled paper ball roll off his desk and under the bookshelf. He makes a mental note to get it later, which means he will absolutely not get it.
"How's school?" Colt asks.
"Fine. Good, actually." He thinks about it. "There's a new girl. Started about three weeks ago. She's-I don't know. She's adjusting. It's always hard, mid-year, and she's quiet, kind of watchful. But she answered a question last Tuesday that honestly floored me, and I thought-" he realizes he's rambling and pulls back. "She's doing well. I'm keeping an eye on her."
"You keep an eye on all of them."
"That's the job."
"No," Colt says, "that's you."
Ryland doesn't have anything to say to that, so he straightens the quizzes on his desk, squaring the corners. "Are you going to frame the magazine?"
"Am I-" Colt laughs. "No."
"I'm going to frame it."
"Please don't."
"I'm going to put it right next to the photo of you at prom."
"Ryland, I am begging you-"
"You had frosted tips, Colt."
"It was one time-"
"I've already ordered the frame. It's a double. They'll go side by side. It's going to be amazing."
He hears Colt's long, suffering exhale and feels the particular satisfaction of a man who has been annoying the same person his whole life and has gotten very good at it.
"Okay, whatever. Come over on Thursday. Jody’ll be there, and we should celebrate."
"Yeah," Ryland says, and means it completely. "Yeah, we should."
Six is…adjusting.
He wouldn't call it peace, exactly. He's not sure he remembers what peace feels like or if he was ever the kind of person who could hold it without flinching. But this — the apartment, the quiet, the particular calibration of days that don't require him to kill anyone — this is something. It's less than peace and more than nothing, which is a wider margin than he's had in a long time.
Claire has claimed the bedroom. He hadn't planned it that way, but she stood in the doorway, looked at the bed, looked at him, and said this one in a tone that didn't leave room for discussion. He takes the couch. He doesn't mind the couch. He's slept in worse places than this — worse places than he'd ever let her see, which is the whole point.
She's started leaving her shoes by the front door. It's such a small thing. But she didn't do it at first; she slept with them on for the first week, which he understood and didn't mention. Then one morning they were by the door. Lined up. The white and black polka dot inlay facing out.
He doesn't know what to do with how that makes him feel, so he doesn't do anything. He just notes it and moves on, which is more or less how he handles everything.
The best part of the apartment, however, is the proximity to his brothers.
He doesn't examine this too closely. He doesn't need to. He just knows that when the days feel longest, and the quiet gets the particular quality that means it's pressing in rather than holding still, he does his sweep of their neighborhoods and something in him levels. It's not a fix. It's barely even a comfort. It's closer to a habit, or a need, the way breathing is a need. It’s not something he decides to do, just something that happens.
He's the oldest. This was always the job.
Ryland is awake. Technically. He's on his side on the carpet, and his eyes are open by a margin, and he tries to put a hand down to push himself up, and his arm buckles and he goes back down. He stays there. Colt watches him try to understand where he is, watches him find Colt across the room with eyes that are working very hard to focus.
He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.
"Don't try to get up," Colt says. His voice is very even. "Stay right there, Ry. Just stay."
The man between them looks almost bored, which is somehow the worst thing about him. He checks his watch. He looks at the door.
Come on, Colt thinks. At no one. At the door. At the empty idea of rescue. Come on. Come on.
He doesn't let himself think the name.
He thinks it anyway.
It's a Thursday night.
Six knows this because Ryland's light has been on since six-thirty, which means he has quizzes to grade, which happens on Thursdays. He knows Ryland's patterns the way he knows everything necessary — completely, without trying, because he decided once that it was necessary and that was enough.
He's parked half a block down. He's had this car for three weeks and will have a different one in another two. It's blue, which is a mistake; blue is memorable. He'd taken it in a hurry.
He watches Ryland's light.
He told himself, when this started, that it was tactical. That it made him sharper, keeping tabs on the twins, that it was an extension of the vigilance he owed Claire. That's still technically true. Claire is his priority and purpose. He holds onto that because it's solid and it makes sense and it doesn't require him to look at the parts of himself that aren't solid.
But he is not doing this for tactical reasons right now.
Right now he is doing this because Colt called Ryland on Tuesday and they were on the phone for forty-three minutes and Six couldn't hear what they were saying (he wasn't close enough and he doesn't tap their lines, which is one boundary he has decided to keep), but he could see Ryland through the window pacing around his living room the way he does when he's worked up about something good. The way he did when he was seven and learned that humans are actually more closely related to mushrooms than they are to trees, which he had to tell Six about immediately, standing in the bathroom doorway while Six brushed his teeth, talking very fast about opisthokonts.
He was smiling on the phone with Colt. Six could see it from half a block away.
He sits with that for a while, the car idling with the heat off. He should go. He's been here long enough. Claire is fine. She has the alarm, and she knows the protocols, and she is better at this than a kid her age should have to be.
He gives himself another two minutes.
Ryland's light stays on.
Six gives himself another five after that, and then he goes.