By the time his alarm blared on Monday morning, Cort had already been awake for hours, staring at the tiny fissures in the plaster ceiling above his bed and contemplating his life choices. He sucked in a breath, let it out in a sigh, and rolled over to grab his phone from the nightstand. The stupid thing played an obnoxiously peppy song - like Happy Birthday with maracas - and he never could figure out how to change it, but at least it meant he always leapt out of bed immediately at seven a.m., wide awake if somewhat annoyed.

Today, though, he flopped back on the bed after silencing the alarm, and debated throwing the damn phone out his second-story window to shatter on the asphalt below. There had to be some silver linings to being thisclose to unemployment for the first time in his adult life, goddamn it. He had a right to lie in his bed, still stinking faintly of chlorine because he hadn’t bothered to shower all weekend, and he didn’t need an alarm going off every morning to remind him he had no job to go to. Since he was unlikely to get his job back at all, he probably didn’t need the FBI-issued piece of crap any longer anyway.

He stood up and stretched, tossing the phone onto his dresser next to his wallet, then picked his way through the living room to the little kitchen. His foot swiped a mostly-empty bag of chips sticking out from beneath the couch, sending dull yellow crumbs scattering across the floor, and he grimaced when he accidentally stepped on some, grinding them into the area rug in the center of the room. In the kitchen, he set the kettle on to boil, then turned to stare in disgust at the wreck of his apartment.

The folders of notes piled haphazardly, clothing thrown over chairs, and paperbacks stacked sideways and double-banked on the cheap bookcase didn’t bother him at all, though he’d pissed off enough roommates over the years to know he was no picnic to live with. The other stuff, though, all the signs of the weekend-long pity-party he’d thrown himself, bothered him immensely. He had no reason to feel sorry for himself, after all. The food strewn on the coffee table, the mugs of half-drunk coffee and dirty dishes he’d accumulated over the past few days, the stale scents of beer and unwashed human - all that shit reminded him a little too much of some of his childhood homes, and the kind of person he’d sworn he’d never become.

And all this because Cam Seaver tied you up in knots. It was shameful, it really was. He grabbed a garbage bag and broom, and began systematically tidying the living room while he waited for the water to heat.

What else did you expect would happen on Friday night? he asked himself for at least the hundredth time in two days. And just like every other time, he had no good response. It was a foregone conclusion that Cam was going to learn the truth about Cort, that he’d feel like an ass when he did, and that Cam would never want to speak to him again.

So why did he regret that everything was going to plan?

Cort hadn’t expected the guy would make him laugh so much, or that Cam’s trust in Cort would make him want to confide in Cam, too. He’d never figured the kid in the surveillance pictures would be very much a man, and the hottest one Cort had laid eyes on in a really long while. Blowing the guy in a stairwell, of all places, hadn’t been part of the plan. Neither had the way Cam responded to his dominance.

Shit. Just thinking about it had wound him up again.

But the surprise of the connection and the hot sex were nothing compared to the shock of finding he honestly liked Cam Seaver. For a minute there, he’d been second-guessing his careful plan, thinking about coming clean to Cam and asking for his help instead of forcing his hand. A guy who could be loyal to a dickwad like Sebastian Seaver would understand Cort’s loyalty to his own brother, right?

As the kettle began to whistle, he threw the last of his trash into the garbage bag and made himself a cup of pour-over coffee, tapping his fingers on the counter as he waited.

So, yeah, on some level he’d known all evening long, even as they’d played games at the bar, traded secrets at the pool, and shared their mind-blowing exchange on the stairs, that once Cam found out who Cort actually was and why he’d come to the fundraiser, they’d be headed for disaster. But Cam hadn’t found out, and things had ended anyway. The air around them had barely cooled before Cam was grabbing Sebastian’s call – an epic reminder from the universe of why they could never be together. And Cam hadn’t said a word to stop Cort from walking away, either. It was as if he recognized some essential lacking element in Cort’s makeup - probably the same thing that had made him disposable to everyone but Damon since the day he was born.

He sipped his coffee, grimacing slightly at the bitter burn in his throat.

Whatever. Two days of wallowing was two days too long, and he had a job to do.

A job that still involved him confronting Cam Seaver and making some carefully-worded demands.

Cort ran a hand through his messy hair, then took his coffee to the sofa and sat down, toying with a pen on the coffee table and contemplating the files in front of him. Though he could practically recite all the information by heart, he grabbed the top folder from the stack anyway - the file on his brother - and looked at the picture he’d carefully clipped to the top of the page, needing to remind himself of exactly why he’d targeted Cam Seaver in the first place, why he couldn’t afford to show the man any weakness.

He winced. Any more weakness.

Nineteen-year-old Damon Fitzpatrick stood in front of the Dempseys’ one-story house, his broad shoulders hunched, brow furrowed, eyes staring straight ahead as though he was anticipating a fight. His hair was still blond, not yet the all-over gray Damon had acquired in his early thirties. Meanwhile, beneath his right arm, was a scrawny twelve-year-old Cort wearing a t-shirt two sizes too big, and looking up at Damon as though he was magic.

Cort snorted. In a way, his brother had been magic, especially when Cort was younger. From the first moment Cort had been placed with the Dempseys, eight years old and way more pissed at the world than a third-grader should have any reason to be, Damon had taken care of him. Seven years older and already wise to the way things ran at Craig and Rhonda Dempsey’s house, Damon seemed to feel like it was his mission to keep Cort safe. No food in the cabinets or the fridge? No worries, because Damon would find some. The guy who lived across the street, in the house with the boarded-up windows, was eyeing Cort in a way that made Cort squirm? Not a problem, because Damon would get him to stop. If Cort was sick, injured, confused, or sad, Damon had always been around to help. And when Damon’s friends asked why little Cort was always hanging around, Cort remembered the happy thrill he’d get when Damon would give his friend a killing look and reply, “Because he’s my brother, that’s why.”

It wasn’t until Cort was sixteen or so that he’d realized exactly how much Damon had sacrificed to take care of a kid who was no blood relation - the junk food that miraculously appeared when Craig and Rhonda failed to do any shopping was stuff Damon had stolen, the reason Randall from across the street had disappeared was because Damon had beaten him within an inch of his life, and the only reason Damon had stayed in the house after he’d turned eighteen and was phased out of the system, was by working out a deal with the Dempseys where he would pay an exorbitant monthly rent to continue living there - a rent so high Damon couldn’t afford to go to school.

After that, there had been arguments aplenty, about how Cort was practically an adult and perfectly capable of taking care of himself, thankyouverymuch, and how Damon’s decisions were none of Cort’s business, so he should keep his damn mouth shut. But in the end, Damon had stayed in Johnsville, working as a mechanic at the tiny regional airport, until the day Cort turned eighteen a month after his high school graduation. And then, while Cort had secured a partial football scholarship to Northeastern, and moved on to various assignments with the Bureau, Damon had kept his mechanic job and studied for his degree at night, before training to become a pilot and getting a job at a charter airline service. It hadn’t been a painless process, not for either of them, but as Damon used to say, “Hard and easy don’t matter when there’s no Plan B.”

Cort sipped his cooling coffee and flipped the page, feeling a familiar rage churn in his gut as he pulled out the official report of the plane crash where Damon was believed to have died thirteen months previously, along with Levi Seaver, Charlotte Seaver, and Amy McMann. Pilot error, the official cause said. Damon’s error.

Examination of the airplane by an FAA inspector reveals fire damage in engine compartment. Fuel control feed lines and return lines found to be loose at rear engine fittings above the starter adapter. Probable cause of incident: Loss of engine power caused by failure to properly secure fuel control lines. Maintenance records show the pilot, Damon Fitzpatrick, had replaced the plane’s starter adapter eight hours before the incident. Witness reports indicate the pilot had been drinking heavily during the hours before the flight. Heavy fog likely an additional contribution to the incident.

It was all neat, tidy, and official-looking to anyone who didn’t know Damon, who didn’t understand how fastidious and responsible he was. It had been especially convincing to Sebastian Seaver, who’d been looking to point fingers. Cort sure as hell understood the impulse to handle grief by becoming angry and casting blame - he was a gold-medal all-star at that shit. But Sebastian Seaver hadn’t merely vented to his friends or talked to his grief counselor, he hadn’t had a few too many drinks and thrown out a few careless words at a bar. No, when Sebastian Seaver had read the NTSB report and gone off the deep end, he’d done it on the public stage. And for a Seaver, for American royalty, that was a very big stage. Grossly negligent, he’d called Damon in one article. Murderously incompetent, were the words he’d chosen for a television interview. And when the sympathetic host had shaken her head and asked what Sebastian would say to Damon Fitzpatrick if he could have the opportunity, he’d looked directly at the camera and said, “I hope he and his entire family rot in hell.” Naturally, reporters had jumped on the story, digging into every aspect of Damon’s private life. And the bastards hadn’t cared about the innocent people who’d been caught in the crossfire.

It was how they’d found Damon’s asshole of a father who, for the right price, had been happy to dish about Damon, along with Chelsea, the twenty-year-old sister Cort was positive Damon had never known about, and her three-year-old daughter Molly.

Cort tapped his pen against his thigh and turned the page again. Damon had never talked about his life before the Dempseys, even to him. Since the bits and fragments Cort recalled about his own life before foster care generally turned his stomach to think about, and he wasn’t one to share personal shit at the best of times - did Derrick Green even know Cort was once in foster care? - Cort had understood this. But it meant he had to wonder whether Damon had ever known his father had sired another child. Given the way Damon had protected him all these years, he was pretty sure the answer was no. The idea that Chelsea and Molly would never know Damon was just one more level of loss, added to Cort’s already overwhelming grief over his brother, whose remains had never even been recovered from the mountain, for the love of God, and anger at the way Damon was being demonized by Sebastian Seaver’s pet reporters. Cort’s own overtures towards the girl had been completely rebuffed, and he had felt more alone than ever.

And then, just six months ago, the first package had arrived.

A random box of Twinkies arriving in the mail might not be a heart-attack-inducing moment to anyone else. But for a kid who’d never had a birthday cake until his teenaged brother had stuck a candle in a Twinkie one time and told him to make a wish, receiving the box of treats on his birthday was like receiving a message from beyond the grave. Cort had never told anybody about the Twinkies, so what the hell could this mean but Damon was still alive?

Then, newspaper clippings began arriving. Old-school, the way Damon knew Cort did things, no computers involved. Roughly once a month to begin with, but at other times more frequently, once or even twice a week. Cort had collected articles which ran the gamut from fluff pieces on the rise and fall of Levi Seaver, to business reports about Seaver Tech stock having plummeted before Sebastian Seaver took over the development reins and Camden stepped in as president.

He’d pored over a picture of Cam and Sebastian at their parents’ funeral, flanked by Senator Emmett Shaw and his entourage. He’d encountered dead-end after dead-end trying to trace the witness who’d seen Damon drinking before the crash. He’d slogged through multi-page articles cut from tech journals reporting on new technologies, and rolled his eyes at political pieces on special interest lobbies and military spending. He’d pored over every article as though they were fragments of a puzzle, trying to figure out the hidden meanings, trying to twist them into a clear picture of whatever Damon was trying to tell him, but only one consistent theme had emerged: Seaver, Seaver, Seaver.

What he’d found during his investigation was that Cam was at the helm of the company, while Sebastian had become a near-recluse who disappeared for weeks at a time, only emerging to continue dragging Damon’s reputation through the mud at every opportunity, or hack government computers without repercussions.

It had been an easy leap from there to see what Damon was pointing out. If Damon himself hadn’t caused the accident by failing to inspect the engine, someone else must have sabotaged the plane. Who would profit from the death of Charlotte and Levi Seaver?

Sebastian and Cam.

Cort had pretty much ruled out Cam even before his dick had become involved Friday night, and nothing about his quiet strength or reluctant assumption of authority suggested he could have set the events in motion that killed his parents. So, Sebastian must have been involved.

And wouldn’t Cam love to hear that, coming from Cort?

Cort squeezed his eyes shut at the idea of causing Cam that much pain. And he would never believe it, not until Cort had concrete proof, so Cort would wait to share that information until Cam could easily draw his own conclusions.

Not for the first time, he wished he could call Damon and consult his brother.

It wasn’t lost on him that Damon hadn’t called to ask Cort’s opinion on the case over all these months, or to chat about Cort’s life and mental state. And he recognized that he was essentially duplicating Damon’s work, double-checking all the conclusions Damon had already come to. Why couldn’t Damon call him, even anonymously? Why not send a letter of explanation? Why wait until nearly six months after the accident?

He shoved the papers back in the folder along with all the newspaper clippings which had fallen out, before placing the whole stack of folders into his briefcase. He took his coffee cup to the sink and washed it carefully - look at me, being responsible and not pitiful! - and then headed for the shower.

He had had no clue what his brother was doing, but he knew Damon was smart, and would have faith in Cort’s loyalty. So Cort had set up a facial recognition scan and waited patiently for months, until the previous week when pieces began to fall into place.

The first, another anonymous envelope, had arrived on Monday containing an outdated travel brochure from a tiny island called St. Brigitte. Google told him the island was once semi-private, but now owned entirely by the Tyndall family, who used it to host enormous fundraising galas like the ones the Seavers always attended. And a quick (nausea-inducing) glance at a well-known Boston society blog had told him the next such event, the Tyndalls’ end-of-summer party, was coming up.

The second breakthrough was on Friday morning, when Damon’s face had been captured at the largest commercial airport near St. Brigitte. Damon would be on the island, Cort had no doubt, so he needed to get there too. And whether Cam liked it or not, he would be Cort’s ticket.

Cort took the fastest shower known to man then threw on a suit and tie. He grabbed his phone, wallet, and lucky quarter from the dresser, collected his briefcase from the coffee table, then headed for the door before he could reconsider his plan. Damon was counting on him. He would not betray his brother’s trust for a love affair which could only end in tragedy.