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Continuous banging on his apartment door typically wasn’t Colt.
Ryland’s twin brother thought that kind of thing was rude. Colt always knocked exactly three times, paused, then knocked another five if Ryland didn’t answer after the first set. Ryland had once pointed out that this system was objectively insane and Colt had argued back that it was “predictable” and therefore polite.
Which meant whoever was currently trying to beat Ryland’s door off its hinges was definitely not Colt.
Ryland groaned into his pillow and shoved his face deeper into the mattress. The banging continued.
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled.
They were filming in San Francisco this week, which meant Colt was nearby. Maybe one of Colt’s coworkers had the wrong apartment? Dan, maybe? But Dan wouldn’t be hammering on his door at one in the morning either. Jody liked him too much to assault his entryway like this.
The pounding came again.
Ryland dragged himself upright with all the grace of a corpse reanimating itself. He fumbled blindly across his nightstand for his glasses, found a pen, an old sticky note, and somehow a spoon, but no glasses.
“Fantastic.”
Squinting at the blurry glow of his phone screen, he made out 1:07 A.M.
Who the hell—
Another bang rattled through the apartment.
“I’m coming!” he yelled hoarsely.
He shuffled toward the front door half-blind, hair sticking up in every possible direction. The hallway light outside leaked beneath the crack in the door, painfully bright against his sleep-heavy eyes.
Ryland cracked the door open.
“Hello—oomf!”
A body crashed directly into him.
Ryland hit the floor hard enough for the air to leave his lungs in a pathetic wheeze. Something soft and heavy sprawled across his chest while a familiar laugh bubbled into his shirt.
Wavy blond hair blocked most of his vision.
Ryland blinked slowly.
“Tom?” he croaked. “What the fudge?”
“Mwrrrf,” Tom replied eloquently.
“Great. Excellent answer.”
Tom giggled harder, which only confirmed Ryland’s rapidly forming hypothesis.
“Are you drunk?”
Tom lifted his head just enough for Ryland to see his unfocused eyes and flushed cheeks. “M’not drunk.”
Tom’s hands suddenly found Ryland’s face, thumbs pressing clumsily against his cheeks. “Where’r your glasses?”
“Couldn’t find them.” Ryland squinted at him. “Where did you even come from?”
Tom stared at him with slow, heavy blinks. “You look like Colt.”
“Yup. Identical twins. That’s generally how it works.”
Tom hummed thoughtfully, apparently fascinated by this information.
Ryland sighed and wrapped his arms around Tom’s waist so he could shove himself into a sitting position. Tom made absolutely no effort to help, all long limbs and dead weight draped over him like an affectionate (and slobbery) golden retriever wearing several thousand dollars worth of clothing.
“Okay,” Ryland muttered. “Stand up. I need to get you water.”
“Don’t need water.”
Ryland grimaced instinctively.
God, he hated that sentence.
Years later and the phrase still made his brain twitch in protest.
“Yes,” he said firmly, “you do need water.”
Somehow, through a process Ryland was fairly certain violated several laws of physics, he managed to stand. Tom immediately slid bonelessly onto Ryland’s carpet and continued giggling to himself.
Honestly, what the hell was his life?
Ryland stepped over him and headed for the kitchen.
He should probably call Colt.
Actually, no, terrible idea.
Colt hated Tom Ryder. Deeply. Passionately. The kind of hatred Ryland usually reserved for invasive species and water. If Ryland called him right now, Colt would immediately ask why Tom was drunk in Ryland’s apartment at one in the morning, and Ryland really did not want to unpack the deeply confusing nature of whatever this relationship currently was.
Friends?
Sort of?
Occasional kissing acquaintances?
He grabbed a glass from the cabinet and filled it halfway. He blamed his Uncle Holland. Maybe this is how he felt when he met Uncle Jackson…or maybe this is how Uncle Jackson felt when he met Uncle Holland?
“Ryyyland?” Tom called faintly from the hallway. “Wheeeere’d you goooo?”
“I was gone for twelve seconds.”
Ryland returned to find Tom facedown on the floor, cheek pressed into the carpet.
“Man,” Ryland said, crouching beside him, “do all of your friends act like this drunk?”
Tom dissolved into another fit of laughter.
Ryland pulled him upright and shoved the glass into his hands. Tom drank three obedient sips before peering up at Ryland with suspiciously soft eyes.
Then he leaned forward.
Ryland dodged immediately.
“Nope,” he said. “Absolutely not.”
Tom frowned. “But I wanna kiss you.”
“You’re drunk.”
“So?”
“So you are not allowed to kiss me while intoxicated.”
Tom looked genuinely devastated by this information.
Dan had once warned Ryland that Tom became “an affectionate menace” when drunk, but Ryland had expected loud and chaotic. Instead Tom was weirdly clingy and sleepy, smiling at Ryland like he personally hung the moon.
“Can I stay here?” Tom mumbled.
Ryland looked at him for a long moment.
“…Yeah,” he sighed eventually. “I think that’s probably best.”
Tom beamed.
Unfortunately, he still refused to stand up on his own.
Ryland grabbed him beneath the arms and hauled him toward the bedroom while Tom clung to his leg like a koala.
“You’re heavy.”
“M’not, it’s…it’s the drinks…”
Ryland snorted despite himself.
After considerable effort, he managed to dump Tom onto the bed and tug the obnoxiously expensive coat off him.
“Wooow,” Tom whispered, staring up at him. “Yousostrong.”
“Go to sleep.”
Tom kept smiling lazily while Ryland tugged the blanket over him. Within three minutes he was snoring loud enough to remind Ryland of his Uncle Jackson.
Ryland stared at him for a second before rubbing both hands down his face.
What. The hell. Was his life.
He shuffled back into the living room and collapsed onto the couch beside the stack of assignments he’d been grading earlier.
Well.
He was awake now anyway.
Tom woke up feeling like someone had replaced his skull with a cement mixer.
“Ughhhhhh—”
He promptly rolled off the bed.
The impact against the floor sent pain ricocheting through his head.
“Fantastic,” he groaned.
Not his room.
Tom squinted around blearily at the bland apartment interior until recognition clicked into place.
Oh.
Ryland’s apartment.
Right.
Bits of the previous night resurfaced in horrifying fragments: tequila, Gail yelling at him, getting into a cab, Ryland’s face and carpet.
…why did he remember carpet so vividly?
Tom stumbled upright and found a glass of water and painkillers waiting on the nightstand.
“Well,” he muttered, dry-swallowing the pills, “that’s domestic.”
He grabbed his coat and wandered into the living room.
Ryland was asleep on the couch, one arm hanging off the side, red pen still clutched loosely in his hand. Papers covered most of the coffee table.
Tom stared for a moment.
He looked…soft like this.
Less tightly wound.
Tom draped the coat over him carefully before grabbing the remote and turning on the TV at the lowest possible volume.
A second later Ryland made a deeply offended noise and shoved the coat away from himself without opening his eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled. “You smell like my grad school dorm.”
Tom grinned. “So it’s true?”
Ryland cracked one eye open.
“You got high in grad school?”
“The chemistry and biology departments collaborated a lot,” Ryland replied dryly.
“That is not an answer.”
“It should explain enough, man.”
Tom laughed weakly and grabbed Ryland’s ankle, letting it rest across his lap while he flipped through Netflix.
Ryland tolerated this with the exhausted resignation of a man who’d simply accepted that strange things attached themselves to him now— which wasn’t false. He thinks it’s genetic, he’s been thinking about Uncle Holland a lot recently.
Tom leaned back against the couch with a sigh.
“My head is killing me.”
“Loud,” Ryland muttered instantly.
Tom froze. “Oop. Sorry.”
He lowered the TV volume another two notches.
Ryland finally opened both eyes and stared blankly at the screen.
“…Are we watching a documentary about frogs?”
Tom frowned. “I thought you’d like it.”
Ryland looked at him for a long moment before snorting tiredly and sinking deeper into the couch cushions.
Somewhere beneath the pounding headache, Tom decided that was probably worth the humiliation of drooling on Ryland’s carpet.
Ohhhh, that’s why he remembered carpet.