The first thing he hears, as he carefully closes his bedroom door behind him, is the sound of his brothers' voices, but he can't quite make out what they're saying. Virgil creeps closer, but pauses at the end of the hallway, looks down to make sure his shadow won't give his presence away. He's already been so careful to step near to the wall, to avoid any creaking floorboards, and now he pauses at the end of the corridor, just listening. His brothers are talking—really talking, for the first time in years—and that merits a listen.

"—I don't know why he hated me. He did, though. You were too little when we had him, you wouldn't remember."

"I remember fine! I was ten when he got put down. That's not like, little-little. Like, Alan probably doesn't remember, but I definitely do."

"If you say so. I was fourteen. It's probably horrible to say it, but it was kind of a relief. When Dad took him to get put to sleep, I mean."

"Jesus, Johnny. He was just a poor little dog!"

"I don't mean I was happy that it happened. I was sorry when he got sick, and it sucked that there wasn't anything we could do about it, money or not. Dad would've paid whatever it took to fix him. But I guess cancer's pretty bad for dogs, sometimes."

"I guess. I wish Dad hadn't just taken him away, though."

"He was suffering. Dad did the right thing. Also, he hated me."

"I don't think he hated you. He was just a little guy, and he was a good dog. Anyway, dogs don't hate people."

"He barked every time I came in the room. He growled at me whenever it was my turn to feed him. He never let me pet him. He liked you and he liked Scott and he liked Mom, he was neutral about everybody else, and then he hated me."

"Sparky wouldn't just hate you for no reason. You probably did something to him. Like you stepped on his paw or you kicked him on accident or you spooked him sometime."

"Not that I ever remember."

"Sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"Hmm. Then it's probably because you're tall."

"…what's that got to do with anything?"

"Well, you're really tall, John."

"…and?"

"Dogs hate tall people."

"That's not true."

"Is so."

"That sounds like something made up by a short person. That sounds like something made up by a specific short person."

"Dude, I am not short, I am average. I am exactly average, I am five-ten, I am normal."

"That sounds like something a short person would need to know."

"Fuck off. You're the freak of nature at this table, buddy—you're like, what, six-three? That is unnatural."

"Six-two. And I wasn't that tall, when I was fourteen. I was still shorter than Dad, and Sparky liked Dad just fine. And he loved Scott, and Scott was like half a foot taller than I was."

"Then it was the whole soulless ginger thing, probably."

"Don't start."

"No, I bet that was it, though! Why else would he have only hated you, then?"

"Dogs are colourblind. And he loved Mom."

"That was Mom, though. Everybody loved Mom. He was her dog."

"…yeah. Maybe that was why. She was gone, and I was a pale imitation."

There's a long silence, then, the sort that falls whenever their mother gets mentioned. It's not sad, necessarily. It's just the sort of quiet, melancholy acknowledgment of her memory that has to happen, whenever she comes up in discussion. It's a natural break in the conversation, and Virgil should be figuring out a non-awkward way to make his entrance, when there's a pointed cough from the kitchen, and—

"You gonna eat any more?"

There's a pointed silence.

"…I really, um. I really think I've eaten enough of…of that."

"C'mon, it's Grandma's tuna casserole! It's a midwestern classic. It tastes like America."

Gordon's unique among their family for his fond nostalgia for their grandmother's cooking. Everyone else seems to have grown up and learned better, but Gordon's palate has never been what's best described as discerning. Virgil's sympathetic, right up until the moment his older brother attempts to throw him under the bus.

"We should save some for Virgil."

Gordon scoffs at this. "Screw Virgil. He's supposed to be a vegetarian, anyhow. And I put, like, four cans of tuna in there."

Technically, though no one's asked, Virgil considers himself more of a pescatarian. Not enough of a pescatarian for Grandma's tuna casserole, but the point stands.

"…yeah, you did that."

"Protein! You need to put some weight back on, man. You're kind of a goddamn scarecrow right now. What d'you weigh, Johnny?"

Virgil winces. He's pretty sure his guess would've been a good one. John's gotten alarmingly thin. He's probably down to around a hundred and forty pounds, if that. Thin enough that he just has to know it's unhealthy. There's a point at which it's just a mathematical fact.

But there's an embarrassed silence and John's eventual admission is a reluctant, "I don't know."

Gordon's undissuaded. "Less than me, though, probably. Yeah, for sure. We gotta work on that."

"I guess."

"No, we really do. It's not hard, though. Or it shouldn't be, anyway. Your body wants it, so that'll help. Couple extra meals per day. Lots of eggs. Peanut butter. Cheese. Avocados. Nice whole grains. Hell, find out what exactly Virgil eats in a given day. If he can get jacked as fuck on a vegetarian diet, then you can put on about twenty odd pounds eating whatever the hell you want." There's the sound of something sliding along the tabletop, and the suggestive tap of a wooden spoon against glass. "Lotsa good stuff in here. Carbs. Protein. Good ol' healthy dose of fat. Sticks to your ribs, which is good, because if you took your shirt off probably I could count 'em. We gotta get you fed up."

"…this process doesn't need to start with a lukewarm mess of mushy noodles, wet tuna, and congealed mushroom soup."

"And potato chips!"

"And stale, greasy potato shards."

"God, you're a snob. You are literally malnourished, buddy, you can't afford to turn down food."

"Next time maybe offer me food, then. I ate as much of that as an adult could reasonably be expected to eat. If I overdo it, I'll make myself sick."

"…yeah, okay. Well, we gotta go shopping tomorrow. Damn, though. I guess it's probably too late to walk back to the car, even if we found a flashlight. What's your timeline looking like vis-à-vis the comedown, Jaybird?"

Virgil's a little alarmed by just how blunt the question is, how freely and casually Gordon talks about this whole state of affairs. But then, maybe that's the difference between the two of them—that Gordon's willing to talk about it. Virgil can't quite get there, the whole thing still makes him nauseous and anxious and uncomfortable. The terminology of it all—withdrawal and crash and comedown—still feels foreign in his brain, and he feels fake and false when he tries to use these words the same way his brothers do, as though he understands what they mean.

But for as uncomfortable as it is for him, just listening to the conversation, the conversation itself is almost pleasant—sociable and friendly and probably the most civil of the interactions Gordon and John have had since spring break started. Of everything in the world his brothers could bond over, their mutual experience with drugs is the absolute last thing in the world Virgil would have expected. Nevertheless, instead of interrupting, he finds himself leaning against the wall in the hallway, just to continue listening in. Without quite realizing it, he's pulled the little pill bottle out of his pocket and holds it cradled in the palm of his hand. He turns it, end over end, too slowly and carefully for the pills to so much as rattle against the plastic.

"Well. In theory, it's a twelve-hour dose, the capsules kick in slower and last longer than the tablets do, and coming off them is a little easier. In theory I should be good until about 3AM. But it's hard to say, none of it really works the way it used to. It's only been four hours, and I'm already tired. Tolerance, I guess."

"Mm. What's the most you'll take in a day?"

"I try not to take more than forty miligrams as about an average, but that number keeps creeping upward. I'll go as high as sixty if it's a really big day, but with the awareness that I'll regret it. It depends on what I need to do. The XR works if I know it's going to be a long day, but if it's also mostly just busywork. There's one or two classes that are hard to handle if I haven't taken something. I know I can't give presentations sober."

"Shit." There's something almost like awe in Gordon's tone, almost as though he's impressed. "You've got a habit, hey?"

John's answering laugh is dry. "More of a regimen by this point, honestly. Habits are for children. It's—Christ, it's going to sound terrible to say it, but at first…at first it was like a puzzle, it was just a problem to solve. Fine-tuning what worked and what didn't. The fact that it worked at all was what convinced me. Everything got so much easier."

"…I still don't understand what was hard, I guess. Like, John, you're a goddamn genius. I'm pretty sure that's, like, written down somewhere. You were at KSU for four years and came out of it with…uh…with something—"

"I have a Masters in Computer Science."

"Right. And you got that without even breaking a sweat."

"—um."

"—or, well, that was what it looked like, anyhow. Jesus, Johnny, take a damn compliment."

"Yes, thank you for failing to notice that I took college level courses all throughout the last two years of high school, and then busted my ass doing a combined degree at KU for five straight years."

The incredulity in the protest is enough to hammer home just how disconnected John and Gordon were, during that period of time. It only stands to reason—all the years John spent studying were years that Gordon spent swimming. Virgil remembers seeing both of them, from space in between. He remembers getting up early to drive Gordon to practice, and passing the door of John's room, catching his big brother still awake, still staring at whatever essay or paper was due.

"Jaybird, whatever the hell your overacheiving ass was doing at Kansas State, if you weren't doing it at the deep end of a lap pool, there's no way I was gonna notice much of any of it."

"Clearly not, if you thought I was at Kansas State. I was at the University of Kansas. You had a few swim meets at the pool there."

"…did I?"

"You don't remember?"

"Johnny, I don't know if I can accurately articulate just how many goddamn pools I've been in over the past decade, but it is a lot. I don't think numbers even go that high."

"Numbers go pretty high."

"Well, I've been in a lot of fucking pools."

"Regular pools too, I'm assuming."

"Ha ha. Jeez, you're just a regular goddamn comedian when you're tweaking, hmm? Back it up though—you were at my swim meets?"

"If they were at KU, I was. Tried to be, anyway."

"I totally don't remember."

"Well, then maybe I waited around to watch someone else's jackass little brother swim from one end of the pool to the other a few dozen times. But Grandma used to let me know whenever you were going to be up in Lawerence, and if I had time, I'd try to be around to watch. I saw you at least a few times. Probably I waved."

"…huh! Why didn't you ever say hi?"

"Didn't I?"

"Not that I remember."

"I suppose that sounds like me. I mean, realistically I was probably busy. If I had time to stop by, it would've been just to watch you race, and I wouldn't have cut class on your account. You started getting really serious about swimming at about the same time I started getting really serious about school."

"I guess those were a few years when we were both pretty goddamn busy. 'Cuz, what, you never took a year off after high school, did you?"

"No, I only had that one summer after graduation. And I was already talking to the Dean of Engineering before the my freshman year started, I'd been tapped for KU since I was about fifteen. Dad kind of fast-tracked the whole thing for me. That was fine. I was excited to start."

This is something Virgil hadn't ever considered, but of course it's true. He's sitting on the floor in the hallway by this point, and there's no way he's about to interrupt his brothers. They're giving him too much to think about, too much to remember.

Scott had taken a year off, after high school. He'd traveled overseas for a few months, spent some time in England, but had spent the bulk of his time at home in Kansas, volunteering with the Red Cross during the peak of tornado season. It's Virgil's private and personal opinion that in a lot of ways Scott's the best of the five of them, but it had never been more apparent than when he'd spent that summer with the Red Cross. The work had been hot and harrowing and hard and heroic, and Scott had been happy, in a way Virgil hadn't ever seen before, and hasn't again since. When it was his turn, Virgil had attempted to pattern his own gap year after Scott's—spent some time in Germany, built a few houses in Sierra Leone with Habitat for Humanity—although his year had also been a quieter, more revelatory sort of period, when he'd come to realizations about the state of his own mental health, and had taken the appropriate actions to manage it. In the end, his year off had been just as good for him as Scott's had been. He'd been glad for his father's insistence upon it.

But apparently it hadn't quite been mandatory. Their father's reasons for vigorously suggesting that his boys take a gap year are good ones, but it's another truth about Jeff Tracy that he's almost always willing to negotiate. John's exactly the sort of person who could've made a compelling case for his academic career, made the suggestion that all he would've opted to do was academic in nature anyway. So John had gone straight from high school to Kansas University, where he'd continued to achieve the same standard he'd set during high school.

In retrospect, John's academic endeavours have probably always been about as intense as Gordon's athletic achievements ever were. The back of Virgil's skull knocks lightly against the wall as he tilts his head back, and reflects once again on just how much his brothers have in common. And just how long its taken the pair of them to see it.

Gordon seems to be coming to a similar realization about the past eight years of John's life. "Christ, you just didn't stop, did you?"

John seems to be coming around to the same belief Virgil's always held, about what he has in common with Gordon. "Well, neither did you."

"Kinda seems like it's been to your detriment, Johnny. Kinda seems like you could've done with the break. Scotty and Virg both took a gap year. Hell, I took one too, it just didn't happen til after the games."

"Yeah, because your year off was such a sterling example."

In the hallway, Virgil's holding his breath. This is a danger zone, this is something he doesn't know if his brothers can talk about in a civil fashion. It's a secret about Gordon that he doesn't regret anything he did after the Olympics. It's a secret about John that he'd been hurt by it, in a way that was more personal than Gordon would ever have realized.

There's another long silence.

"…do we wanna talk about this now?" The caution in Gordon's tone is cause for hope. "Because J, I'm down to hash out the facts and figures of what that year was—what I did versus what you only think I did, versus how it all hit the wall—but I kinda feel like we got a good thing going, in the here and now. I kinda feel like if we're gonna talk, we should talk about you. Y'know, before the fog rolls back in. Might not get another chance."

"…yeah. Yeah, I suppose that's probably wise." There's a weak, lightly sardonic chuckle from John. "It wasn't you I wanted to talk to, this week. I hated it, when you showed up, and I hated what you did to me. And this morning I think I hated you a little bit. But I guess I might be lucky that you came."

"It's been good," Gordon hazards, delicately skirting the conversation away from just why exactly John's lucky to have him. He corrects himself hastily, "I mean—like, just this bit. I don't mean the weekend so far, that's gonna go down in history as one of the shittier experiences I've had in this family. But these last couple hours. Talking to you. That's been cool."

"Yeah. It has."

The silence that falls then almost feels like it could be the right moment for Virgil to haul himself off the floor and make an entrance. Someone a little less intensely tuned to his brothers and their emotions—someone less used to being in the middle—would've taken this lull in the conversation as an opportunity. Virgil, by some deeply ingrained instinct, knows that this particular silence represents the brink of something new, an edge. Whatever gets said next, whoever says it—it's going to matter.

His big brother's voice is weary, a little bit raw, when he finally speaks.

"This is the first time I've felt like maybe I might be able to do this. Like I might be able to stop. And I recognize that it's ironic to say that, when I couldn't even manage forty-eight hours without a relapse, but—"

Gordon's quick to excuse him. "It happens, Johnny. It wasn't your fault. It's not the end of the line."

"…that's—I mean, Gordon, I get what you're trying to say, but I don't think it's true. I know it isn't. I knew what I was doing. There was plenty of intent there, it wasn't just that I couldn't help myself. We drove for three hours before I had the window to actually take the damn pill, and it was just all I could think about that whole time. I just kept coming up with reasons. There's always a reason. It's…it's just exactly what you said, on the walk out here. It's always just one. It's always just that one choice, and somehow I always choose wrong. But the reasons—they always seem like such good reasons. I had so many good reasons. This was one of them. Being able to keep my head together and have a conversation. And I can't regret it, because we're actually talking. You aren't who I thought I wanted to talk to, but I'm…I'm glad we're talking. Christ, but I've needed somebody to talk to."

There's guilt sitting like lead shot in the pit of Virgil's stomach.

That manic edge has faded away from John, and possibly this is some sort of sweet spot, as far as the half-life of the drugs left in his system can be considered. He's articulate, but not overly verbose. He's being forthright, at least as near as Virgil can tell, but he's not just saying whatever comes into his head. He sounds, impossibly, like the brother Virgil remembers, like the version of John he's been missing, the version he'd assumed was gone. Some sort of unlikely alchemy has occured between his personality and the drugs he's come to depend upon to function, and suddenly John's not a stranger anymore. He's not a problem to solve, but a person who needs help—who's needed, more than anything, just someone to talk to.

And before now, Virgil realizes he hasn't been willing to listen.

It's probably time he did something about that.