Unbetitelt

and if i've also said i've learned how to draw ryan gosling now.. (phm changed my fucking life and the coltland twin au has captivated me)

Trans ftm Grace, Colt was the first one he came out to.

Raised religious, “don’t take/say god’s name in vain” was a very frequent saying while they grew up. The habit to refrain from cursing sticks with Grace, further enforced by his career in teaching children where cursing in front of them would not win him any favors.

In that same vein, Ryland’s pastel/white Easter or Sunday best dresses stained with dirt and the knees of Colt’s pants ripped, his tie lost somewhere, from their rough housing outside church was a common occurrence. Their parents eventually relented and let Ryland wear dress pants as well, even before he came out to them, mainly because it saved the cost of buying expensive dresses that would hardly last a day.

Ryland could actually match Colt’s energy/temper when they were young. Both of them were no stranger to short fuses or exasperated outbursts. Ryland got in more trouble than Colt in school, mainly because he was too advanced for the classes he got stuck in and quickly got bored, which quickly shifted to agitation. He learns to control it later on, especially after one particularly poor outburst leads to him being ousted from the field he’d spent years studying to be apart of, but it can sneak up on him when he’s feeling particularly overwhelmed (like when he’s making alien contact for the first time in all of humanity and his stupid spectrometer keeps telling him xenon is a solid).

Ryland made fun of Colt for being stuck in the “dumb classes” once they finally bumped him up to honors/AP, but stopped once he realized how much it was really hurting his brother. They both agreed where Ryland ended up with the book smarts, Colt had taken every other braincell.

Their dad dies when they’re young, in their early teens. They were never a particularly close family, but the loss of their dad just drives the wedge deeper. The choice to lose contact with their mom isn’t a conscious one, just something that happens as Ryland gets caught up in grad school and Colt moves to LA and sucked into the whirlwind of Hollywood chaos.

The last time they speak, before Ryland is launched into space, is at their mom’s funeral.

Despite their distance, they do share a tattoo, a black bar on the inside of their wrists that was done on a drunken impulse during their early twenties. Colt tells people it doesn’t mean anything, Ryland tends to forget it’s there (or intentionally avoids looking at it). “Something for dad,” Colt had suggested when proposing the idea, beer in his hands from the pack they were splitting, “or for us, just the two of us, so we have something that will always look the same” - his broken nose had healed crooked, markedly different from the unblemished bridge of Ryland’s.

They are both horrible communicators. Neither one of them wanted to lose contact with the other, but they were raised in a household of staunch avoidance, and they never overcame the imagined barrier between them.

Ryland visits Colt in the hospital after his accident. Colt never finds out, he was asleep when Ryland wiped tears away with a shaky hand and prayed for the first time in a long time that his brother would be okay.

Colt leaves hundreds of voicemails for Ryland, none of them will ever be heard. There are the dozen or so after the Hail Mary first launches, Colt confused, then demanding, then frantic as each of his calls goes unanswered. There’s the one Colt left when he was choking on sobs, crying so hard the words begging Ryland to pick up, to come home, are near unintelligible. Then there are the ones placed for years after, happy birthdays, somber admissions of regret, life updates, a wedding invite, a birth announcement for a nephew Ryland will never know, his voicemail becoming a graveyard for a relationship they both cannot have.

Colt can’t look in mirrors for too long, he will notice lines in his face, gray hairs, crows feet, and the fact that Ryland doesn’t share his age anymore hits him hard enough to make his world tilt.

-seavers was their mother's maiden name, colt took it for his stuntwork

-grace never approved of colt's profession because it was so unsafe. colt would always assure him that the stuff barely even hurt (lie)

-after grace heard about colt's fall, he tried to reach out but colt stopped answering and (canoncially) changed numbers + fell off the map

-grace heard that colt literally exploded and couldn't deal with it so he blocked all mention of him online and refused to talk about him in casual convo, so he doesn't know that colt is alive

-colt is back on the map/credited in movies again but grace never tried to reach out so he thinks grace is (painfully but understandably) protecting his peace and doesn't push it

Viewing their brother in a coma as the Hail Mary flies to Tau Ceti. Seeing him wake up and, to their horror, forget ever having brothers. His memory a black hole.

Ryland meeting them in dreams, his shock and terror at seeing faces he doesn't know.

He gets better, slowly. Colt and Six slowly piecing together his forgotten past. Helping him see his life in dreams and memories.

Six pounding his head on walls as Ryland does his first spacewalk (Colt shouting instructions his twin never hears. No one sees their brothers when awake).

All three weeping as Rocky gives his fuel from the Blip-A to get Grace home.

Colt and Six screaming in fear as Ryland is crushed in his chair in the skies above Adrian.

Both keeping watch over Rocky and Ryland as they slept, recovering. Hoping.

Them becoming enraged at seeing Ryland's worst memory (Colt had to physically restrain Six when they're awake to not go after Stratt).

Them watching as Ryland gets thinner and thinner as the Hail Mary races to Erid. Praying that he will make it another week. Another day.

I cannot stress enough that Ryland and Simon have not dated, are not dating, and will never date each other. They might get married if the legal protections it afforded them was advantageous, but they’ll never date each other.

actually wrong in this

one, but may I add