Chapter Text
Francis came home two days later.
The front door opened just before noon. No knock. No warning. Just a jingling key, a heavy step, and the sound of a takeout bag rustling like an apology.
Malcolm was washing dishes.
Reese was sweeping up a broken mug Dewey had knocked over during breakfast.
Francis stepped into the kitchen like he expected fanfare.
"Hey, guys," he said, holding up the bag. "I brought pad thai."
Malcolm didn't turn around.
Reese didn't stop sweeping.
Francis cleared his throat. "No welcome back? Not even a 'you look great, Francis, where've you been?'"
Nothing.
He shifted his weight. "Look, I know I've been kinda MIA, but—"
"Amber's gone," Malcolm said flatly.
Reese leaned the broom against the wall. "We kicked her out."
Francis blinked. "What — why?"
The question landed wrong even as he said it. Like he already knew the answer wasn't going to be good.
"You can't just... abandon us, Francis," Malcolm said, turning finally. His hands were still dripping from the sink. "You can't show up with some girl, dump her on us, then vanish while she scares our little brother half to death."
Francis opened his mouth. Closed it again.
Then, a little too fast: “She needed a place to stay.”
Neither of them responded.
Francis pushed on anyway. “And you guys—look, you had Dewey, you had school, everything going on. I figured having someone here—an adult—would help.”
"An adult?" Malcolm repeated.
Francis hesitated, then doubled down. “Yeah. Someone to keep an eye on things. Make sure Dewey was fed, get him to bed on time. I thought it’d take some pressure off you.”
Reese let out a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah. That worked out great.”
Francis’s jaw tightened. “I wasn’t just dumping her here. I was trying to fix two problems at once.”
Malcolm stared at him.
Quiet and cutting: “You left her here with Dewey for days.”
Malcolm took a step closer. “She locked him outside. She screamed at him. She called him a pest and told him no one wanted him.”
Francis looked at him, looked at Reese, then down at the takeout bag.
“I was just trying to help.”
“You didn’t.”
Malcolm’s voice cracked. “You made it worse.”
Francis shifted awkwardly. "Look, I didn't know she'd—"
"You didn't care," Reese snapped.
Francis flinched.
He glanced at the table. "You guys look tired."
"Yeah," Malcolm said. "We are."
Francis set the bag down. "I'll—uh—I'll clean up. And I'll talk to Dewey. And I'll sleep on the couch. Okay?"
Reese gave him a long, unreadable look. Then walked out of the room without saying a word.
Malcolm stayed where he was.
Francis looked at him. "You hate me now, huh?"
"I don't hate you," Malcolm said. "I just don't trust you."
Then he dried his hands on a towel and left him there.
***
The house was quiet in a way that felt borrowed.
Ever since the confrontation in the kitchen, Francis had started acting like he lived there again. For once, though, he was out. Dewey was down the hall, footsteps thudding now and then as he moved between rooms, too restless to settle.
Late afternoon light slanted through the living room window, dust floating in it.
Malcolm sat on the couch with a textbook open on his lap, pretending to read something he'd already failed to understand three times.
Reese sat at the other end, jacket folded beside him, turning his work cap over slowly in his hands.
Neither of them spoke.
The air felt thick. Like it was waiting.
After a long stretch, Reese said, "You're not actually reading that."
Malcolm didn't look up. "Yes I am."
"You haven't turned a page in like ten minutes."
Malcolm turned a page. "There."
Reese huffed — almost a laugh. Not quite.
The couch shifted. Reese moved. Not touching. Just… closer.
Malcolm's heart slammed against his ribs.
"You've been weird," Reese said.
"I haven't."
"You have. You won't look at me."
Malcolm's fingers tightened on the textbook. The spine cracked softly.
"Malcolm."
He looked up.
Reese was right there. Studying his face like he was trying to solve something and didn't know where to start.
"What's going on?" Reese asked, quieter now.
Malcolm's throat closed.
A thousand answers crowded his head, none of them survivable.
"Nothing," he whispered.
Reese leaned in. Close enough that Malcolm could feel his breath.
"Liar."
Malcolm's eyes dropped to Reese's mouth before he could stop himself. Something shifted in Reese's expression — darker, startled, almost hopeful.
The space between them collapsed —
Footsteps down the hall. Dewey, pacing.
They both froze.
Reese swore under his breath and leaned back, scrubbing a hand over his face. "I gotta go."
He stood too fast, grabbing his jacket.
Malcolm nodded, pulse roaring in his ears, not trusting his voice.
Reese paused in the doorway. Didn't look back.
Then he left.
The house settled again.
Malcolm stayed where he was, textbook sliding forgotten to the floor, heart still loud in his ears.
Almost.
The front door clicked open again not even five minutes later.
Malcolm looked up.
Reese stood just inside the doorway, like he hadn't made it past the porch.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Reese shut the door behind him. Slower this time.
"I forgot —" he started.
Stopped.
Malcolm was already standing.
They met halfway without meaning to.
Too close again. Malcolm could smell the cold air still on Reese's jacket, the faint grease from the pizza place underneath it. Familiar. Too familiar.
Reese let out a breath that sounded unsteady.
Malcolm didn't move away.
That was all it took.
Reese's hands came up slowly. Cupped Malcolm's face.
Malcolm forgot how to breathe.
Their mouths brushed — barely. Not a real kiss. Not at first. Just contact. Warm, uncertain, there.
It lingered a second too long to be accidental.
Then Malcolm's breath caught, and Reese shifted just slightly, and it became something else — still soft, still unsure, but real. Malcolm felt it everywhere at once, in a way that made no sense for something so quiet. The warmth of Reese's palms against his jaw. The slight roughness of chapped lips. The way the world went very small and very specific, narrowed down to just this, just here, just the two of them in the dim living room with Dewey still pacing somewhere.
His body just — leaned in, hands finding Reese's wrists, thumbs pressing gently against his pulse. Quick under his fingertips. As unsteady as his own.
He thought, distantly, that this was what it felt like when something you'd been carrying without knowing it finally set itself down.
Somewhere in the middle of it, he'd closed his eyes. He didn't remember doing that.
They pulled back just enough to look at each other.
Neither of them said anything.
Neither of them smiled.
Reese swallowed. "I —"
He stopped. Shook his head.
"Later," he said. Like he didn't mean later so much as not now.
Malcolm nodded, even though he didn't know what he was agreeing to.
Reese stepped back and grabbed his cap from the coffee table.
This time, when he left, he didn't come back.
Malcolm stood in the quiet.
The room was exactly the same as it had been ten minutes ago.
He wasn't.
Not almost.
***
They didn't talk about it.
Not that night, when Reese came home from work and Malcolm pretended to be absorbed in homework. Not the next morning, when they moved around each other in the kitchen making toast and coffee like everything was the same.
But it wasn't the same.
A week passed in small moments.
A kiss behind the dryer door while they were folding laundry, Dewey's cartoons blaring from the other room. Malcolm pulling Reese down by the collar in the hallway between rooms, both of them breathless and quiet about it. Reese's hand finding the back of Malcolm's neck in passing — brief, deliberate, gone before it could mean anything out loud.
It existed between them now. Wordless. Certain.
Neither of them named it.
Neither of them needed to.
Francis was around more that week.
Not hovering. Just… there. Loading the dishwasher wrong. Asking Dewey about homework like he wasn't sure what grade he was in. Talking too loud in the mornings, like volume could make up for time.
Once, Malcolm passed the hallway and saw Francis standing outside their bedroom, hand not quite raised to knock. Then he walked away.
Reese barely acknowledged any of it. And somehow, that made it easier not to either.
Francis had no idea what he was doing. Malcolm did.
By the time Monday came, Malcolm felt older than everyone around him.
School hallways still smelled like deodorant and cafeteria grease and cheap perfume. People complained about quizzes. Talked about dates. Who liked who.
Malcolm moved through it like someone visiting from somewhere else. He was at his locker when two girls stopped nearby.
“—and then he held my hand through the whole movie,” one of them said.
“That’s so cute. Is he taking you to the Fall dance?”
They laughed and moved on, voices dissolving into the hallway noise.
Malcolm shut his locker and didn’t move.
Fall dance.
He pictured it automatically: dim lights, cheap music, bodies pressed together in practiced closeness. People pretending not to care while caring intensely, in ways that came with permission slips and chaperones and slow songs.
It felt distant. Not forbidden — just unreal. Like something happening in a different version of the world, one he wasn’t currently occupying.
“Hey,” Stevie said, hovering at his elbow. “You coming?”
“Yeah,” Malcolm said too fast.
He followed him down the hall, but the thought stayed lodged somewhere under his ribs. Not jealousy. Not longing. Just the sharp awareness that whatever he was doing now didn’t come with music or invitations.
It came with silence, and dark, and the constant effort of holding his breath.
***
That night, the TV was on too loud.
Francis had it on when they came in — some late night rerun he wasn't really watching, volume up the way he always did, like noise was company. He was sprawled across one end of the couch, feet on the coffee table, already half-asleep.
Malcolm sat in the middle. Reese dropped down beside him.
Dewey was asleep in the bedroom, the house settled into that fragile quiet that only held if nobody acknowledged it. Reese leaned forward to grab the remote, and his arm brushed Malcolm's chest.
Malcolm froze.
For half a second, his brain screamed no — not a word, not a reason, just a hard internal brake, instinctive and panicked. His eyes cut sideways to Francis without meaning to.
Francis hadn't moved. Still staring at the screen, chin dropping toward his chest.
Reese felt it immediately. Pulled back. Looked at him.
"You good?" he asked, voice low.
"Yeah," Malcolm said. Too quickly.
Reese followed his glance toward Francis. Said nothing. Leaned back into the couch like nothing had happened.
But Malcolm didn't relax.
His heart kept racing, blood loud in his ears. He stared at the TV and tried to understand why his body had reacted before his thoughts had even formed. Why that had scared him more than all the other things that hadn't.
When it was time to go to bed, he didn't follow Reese into the master bedroom.
He took the double bed instead.
The mattress creaked when he lay down. The sheets smelled wrong — dusty, unused, like something no one wanted anymore. He stared at the ceiling and told himself this was better. Smarter. Necessary.
This was what stopping looked like.
Ten minutes later, footsteps crossed the hall.
The door cracked open.
“You sleeping in here now?” Reese asked.
“Just tonight,” Malcolm said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
That was true. And not true at all.
Reese stood there another second, like he might say something else. Then he nodded.
“Okay.”
The door closed.
Malcolm lay awake longer than usual, stomach tight, waiting for relief that didn’t come. This didn’t feel like safety. It felt like holding something at arm’s length and realizing it was heavier than you thought.
***
Morning came too early.
Reese wasn’t beside him. That should have helped. It didn’t.
In the bathroom, Malcolm avoided the mirror. Brushed his teeth too hard. Rinsed. Brushed again.
Brothers don’t—
He gripped the edge of the sink until the thought blurred out of focus
“Malcolm!” Dewey yelled from the kitchen. “The toaster’s smoking again!”
Malcolm swore and ran.
Burnt bread. Dewey panicking. Reese already at the counter, handling it, calm and competent like this was normal and always had been.
The moment passed.
They always did.
***
That night, they lay in bed again — this time together, but not touching. The dark felt thicker for it, the space between them more noticeable than contact would have been.
After a while, Malcolm whispered, “What are we doing?”
Reese didn’t answer right away.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
“Does it… make things harder?”
“Yeah.”
Malcolm swallowed. “Does it feel wrong?”
A longer pause.
“Sometimes,” Reese said. “And then you’re here.”
It wasn’t an answer. Malcolm knew that.
But Reese’s hand slid under the blanket and found his. Squeezed once, steady.
“We don’t gotta figure it out tonight,” Reese said.
Malcolm wanted to argue. Wanted to insist they should.
Instead, he said, “Okay.”
They fell asleep like that — hands tangled in the dark.