Authors Note: Thanks again my beautiful people for all your kind reviews. Hope you like the next installment. I've had to try and tweak a bit as Charlie didn't find out about the huntingtons diagnosis as I'd assumed he would. Enjoy the ep tonight. Love you guys.

The voicemail beeps obnoxiously in Cal's ear and he swears violently causing Robyn to turn and shoot him a concerned look.

'Call me. Seriously Ethan.'

He hangs up. This is the hundredth time in a week he's called. His hands shake. Not with the huntingtons which he'd feared these past weeks but with pure unadulterated physical fear.

'I need time.' Three words. That was all Cal had gotten from his brother after he absconded from the hospital. A pitiful 3 word text but it was what he was clinging to in those times when he was downright terrified, waking up in a sick sweat with the image of his brother stood on a bridge or hanging from the ceiling or o'd on the bathroom floor. Cal read the text again, he'd read it countless times since he'd received it an hour after Ethan had disappeared. Before his younger brother's phone had been turned off to civilisation, to Cal.

It's Cal's first day back. He's been going crazy the past week. Quietly and solitarily crazy. He'd called and told Connie Ethan wouldn't be in. He had no idea where he was, how he was doing, what state he was in. Dealing with this alone. Cal wanted him close to him. Wanted to be at his side, supporting and consoling and being whatever he needed to be. But Ethan, typical Ethan had shut down and pushed away as close to form as ever.

'I need time.'

What did that even mean? Time to what? Time to take himself out? Time to sort his head out? Time to what? Cal couldn't stop the worst case scenarios running through his head. He was angry. Angry with Ethan for putting him through this. For thinking three words would be enough to stop him going out of his mind. He knows his brother. Knows ordinarily Ethan's the last kind of person who'd do anything stupid. He's not the reckless type. But Ethan's never been dealt a blow like this. Has never been told that everything in his life was going to end darkly, earlier and in total implosion of his physical, emotional and mental state.

He goes outside for a breather. He can't focus right now.

And suddenly Ethan's there. Walking up, briefcase in hand.

He must have come back to the flat then.

Cal's instantly before him. 'Where've you been?' Something unfurls in his chest and he feels relief wipe through him. Ethan's silent and trying not to meet his gaze but he finally does and seems to acknowledge Cal's panic when he mentioned how worried he'd been.

Then Charlie's there. Trying to talk to them both and Ethan walks away from him into the hospital without even a word and Cal watches darkly as the doors shut behind him, literally and metaphorically.

His brother's only on the other side of that entrance but he might as well be a million miles away.

Ethan's white knuckled today. Totally white knuckled it. Tried to keep his head down and work and get on with it but every time he does someone pops up with some well meaning advice or a sympathetic attempt at conversation. Or even worse. Cal tries to talk.

Ethan's angry. He's spent the entire week in a state of total and complete shock that gave way to rage as easy as anything. He wishes he didn't know. Wishes he'd never opened the damned results. Wishes he could put back that letter into the envelope and throw it out to the god forsaken sea. He's so angry. His hands curl and uncurl as Connie dismisses him to minors. Incapable of doing his job then? He has to look at her a moment and make sure she's just talking about his mother's death, not the diagnosis. It seems that finally, finally, his brother has learned to keep his mouth shut and hasn't broadcast anything to the department. Good. He needs it to stay that way. He sees no need to tell anyone anything yet. He just wants to live his life, what's left of it, doing what he did before. Trying to save people. It's what he knows, what he's good at. He's going to keep doing that.

On the second day alone in the hotel room, researching huntingtons over and over again his anger becomes focussed on his brother. Why did Cal do it? Why did he go behind his back? Why did he desecrate Ethan's life to this degree? Sure he has form, he's done it before, swept into Ethan's life, swept out of it leaving everything in disarray, in chaos. But this is different. This is so much worse.

He knows it's unfair. He knows it's not Cal's fault. Not entirely. Cal can't create a genetic mutation. But Ethan is just so very furious. So full of bitterness right now. It's not fair. It's not fair that Cal gets to turn his world upside down in a moment and once again emerge totally and completely unscathed. Why? Why him? Why was it always Ethan who drew the short straw in their crappy excuse for a history.

What horrific things must he have done in a past life to deserve the luck he's had lately.

He looks at Lily's patient file and he hears a laugh and he looks up and his brother's there. Flirting with a nurse. Leaning against a pillar, looking for all the world like he has nothing to worry about. Nothing on his shoulders, free of the burden now. Ethan sees red.

It's everything he'll never have. Stood in front of him laughing.

And he loses it at Lily and he storms away and he heads to the locker room, gets out of his scrubs. Finishes his shift before he should. He is done today. He is absolutely and completely done.

He's barely out of the doors before Cal catches up with him. 'Ethan?' He keeps walking. Shuts down the rage, shuts down the injustice and the barely contained fury brewing inside.

But when Cal grabs him, turns him around 'right now i'm all you've got.'

Ethan wants to scream.

I don't want you Cal.

He doesn't want anyone, least of all the person who's inadvertently brought all of this horror to light. They'd been doing better he and Cal, after Matilda, during Matilda, they'd come to a place of real brotherhood. Of real, closeness, of the like Ethan had worried they'd never reach.

And now now he just feels rage. Pure hot rage.

'You know when you fail at being a doctor, or give up, you should try counselling.' he spits out. Venom lacing the clinical tone.

Cal grabs him, and pushes him.

Ethan shakes his head, once. Don't.

Cal's pushing him, shoving him hard. 'Do it, just hit me!'

Ethan won't stop. He knows. He knows if he swings at Cal now he won't stop hitting him and the danger, the absolute certainty of that terrifies him, chills him deep down. Caleb has no idea just how dangerous Ethan can be. Just how dark the feelings run within him. Just how far he could go.
He does what he's always done. He takes a breath, he reigns himself in. He walks away. Cal doesn't get the satisfaction of Ethan losing it. What good will beating Cal to a bloody mess do? It won't change the fact that Ethan has a death sentence hanging over his head. It won't change this feeling of grief, of rage, of loss deep within his heart. What would it do?

He walks and keeps walking, can feel Cal's eyes boring into the back of his skull. When he gets to his car he puts his head in his hands and lets out a shaky exhale. And then he beats the steering wheel to within an inch of its life instead. 'Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!' He screams, palms bruising with the force with which he attacks the rubber.

Then he stops. He puts the key in the ignition and drives. There's a minibar in his hotel room and Ethan's going to drink tonight. He's going to drink so much that he forgets this, forgets everything. He's going to get totally and utterly obliterated.

Cal watches Ethan's car drive away. 'Good one Cal' he mutters under his breath. Great idea that was, pushing Ethan, shoving him, trying to provoke a reaction, cos that's always worked out so well in the past. He's filled with self loathing and guilt. What Ethan needed was careful handling right now and patience not what Cal had just done. It was just so easy though, so simple to fall back into his old routine for dealing with his brother. For getting a reaction outside of the antiseptic Ethan bubble.

In the past he'd admit he'd love to make Ethan lose it. It had been one of his favourite past times growing up. Pushing his little brother into a reaction. Ethan was just so uptight, just so controlled that watching him lose it was strangely and selfishly fascinating. So Cal pushed. Cal pushed all growing up, pushed by shoving him into a door and got punched in the face for it when Ethan was 9, pushed by stealing Tina Pitman a girl he knew very well Ethan cared about when Ethan was 16. Pushed when Ethan announced he wanted to be a doctor by showing up at his graduation ceremony blind off his face drunk and getting another fist to the face for the trouble. Pushed with Lily, pushed with Taylor, pushed with Matilda. Cal was a button pusher.

And he was ashamed of himself for that.

He told himself he did it for Ethan, that Ethan needed to let go. More than anyone Cal had ever known his brother needed to let go. It wasn't healthy to be that trapped inside yourself. That firmly locked down. Ethan ran deep. A lot deeper than anyone else Cal knew. But when he lost it. When you got to see that fire, that loss of control. It was almost terrifying. Cal rarely saw it but it was almost intoxicating to see Ethan go, to see that look in his eye.

He'd come close tonight. After he pushed him, after the second shove Ethan had looked at him. A warning. And there'd been a second where Cal had thought 'oh here it comes, there he goes'. But then he'd shut it down again. Shut down, back in the bubble, back under control. Ethan is the master of control.

It's something that Cal simply can not comprehend. He's never controlled. It's not an aspect of his personality in any way. He can't shut down his emotions. Has never been able to do that. It's why he'd been so shocked to discover he and Ethan were biological brothers after the adoption reveal. Because they really were totally different. Total and complete different sides of the coin.

Ethan was light, Cal was dark. Ethan had the kind, caring nature. Cal had the easy flirtatious manner, the comfortable way to glide through life. Ethan worried, Cal was carefree. Cal was the runner, Ethan was the stable one. 'Hardy' indeed. Well Cal had never lived up to the name, hadn't wanted it, it never suited him being Caleb Hardy. It suited Ethan to a tee.

Cal heaves a sigh and heads back to his own car. He wishes Ethan would just come home, would just let them try and deal with this together. They balance each other out, the two of them. Positives and negatives. North Pole and South, that's he and Ethan. They need to deal with this together.

But as he gets back into his car he can't get a single thought out of his head. That he'd just blown his only real chance to get Ethan to trust him with this. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and scrolled down to his brother's number.

'I'm sorry.' He writes. Pockets the phone, and drives off into the night.