The Flicker of a Streetlight- Part 17
Everyone like the fluff in the last part? Good, hold onto that feeling, it’ll be a while before we see it again. Colt is not in the right mindset to be having these conversations about his family. References to childhood abuse and manipulation.
I have once again updated the masterpost with warnings for this and the next part. I’ve also made it a bit easier to pick out specific warnings in that section. Additionally, I've created a more in-depth warning post, and further updates to warnings will be directed there.
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Masterpost
"What? Oh, I don't have a car."
Colt blinks, processes what Ryland said, then stares. "You don't have a car."
Colt grimaces, the thought of the hills alone makes his legs ache. He points down the sidewalk in the direction of his parking spot, "My car, then."
The sun is bright in the sky, not yet at its peak but well on its way. Colt is tempted to take his jacket off to better feel the light breeze, but he can see his car from here and it really isn't worth it when there's air conditioning just a few yards ahead of them.
"How was the drive? I don't think I ever asked."
Colt digs for his keys as they get closer. "The view was nice but there was this thing with the gas and I dropped my coffee right at the on ramp for highway one so I felt like shit basically the whole time."
"You mentioned that—the gas—what happened?"
"Honestly, I have no idea." He doesn't want to talk about it, so he adjusts. "I had a panic attack at the scenic overview, so there was that, too."
What he really needs to learn is when to shut his mouth and not let his impulses get the best of him, because why did he say that?
Ryland stops walking. Colt's car is a yard ahead of them. "You had a panic attack, in your car, and then kept driving under the same conditions?"
"Do you know what caused it, at least?"
"Not really." He looks away. "One minute I was fine and the next I just, couldn't breathe. It wasn't the coffee, though, I would have had a panic attack a hour ago if it was. And it wasn't the driving because-" he cuts himself off, suddenly very aware of how he didn't bring up his uneasy feelings about the car rides after he got back to the states with Dr.Kay.
Ryland swipes the keys from his hand.
Colt is slumped in the passenger seat of his own car. Ryland is in the process of parallel parking in front of his apartment building. The drive wasn't that long, but Colt's stubborn refusal to respond to Ryland made it feel so much longer.
A statement—an observation, really.
"I drove to the coffee shop just fine."
"You don't know what triggered the first panic attack and it would be irresponsible for me to let you operate a vehicle when I am capable of doing so."
Colt huffs, leaning his head back against the headrest. "'Irresponsible,' huh?"
Ryland sighs. "I just, I don't want to see you hurt again."
He can hear the pitter patter of rain on their bedroom window, but the stinging pain on his back drowns everything else out. Ryland is begging him to stop making things worse, but neither of them actually know what will set him off.
Colt clicks the release on his seatbelt and gets out of the car.
Ryland is quick to follow him. "Colton-"
He rounds the car to meet Colt on the sidewalk. "I'm not gonna say I'm sorry," he says quietly, "If I think you're a danger to yourself, I'll do it again, and I won't try to apologize for a behavior I don't intended on stopping."
Colt stares at him. It's always the brutal honesty with him, isn't it? "You think I'm a danger to myself?"
"You have no idea what triggered a panic attack while you were driving, I'm not going to chance that if I don't have to."
"And you just wanted to keep me safe?" Colt can't help himself from sneering.
"There's a lot I'd do to keep you safe."
The confession is jarring. Ernest and quiet, Colt isn't sure what to make of it.
Ryland sighs. "You still wanna come in?"
Colt centers himself, trying to shake off the lingering memories. It mostly works, but he knows they're still lurking in the quiet corners of his mind. "Yeah."
Ryland starts towards the apartment building and Colt follows, hoping they don't live on the top floor.
Turns out, they live on the third floor. It's not high enough for him to justify asking about an elevator, so he doesn't. He just climbs the stairs after Ryland and curses the pain.
When Ryland pulls his keys from his pocket—taking the lanyard with them—Colt realizes that the fox tail key chain isn't attached to the lanyard, its clipped to his belt loop. A weird choice, but he doesn't want to call it out.
Stepping into Ryland's apartment is odd, to say the least. He was half-expecting to see their childhood bedroom on the other side of the door. Ryland locks the door behind them, then deposits his and Colt's keys in a sage green ceramic dish on a sturdy looking table at the entrance. To their left is the living room, separated from the kitchen by a breakfast bar. To their right is just wall that leads to a hallway that Colt can't see into. Dead ahead is what looks to be a door to their balcony.
The very first thing to catch Colt's eye after taking his shoes off is a yellow, floral patterned couch that looks like its straight out of the 70s. Normally, Colt wouldn't care; he's seen too many stupid interiors and furniture arrangements in rich people's houses to have an accurate sense of style anymore. But it feels so out of place. The yellows stick out among vibrant oranges and rich greens.
"Dude." Colt takes three steps towards it, then turns back to Ryland. "This better be the most comfortable couch in existence. Why do you have this?"
Ryland laughs. "It was all we could find when we moved into our first place and now everyone's too attached to it to see it go."
Careful to avoid knocking the low coffee table, Colt flops onto the couch and then veritably sinks into the cushions with a groan. "Yeah, I can see why." This is the kind of couch that Colt would kill for—plush but supportive with a soft fabric that doesn't make his skin prickle. Shit, maybe he should have taken up Ryland's offer to sleep on their couch.
Ryland takes the pine arm chair, curling his legs up underneath him like he did when they were younger.
"You talked to your therapist, about Liz?"
Colt sighs, it was basically the same question he asked in the coffee shop, but now Colt didn't have any excuse not to answer it. "Yeah. Yeah, um-"
He can't look at Ryland—he used to be able to look to his brother then his words got lodged in his throat and wouldn't come out, but now? Now he hardly knows the man. He unclenches his jaw. "She helped me make a plan. Figured you know better about what not to do, though."
Colt's leg bounces; he doesn't care to stop it since the little movement he gets from it stops him from getting up and pacing.
"You can't set her off the way I did."
"I do know that. The things I said to her," he pauses and Colt finally looks at him. 'Haunted' isn't the right word, there's too much anger in his expression. "You couldn't possibly fuck it up the way I did."
"And you're still not gonna tell-"
"No," Ryland cuts him off, "Its not something you would ever need to know."
Colt frowns, "You know that doesn't make me any less curious."
Colt heaves a long sigh, leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling.
Ryland's voice has lost its hard edge again, "What are you planning on telling her?"
"That I feel betrayed by her lies. That I don't think our relationship can survive that betrayal and her manipulation of my life. That I'm blocking her and I don't want to hear from her again."
He hums. "Don't tell her you've blocked her number, she's got about a dozen and it'll take her longer to move to a new one if she doesn't know she's blocked."
Colt lifts his head and stares at his brother. "What?"
"I told you she was persistent, didn't I?"
"How many times has she tried to call you?"
Ryland is obviously unimpressed by the line of questioning. "Enough to establish a pattern of behavior. Look, just trust me when I tell you its a bad idea, okay?"
Ryland wants his trust. Why is it so hard to give?
That's in the past. They're both different people now.
Quit thinking about it, Colton.
"Should I leave you and Court out of it? As much as I can, I mean."
"I think talking about what happened is unavoidable, but don't harp on Court."
"Well, I'll be there, so I'm guaranteed to be a topic of conversation."
Colt's leg stops bouncing as he focuses on three specific words. "What do you mean 'you'll be there?'"
Ryland shuffles, pulling his arms out of his cardigan. "I mean, I'll be there. Did you think you were going to do this alone?"
He did. That's what he prepared for. Colt had planned on driving to see and confront his mother completely by himself.
Apparently, Ryland had other plans.
"I thought you didn't want to see her."
"I don't, but I want to be there for you more than I don't want to see her."
Where was this hiding? Ryland's feelings, where had they gone for so long and why are they back now?
Colt is forgetting something.
Its that same, frustrating blank spot in his memory that he'd prodded at just over a week ago.
"You spaced out for a second, you okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Its- I'm fine."
Ryland gives him this look. Its the same one he used to shoot at him when Colt was lying and they both knew it.
The words escape Colt without much conscious thought. Its been on his mind, but all he wants right now is to more on from his little moment.
Ryland tenses. "Do what, exactly?"
It hits Colt, then, that his mother has done irreparable damage to him and his brothers. She hurt them. A lot. And not just-
"I don't know. I have a hypothesis or two, but nothing that I could get confirmed. Sometimes," he hesitates, pulling his cardigan all the way off, "sometimes people aren't meant to be parents."
"And we got the shit end of the stick." His hands shake, even as he balls them into fists to try to stop them.
"For the most part, yeah. But at least we made it though."
"Did we?" Colt stands suddenly. He mentally kicks himself when Ryland flinches, but the build up of energy inside of him is too much to be sitting down. He paces the length of the couch, then the length of the rug under it after finding the couch too short. "Did we really make it through?
"I mean, you ran off the second you could, I spent so long in it that I barely feel like my own person, and Court! We have no idea where Court is but the last we heard he was in jail. Is that what 'making it though' looks like?!"
This is, perhaps, the most calm he's seen Ryland since they started talking again. " I got out, you're getting out, and Court made it possible." Its unnerving.
"But she hurt us! Why the hell would she do that?! What was the point of it all?! Why pit us against each other or let dad hit us or, or!-"
"You need to slow down and breath, Colt."
"What I need are answers, Ryland! How am I supposed to live in a world she created? Do I- Just- How could she?-"
He growls. The words won't come out right and if he keeps trying to force them out it'll only get worse. Colt's breathing is heavy. At first he thinks its because of how worked up he is, but no, he can't really breathe right now.
That's not supposed to happen.
He sits back down on the couch—falls onto it, really—focused entirely on getting his lungs to work right.
The memory comes back, one of them, at least. It doesn't slam into him so much as it eases its way back into its rightful place.
She had him by the neck, blunt nails digging into his skin. There was nothing for her to say that she hadn't said before. It was a reminder: follow the rules, don't fuck it up—smile, hide the marks, tell everyone how much mommy does for him, be a good boy.
He hadn't been good. Not that he knew what he'd done wrong, no, he just knew that was the only rule he could have broken. Her hand was tight, making him feel light headed even when he knew his airflow was perfectly fine.
Fuck the adrenaline, he hasn't felt fear like that in years. The only thing that came close was when Tom had him tied to the chair on the pier. He chokes on the gasoline.
No. Not gasoline. Its not gasoline. Its air.
A phone goes off. Not Ryder's phone—it can't be Ryder's phone because they shot it.
Ryland's voice reaches him though the haze of memory, “I know you’re chasing coyotes right now, but you can’t run with them if you can’t breathe.”
How much of his childhood did he bury? How many little phrases has he forgotten because there was no one around to remind him of them? 'Little Coyote,' that was what his brothers used to call him in the dead of night, when things were calm.
Breathe. He needs to breathe.
Colt holds his breath. It sounds counterintuitive, but if he can hold it for five seconds, he can start box-breathing. Its regulatory, nice and simple, with an easy pattern. Logically, he knows he's okay; all he has to do now is get the rest of his body in line with his brain and calm the fuck down.
His heart rate spikes again when he opens his eyes—when did he close them?—to find Tom crouched in front of him. Colt is already committed to throwing the punch when he realizes that its just Ryland. The guilt is immediate, Ryland is just trying to help-
So he's not the only one with reflexes.
"Shit. Shit! Sorry! Are you okay?"
As far as being pinned to the ground in seconds goes, this might have been the most clean execution he's been on the receiving end of. He gives a thumbs up—work mode, he's in work mode. He grits his teeth because it kind of does hurt, but his head is back in the game and he can think straight again. "Fine. Good. Better, actually."
"Am I still gonna get punched?"
Ryland climbs off of him, but Colt stays on the floor. The rug is soft. His back hurts; taking the pressure off by staying still on his stomach will only work for so long, but its working now and he'll deal with the stiffness later.
"Oh, is it floor time?" Ryland asks from the couch. He sounds amused, but Colt can hear the undercurrent of worry. His thumbs up becomes a middle finger.
"Hey, there's no shame in needing floor time." Ryland nudges Colt's leg with a socked foot. "Are we gonna talk about it, or do you need some time?"
"I thought you were Tom," Colt confesses to the coffee table.
Ryland doesn't say anything for a moment, then, "He's your ex, right?"
That's about the last thing he wants to talk about right now. "Stop."
They sit in the semi-peaceful quiet. Colt regulates his breathing as he comes down from the adrenaline high. Ryland is tying away on his phone;the only reason Colt can tell is because the man has haptics on. He nudges Colt's calf with his foot again.
"Uh, sort of adjacent to that, Simon'll be home in 20 minutes. If you want to stick around to meet him you can, but we won't be upset if you want to go back to your hotel and decompress."
"I'll be fine in a couple minutes." Colt sighs, then remembers, "Wait, do I get to meet your dog?"
Ryland laughs. "Yeah, you get to meet Laika."
While I am sorry about the delay, I really don’t have a set schedule for Flicker. That being said, the end of this arc is fast approaching and fully plotted <3
Dinner is served :3 (let me know if you'd like to be added) @causticflower @your-mom-friend @bad-at-names-so-yeah @imnoteventechnicallyinthisfandom @unlabeledcassette @daniel-dion-hyde @mon5tera @emptyingthespiral @thecandiedchocolate @zucchinigal @kittzu @elderredraccoon @mr-seamonster @ashhes030 @ikeasharkcore @urlocalplagedocter @aceduzmusic @nonbino-chaos-fox @newsiesiswhyimhere @ranch-by-the-bottle @bunnyblinks @slow-reboot @rae-not-rey @8th-degree-of-kevin-bacon @hyenatenni @not-a-virus-exe @gildedcryptid
and a big big big thank you to everyone who lurks <3
