“I was afraid of that. I mean, he called me for the first time in how long? He had to be desperate,” Danny replies quietly, and then takes an audible, deep breath. “So, what’s he…I mean, how is he?”

Robbie smiles despite himself. “He’s grown up. He’s almost as tall as me.”

“What?” Danny sounds indignant.

Robbie’s grin widens. “That’s right. You jealous?”

“God damn it,” Danny growls, and then launches into a familiar and very unconvincing rant. “I don’t care about that. You know I think our culture’s standards of beauty are bullshit. And I’m not, like, a victim of the American height obsession, okay?”

“Yeah, you don’t sound like a victim at all. You sound completely unbothered.”

“That’s right,” Danny says, still growling, “because I’m not. You know, in some cultures—no, I’m not going to get into this with you. But even if there was such a thing as an objective standard of beauty, it would still be a meaningless measure of worth.”

He goes on from there for a while about how the beauty bias comes, at best, from the hindbrain, and then delves into a commentary on ableism that feels only tangentially related to the original topic. Meanwhile, Robbie listens and makes sure he doesn’t laugh. For a minute or two, it feels like old times—Robbie baiting Danny into a dissertation in just the way he has so many times before, then being just as proud as he is amused by Danny’s offhand insights.

“...Which is why half the people back home still won’t let their sons wear pink.”

That’s apparently Danny’s closing statement, because he falls silent. With the cell connection suddenly quiet, a few strained seconds pass. Then Danny says in a different, tentative tone, “I wish I could come back.”

“Your semester just started.” Robbie knows Danny doesn’t need the reminder, but he says it anyway, just in case. “I’ll…take care of him.” For some reason, the words make his face heat.

Robbie swallows. You’re just lonely, he tells himself again.

“I know,” Danny says softly. “Thanks.”

“You don’t have to thank me. I care about him, too.”

“I know. Hey, I tried calling and texting him. Maybe he just doesn’t want to talk to me.” He laughs, short and mirthless. “Anyway, will you tell him I said hi, and that if he wants to talk, I promise not to ask him about anything except his feelings about the movie adaptation of The Team?”

“Those awful magazines you used to be obsessed with? What idiot thought that would make a good movie?”

“They’re comics, and they’re—you know, they’re actually a cult classic!” Danny snaps. “They’re deliberately ironic, and fuck you, did you just do that on purpose?”

“Definitely not,” Robbie promises, swallowing his laughter.

“You’re worse than Johnny.”

“You wound me.”

Robbie hears a voice in the background and a moment of static, like Danny just breathed hard into the receiver. Then his brother is back, speaking a little faster than he was a moment before. “I have a class starting. Are you sure...?”