When they'd picked up the key, the esteemed Dean of Admisssions neglected to mention that the cottage it belongs to is inaccessible by car. Or, at least, inaccessible by the sensible sedan Virgil had rented at the airport. So their four hour drive had reached its terminus in a small, wooded parking lot—packed dirt, not even paved—just off the end of the road that had brought them ninety-nine percent of the way to their destination. The rest of the way is going to require a two-mile trek down a sandy, unpaved access road, a thoroughly wooded lane lined by cottages. Their destination, predictably, is at the very end of this path.

At first, Virgil had expected this news to be met with flat, dour refusal on John's part; with justifiable protestations about his relative levels of exhaustion and patience—but the drive out seems to have worked a change in his brother. He's still quiet and subdued, but when told about the last leg of their journey, his initial reaction isn't anger. Just a shrug of his shoulders and a nod of acquiescence. One they're parked and out of the car, John climbs out and stretches, and looks around their surroundings with something that might even be interest, though he doesn't go far.

Gordon, by contrast, practically explodes out of the passenger seat, and rightly so. Once his feet hit the ground, he stops just shy of turning an exuberant handspring before setting off to jog a brisk few laps around the parking lot. This is just what's to be expected, after Gordon's been cooped up anywhere for any substantial length of time. There was a point in time when Virgil would've considered a four hour drive in near silence to be beyond his little brother's capabilities. But apparently that time has passed, because Gordon's just done it, without even one word of complaint.

A predictable change had come over him as they'd gotten in sight of the sea, and from that point it had been rather like sharing the car with an anxiously excited labrador puppy. They'd taken the ferry across the Vineyard Sound, and Gordon hadn't been able to help taking himself up to the observation deck, while Virgil and John had stayed in the car below decks, talking quietly about nothing in particular. Between the two of them they'd eaten what remained of the snacks purchased for the trip.

And then there'd been a drive through a picturesque little town, where Virgil had carefully made a mental note of the hospital they'd driven past, and Gordon had chattered excitably about the possibility of taking a swim in the Atlantic Ocean, and John had just sat quietly in the backseat, watching but not commenting as they'd come to the end of the main drag.

And now they're here, in a little wooded parking lot with only two other cars and no other people, and a narrow, sandy path winds off into the woods. It's late in the afternoon, and the light is just beginning to grow golden. The air is crisp and damp and smells of the sea, and seems to carry the sound of waves further than it should be able to, through the rustling of the wind in the trees.

And maybe, finally, something's changed for the better. Virgil can't quite pinpoint the source of the feeling, but as his older brother joins him by the trunk of the car, he'd almost swear that something's different.

"It's quiet here," John observes, making the comment offhandedly, as Virgil unloads the trunk and methodically checks to make sure he has everything, all the requisite keys, his wallet and his phone. He almost doesn't expect it when John holds out a hand for the strap of his backpack, and he realizes in that moment that he'd mentally assigned himself the task of carrying John's bag. He manages to cover for the moment of reluctance before he hands it over and closes the trunk. "Boston isn't quiet."

"It's nice," Virgil agrees, and then promptly disrupts the quietness with a sharp, piercing whistle, attempting to summon Gordon back from the far end of the parking lot. "Come get your bag, dumbass!" he calls. "We gotta go!"

Gordon comes scampering over, grinning from ear to ear and all wound up by the sea air and the freedom to move around again and possibly the same sense of change that Virgil's noticed. It's a truth about Gordon that he can be absolutely irrepressible when he's really and properly happy, and something about being close to the ocean never seems to fail to make him happy. And he's completely and obviously pleased with himself as he declares, "I'm a genius. This was a great idea."

"This was Dad's idea," Virgil points out, and hefts his bag over his shoulders. And then, absently, "We'll have to call and let him know we got here okay."

He realizes a moment to late that this is the sort of prospect that might upset his brother, but when he glances at John, he doesn't seem to have noticed. Instead, he's peering down the winding path that waits for them, cut through a forest that's dense with trees, but still sparse with new green leaves. He hasn't reacted to the notion of calling their father, and Virgil clears his throat as he hastily changes the subject. "—But we've gotta get there first. You guys got everything?"

Gordon slings his backpack over his shoulders and bounces up onto the toes of his sneakers, already restive and ready to go. "Yes, Mom."

Virgil ignores this and taps John's shoulder, just to make sure he's got his attention. "J, you up for a bit of a walk? Gonna be all right?"

"I'm fine," John answers, and then, dryly, "I'm better off than I was the last time you made me walk anywhere."

Virgil blinks. "When did I…?"

"You dragged me three times around the track at the park by my apartment on Friday night and legitimately almost killed me."

Only he doesn't say it like he's angry. In fact, unless Virgil very much mistakes his brother's tone, John's said it like he meant it to be funny, and of all the unpredictable things that could happen next, Gordon actually laughs, and gives Virgil a shove on John's behalf.

"Well, but you're still here though. C'mon, let's go. I wanna get to the water before the sun goes down."

It becomes obvious as they start down the path from the parking lot that there was really no way the car could've gone much further. It's the off season, and the road is rough from lack of use. It's walkable, and would probably be drivable with gumption and a disregard for a car that's technically the rental company's property, but the drive would've been a miserable exercise. At points the path narrows further than it seems a car would even be able to pass, and though the greenery is still sparse, this early in spring, the wood around the path is dense on either side, and what cottages they pass are set far back from the path. Even worn out and exhausted as he is, John's long-legged and walks quickly, and Gordon very deliberately keeps up beside him, while Virgil trails a few paces behind, watching them both.

For a while they walk in companionable silence, acclimating to the change in environment. Vacations have always been part of their family's life in one capacity or another—simple road trips early in their childhood, and on to more elaborate destinations as the family's fortunes increased. A few years back the entire family had gone to Hawaii, though it had been Gordon who'd had Virgil's attention then. He'd been newly beneath their father's thumb and meant to be kept on a short leash. Hawaii had been the first time since his ill-fated eighteenth birthday that their father had permitted him a little bit more freedom, with the provision that he stuck with Virgil.

But it hadn't been bad. It had been pleasantly surprising, even, to spend time with Gordon and discover that he cared more about surfing and rock climbing and frolicking in the Pacific than he did about sneaking off their father's radar and getting into trouble. That his bad behaviour was a symptom of his lack of direction, and not emblematic of a significant shift in his actual personality.

Discipline is Gordon's silver bullet. It had been what pulled him out of the rocky few years after their mother's death and set him on the path to his Olympic Gold. The subsequent loss of that structure had sent him spiraling off the rails again, and into a sort of desperate anarchy. Absent of anything specific to devote his attention towards, instead he'd decided to try anything and everything, and preferably all of it at once. It had taken their father pulling him up short to put a stop to that.

As he watches Gordon reach out and catch John's elbow as he trips over a deep rut in the road, Virgil wonders if there's a similar solution for John. Maybe it's naive, but Virgil finds himself hoping that the reminder that people actually care about him might at least start to make the difference. The fact that Gordon does should count for something.

"Hey, V?" Gordon calls over his shoulder, and slows a bit to allow Virgil to catch up. John, consciously or not, matches the change in pace, and Virgil winds up between the pair of them again. "Umm. I just, uh. Had a thought. About something."

"Well, don't panic, I'm sure it'll dissipate soon enough."

Gordon shoves him, but not hard enough to set him stumbling, nor with enough fervour to merit a casual tussle. "Fuck off. I think this might actually be important, because, like…uh…well. Um. So, um, so, John?"

At Virgil's elbow, John adjusts his grip on his backpack and diverts his attention from the pathway ahead. They've only come about half a mile, and since his comment about Friday night, Virgil's been keeping an eye on him, but so far he doesn't seem winded. "Hm?"

Gordon clears his throat. "Did you...um. So, I guess you had to have had—like…I mean, did you have a—a dealer? Like, for the drugs? Also, please appreciate for a second just how difficult it is for me to ask my big brother whether or not he has a drug dealer, but like—umm! Is that, uh, is that gonna be a…a problem?"

Virgil hadn't considered this factor and the thought that someone else knows about his brother and his drug addiction causes him a sudden jolt of anxiety, but John seems unperturbed. Maybe even a little perplexed. "Why would that be a problem?"

Gordon blinks and then glances around, as though there might be someone nearby who might overhear their discussion. It's not likely—this is very clearly the off-season, and they haven't seen a soul since they started walking. If the cottages that line this road are occupied, their occupants are uninterested in other visitors. "Well! Uh, just, like, speaking from personal experience—people make a pretty big deal about it, when we fuck up. Or…I mean, like, when I did, anyway. That shit hit the tabloids faster than I even realized was possible."

It's possible there's still some lingering disdain on John's part, hearing the whole thing brought up again, because he grunts disapprovingly. "You were warned, if I remember correctly. Nothing that happened to you was surprising."

Gordon waves a hand dismissively, as though the minor campaign of tabloid blackmail that had resulted from his post-Olympic antics is a matter that can be waved away. "Whatever. There were people who knew about me, and the kinda shit I got up to, and anyone who knows our name knows about the family it's attached to. It's…I guess what I mean is, if this guy—uh, or girl, or whoever, not meaning to pigeonhole your drug dealer based on their gender—like, if he's been selling you drugs, and if he knows anything about you—do we need to make sure nothing, uh, happens, with that? Like, do we need to deal with some shit?"

"No pun intended, I'm sure."

"No, no pun intended, because I'm trying to figure out if some drug-dealing shithead is gonna sell an exclusive scoop about John Glenn Tracy's Adderall addiction to whatever gossip rag bids highest, because he suddenly lost you as a customer."

That sounds awful. Virgil hasn't commented, because what the hell does he know about drug dealers, but he's already mentally composing a list of people who might know how to deal with this problem, and who could be trusted not to bring it to their father. Scott, obviously, is the top of the list, though he's too far away to do anything but advise. Uncle Lee leaps to mind, though Virgil hasn't seen the old astronaut since graduation, and this is a bit more serious than that time he scratched the paint on Scott's first car. Kayo, maybe. Their foster sister is an almost universally unknown quantity, in situations like this, but she's smart and practical and knows the sorts of things her father knows, which would be handy, because Kyrano is absolutely a last resort. Kyrano would certainly solve the problem, but there's the lingering impression that he might solve it by disappearing its source. And he'd be guaranteed to tell their father pretty much immediately.

There's absolutely nothing funny about this, especially considering Gordon's relevant and relatively painful experience on the subject, but it's still the first thing that makes John laugh, really and properly, since this whole mess started. The sound of it echoes through the slowly greening limbs of the woods around them, but doesn't get far. "Christ," he says, and shakes his head. "That's not funny," he adds, half to himself, as though he needs the reminder.

"No, it's fucking well not!" Gordon agrees, affronted. "Nothing about that is funny! Shit, Johnny. Is this…what, hysteria? D'you understand what we're talking about? Blackmail. Because if this person can get at you—"

John shakes his head, and despite Gordon's histrionics, he still seems unconcerned. Virgil can't help but take a little bit of comfort from that. "He won't."

"You sure? Because there were a lot of people in my circle who seemed like I could trust 'em, but it turns out a lot of my friends were the sorta people who got quoted in articles calling me a drug-addled, sex-addicted, alcoholic trashfire. And I was probably only like, one and a half of those things."

"What I've been doing isn't like what you did," John states, clear and deliberate, for the second time in Virgil's memory. "Calm down, Gordon."

Telling Gordon to calm down is one of the most reliable ways to get him spun up again, and he heaves an irritated sigh. "John. Do. You. Have. A. Drug. Dealer?"

John shrugs. "I guess that's technically the term for the arrangement, sure."

"Somebody in the world has sold you drugs. And you're somehow not worried about that being a problem, because—?"

Incongruently, John chuckles again and there's an unusual note of darkness to it. "Because he's never met me. Because I have his entire life on a hard drive. On several hard drives, because backups are important. Because if I wanted to, I could torch his entire life. I may, still. I haven't actually decided."

Well. That's more sinister than anything Virgil was expecting to hear from his brother, and he attempts to share a concerned glance with Gordon, but Gordon's pushed past him to snag John's elbow and stop him in the middle of the road. "What? What the hell does that mean?"

"Don't. Do not touch me."

John pulls sharply free of Gordon's grasp, and there's enough warning in the movement that Gordon steps a half-pace back, already holding his hands up as Virgil puts a hand on his chest and pushes him a few steps further. "Guys," he warns, with that low rumble of their father's thunder in his voice. "Let's not start."

He makes it sound as though he'd somehow be a part of the collective effort, "starting", but it's still just the two of them, reflexively clashing. Whenever John seems to rally, so far he's always blown that resurgence of energy on scrapping with Gordon, and Virgil's finally caught on in time to stop the cycle.

And the pair of them look at each other, just for a moment longer than they might have otherwise, and the tension passes. They've come to some silent agreement, the two of them, and they both stand down.

"Sorry," Gordon says, cautiously extending an olive branch, prodding it at his brother. "Sorry, I shouldn't have grabbed you."

John's hand's gone, involuntarily, to where Gordon had touched him. "It's fine," he answers, almost embarrassed. "I didn't mean to snap. I'm just…not used to it. Sorry."

"Nah, my bad. Still kinda wanna know what the deal is with your dealer, though."

John shrugs again. "He's a cretin and I own him."

"Yeah, uh huh. Those are two admittedly interesting but fundamentally discrete facts that don't actually explain what the hell the deal is, Johnny. Do you think…could you maybe start at the beginning? I think me and Virg probably both just really wanna know how the hell this all happened. To you, of all people."

Gordon's probing towards the story at the heart of this whole thing; just how exactly John had gotten started on drugs in the first place. John hasn't avoided talking about it, exactly, but the subject hasn't come up before now, and there hasn't seemed the right moment to ask the question. If Gordon's asking it now, John doesn't answer immediately and instead starts walking again, leaving his brothers to fall in step alongside him, not too close. For a few dozen yards, there's only the sound of footfalls on rough gravel, before Gordon prompts again, "John?"

"I mean," John starts, but he doesn't slow down, and he keeps his gaze fixed on the path ahead, as though acknowledging that he's having this conversation with other people will make it that much harder to have. "You have to understand—and I know I didn't, when I started—but you have to understand, drugs are just part of how things get done, at Harvard. At the level I have to maintain. I think I didn't expect the…the ubiquity of it. It feels like such an open secret, among the student body generally, I didn't—I didn't know it would be like that. I never thought it would seem necessary."

"Why was it?" Virgil questions, hoping that they'll finally start to get to the bottom of the beginning of this thing, the nightmare that's had ahold of their brother.

He and Gordon are a step or two behind John, and Virgil watches him shrug his shoulders again, though he can't see his brother's face. "It wasn't—it wasn't the difficulty of it. It was just that it was so hard to focus, so hard to care. And going into my second year, the direction shifted, and everything became more—more collaborative. More group projects, more focus on leadership, and I just—I needed to be better. People were watching me, and everyone seemed like they expected me to be more. And it was just nervewracking, because everyone knows our father. And everybody knows why he sent me to Harvard. I'm supposed to graduate with honours and an MBA, and then I'm supposed to—supposed to be whatever he tells me, I guess. Because I'm not anybody in my own right; I'm Jeff Tracy's son. I don't think I'm expected to be anything else."

Virgil winces and wonders how John could possibly have let himself believe something so obviously untrue—but Gordon breaks into a trot, closes the few paces of distance between him and John. This time he's careful, ginger, as he puts a sympathetic hand on John's shoulder. "I get that," he says, and sounds like he means it. "That kinda pressure—god, Johnny, you don't deserve that. Not for something you don't even care about. I mean, at least all I ever had to do was swim in a straight line a few million times. And I cared a lot about that."

There's a soft huff of laughter from John again, and then an unexpected compliment, "You swam in a straight line really well, that one time."

Gordon grins, and the sunlight through the trees catches the gold in his hair as he nods. "Oh yeah, I kicked that straight line straight in the ass. Got the medal to prove it. But y'know…it's like…I mean, it's not like that one time was the fastest I've ever swum a hundred meters? It's the weirdest thing, that it's just that one race. It's not the average of ten races, or a hundred, or a thousand. Because it's not just being fast. It's being fast every damn time, and it's being fast when everybody's watching, and it's being fast when it counts. Everybody else in that race swam just as well as me, like, by definition. It was the fucking Olympics. There were favourites to win, sure, I don't even remember if I was one of 'em, but everybody's on the same level. I definitely know there was a six and a half foot tall Canadian who made me real nervous. But—at that level, it's just about finding whatever you've got to make yourself just that little bit better. Just that one time. Just when it counts. Just one paper. Just one test. Just one all-nighter. And then suddenly your entire life becomes the average of every time it was supposed to be 'just once'."

The beat of silence that passes between them speaks volumes about something Virgil's never considered before; that John and Gordon might have more in common than even he's ever imagined, even caught as he is, exactly between the two of them. He's not separating them now, and he doesn't belong between them now, the three of them wandering along a rough path through the woods in a strange part of the world, somewhere none of them have been before, somewhere they're only lucky to be together.

Gordon's voice is uncharacteristically soft when he asks, "Does that all sound about right?"

It takes John a moment to answer, and even the light through the trees seems to dim around them as he clears his throat, as a cloud passes over the distant sun, makes the fall of evening seem that much closer. Virgil almost can't stand the sadness in his brother's voice, as he says, "More than I thought you'd know."

And Virgil realizes that they've got so much further still to go.