Oh.

God.

The clock by John's bed tells him it's three in the afternoon, and this means he's lost at least a day. If it's as bad as last time, it might be two. His phone's nowhere in reach and his mouth is dry and his head hurts, but the worst is the gnawing, awful hunger, like a lead bar dropped across his stomach, pinning him down and pinching him in half. Which admittedly makes sense, if the last time he ate was—was...

Dinner with Virgil. And then everything afterward.

Someone's opened his bedroom window, presumably to help wake him up, but the temptation to throw himself out of it is real and awful. He pushes the blankets back instead, blearily checks his phone and doesn't acknowledge the missed calls or the messages. He's still in a t-shirt and jeans and the former is too thin and clingy and the latter too stiff and tight against his skin. Everything's uncomfortable and life is wretched.

Life improves by the very smallest fraction when he swaps the jeans for fleece-lined track pants, and fumbles a sweater out of his dresser drawer, a slouchy gray cable-knit thing, a Christmas present from Grandma. It's a bit too broad across the shoulders and therefore long in the sleeves, because Virgil had been used for sizing, with a few inches added to make up for John's height. But it's warm and it's familiar and probably one of the only soft and comforting objects in the entire apartment.

Okay.

John ducks through the hallway to the bathroom, runs on auto-pilot until he's washed his hands and his face for good measure and opened the medicine cabinet door and been stared in the face by the empty place where the worst part of him is supposed to be.

There's a burst of white-hot anger through him, an urge to slam the cabinet door shut and shatter the mirror and grab fistfuls of glass and press them against his face and throat and chest, until he looks as torn and bloodied and defeated as he feels inside. He doesn't. John's fingers clench at the edge of the sink, squared off white porcelain not as sharp as it needs to be on the palms of his hands, and he just holds himself still until the feeling passes. It doesn't take long, he's too tired to sustain it, a bright, magnesium flare of fire, like a flashbulb.

Maybe if everything that's wrong were actually visible, he would be on the receiving end of something a little less dire than Gordon's raw, abusive scorn.

As though Gordon has any right to look down at him.

John shoulders the bathroom door open, and leans against it for a long few moments after he closes it behind him. The rest of the apartment's quiet. Gordon, Virgil, and a little bottle of not-aspirin have taken off somewhere, but John's still cautious as he pads into the living room in his bare feet, blinks at the glare of the sun off the wooden floor. It's hunger that's driven him out of bed, but there's some awful fear dug into the back of his skull, and as he peers into the kitchen, the sense of relief he feels at finding it empty is inexplicable. Of course the kitchen's empty.

In more than one sense of the word. John's still being chewed in half from the inside out by the hungry, hollow place in his stomach, but he doesn't have the energy to do much more than scrape the remnants of a jar of peanut butter onto the end of a loaf of bread, fold it over, and devour it, and then curl up on the couch, entirely unsatiated.

There's an AED on the coffee table.

The defibrillator Gordon had mentioned, being dramatic, however long ago Gordon had mentioned it, sits and stares John in the face, with its bright red case and its little electrified heart symbol. He reads the instructions on the side of it, still hungry and sore and exhausted and waiting for the phone he's got wedged in his pocket to ring. Waiting for his father to call. Or Scott. If it's Alan, he just won't pick up, he can't bear that. If it's Virgil, he'll at least try. If it's Gordon, he'll throw the phone out the window.

John's half asleep when the key turns in the lock and his door opens, maybe half an hour later. There's the rustle of grocery bags and the sound of heavy soles hitting the floor as shoes are kicked off, the low mutter of conversation between his younger brothers.

"—I mean, all I'm saying is I don't know what you expected. It's Boston. Of course it's cold."

"Sure, but just—"

And talk ceases as the pair of them appear at the end of the hallway, Gordon peering around Virgil's shoulder. John doesn't especially want to be acknowledged, and Virgil's voice is appropriately hushed. "Oh. Is he...?"

"Dunno. One way to find out. Hey, sunshine, you awake?"

There's a rustle of grocery bags again and then a head of garlic arcs expertly across the apartment and bounces off John's forehead. This seems like it hurts more than it actually does and he presses a hand over his temple. "D'you have to? Do you really have to be awful? Gordon, fuck off."

"Hah. Ten points, hey Virge? I—ow! Ow ow ow!"

Virgil's taken a leaf out of their grandmother's book and has Gordon firmly by the ear, his hands full of grocery bags. "Kitchen," Virgil orders sternly, tweaking Gordon's ear a final time and giving him a shove through the door. "Make yourself useful and come out when you're done being an ass. Or when there's food, whichever comes first."

"Ow. Christ, Virgil—"

"Enough," Virgil growls. "I told you to lay off and I'll kick your ass if you don't quit it, Gord, don't think I won't."

There's more bad tempered muttering from Gordon, but he retreats to the kitchen and the sound of running water and the exhaust fan over the stove soon drowns out whatever he's getting up to with the rattle of pots and pans.

Virgil crosses the room and drops into the chair beside the couch, drums his fingers on the arms of it. "Hey, John," he says finally.

"Mm."

"Slept a long while."

"Yeah."

"Feel any better?"

This gets a baleful glare. "No, I feel like shit."

Virgil nods and sighs. "Yeah, kinda figure that's par for the course. We, uh. Well, I mean obviously you can't...uh...with the drugs, or whatever. Obviously we had to get those gone. You've gotta stop this, John."

It's acid on his tongue, bitter and painful, to try and tell Virgil that he's tried. That that's what the last time was, the last time he got to a point where he'd realized he was losing control. When in a fit of terror he'd thrown a few hundred dollars' worth of someone else's prescription down the trash chute in the hallway, and had a weekend of exhausting, agonizing withdrawal. John had gotten so badly seized by anxiety and depression and fatigue—by the time Dad had called to find out why he'd missed two days worth of classes—there hadn't been any option but to fall back into it.

But it's too hard to say. John just shrugs and sighs instead.


There are certain rules—nay, laws—which apply to sibling warfare, as undeniable as they are unavoidable. It is a fact universally known that the youngest sibling can cause maximum mischief with minimal repercussions; meanwhile, the oldest gets first shot at the keys to the car, the curfew past ten, and everything else deemed holy in the world of childhood. It is a fact undeniably true that the concept of hand-me-downs becomes significantly more beneficial as one climbs higher up the chain of command and that, in fact, many things become significantly more beneficial as one climbs higher up the chair of command. Crossing the threshold into someone else's room may as well be jumping the wall of a divided Berlin, and thievery of the very last bread roll is a crime punishable by death. Never let them see you cry. Never let them hear you crumble.

These laws are unwritten, nonnegotiable, and almost always determined by birth order, but there is one law that soars above the rest. One law that is absolutely unbreakable. Never—ever—let the enemy know that you might actually give a damn about them.

So, you see, Gordon had only been following the rules.

Maybe that's why it feels so strange—well, aside from the fact he's just tied a dishtowel to a wooden spoon. He understands why that part feels a little funny. It's a joke. It's supposed to be funny, but the part he doesn't quite understand is why it's so hard to call a truce.

He wrings at the wooden handle for just a few moments, working up the courage he needs, and then he holds it up in the air, towel end up, waving his white flag. It's Virgil who stares him down. "Food ready?"

Gordon shakes his head. "No, but I'm done being an ass and I believe that those were the terms of our agreement."

Virgil looks doubtful, but beside him, a beaten-up John just smiles. "I have his garlic," he explains, holding up the head in the palm of his hand. "He needs it for his lasagna and he's calling a truce in hopes that I won't chuck it at his head."

At this, it's Virgil's turn to smile, as if John's the one making jokes these days. "You mean the garlic he threw at your head, John?" he asks, fully aware of the answer. "Is that the one?"

"That's the one," John confirms. "Hey, Gordon—why don't you come getyour garlic?"

Gordon looks between his two brothers, side by side, and the scene looks awfully familiar. Lines have been drawn, he notes, and however temporary the alliance, it's not going to work out well in his favor. "Truce," he says again, pointing to the flag.

John rolls his eyes in a very Gordon-like way. "I see your dishrag," he says. "Do you really think I'm going to fight without honor?"

The answer to that question is a resounding yes. Gordon's seen John fight without honor on more than one occasion, and he knows John is more than capable of winning, not because he's good, but because he's advantageous.

So when John holds out his hand, garlic fresh for the taking, Gordon hesitates, wondering what, exactly, the word truce means to John Tracy.

And then, just when he starts to trust his big brother—a truly fatal move on all accounts—John throws.

Gordon flinches, despite the fact that John would barely be able to lift a feather at the moment, much less chuck a head of garlic at him. Not to mention he's throwing underhand. This is the part John likes the most, Gordon's sure. The mind games. Psychology always has been John's favorite battle strategy.

Gordon has to leap forward to catch it in time, due mostly to the fact that John doesn't have much of an arm on him at the moment. This results in a solid kick to the coffee table, sending the AED wobbling. All three of them watch it, dancing across wood, and all three of them wonder what's next—if it will stay standing, or if it will simply fall.

John's the one who grabs it before they get their answer. "Can we put this thing away yet, or is it a permanent centerpiece on my coffee table?"

Gordon looks to Virgil. Virgil looks to Gordon. In the end, it's Gordon who answers. "Couple more hours."

John scoffs. "You're being totally dramatic. We can't keep it in here—what if an actual emergency happens? What if someone really needs it?"

The silence that follows is not unfamiliar to the three middle children. It is the silence that comes when Dad only wants to talk to Scott. It is the silence that comes after Alan sheds his tears and gets ice cream for it. This is the silence of being stuck in between, waiting for someone to say something.

And of course, it's Gordon who breaks the silence. Gordon almost always does. "Honestly, John, you almost really needed it."

Maybe it's the smell of tomatoes in the air. Maybe it's the the feel of John's gray sweater on his shoulders, or maybe it's that little white flag hanging limp from Gordon's fingers, but there's a moment when the word truce seems much more present than before. There's a moment when suddenly Gordon's dramatics don't feel all that dramatic at all.

But John is a man of the law. A rule-follower somewhere deep in his heart. He will never break the unwritten code of siblings—not so long as it is convenient for him to remain aligned—and so he slumps back into the couch and twists up his nose. "Hurry up with dinner, would ya?" he says. "I'm literally starving under your so-called care."