John

Relieved of duty. Those are three words that John Tracy can't stand. Even worse, the thought that part of his job is now being done by his grandmother…

Guilt jabs like pinpricks. That's not fair, of course. Grandma is more than capable of manning comms. She might be older and she might say she doesn't do technology, but she still grew up with constantly-changing communications networks, she still lived through the birth of social media, still made one of the first holo-calls on the planet…

John turns in the bed and squeezes his eyes shut, cocooning himself in a duvet fortress. If he's not allowed to work, he refuses to operate at all. Thus, it is three p.m. and as yet, he hasn't pulled himself from bed.

The others are out doing their jobs. Or at least, they were, since John's 96.4% certain that the rumbling he can hear – even through the soundproof glass – is Two returning. And Two's return means Virgil's return. And that means John's about to get his ass handed to him in the gentlest way possible.

But he still has time. He could get up, maybe even half-dressed, before Virgil arrives at his door. And yet John is still swaddled in blankets, mentally calculating the probability of Virgil not knocking the door, when the door knocks.

Oh.

His brother doesn't wait for entrance to be granted. He comes in point-five of a second after his second knock. His footfalls are heavy on the wooden floor as he walks forward, disturbing the humdrum of the aircon.

Then the curtains are pulled back, the window is opened and John dives six feet under the covers. Because he hates Virgil just a bit right now, since all of this is his fault.

It isn't, of course. And John knows it. But he doesn't want to know it. It's much easier to blame someone else than to turn the camera within.

"It stinks in here," Virgil says. "I'll go start the shower."

The heavy footsteps pad into the en suite and John keeps his eyes squeezed shut. How very Virgil. Not, you stink. Not, you need to wash (those sentiments are reserved for Gordon and Gordon alone). No. Virgil doesn't approach the problem of the lump in the bed with the tact of their father, all blanket-wrenching and tongue-lashing (a more efficient approach). Instead, Virgil points the issue out without pointing fingers. And it's only for the resonance of that approach, which echoes somewhere deep in John's chest, that he slides out of bed, hair akimbo, tottering on Bambi legs.

Virgil reappears and pulls John's too-large sleep shirt off before he can protest. The redhead is in the shower before he's had time to process just what's happened. One minute, his calves were leaning against the cool bedframe. The next, his whole body is slumped against the freezing tiles. And camouflage rains down on him.

He can't calculate how long it's been when at last he shuts off the sluice.

It takes him twice as long as it should to cross to the door. He doesn't remember that towels exist for five point three seconds, by which stage, the floor is already soaked. He misses the handle by ten degrees, sending his knuckles into the door frame.

By the time he makes it to the bed again, Virgil is holding a pair of sweatpants that look like they belong to an abnormally tall child. John takes them because elasticated waists are the only thing keeping his butt from greeting the sunlight.

When Virgil hands him an ancient t-shirt, John half-turns. He just about catches his reflection in the long corner mirror. He stops. Drops the t-shirt. Steps forward. His fingertips ghost against the glass, clouding its streaked surface with heat.

"Holy hell."

It's the most appropriate of all the inappropriate things he could say in all the languages he could use. The man in the mirror is a stranger from the neck down. His deltoids look abnormal, like globes, compared to his withered biceps and pectoralis major. The lines of his serratus anterior look like sharpie marks on his canvas skin. And there's a bottle-neck narrowing at his waist that he hasn't seen since his finals at Harvard.

Virgil, three metres back in the reflection, still looks wider.

"Yeah," is his reply. "Exactly."

John turns his back on the stranger and drowns himself in the t-shirt. It has that over-washed softness of an old garment. Plucking the front up, John studies the upside band down logo. He doesn't recognise it. Come to think of it, green has never really been his colour. It's more…

He releases the fabric and scowls.

"Is this Alan's?"

Virgil has the decency to look a little shamefaced at that. He nods.

"It was," he says. Then his eyes harden. "It's too small for him now."

John's chin falls and he looks down. It's nowhere near a snug fit on him, though the hem skirts his belly button.

He has no interest in appropriateness any longer.

"Fucking Jesus," he spits. "What the shit?"

"Yeah," Virgil says again, too polite for profanity. "Exactly."

Their mother taught them not to swear. Their father said it was okay in certain circumstances. To John, this is such a circumstance. Because it has to be. What else could your reaction be when you look in the mirror and see a stranger in your skin? Someone nothing more than a bag of bones?

John won't turn around but he doesn't want to look at Virgil either. Virgil is fine. He's not the one who looks like a skeleton with a skin graft, as Grampa Grant used to say. He's not the one who's apparently dropped a seventh of their body weight without even noticing.

"How?" John asks.

He doesn't have the answer. Neither does Virgil, who looks at him with those liquid eyes, chocolate smooth in their compassion.

John won't turn around but he doesn't want to look at Virgil either. So instead, he stands stock-still and closes his eyes.

Maybe that'll make it all go away.