sunnyβs eyes shimmered when devon cupped his cheek, and for a second, he just looked at him, like he was trying to memorize every soft, patient line of his face before his brain could twist this into something else. devon understood. that was the part that made sunnyβs chest ache so badly. he understood without making sunny feel stupid for being scared, without turning his guilt into some awful thing they had to drag into the middle of the room and dissect until sunny couldnβt breathe.
βi donβt wanna do everything alone,β he admitted quietly, voice small in a way he hated a little. βi just think i forget i donβt have to.β his mouth twitched, but it wasnβt really a smile. not all the way. βwhich sounds dumb when i say it out loud, because youβre, like, right here. youβre always right here.β he blinked hard, gaze dropping for a second before he forced it back to devonβs. βand i still get scared that if i bring you all the ugly stuff, youβre gonna realize itβs too much.β
his hand lifted, fingers curling gently around devonβs wrist where it rested against his face. βbut i know you wouldnβt.β a beat. βor iβm trying to know that.β sunny let out a shaky breath, leaning further into the touch because he wanted to be brave enough to accept it. because devon was asking to stay, and sunny loved him too much to keep treating every soft place like it was something he had to hide.
when devon mentioned noah, sunnyβs expression folded into something tender and pained. βhe thinks that?β he asked, almost helplessly. the best decision iβve ever made. god. that went straight under his ribs. βi thought he tolerated me because you love me.β his laugh came out wet and quiet, and he shook his head. βi donβt mean that in a bad way. i know he loves you. i know heβs protective. i think i just β i donβt know. i get scared of being something that makes your life harder. yelling at him feels like itβsβ¦ yeah.βΒ
sunny shifted closer, resting his forehead against devonβs again, eyes fluttering shut. βbut i love you,β he whispered. βand i love that you have people who care about you like that, even when itβs messy. even when i donβt know what to do with it.β his thumb brushed lightly over devonβs wrist. βiβm sorry i keep apologizing. iβm sorry for apologizing about apologizing.β a little, exhausted laugh slipped out of him. βiβm a nightmare.β
but he didnβt pull away. instead, sunny stayed there. βiβll try,β he said softly. βto come to you. to let you sit with me when itβs hard.β a beat passed, and his voice thinned. βi donβt want you to have to fight my head for me, butβ¦ maybe you can remind me when itβs lying.β his eyes opened again, blue and wet and full of all the love he didnβt know how to make smaller. βbecause i believe you more than i believe me most days.β
Devon felt something inside him yield with a tenderness so complete that it nearly hurt. There had been a time when he would have mistaken pain for proof that he was alive, when affection had seemed like a language spoken through clenched teeth and conditional mercy, but Sunny had undone that belief with such patient persistence that love no longer resembled survival. It resembled this instead: an afternoon steeped in golden light, the weight of Sunny's forehead against his own, the fragile honesty of someone placing the worst corners of themselves into Devon's hands and trusting they would not be crushed. He thought, not for the first time, that courage was so often mistaken for fearlessness when, in truth, it looked exactly like Sunny did now, trembling and openhearted all at once.
His hand remained against Sunny's cheek, his thumb tracing absent circles just beneath his eye as though he could soothe every anxious thought before it ever found a voice. "You aren't bringing me the ugly stuff," he said quietly, the words carrying none of the hesitation that so often colored his own confessions. "You're just bringing me your stuff. Big difference." His smile was almost unnoticeable, soft enough to disappear if someone blinked. "Ugly things happened to you. That doesn't... They aren't you, y'know? They just rewired your brain to expect someone to leave instead of bringing comfort. I used to mistake silence for rejection and, like, mistakes for the beginning of the end. Doesn't really matter, really, none of it decides who you are." His gaze wandered across Sunny's face with something approaching reverence. "You come to me scared, and I don't see someone who's too much. I just see the love of my life trying to trust me with parts of himself that other people forced him to hide. I don't think that's even close to burdensome, baby." His voice lowered, quiet enough to bleed into the rhythm of their breathing. "I think it's an honor."
Noah's name is mentioned, coaxing a wistful breath from Devon. His eyes drifted toward the window where the afternoon gathered in pale ribbons across the hardwood floor. Loving Noah had never been simple because nothing in their lives had ever permitted simplicity, yet it had always been absolute. "Noah likes you," Devon reiterates. "He just spent so many years believing it was his job to stand between me and the world that I don't think he knows how to do anything else when it comes to me." A faint smile touched his mouth before fading again. "Noah just recognizes anger. If he's afraid, it comes off as anger. If he's devastated, it looks like rage. That's how we differ," Devon looked back at Sunny then, warmth returning to his expression. "Neither one of us learned what safety looked like as kids. We had to build our own version of it. Noah built walls, and I made myself smaller. You..." His thumb brushed gently along Sunny's cheekbones. "You learned that love would leave if you weren't careful enough." Devon shook his head with quiet certainty. "None of these things makes us inherently difficult to love, though. That's the funny thing about how people's brains work after shit like that."
A breath of laughter escaped him when Sunny called himself a nightmare, so fond and disbelieving that it dissolved before it had properly become sound. Devon leaned forward just enough to press another lingering kiss against his forehead, allowing it to rest there for a heartbeat longer than necessary. "You're not a nightmare, baby. You're the sweetest man I've ever met. You'll always be someone worth staying for." When he drew back, there was moisture gathering at the corners of his own eyes, though he wore it without embarrassment. "You don't have to apologize to me. I get why you do, though. Your existence doesn't require an apology, Sunny." His fingers slipped from Sunny's cheek only so he could cradle both of his hands between his own, holding them as carefully as though they were something irreplaceable. "You said you believe me more than you believe yourself most days." His fingers squeezed Sunny's with quiet reassurance, his gaze impossibly tender. "Borrow my faith until yours comes back. Let me believe in you on the days that you can't. That's what people who love each other do. You don't ever have to earn your place with me, Sunny. You already have it. You've always had it."
his nose wrinkled immediately before he shook his head. "baby..." sunny did his best to look at devon like he'd grown another head or something. "you are so... so wrong. it's okay. you're, like, so handsome. you don't have to be right about this." he grinned, wide and toothy. "it's okay to admit you're wrong. you don't have to be right. you can just be pretty."
"Baby..." Devon echoes. The smile on his face refuses to falter, even when Sonny opts to disagree. He'll take an argument this surface-level as long as Sonny keeps complimenting him. "You're so sick. I'm pretty and right about everything, I'll have you know." Laughter laced his words, winning an eyeroll. "You can keep complimenting me, though. Go ahead and fill my head with even more air."
noah's knees have crashed onto the tile floor, bruises blooming across knees hidden behind sweatpants. he doesn't know if anyone can see the outline of his vertebrae beneath the tshirt from some diy show in jersey, and the sweatshirt that has been pulled up towards his elbows. his hair had been sweat slicked to his forehead and his hair previously, and some of it hangs in his face as he leans over porcelain. he had no interest in being spoken to about the retching, or any of the other things that happened. he doesn't want to talk to anyone, he had tried, clearly, and been shut down. it doesn't matter if it's true if noah believes it.
he loved me. he loved me. he loved me.
it's an impossible truth that noah holds so close to his chest. he was kept. he was important. and that reality is something noah needs to hold on to if he wants to survive any of this. he remembers, in some distant manner, sitting in that basement, talking about things. after so many years being taught how to behave, he doesn't remember where it ended. but he does remember the innate fear under his ribs that if he went away to college both hudson and miles would forget him. being forgotten by miles was a deterrent far stronger than he wanted to admit to. noah was a prize. noah was what he wanted. everyone else was simply a stand in.
devon sits behind him, and his voice hits too hard against noah's back. it settles between too tight shoulder blades. he doesn't know what to say. doesn't know what to do. his chest aches with devon's words. but they all settle like lies, they all settle like things devon doesn't know the truth of, and noah does. "how could you say that?" he mumbles, staring down into the water in his toilet, yellowed with his stomach acid and embarrassing all the same. "why would you say that?" it sounds broken. hurt in a way that noah doesn't expect himself to be. "why do you want to hurt me?" oh, noah doesn't even have the sense to hold it back. not like this, with discolored knees and knuckles.
he doesn't say anything about the mirror. not now, not ever. this isn't the first time devon has seen the physical consequences of noah's struggles. but his hands are still clenched around the toilet, glass embedded in his knuckles and stained red with his blood. he should pull it out. he knows that. but he can't bring himself to care. he can't bring himself to fish tweezers from a drawer to pull glass from his skin. he doesn't mean to be concerning, but he is incredibly aware that he is. even if he keeps trying so desperately not to be.
his eyes well with tears as he leans over the toilet. until he leans back on his heels, until he sits again and pulls his knees up to his chest. "he loved me." he says it to himself, more than he's saying it to devon. it's a truth noah is desperate to believe, an understanding that he has of his own issues. no one made him feel like that before, no one had since. he doesn't think anyone understands quite how special awful things were. then his brows furrow, pulling together and showcasing his desperate confusion. "are you β" his voice breaks before he can say it. jealous ? he won't ask the question, because he doesn't want to hear what devon thinks. he doesn't want any more of these poisonous accusations that he didn't matter βΒ that it wasn't what he thought.
devon says he's angry, and noah feels his own anger smolder in his chest. he doesn't expect anyone to understand him, he doesn't expect DEVON to understand why what noah had was special and why what devon had wasn't. but noah has things no one else does. the first person to ever KEEP HIM. he doesn't comment, doesn't explain, but that doesn't mean his bones don't ache with it.
he loved me.
i was an angel. i was divine. i was everything. i was the prize.
noah believes that, he really does. he believes wholeheartedly that all of the things that happened were not because he was hunted, not because he was hurt, but instead because he was a child who somehow ensnared an adult. he was a young boy who ended up in a position that no child should be in, but he still didn't live in the world where that was his truth. instead, he stacked everything up the way he always had. he was a temptation. he was a bad child. he was broken. he wasn't enough. he was made whole by someone who never should have laid a hand on him. he needed to be better.
"i didn't mean to make you angry." it always comes out too small. "you don't need to talk about this with me." he really means that. he really doesn't want to talk about it, if he's honest. he doesn't want to hear anymore about how he's not special. how he's not enough.
"i don't need you to give anything." he breathes, chest aching and twisting all over again. "i never asked you to."
In all the years Devon had spent outrunning Indiana, he believed that there were horrors capable of losing their shape if enough time passed. He had built an entire life around that illusion. Convinced himself that memory dulled instead of calcified. That silence could starve a wound instead of feeding it. That distance had some miraculous ability to make the unbearable survivable.
Nothing in this life had prepared Devon for the grotesque reality of watching his brother kneel on a bathroom floor and grieve the man who had violated him with the same desperate devotion of someone mourning a first love. It was not the anger at Noah that seized him then, but something so enormous and formless that it nearly split him open. It was disgust aimed at a world that had so thoroughly rearranged Noah's understanding of tenderness. Violence had become synonymous with affection. Possession had become indistinguishable from love. It lodged itself beneath Devon's ribs until breathing felt like labor. There was something uniquely cruel about realizing that the child he had tried so desperately to protect had not merely survived what had been done to him. He had rebuilt his entire identity around it.
He remained where he was. His hands curled into fists against the bathroom floor hard enough that his nails bit into his palms. Devon did not trust himself to reach forward just yet. Every muscle in his body screamed at him to gather Noah into his arms and never let his brother be touched again. Another part of him, more frightened than anything else, worried that even comfort might feel like another theft after everything else had already been stolen. His jaw clenched until it ached. When Devon finally spoke, his voice was rough enough to sound unfamiliar. "I'm not saying this to hurt you." His throat burned with a force of what he was swallowing back. Noah's question had settled inside him like a blade. There was no accusation Noah could have made that would have wounded him more completely. "I'm saying this because you need to fucking hear it, Noah. He didn't love you. He never loved you. He hurt you, Noah. He hurt you."
Devon looked at the broken mirror scattered across the bathroom floor. At the blood dried against Noah's knuckles. Devon felt the unbearable certainty that every single one of these things had been screaming for help long before today. He had missed them. He had missed the hollowing of Noah's body. The rituals disguised as discipline. The careful destruction masquerading as ambition. Noah had become so impossibly skilled at bleeding in ways that looked respectable. The revelation settled over Devon with the suffocating weight of sheer failure. Noah never deserved any of this. Devon hated every person who had ever taught his brother that pain was proof of devotion.
Devon felt something inside him recoil so violently it bordered on panic. There was no longer room left for restraint. "No," he said, and the word came out low and firm. It carried more grief than anger despite the tremor beneath it. "He loved what he could take from you. He loved what he could convince you to surrender to. He was sick. He was evil, Noah. He fucking..." His voice drops, his head gently hitting the wall behind him. "You were never special because he chose you to torment. You were special before he ever knew your name, and the only thing that piece of shit ever recognized was the brightness he wanted to snuff out." His breathing faltered beneath the weight of his own fury, and he scrubbed a hand over his face as though he could wipe away the image of Noah believing himself complicit in his own abuse. "Do you hear yourself, Noah? Do you understand how fucked up this sounds?"
Devon hated the word special more than he had ever hated another word in his life. It echoed every memory he had spent years trying to bury. Against every coach who had praised them because trauma made them disciplined athletes. The foster parents who had smiled for social workers before locking the doors behind them. Every adult who looked at the Vanek boys and saw usefulness instead of children. People had been calling them special since they were old enough to lace their own skates, and every single person who used that word had expected something in return. Their grief. Their obedience. Their talent. Their silence. Their bodies. Devon felt sick with the realization that Noah had learned the lesson too well. Now even the most monstrous violation had become another transaction in his mind. Just another debt paid for the privilege of being wanted. "I'm angry 'cause you're so... You're so fucked up by all of this that you're convinced being chosen by a sick man was the closest thing you'd ever have to being loved. You should fucking hate him, Noah. You should want nothing more than to spit on his grave. I just... I don't... I don't understand."
His gaze dropped to Noah's hands, to the blood dried around the tiny glittering fragments of glass still embedded beneath his skin. Another wave of despair rolled through Devon. Noah had been trying so desperately to erase himself for years. Some part of him still believed smaller meant safer, emptier meant cleaner, hungrier meant less deserving of another pair of hands that would mistake vulnerability for invitation. Devon's chest constricted until he thought it might collapse beneath the enormity of it. "You don't have to tell me not to talk about it 'cause you're afraid I'll hate what I hear. There isn't gonna be a version of this story where I ever stop loving you, Noah. There isn't gonna be a word you say that can make me look at you and see anything except my brother."
He shifted closer then, slowly enough that Noah could move away if he wanted. Every instinct in Devon prayed he wouldn't. His hand rested lightly against the back of Noah's shoulder, just to remind him that he was not alone inside the nightmare. "I might not understand it, but I can't sit here and let you believe any of this. I'm sorry. I just... I can't."
somewhere in this, she supposes that there's an angrier part of her that's lashing out, crashing out. blair when she's jealous, or felt unseen, could be a MONSTER, but why was it she had a sense that he'd had more than enough in his life, looming, trying to bury themselves within his bones? she reads it in the small things, how that wasn't a part of her life, but she's seen it enough by now. blair's waiting for the moment he felt ready for this, or her. to talk, or not to. she's never been the person anybody turned to with the idea of her being a soft place to land, but she could do her best in a pinch. and this was that. and he needed her to be softer, not hard, not angry, not the bulldog she could be when enraged. and this was the part she wasn't as good at, trying, trying, hoping she didn't accidentally make thing worse.
he watches their hands, and she's watching him. someone had to. he bore the signs of being the eldest, the one that had to do it all. she understands, but her bounds and boxes within the idea of eldest and sister sat in a wholly different arena that what he had. part of her wonders if he's ever had the chance to voice for himself more of what he wanted given how he seemed to struggle so innately with the idea of communicating it to her NOW. and how carefully he packages up his words for her, he looks at her with words unspoken, and she figures, years down the line, maybe if and when they had a child, he'd tell her something awful that would break her heart, as a wife, as a mother. why was it that the gentlest people tended to bare the deepest scars? she only hoped, for him, that she was the one with the overactive imagination here.
"do you wish you could say something?" stuff like this is a process. she thinks. it takes a lot for her to quiet that urge to scream and shout, how she's immediately wanting to tell him that she'd fight everyone for him, keep him safe, bark at anyone who tried to come near, even if she asked. but that's not good for her, or him, or them, which was also it's own, nebulous and alive thing that she was learning to deal with. blair, without the absolute UTTER FOCUS on herself could be a terrifying thing, as she was coming to learn, and right now it was a reminder that despite the way that the both of them gave to each other, and even loved each other, that... this was also a personal thing for him. boundaries meant nothing, if it was on everyone else to enforce them for you. fuck. blair was even terrified she'd be the one to push him into things he didn't want to do.
and wasn't she an EXPERT at that? hey, it's not her fault everyone's so dumb! but why does this feel different? he's not quiet or shy or unwilling to say something because he was stupid or horny or selfish or mean. the way he looked at her now, as if terrified he'd done something wrong for not saying something about something wrong gave her enough pause. she knew him. the devon who could be funny and sweet and light up and be so, so, so boyishly adorable it made her want to fucking throw up, because what was he doing with someone like her? hard-edged and mean, ambitious to a fault. she knew him, as much as she knew this was odd, still there to smooth out her touch over his cheeks. a silent reminder that she could be here! quietly... she swears it.
even if she wants to go SCREAM at some of those people outside now.
blair's got him in her arms, her expression a more curiously pinched and thoughtful look from over his shoulder. she's thinking. "... i'm not going to throttle you, but you definitely have me imagining me throttling someone else. anyone else. and i'm going to tamp down on that MURDEROUS INSTINCT for both of our sakes, because i'd look terrible in prison colours, and you don't need the press~" her lips curved into the hint of a smile, reaching up to scratch her fingers through his hair as they arrived at his place, the open door theirs to slip from into the night. "besides. i think we need to talk about if you have any boundaries first!" she's kidding. sort of. "... maybe we come up with a sign or something. so if you need someone, i can be there. and if you don't? i'll fuck off and leave you to handle things the way you want. or... are you worried that might make you freeze too?" shit. honestly, blair hardly knows how to handle this, this was her, making her best efforts, in an arena where her mother had spent her lifetime telling her to simply suck it up. hey though. an underdeveloped muscle was better than none at all!
Devon smiled despite himself when she spoke about prison colors, the expression arriving with all the uncertainty of sunlight after days of rain, tentative enough that it seemed almost afraid of its own existence. It lingered only because it belonged to her. After all, Blair possessed an uncanny ability to pull laughter from places inside him he had long mistaken for abandoned. Even beneath the heaviness of the conversation, beneath memories he could feel prowling restlessly at the edge of his thoughts, she remained impossibly herself. All sharpened wit and ferocious affection wrapped around a heart she insisted on pretending was harder than it truly was. He loved that about her. Perhaps he loved it because he had spent so much of his life believing anger could only arrive wearing cruelty. While Blair's anger, for all its volatility, was born solely from devotion. It sought injustice before it ever sought weakness. It wanted to protect long before it wanted to destroy. The distinction mattered more than she realized.
He followed her out into the quiet of the night, the city no longer roaring quite so loudly now that they had stepped beyond the glittering theater of cameras and music. The air carried the faint scent of rain that had not yet fallen, heavy enough to press against his lungs as they crossed toward the entrance of his building. Her fingers remained tangled loosely with his, and he found himself holding them a little tighter than he ordinarily would have. It was not out of fear that she would disappear, but because they reminded him with every step that he no longer had to shoulder every difficult thing by himself. It was a strange feeling, still unfamiliar enough that part of him waited for it to vanish the moment he trusted it too completely.
Her question lingered between them with a surprising gentleness. Do you have any boundaries?
Devon did not answer immediately because the words themselves opened a door he rarely allowed himself to approach. The truth was almost humiliating in its simplicity. Boundaries had always seemed like a privilege reserved for people who had first been taught that they belonged to themselves. Devon could not remember a version of childhood where his own body had been entirely his. He remembered Noah hiding behind him while voices rose through paper-thin walls, remembered instinctively stepping into doorways before his brothers ever had the chance to, remembered measuring danger with the quiet certainty of someone who had accepted, far too young, that pain was easier to survive when it landed on familiar shoulders. Protecting them had become less of a choice than breathing. There had never been time to wonder what frightened him, what exhausted him, what he wanted or refused or needed, because every calculation began and ended with whether Noah was safe, whether Hudson had eaten, whether everyone else could make it through another day intact. Somewhere in that endless arithmetic, he had quietly removed himself from the equation altogether. Even after the danger had ended, his body had never received the message.
People often mistook gentleness for ease. They saw the quiet smile, the patience, the way he rarely interrupted or objected, and they imagined kindness came naturally to him. They did not understand that compliance and kindness could resemble each other from a distance while being born from entirely different places. There were moments, even now, when someone reached toward him unexpectedly, and every instinct inside him urged stillness before thought. His muscles remembered things his mind had buried beneath years of hockey practices, college lectures, interviews, and carefully constructed normalcy. Freezing was never a decision. It arrived the way winter arrived over empty fields, silent enough that you scarcely noticed the frost until everything beneath it had stopped moving.
His fingers curled more securely around Blair's hand before he finally looked at her, his expression carrying the familiar vulnerability which always seemed to surface when he trusted someone enough to let it. "I think I learned really young that if something uncomfortable was happening to me, it probably meant somebody else wasn't dealing with it instead." He paused, searching for words that had lived inside him for years without ever becoming language. "When Noah was little, I didn't... I didn't think about what I could handle. I only thought about what I knew he couldn't." A faint breath escaped him, almost a laugh in how painfully small it sounded. "After a while, you stop asking yourself whether or not something hurts. I just kept hoping it never hurt the people I loved." He lowered his gaze, watching the uneven pavement beneath their feet as though the cracks themselves deserved more certainty than he could presently offer.
"I don't always know when something's crossed a line until it's too late." His brows furrowed with quiet frustration directed entirely inward. "Sometimes I don't even know whether I'm uncomfortable or just... waiting for permission to be." The admission rested heavily between them, and yet speaking it aloud made it feel less monstrous than it had inside his own mind. When she had suggested a sign, something she could recognize before the panic rooted itself too deeply inside him, warmth spread quietly through his chest. It wouldn't solve everything, he didn't think. There were no elegant solutions to wounds stitched into a person's nervous system over years. Healing was slower than that. It asked impossible things of ordinary days. But Blair had offered him something far gentler than rescue. She had offered him choice.
Devon stopped walking before they reached the front door, turning toward her fully beneath the amber glow of the building's lights. "I like that," he admitted, his smile returning with a little more clarity than before. "I just don't want you to feel the obligation to save me every time." He shook his head lightly. "I don't want that to become your job." He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "I think maybe I'd just like to know somebody's looking for me now."
noah had always expected the time to come when they finally talked about this. not necessarily the pills, he didn't always know about those. but the understanding that noah had of what happened, of devon's departure, he always expected there to be a time when they could talk about it the way it was, instead of the unstable way noah regarded it when he was struggling. the tears slipped down devon's face, and soaked into the fabric of noah's shirt. noah has never shied away from the tears of his brother, he has never been afraid of their emotions. it's his own that he so often runs into problems with. he doesn't know how to be vulnerable without it feeling like a risk, but he doesn't think devon's vulnerability is the same. he thinks its brave.
noah remembered sitting together in their room in that house too. he remembered the way they daydreamed about hudson, about a life that was better than the hell they were living in. he remembered the way that he helped hudson pack his bags, he remembered the way devon handed him the bear, only for hudson to get angry, to say he wasn't putting it down, telling his brothers how fiercely he loved them before he had been sent on his way, social worker holding one hand and bear in the other. noah remembered the way that devon laughed when the three of them walked down cracked sidewalks, the way he always looked for ways to make his younger brothers smile. he remembered being in that hospital room waiting for their parents, and the way devon never let go of either of their hands. he remembered SCREAMING in the hospital room after their uncle was deemed unfit, the way he shouted and cried until devon appeared at his side. holding his hand, telling him it would be okay.
noah remembers devon in their youth, as someone who he could rely on, when fear took over and he didn't know where to turn. he remembered earlier in the season, when he slammed into the crossbar so hard he separated his shoulder. he remembered SCREAMING AND FEAR in that hospital room too, and devon promising to watch the door so he could stop being afraid. devon's love had looked like strength. conviction. it looked like an unmoving force, present even when they weren't physically together. even when they weren't speaking, noah could feel it in the way devon talked about him in interviews. noah could see it in the way that devon had checked on him, the way that he knew things that noah had only in mentioned in those voicemails and text messages, and never saw the light of day where anyone could see noah. he could see how much he cared in everything he did, every breath he took.
and sometimes, noah can't see it. sometimes, noah doesn't know how to separate it all out, doesn't know how to believe the reality instead of the internal dialogue in his head. but that isn't something he's worrying about right now. not when devon is standing in front of him, heart bleeding, and begging noah to explain how he could make sense of any of this. devon mentions that he forgot who noah was, and noah nods. it doesn't really hurt his feelings, even if its a raw confession. noah knows what it's like to tell yourself something for so long it calcifies into truth. he can't put words to it, he's too afraid of the consequences of his own honesty, but that doesn't mean he doesn't understand. "i never felt like i had a reason to hate you.;" a beat, "i couldn't hate you, not then, not ever."
noah looks at devon, all open kindness and care. he has always regarded devon as one of the strongest, bravest people he's ever met. even when things fell apart, that didn't mean noah ever regarded devon as any less. it hurt him, obviously, but that didn't mean he viewed his brother as anything but his hero.
"devon, you were always going to go to college." noah replies, easy and sure. he never had a difficult time knowing when devon would leave, he never had a difficult time with the idea that he would. the only thing noah struggled with, the only thing he struggled with was the silence. and he didn't need to worry about the way that noah handled it. he didn't need to concern himself with the choices that noah made, or the way that noah handled it. he watched devon walk out that door, prouder than he ever had been. he never expected to be saved, he never expected anything at all. would it have been easier on noah, had he not been alone in it? maybe. but noah wasn't always sure he was going to make it to college. he wasn't smart, the way devon does. and sure, he had been scouted. but noah wasn't sure he was ever going to make the grades to get there. but that wasn't the case for devon. devon was SMART. he was always going to be able to get out. it was one more reason that noah knew that devon had to be the one to get out. noah would have sacrificed himself every time to get his brother out of there.
"if you had been in my place, you would have done the same thing." he knows it β he has always known it. he just wished devon wouldn't have to sacrifice. he just wished devon didn't have to sacrifice. but noah did his best, he tried his hardest to make sure that devon never had to, but he couldn't be everywhere. he never could cover everything.
he hears the sadness in devon's voice when he mentions that noah had been trying to save them. a sad little laugh pulls through him at the thought. "that's what bein' a vanek is devon." it sounds sad, but so genuine nonetheless. "'s takin' care 'a your brothers because you CAN." he shakes his head again, letting out a soft breath. it's so small, anyone else might have missed it, but devon never misses any of it. "i didn't do it because anyone made me. i did it because i could. because i wanted to. because i love you two."
devon mentions that the guilt will live in his bones forever, that somedays it feels older than him. noah knows that feeling well. "you can try all you want." he replies, "but i'm stubborn. you're never carryin' this shit alone."
There had always been something unbearably cruel about memory. It refused to arrange itself according to justice, refused to preserve only what deserved preserving, refused to leave the dead where they belonged. It carried everything with equal devotion instead. The terror survived alongside the tenderness. The screams echoed with the laughter. Every beautiful thing they had managed to carve from that life seemed forever tethered to something that had tried to destroy it, and Devon often wondered whether that was why he had spent so many years confusing love with suffering. The two had arrived so faithfully hand in hand throughout his childhood that, somewhere along the way, he had stopped believing they could exist apart.
Devon found himself thinking of another hospital, another impossibly bright room that smelled of antiseptic, where Noah's fingers had fit so naturally between his own because Hudson had been too small to understand why everyone around them had suddenly forgotten how to smile. He remembered sitting on those unforgiving plastic chairs until his legs had gone numb, watching the fluorescent lights hum softly overhead while Noah asked questions that no adult had ever truly answered. He remembered Hudson climbing into his lap because he was tired, curling against his chest with the unquestioning trust that only very small children possess, and remembered promising both of them that everything would be okay long before he understood that promises could be made in perfect sincerity and still be broken. He had believed those words when he spoke them. Perhaps that was the cruelest part. He had been a child making bargains with a universe that never intended to negotiate.
His eyes closed for a fleeting moment as Noah spoke, and memory continued its quiet procession through him. Hudson's tiny shoes scuffing against broken sidewalks in Indiana while he insisted on racing both of them home. Noah pretending to lose every single time because Hudson's laugh was worth more than winning. The ridiculous little stuffed bear tucked stubbornly beneath Hudson's arms, its fur worn thin from being held too tightly, because neither of his brothers could convince him to leave it behind for even an hour. There had been evenings when the three of them sat on the cracked front steps after dinner simply because no one wanted to go back inside just yet. Quiet moments that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things, but meant everything to Devon, even to this day. Devon had forgotten how often Noah laughed back then. Not because life had been easy, but because Noah had always found some impossible corner of joy to shelter inside, some tiny rebellion against the ugliness surrounding them. Even as a boy, he had loved with astonishing deliberateness, tending to affection the way other children tended to playground violence.
A quiet ache spread through Devon's chest as he looked at his brother, and it occurred to him that perhaps Noah had never changed nearly as much as Devon believed he had. The world had sharpened his edges, certainly. It had taught him to fight with his fists before anyone else's could ever reach him, had taught him to carry anger like armor because anger frightened people into keeping their distance. Yet beneath every scar, beneath every instinct that had been carved into him by survival, Noah still possessed that same impossible constancy. He was still the boy who split things into thirds without thinking. Still the boy who instinctively reached for both of his brothers whenever fear entered a room. Still the boy who believed love was something you practiced rather than something you earned.
When Noah said he had never possessed a reason to hate him, the words did not strike Devon as forgiveness. They landed with the quiet certainty of truth spoken by someone who had never doubted it, and somehow that certainty hurt more than any accusation ever could have. Devon had spent years constructing elaborate explanations for why Noah must have stopped loving him because the alternative always demanded something more difficult: admitting that the silence had not been punishment at all. It had been grief. Noah had not waited because he believed Devon owed him anything. He had waited because love had never been a transaction. It had never occurred to him to stop.
A slow, trembling breath escaped Devon before he found himself smiling through tears that no longer felt born of despair alone. They carried something gentler now, something quieter, though no less painful. "I think..." he murmured, his voice dissipating into the space between them. "I've spent so much of my life trying really hard to become the person I thought you deserved that I kinda forgot you already knew who I was." His gaze lingered on Noah with an almost reverent softness, as though he were trying to memorize him all over again. "You keep talking about me like I'm still that kid who held your hand in the hospital, or made all those dumb promises 'cause I didn't know any better. All I've been able to see is every version of myself that came after that. I'm stuck on every mistake. Every year. Every reason I thought I'd just become someone you'd never really recognize anymore."
His voice faltered, though not because he lacked any words. He possessed one too many all at once. Years of unspoken sorrow crowding together until language itself struggled beneath that weight. "I never stopped loving you, kid," he continued quietly. "Not for a single day. There wasn't a morning I woke up and forgot I had two little brothers somewhere doing god knows what. I carried you everywhere I went. Every city I existed in, every apartment, every rink. I'd wonder whether Hudson would've liked it, or if you'd complain about the shitty coffee, whether the two of you would have made fun of how pretentious half the restaurants were." A small, watery laugh escaped him. "God, I couldn't even walk through a grocery store without wondering if Hudson was still eating those stale fucking cookies he liked. Every time hockey season started, I'd wonder if you were sleeping enough, or if you were still pretending your shoulder didn't hurt."
He shook his head slowly, overcome by the quiet absurdity of it.
"I don't think I'll ever know how to stop hurting overnight," he admitted with quiet honesty. "I don't even think that's how people like us heal. I do think that maybe healing starts with finally letting someone sit beside me while it hurts." He let the words breathe before continuing, his voice sharper. "You're stubborn as hell. Stubborn enough to keep carrying the hope for both of us until I can manage it myself. It's only fair I stop trying so hard to convince you to put it down."
possession. consumption. heβs not a person anymore, heβs an object. and the most heβs ever been able to say is something really bad happened to me. he never seems to have the words.
how does noah explain, how does he tell anyone? heβs so stained and unworthy. but devon says he understands, and the tears get worse. βno you DONβT!β it comes out far to sharp, more than he intends it to. but heβs pretty sure the curtain has been pulled back, and devon can see the sharpness for what it is. fear. pain. sacrifice.
βi was SPECIAL.β and he knows what he did to become that way. the way he behaved to become that way. βmiles was the only person who ever thought i was special.β the heal of his hand scrubs against his face, bloody knuckles long since dried arenβt even interesting to him anymore. heβs cracked open and bleeding. this is a secret he has never let anyone in on, a guilty truth that he has carried since the day he turned eighteen. βhe LOVED me.β
the problem, for noah, has always been feeling unimportant. feeling easy to abandon. and he canβt conceive of the idea that someone who promised he wasnβt any of those things, was the same person who caused all of this damage. he had to have some responsibility, because if he didnβt thereβs nothing else left. just sacrifice and grotesque pretending for no reason. maybe it wasnβt pretend at all, maybe there was actually something wrong with him. noah canβt handle that possibility.
βi know it happened to you and to hudsonβ but he KEPT ME. HE LOVED ME." a heaving breath pulls through him, βand it ruined me, but it still felt nice to be wanted.β oh, hudson would kill him if he knew noah said that, but noah doesnβt have the energy to think about it right now. all he can see is times that both devon was gone and hudson had been sent away, and the only person still there was noah. he kept noah. at least, thatβs what noah tells himself, when he needs to justify all of the suffering. at least i was special. at least he loved me. at least thatβs why i was such a temptation.
noah has done so much to change the aftermath of this. they have moved in such opposition to each other. noah craves violence and chaos, places where he has complete control and places where he can give it all up. to be taken apart so violently he doesnβt have to remember a touch that never should have lingered, to make himself smaller with every skipped meal and every workout, so that he becomes less desirable.
twelve is pretty early to learn that no isnβt always enough. but noah has known things about himself since long before they ever arrived in that house. sliding pieces of his dinner onto his brothers plates, getting louder just so the attention is focused away from them, he has always been damned, what is the sense it letting his brothers be damned with him.
it might kill me if we do. it finally registers to noah, and he immediately feels guilty for opening his mouth at all. he should have just kicked devon out, he should have just shut his mouth, he shouldnβt have said anything. he would back up, but thereβs nowhere to go. heβs pressed up against the wall, in the corner of the room, like he has been so many times before. he leans back towards the wall again, instead of into devon, and pulls his knees to his chest again. when his voice comes out, itβs wrecked around the edges, but far to even for someone who so obviously is cracking under the pressure. he scrubs the heel of his hand across his face again, harsh, like it could save him from his own shame and guilt and embarrassment.
βsorry. we donβt need to talk about it.β for a second, noah actually looks like he always does. itβs that same half dead look heβs been wearing for months, but itβs there all the same. eyes bright with unshed tears, teeth clenched with too much emotion, redness in his face, but he just looks off like none of it ever mattered. his stomach twists agin, he thinks he might be sick. but what is there to even throw up? when was the last time hunger wasnβt pulling down on his ribcage?
βanywaysβ umββ thereβs something awful about it, like the space between them has permanently changed because of the things he just said, and now heβs trying to act like it hasnβt. he blinks back his tears, until he's effectively bullied himself back to normal. oh, he wishes he hadnβt said anything at all. βiβm gonnaββ he pulls his feet under him, and his muscles creak as he stands up. βiβm gonna go β throw up, or take a shower, or something.β a humorless laugh pulls through him. βi donβt ββ something aches again. βiβm sorry?β
he walks over towards the bathroom, steps stumbling like heβs still bleary eyed. he IS. but he's just pretending he's not. it's all fine, he swears. he collapses in front of the toilet and wretches, but all thatβs there is bile. thereβs nothing else to him. he canβt remember the last time he ate something. his knuckles are white against the porcelain, like somethingβ anything solid could save him from the guilt overwhelming him. he doesnβt expect devon to follow, but he also doesnβt lock the door. heβs too busy not thinking. if he had been smarter, maybe he would have. maybe he would have made sure his notebook wasnβt out either. the mirror has been shattered all day, at no point have either of them mentioned it. devon must have seen it, if he saw the notebook. it was in the bathroom in the first place. but devon said they shouldnβt talk about this anymore, that he canβt handle it. so noah has shut it all down. put it in a box, pretend it never happened. he canβt remember crumble under the weight of his memory once devon leaves. he can pretend he hasnβt thought about how to explain this a million times.
there is an awful, twisted up part of noah that misses indiana. heβs never told his brothers that. but he misses it all the same. there was something easy to suffering he understood. if hands lingered where they didnβt belong, if noah was ruined, at least he remained special. at least he remained useful. at least he was still real. but now, floating amongst all of these wretched memories and pain, noah didnβt know how to be useful anymore. he doesn't know how to exist anymore. he has nothing left.
Devon did not follow immediately. He remained exactly where Noah had left him, staring blankly at the space his brother had occupied only seconds before. Grief had a funny way of assuming a physical shape, one that had been pressed into the drywall alongside Noah's shadow. The room felt impossibly still now, yet it was not the comforting stillness of an empty room. It was the stillness that descended after catastrophe, the kind that arrived only when the body had exhausted itself screaming.
Somewhere beyond the bathroom door, he could hear the hollow sound of Noah retching, the miserable scrape of porcelain and uneven breathing. Every instinct Devon possessed urged him to move, to fix, to gather every shattered piece of his brother into his own hands and somehow force them back together. He stood rooted to the floor, because Noah's confession had hollowed him out so completely that he could scarcely remember how to draw breath.
The words refused to love him alone.
He loved me.
Devon shuts his eyes, but it's all in vain. The words only echoed louder.
He loved me. He loved me. He loved me.
There was something uniquely monstrous about the way children survived the unbearable. Adults liked to imagine innocence as something pristine, untouched, but innocence had never belonged to them. Innocence belonged to the people who looked away while they bargained. Noah had rewritten reality because the reality itself was something too impossible to survive. A child who believed he had been chosen was far safer than a child who understood he had been hunted. A child who believed affection lived somewhere inside violence could wake up the next morning. A child who accepted that he had been nothing more than prey often could. As much as Devon understands it, he simply cannot wrap his mind around it. Noah had fallen within the lie his own mind had built to keep itself alive, and the revelation filled Devon with a fury so complete that it eclipsed even his own shame.
He crossed the apartment before he remembered deciding to move, his footsteps quiet against the floor until he reached the open bathroom door. Noah was folded over with nothing left to give. His shoulders trembling beneath all of his efforts. Devon's gaze drifted upward without meaning to, landing on the shattered mirror above the sink, where fractured pieces of glass still clung stubbornly to the frame, each one reflecting only broken portions of the room. It struck him that Noah had been living inside that image for far longer than today. He had been surviving inside broken reflections, measuring himself in shards, starving himself against a body that had never once betrayed him despite all of the cruelty inflicted upon it.
Devon's throat tightened until speaking felt almost impossible. "Noah..." The name emerged so quietly it scarcely disturbed the silence. There was a lost feeling that tightened in his chest. "You were kind. You were lonely. You wanted somebody to choose you because everyone else walked away in one way or another. He saw that. He used it." Devon's hands shook violently as he lowered himself onto the bathroom floor several feet away, leaving Noah enough room that he would never mistake comfort for confinement. "He didn't love you." His voice remained firm, despite the instinct to break around the sentence. "He never loved you, Noah." He hates how cruel it sounds, despite everything. "He loved what he could take from you. Those aren't the same thing." He swallowed down the sickness rising inside of him. He dismisses the tears that stream down his cheeks, wiping them away with the back of his hand. He hates this. It's all wrong. It's all so terribly fucking wrong.
What a rotten waste of innocent years, Devon thinks. He wonders, if only for a moment, what could have possibly been done to have avoided all of this. Devon's eyes slam shut, and the quiet memories of their parents rise to the surface. He remembers their mother, her kindness, the way she used to run her fingers through Devon's hair when he laid his head in her lap. He's missed her for a lifetime, and he thinks of all the things she would have said to offer either one of them comfort. How different would it all have been had it not been for the accident? His chest feels hollow; everything just feels wrong. He's so angry he can't decipher one emotion from the next.
Devon recalls the recurring dream where the house he remembered as a layer of his own hell is set to flames. He doesn't run back inside. He just looks from a distance, watching it burn down to ash. "I don't know what to say," he says, in all of his raw honesty. "I don't wanna say anything anymore."
He doesn't. He stops it all. Shuts his brain off in the way he learned to do as a child. "I'm going to sit here on this bathroom floor until one of us feels normal enough to talk about anything. I just β I don't know, Noah. I know I'm angry. That's all I have to give right now."
