continuing from here

@preludeinz tagging @akireyta!

Things like this happen to other people all day, every day.

It’s just statistical, there’s almost a theory to the chaos of it all. Some days nothing feels right until he’s had a certain number of a certain kind of call. Five car crashes sometimes won’t seem like enough. Sometimes he feels like he can just tell, before a call even connects, that it’s going to be a heart attack, because he just hasn’t had one in a while. He tallies these things up like they don’t represent the worst days of other people’s lives. To do his job well, it’s necessary to be detached, to be calm and practical and fixated on the facts of a situation, not the emotions of the people involved. Maybe that’s why John feels so numb, here and now, standing at the window with his back to his little brother.

Scott’s gone, though he’d sworn to be back as soon as possible. He’s had to go report in to his superiors, and to get permission to take some emergency leave. There’s no question that this will be granted, but it still needs to be made formal, and he has a report to make about the scene he’d responded to. Gordon’s gone home, and that’d been for the best, because their grandmother will need his attention. He’s not only the best at taking care of her, but the best at getting her to admit she needs to be taken care of. Virgil, as far as John’s aware, is still MIA.

And now that he’s finally been allowed into Alan’s hospital room, he can’t actually bring himself to sit down in the chair that’s been pulled up beside the bed. He’s barely been able to look at his little brother, because this is all wrong. He can’t sit at his brother’s bedside, because it will be too much like sitting at his mother’s bedside, and that was never supposed to happen again. Their mother had gotten sick, and her medical bills had drained every cent from the family, and she’d died anyway, only to leave them in debt they’re still paying off. Their father had slowly gone just about out of his mind with grief, and then one day he’d just disappeared. Left the five of them and their grandmother to manage without him, and to this day, even having been no small part of how they’d gotten through it, John still doesn’t know how exactly they’d managed.

But this isn’t like that. This is injury, not illness. And this is Alan, not Mom. This is sudden and sharp and shocking, as opposed to their mother’s long, slow decline. And this time around they have insurance, Scott is Alan’s legal guardian, and Scott’s got a decent health plan, such as it is.

And Alan’s not going to die. Probably. Gordon had been very careful to be clear about how lucky their little brother had been, but there’s no way around the reality that this is bad. Alan’s young and healthy and if he’s a little scrawny, that’s still probably about the only thing he’s got working against him, so his odds are good. He’ll get better.

But it’s a lot. It’s more than John can even think about right now, because right now all he can do is stand at the window of his little brother’s hospital room, watching the orange glow of the parking lot lights through the raindrops that glint on the glass. There’s no rhyme or reason or pattern to them, but he’s still trying to find one. There’s got to be more sense in rain on the window than there is in what’s happening to his family. To his baby brother. In spite of everything, in spite of what he does and the way that he acts, Alan doesn’t deserve this.

Alan’s a good kid.

It’s Scott’s mantra. And John gets it, and deep down he knows it’s true, because even in spite of everything, he knows Alan. There are still occasional flashes of the kid he used to be—smart and kind and clever and funny—but the goodness in his nature has been lacquered over by anger, layer upon layer building up over his surface, as he’d tried to make himself harder than the world he has to face.

John loves his brothers, his grandmother. Some deeply buried part of him may even still love his father, though if ever he sees Jeff Tracy’s face again, John’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to help but throw a fist at it. But Alan—

Lately he’s been hard pressed to remember the last time he even liked Alan. He hates himself for thinking it, but even here and now, John almost can’t help believing that at least something like this might teach his little brother a lesson.

John had been Alan’s age when their mother had died, over a decade ago now, and John’s about that same decade Alan’s senior. An entire ten years between them, and yet John still remembers the lost, lonely little boy who’d been so scared and so desperate after that one, horrible, final day. Their mother had died in a hospital much like this one. And from then on, Alan had been adrift, young and tiny and terrified, and in the maelstrom of grief that had swallowed their whole family, somehow he’d managed to find his way to John and latch on for dear life.

Sixteen to his brother’s six, John had suddenly become a surrogate for everything their mother had been to Alan, a source of comfort and care and attention and affection, things he’d never particularly sought from his brothers, and certainly never from their father. Most of all, he’d just needed the reassurance that he was still loved, and that he’d always be cared for.

Maybe that assurance is something that they’ve allowed to let slip. Maybe they should’ve tried harder. Maybe this never would’ve happened if they’d just managed to find some time, some energy, some way to get through to Alan. Between the four—the five of them, counting Grandma—they should’ve been able to make it work. It shouldn’t have had to come to this, to a lesson learned in a hospital room.

Better late than never, John manages to tear himself away from the senselessness of raindrops on the windowpane, and towards his little brother, still senseless in a hospital bed. The first step he takes towards the chair at the bedside actually makes his head spin, a little, and he gets the reminder that he’s been awake for what’ll be twenty four hours, come four AM. He muscles past the vertigo and drops himself into the chair at the bedside. He still can’t quite look at his little brother—all those tubes and lines and bandages and bruises make him too much of a stranger—but he can reach for Alan’s hand, can carefully stroke his fingertips across his upturned palm.

“I’m sorry, Al,” he says, softly and mostly to himself, because it won’t excuse the last thing he’d said to Alan. “I’m sorry, I should’ve done more.”