the hardships of being

the twins were separated at birth. their mother wanted to get away, and she was allowed to by their father — allowed, because she knew without it she'd be found dead sooner than later — but she had to leave court with him, because he was old enough to be of use, and one of the twins — because their father wanted another child, it just so happened that two were born

and she did, leaving colt with him. she moved, and she gave ryland the life all of her children deserved, except that she never told him about who she had to left behind for him to be safe. and while, yes, the man wanted to have a second son, that want soon turned into demand, explaining why he had so many expectation for colt to follow in the first place

and it makes me wonder how did he feel when he had the opportunity to watch grace teaching his class. was he worried when he first found out that grace was a teacher? was he surprised when he found out that lessons could take place differently, that they didn't involve sermons and hissing warnings?

does he ever get reminded of the past, when one of the students is shouting, or distracted, and he almost expects grace to make remarks in a tone that is unusual for him, or to have a pointer in his hands?

how soon did he join the children, unobtrusively asking questions, learning about things that were hidden from him and his brothers, maybe just inaccessible to the survivors, until grace began to include him in the games he arranged himself? praising him, even?

and the one idea he comes up with is to do parkour. because it's cool, and he's seen colt do some of it before, always creating excitement on the playground, and if his brother can do it, then of course he can too

except he can't, not really. he may be athletic, but he lacks confidence when he has to flip, and he stumbles where he needs a firm grip. colt has to watch as he almost breaks his arm trying to jump over a fence before he thinks "to hell with it" and just. pretends to be ryland in front of his classmates, doing it himself

and it works, so the next step is to simulate ryland's injury — the one that would prevent him from practicing parkour in the future — so that no one can ambush him with a request to do it, preserving his reputation; and they do it, and they're successful

hi!! thank you so much for your ask, yes i do. i also can't imagine that grace would have gotten into too much trouble without a very specific set of circumstances, even with his short temper, but if it had happened, it would have been like this

the need for bail was caused by the fact that grace accidentally entered the territory of a state security facility, and was caught in two minutes

he got in there because he was stoned out of his mind, and was sure they were hiding aliens

he was incredibly disappointed when he realized that the alien turned out to be a stray cat

he hadn't planned to call his brother, but the guard persuaded him because even after he was taken into custody, he continued to grumble, and it was a lot to deal with this late in the night

he also cried a few times because it seemed to him that the cat was pregnant, and all alone

after colt bailed him, he had to take him to the nearest convenience store to buy something to ca him down, because grace had come to realize that this could affect his academic career

colt bought himself a burrito and grace bought himself five different flavors of gum

they spent the next hour on the cold sidewalk and were kicked out by the janitors at dawn

like, simon was in no way stable, and so his immediate reaction upon discovering he was no longer in the blood ocean — dragged from there directly aboard the mary — was to keep fighting the hallucinations surrounding him, even if those hallucinations were suspiciously present, encompassed by sounds he didn't know and smells that hurt his nose

so he attacked grace, the closes being to him, and grace was fine, is fine, but rocky remembers how his body collapsed under the other's force, and remembers the sound of grace's head hitting a hard surface, and it was too much like—

and the worst part is that it doesn't only happen once. it takes months for simon to stop flinching and grabbing grace when he comes up to him from the left, and to stop cursing at him when it seems like he's saying something he doesn't, and so on

and rocky hardly even understands why, so he's being cautious in a way that grace seems to not understand, and maybe this cautiousness is more about him being angry than anything else, still, the tension is feasible in the air, uncontrollable

and i imagine the thing they could bond over would be their fascination with human culture, because it's unfamiliar to both of them and requires not only grace's knowledge, but also his presence to guide them in the right direction. it's also one of a few things that requires them concentrating not on themselves, but on grace, who they both care deeply about

and simon doesn't want to worry about it, but he still can't help but sigh with relief when he returns, only colt now looks different. he's wearing a tattered t-shirt with a pun that makes little sense, and a wool cardigan in plus weather, he's wearing glasses, and his eyes are billions of light-years brighter than ever before, and now he's not buying bouquets for his girlfriend — instead, he's buying plants and succulents "for his students". he's awkward in an unfamiliar way, and much more fun, and simon vaguely wondered if this is the consequences of break up, and thinks about which flowers will make colt smile the most when he inevitably asks him out on a date

except it's not colt. it's grace, and he really buys plants for his classroom, or rather, he bought them the first seven times, until he ran out of space on the windowsill and had to start bringing them to his tiny apartment, arranging them on the floor and kitchen set because he can't think of any other excuse to talk to simon. his brother is recovering from an injury, and it's easier for him when there are small living creatures around him — especially succulents looking exceptionally similar to stones, which he affectionately calls "pebbles" — and he feels a little lonely, so he goes to simon's flower shop almost daily, for plants and the man's smile

and the kids, the kids know this word even if they haven't been provided with a translation, because they've heard grace use it to describe adrian, and they start vibrating even before simon finishes pronouncing the syllables — not having the slightest idea that he just irrevocably disrupted a lesson — because their teacher has a mate. and grace, he's so, so tired of suffering from migraines the last few days that he decides to just. let it happen, whatever, and no, they don't have mate marks, and no, people don't sing songs to each other to announce courtship, and how about going back to the lesson?

they do, but the kids don't forget about what happened, oh no. instead, they come home with an enthusiastic tweet that their teacher has a mate, and all the parents are equally thrilled because they weren't sure if it was possible for grace to be with the new human, and they're so, so glad that it happened, even if those of them who are scientists are already torn by an internal conflict between the desire to respect grace's boundaries and the need to learn more about how people mate

and all of this, of course, reaches adrian, and they already know that their work journal will be filled with separate columns on the behavior of human mates, and they will have to discuss this with rocky — who must have been aware of it happening, and didn't tell him a thing, little shit — so they can prepare a surprise for them, maybe add a nest to their biosphere since simon is always complaining about the cold anyway