Dun-dun-DUNNN

Many thanks, as usual, to my beta-chan paradorx and many curses upon her shmancy new computer which makes things really very difficult for both of us.

"You should ask her out," Yancy insisted on the phone, and Raleigh rolled his eyes. He walked through the main offices quickly, trying to get past the din that was Tendo complaining about missing his keys and his phone and ransacking his entire bullpen for them. Standardized testing week was over and Raleigh was back into the daily rush, which was even more rushed than usual with the tests locked up and awaiting grading and submission to the school board.

Yancy had been roped into monitoring the testing one morning when Newt called in fake-sick and it took him all of five minutes watching Mako and Raleigh scribbling over the same paper to come to the obvious conclusion. He didn't back down.

"Why don't you just ask her out?" Yancy asked on the phone. It was, by Raleigh's count, the twentieth time he had asked that weekend.

"You should watch the road while driving," Raleigh countered, getting tired quickly of the conversation that refused to end. Yancy had dropped him off at the school and then immediately joined the outflow of parents from the parking lot on his way to a doctor's appointment, and then called him to continue his speech from the ride to school.

"Raleigh, listen to me—"

"Goodbye, Yance," Raleigh cut him off sharply. With a frustrated noise he ended the call and turned it off, for good measure, walking to class with a chip on his shoulder that melted when he spotted Mako through the open doors of their classroom, sharing a smile through the hallway.

A loud crash.

A screaming of metal, of glass.

Silence. Cold silence.

Tendo was not a man who could ever claim to hate his job. Of course there were days when he wondered why he ever thought being a school secretary was a viable career choice, but there were days when he would wonder how he could do anything else.

Today was turning into one of the former days.

"Has anyone seen my cellphone?!" he called out for what seemed like the twentieth time in as many minutes. Raleigh, on his own phone, barely glanced at him before stepping out with a sharp word to whoever he was talking to. Tendo wrote him off and was throwing papers around his desk and shouting inarticulate threats towards everything when the school phone rang. Probably another parent trying to call in an excuse for a late-awakened kid. He picked up the phone and jammed it between his cheek and shoulder, rummaging for his keys in the depths of his desk drawers and coming up empty.

"Pacific Rim High School, whaddya want?!" he demanded, and froze.

"Wait, what?" he dropped his papers on the ground and braced one hand on the desktop, cold ice running through his veins. "Jesus Christ. Okay. Okay. Yeah, he's…" he cursed loudly. "I'll get him." He dropped the phone into the cradle and vaulted his desk, bounding off of the walking mountain that was Aleksis Kaidanovsky in his hurry. "Aleksis, answer any calls for me, would you!" It was not a request.

The big man looked around the office blankly for a moment before delicately taking a ringing phone from the cradle and holding it to his ear. "Hello? Pacific Rim High School," he said, in a Russian accent so thick even he wouldn't be able to break it bare-handed.

Raleigh waited patiently for the morning announcements to come on, but when after a few minutes no loud metallic screeching came from the speakers he launched into a powerpoint for his first class block, timing his pauses so that he was looking out of the open door, across the hall, at Mako's open door, where occasionally she would look out and smile at him.

Until suddenly he glanced out of the window and Tendo was filling it as best as his short stature could, panting slightly like he had sprinted there.

"Um," Raleigh said as Tendo tried to catch his breath, "what's up?"

"I need to start jogging," Tendo wheezed, and gestured for Raleigh to follow him out the door. Confused, Raleigh did so with a gesture for his class to keep it down while he was out. Tendo swung the door shut behind him, and Raleigh felt every nerve in his body come alive.

"What's going on, Tendo? What's happened?"

Tendo's dark eyes honed in on Raleigh and a cold shiver flooded his veins. His voice was pitched low as he spoke. "Raleigh, you need to get to the hospital right now. Go. I'll watch your class—just go."

"What happened?" Raleigh repeated desperately. It felt like suddenly half of his mind had been ripped away, leaving a bright, blinding hole flooded with too many senses. The cold air was burning on his skin and the glare of sunlight over the Languages Building's roof was blinding.

Tendo took in and released a breath, going through lines in his head to try and word everything quickly. "There was a three car pileup downtown. Yancy—some asshole knifed into his car. They've got him at the hospital, he's going into surgery, and they called you as his emergency contact."

Raleigh's chest seized up and he could hear his breath whistling out through his clenched teeth. Tendo put one hand on his shoulder and shook him out of it. "Raleigh—hospital."

"Yeah. Yeah, yeah." With a look of pity that Raleigh physically flinched away from, Tendo stepped into his classroom and left Raleigh wandering vaguely out of the hallway, his mind in a tangle. Yancy. Yancy. Yancy.

He was twenty years too old for this, dammit. Raleigh rubbed at his eyes and forced himself away from the grave his mind had dug back up, a grave filled with a half-empty pack of cigarettes and a young girl's angry smile.

"Raleigh."

Mako's voice washed over him like a tide and he took in a great big lungful of air, struggling to stay afloat. He was twenty years too old for this. He was twenty years past his mother's funeral.

"Mako, I—" his voice cracked and he weakly summoned up a single word: "Yancy."

"I heard." Her voice was soft and he wanted nothing more than to listen to her forever. "Come on, I'll give you a ride."

She placed herself by his side, an anchor, and led him to the faculty parking lot and into her sensible car, packing him in the passenger seat as he numbly moved through the motions. It was only once they were moving that Raleigh began to fully grasp that Mako was driving fast enough to break basically every law there ever was applying to cars. A part of him recognized that he should be scared shitless. Another part of him felt relieved.

"Are you alright?" Mako asked him, and from her tone he could gather it wasn't her first time asking.

Raleigh's mouth couldn't form the words, and he cast out silently with his mind, projecting it all as best as he could, thickening the air in the car with the things he couldn't say. His mother's funeral, his sister leaving. Having no one but Yancy, Yancy, Yancy—

"We should have been twins," he said, and his voice didn't crack. It was empty, totally empty. The empty hole in his mind blared with color, painful and sharp.

Glancing over, Mako took one hand off of the wheel and placed it on Raleigh's arm, in his lap and as tense as a bowstring. Her hand radiated a soothing numbness, and the hole in his mind contracted and closed like an old wound, like a scar—painful, but comforting, something constant.

Her hand stayed on his arm the rest of the drive to the hospital.

Raleigh could barely form a coherent sentence when confronted with a secretary. All he did was pant and stare at her, not understanding how she couldn't simply pick up on the panic rolling off of him. Mako, still by his side, stepped forward and requested Yancy Becket.

"He just got out of surgery," she said, aiming her answers at Mako rather than Raleigh. "They moved him to a room—24B." that was all Raleigh needed. With Mako hot on his heels he raced through the hallways, remembering when he was a boy in Anchorage and he had run through similar hallways with Yancy on their way to visit Mom. He was twenty years older now, but not stronger.

The door marked with 24B was closed. Raleigh threw it open and entered in a great rush, Mako staying in the doorway.

"Yancy-!" Raleigh froze in the doorway, looking down at his brother.

"Hey man," Yancy said, sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed save for his shoes. "Can you help me out here? I can't tie my laces with one hand." He wiggled the tips of his fingers, emerging from a cast on his forearm.

"Yancy," Raleigh sighed, the world slipping off of his shoulders, and with two short steps he was across the room. His arms tightened around his brother and he laughed like his heart was breaking.

"Whoa." Yancy reeled back slightly, and then patted Raleigh's back. "Hey. Hey, it's okay, I'm okay. Jesus, Raleigh." He wrestled out of his brother's arms and pushed him away so he could look at him. "What's the matter, why are you here?"

"They called the school, man. Said you were in a car accident, that you were in surgery…"

"I got some shrapnel removed," Yancy explained gently. "They didn't even put me under."

Raleigh laughed again and rubbed fitfully at his eyes. "I thought you were dying, Yance."

Yancy's face went slack. "Jesus, Raleigh," he said again, and pulled him in for another embrace.

"Why didn't you call?" Raleigh asked into his brother's shoulder. "I thought you were dying, why didn't you call to tell me you were okay?"

They parted again, and Yancy looked blankly at Raleigh. "I tweeted it," he said simply.

After a long moment Raleigh laughed, and his heart was breaking. The pieces flew around the room and one shard landed painfully in the center of Mako's chest as she stood in the doorway and watched Raleigh laugh, a relieved smile overtaking his face.

Oh.

Mako was called back to school as Yancy and Raleigh were finishing up paperwork and she left with barely a word between her and Raleigh aside from him holding gently onto her upper arm and telling her "Thank you," in a deep, raw-throated voice. She rushed out and both Becket brothers watched her disappear in the distance, both with different expressions.

They called up a cab together, with Raleigh calling Tendo to stop him from acting like an expectant father—he cursed Yancy out for a good two minutes on speakerphone—and took a free day. At the duplex, for a reason neither brother could voice they stayed on Yancy's side, sitting on the couch with beers and boxes of poptarts (a staple of their college days), and marathoned Sons of Anarchy on Netflix. The day grew long and they settled into a lazy haze. Yancy popped a couple of pain pills.

After several hours Yancy finally found a voice. He cleared his throat and settled his shoulders, slumping against the couch next to Raleigh. "Ral, I'm your big brother—"

"Yancy," Raleigh cut him off. "Don't. Not now."

"No, I have to say this," Yancy pressed. "I'm your brother and I love you, and I thought for a long time that that would be enough. When Dad left… when Mom died… hell, I'm still not sure what Jasmine did, in the end, but I thought that I could be everything. We were basically twins, after all-I could get in your head, there were no secrets. Well, that was my mistake, and it's my fault. I can't be everything for you anymore, Raleigh. You need to open up your head and let someone else in." he wasn't being cruel or cold, he was being his same protective self, looking out for his little brother with big dreams.

"I know," Raleigh said quietly.

For a moment they sipped their beers and watched the television in mutual silence.

Then Yancy spoke up. "Besides, you really should ask her out."

With a tolerant sigh, Raleigh put his palm on Yancy's bandaged forearm and pushed down.

*loud evil laughter* Gosh I do love Yancy's twitter.

Yancy/Diego got a Mean Girls reference last chapter, so Sons of Anarchy is Charlie Hunnam's turn. Good show.