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He takes the hospital corridor at a light jog. Black has been moved to different rooms three times since he’s been here, but he’s been in this room since they took him out of the medically-induced coma and White has the route memorised. It’s busy, and he thinks he gets some disapproving looks, but he isn’t going to not run.
Not when Black’s finally awake.
Getting away from the garage that morning had been tricky, but he’s pretty sure he managed not to wake Sean when he took the call. He’d already been awake for about an hour by then, having been lurched awake by the frantic pounding of his heart – by Black waking up, surely – so it had just been a matter of extracting himself from Sean’s grip and retreating to the edge of the room, keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t stir.
The door’s open when he gets there.
He’s already smiling when he hears his brother’s voice, at long fucking last, saying, “-die, though?”
A woman responds, “It remains a possibility, yes, we really would encourage you to remain in the hospital until cleared for release.”
She isn’t one of the doctors or nurses White has seen before, but then he hasn’t seen many recently; that’s been Todd’s job. He doesn’t look at her too hard anyway, because his eyes are fixed just beyond her.
Black doesn’t respond to what she said. Their eyes meet.
White rushes past the – doctor? he thinks probably a doctor – and to his brother’s side, without either of them speaking. He grabs Black’s hand tightly as he has done many times over the past few months, but this time Black grabs black just as tightly. White has been crying since he got the call, but the tears slow to a stop now.
He’s awake, and they said cognitive function is normal. It’s more than he’s even been hoping for.
He sees Black’s gaze sweep over his body, followed by a squint.
To avoid the question in Black’s gaze (probably “are those my clothes?” or “why are you dressed as me?” with a side possibility of, “hey, White, long time no see, did you by any chance steal my life, identity, and underwear on the advice of my probably-a-traitor former friend?”) he turns to the – yep, doctor, he sees the white coat now – and introduces himself.
“I’m White, his younger brother, I received a call-“
The doctor nods and says, “Yes, your brother is insistent we release him without informing his emergency contact, but hospital policy, and, to be frank, common sense-“
White turns to Black and they share a speaking glance. There’s no such thing as mind-reading, but their old connection isn’t gone and some things are clear enough; Todd was never supposed to be Black’s emergency contact, Black doesn’t want Todd finding him here, and Black wants to leave. The implications of those things, White can deal with later, feel like a complete fucking moron over later, but what they mean for the outcome of this conversation is immediately apparent.
He squeezes Black’s hand and takes over, because Black was never great at excuses.
As the two of them reach Black’s own motorbike, he scans it – still well-maintained, a few new scuffs – and says, “I don’t think this is what she meant when she asked if you had a personal vehicle to transport me in.”
White, arm around his waist to hold him up, replies, “In which case she should have been more specific. Garage or apartment?”
It seems like a good time for the question that’s been bothering him.
“Why have you stolen all of my shit?”
White avoids his gaze again, the coward, but his answer is a matter of fact, “That would be because I’ve been impersonating you, P’Black. Garage or apartment?”
Ask a stupid question, he thinks.
“Garage, if his people haven’t already been informed. The names you asked the doctor about-“
“Seem to be Todd’s points of contact at the hospital, yes.”
“Garage, then.”
Black’s little brother nods, and presents him with a borrowed helmet.
Black shakes his head, says, “Give me my helmet, you use the spare one.”
“This one’s lighter and you had head injuries, P’-“
“Nearly three months ago, give me the fucking helmet.”
As Sean is taking his helmet off, Yok makes one last attempt to convince them to stop.
“I really think it’s getting creepy now, guys,” he says.
(Elsewhere in the city, Dan feels the urge to laugh hysterically. He wonders why.)
Gram hisses back, “It’s not just that he’s acting weird in general this time, the conversation Sean heard was suspicious!”
Sean nods in affirmation, saying, “If he doesn’t want us creeping around, he should try telling us what’s going on with him some time.”
Yok rolls his eyes but nods. They’re going in.
They’ve parked their bikes around the corner from the garage and they came in slowly, so if Black is even at the garage right now, he hopefully won’t have heard their approach. They let Yok lead the way, mostly because it would otherwise end up as an argument between Sean and Gram.
Things have been tense between the two of them, lately.
Because he’s in the lead, Yok is the first one to see it and point it out to the other two – Black’s bike is back.
They exchange glances.
It’s not unprecedented for Black to miss classes to hang out at the garage, even if it is weird that he’s doing it with neither Gram nor Sean, but he headed out early after having a quiet, intense phone call about someone he referred to only as P’ having woken up. Black doesn’t have any brothers, and he doesn’t have close enough connections to any of their seniors to be getting that kind of call about them, so… the sneaking.
Sean hadn’t really expected him to be at the garage, but when they’d swung by his apartment building the bike hadn’t been there; that’s the only reason they came. When Black’s being cryptic, he doesn’t come to the garage.
Except when he does, apparently.
Using all of Gumpa’s stealth training, they approach the doors as quietly as they are able. Sean gets inside a second after Yok, and just before Gram. He hears conversation from deeper within the garage, and no sounds of work.
“-have to tell her Todd was my abusive boyfriend?”
“I only implied it! Could you think of a story that would have got you released without the hospital calling him?”
One of the people he can hear grunts, starting to say, “We could have just fucked off,” before making another grunt, this one pained. Something about the voices is off-putting, but he can’t exactly put his finger on it. There’s another exchange, this one too quiet for Sean to make out, and he exchanges more glances with the others before gesturing to them that they should get closer.
Nods, and they do.
“Let go of me,” says one voice.
The other says, “If I do that, you’ll fall.”
“Just-“
Yok’s the one who blows it; when he sees the people talking, he makes a sound of confusion. Sean and Gram both glare at him, but they follow him into the open, there’s no point carrying on with the stealth now.
Um.
Sean will take back that glare, actually; this is pretty weird.
It’s clear what was bothering him about the voices, anyway. Black is standing next to a chair, sitting in which is another, bruised, Black.
His gaze drifts to Gram, who is looking back at him – he looks stricken.
The Black on the chair says, “You said they all had classes until four.”
“They do!”
Gram puts his hand up to interrupt and says, “We decided to skip class because you were acting suspiciously again.” (He addresses the statement in their general direction, sidestepping the question of which of them, exactly, was acting suspiciously.)
The standing-Black winces and the sitting-Black smirks, turns to the other one, and raises a single eyebrow. Standing-Black winces harder.
“About that,” says Yok. “I have a question. What the fuck is happening?”
Gram nods in agreement, but Sean is thinking. The standing-Black is wearing the clothes he’d left in this morning, and he’s got the worried eyes he’s been wearing every time Sean’s seen him since the fire; the sitting one is wearing a hoodie and sweatpants he’s never seen on Black before, and that superior amusement on his face is also an expression Sean’s familiar with.
He hasn’t seen it in a while though.
He leaves Yok and Gram, walking closer to the two Blacks.
As he approaches, the sitting-Black’s mouth pulls into a sneer, and the standing one just watches him in that expectant way. He doesn’t know what the other two are doing, if they’re following him across the room or not.
“I have a question too,” he starts. When he grabs the standing one by the wrist and pulls him in, the sitting one hisses in anger, and that confirms his question is the right one.
Only to the one standing in front of him, he whispers, “What’s your name?”
As the one that’s actually Black says, “Hey, back the fuck off,” the one Sean likes blinks wetly up at him.
“White,” he says.
“Cute,” he replies, which is fucking nonsense, but it makes White smile just a little bit, so.
He has a lot more questions, but he is aware – distantly, he hasn’t looked away from White’s eyes – that the others are still around, so he says, “Come on,” and starts pulling him away from the others.
Black says, “Hey, back the fuck off, Sean,” and stands up.
Sean wouldn’t give a shit, except White pulls his wrist out of Sean’s hand and rushes back to Black’s side, saying, “Sit down P’Black, you’re supposed to move as little as possible.”
Oh, the other two did follow him over, Sean sees.
Yok’s been quicker on the uptake, it looks like – he helps Black sit back down even though he only gets a glare for it. Gram, on the other hand, is standing a couple of feet back from the chair, just kind of staring.
He’s staring at the right one, though, the one that’s staring back.
That’s when Gumpa comes in, bearing snacks and a knowing twinkle of the eyes – Sean wonders for one brief, insane moment if this has all been one of his training sessions. Situational awareness, or some shit.
“White, do you want to get everyone up to speed?”
“Yeah White,” says Black, with a bit more bite than Gumpa had. “Do you want to get everyone up to speed?”
Yok gets the rest of the chairs.
(Sean makes sure he’s next to White.)
Feeling like he’s been talking for weeks, White is relieved to get the chance to retreat to Sean’s room. The others – the gang, the real ones, wanted to get the chance to discuss the situation without him, which makes sense no matter how he feels about it.
Gram’s pissed off, that’s clear enough – he doesn’t hide his responses like Sean does. Sean and Yok, actually, Yok had been all quiet, and White really has no hope of reading his expression.
Now is the time to feel stupid over the Todd of it all, anyway.
They should be angry, he knows, with who he’d been passing information to. Is it enough, that he stopped giving details before they even took Black off the good drugs? Todd knows a lot already. And if Todd knows…
He doesn’t want to think about this.
At least he’d been able to avoid explaining the whole situation with his dad, Black interrupting and redirecting every time the conversation even tried going there. The whole thing is embarrassing; Sean was there the day after the argument, White doesn’t want him knowing he was that upset over a family argument.
As he’s thinking that, the door slides open.
He looks up and sees Sean, face still unreadable.
What can he even say?
Sean throws something, saying, “Catch.”
He does, and it’s a carton of soy milk.
Looking back up at Sean, he says, “Thank you.”
Sean avoids his gaze but comes to sit by him on the bed.
In the silence, for lack of anything better to do, White uses the straw to puncture the carton and starts drinking. When he glances sideways at Sean, he’s watching him.
Neither looks away.
Eventually, Sean says, “You’ve been confusing me, White.”
White nods, straw still in his mouth.
“And you’ve been lying to me.”
He nods more slowly this time, swallows, and starts apologising, but to do that he has to take the straw out of his mouth.
As soon as he does, Sean’s mouth is on his.
Fuck, White hopes that squeak wasn’t as loud as he thinks it was; that’s embarrassing. It doesn’t seem to put Sean off too badly, at least, because he’s deepening the kiss and getting a big, firm hand around the back of White’s neck.
Is it weird that the neck thing is really working for him? Like, considering the history, and-
Sean bites White’s lip, and suddenly “considering” is not a thing White is capable of. He’s learning a lot about himself today.
(He drops the soy milk.)