certified old man yaoi enjoyer

It's down time and pretty much everyone's milling about ringside or running drills and they all hear Shawn, just like they've heard Bret all day, all week, all throughout this feud, but Bret's the only one taking pause, squaring the shoulders dramatically, giving the brow a good grumpy furrow. Shawn stands with hands on his hips and watches the shrewd eyes and lets him open up that grimacing mouth, think Shawn's gonna let him get off another verbal shot — then barrels over him: "Bret, I really think you'll get over with me better in the shower." He pivots and makes for the locker room. There's chortling from other wrestlers and a You would think that, wouldn't you from the Hitman.

Then he hears boots on tile striding after him.

"You think the ribbing's gone too far?" Bret asks.

Shawn waits until he's walked them into the corner of the stall furthest from the door, then turns around with his back against the crevasse between the damp walls. He leans, uncaring of what's befalling the shoulders of his cream sweater, or the crown of his honey-blonde head. He looks at Bret. Technically, the correct attire for a shower is naked, so he and Bret are both overdressed, but the Hitman is more incongruent with his surroundings than Shawn will ever be. He still doesn't get that the name of the game around the Fed these days is You can't deny Shawn Michaels.

"I might — if it were ribbing," Shawn says. "Increased frequency and escalation in the nature of a rib propels it out of rib territory at a certain point."

Bret stares at him, impatient. "And what's your point?"

Shawn grins. "You're not ribbing me. You're fucking repressed. No — no, hold on, let's stay here and finish. Iron Man can go an hour in the ring, can't go a few hard minutes with the Heartbreak Kid?" He'd caught Bret by the arm to keep him from leaving; Bret hasn't yanked him off yet, so Shawn slowly strokes that hand down leather-clad muscle until he's got Bret's wrist in a loose grip.

"There you go with your innuendos again."

"As opposed to yours? I'm giving garden-variety watchdog group scandals. You, on the other hand, are making it increasingly clear how much you want me. No, I said stay here."

"You know I don't have to take this, right?" Bret looks intense. But not in the I might break your body with a hold, kind of way, but the you might break my heart with a word, kind of way.

Shawn doesn't want to break his heart. He wants to be a little mean. He tilts his head, squinches up his own brow, gives his best confused bimbo. He keeps a hand on Bret and says, "But you clearly wanna take this, don't you? There's gay jokes, and then there's talking about barebacking and Shawn Michaels in the same sentence when nobody said shit about horses." Bret exhales loudly, and he still doesn't yank Shawn off, so Shawn keeps going. "I'm just saying, Hitman. It's all a little pointed."

Shawn's expecting him to fight a bit more, but it's like the fight goes out of him. He slumps suddenly. "Listen," says Bret Hart. "Assuming you're even serious —"

"— as a heart attack —"

"— I won't be another notch on your bedpost. I'm too old for that."

"The world's first sexually active geriatric under 40. We certainly do set records here at the Fed, don't we?"

"You asshole. I'm too old to be getting in silly entanglements with golden children at work."

"Because you can't keep up?"

"Because I can't afford to start over after your kind of fallout."

And uh, wow, Shawn kind of completely resents the idea that he'd uproot someone's career for such a stupid reason. It's 1996, a new millennium is around the corner, and showbiz has not ruined Shawn like that. He won't say it won't ever, but it hasn't yet.

Shawn pulls him in.

Bret falls against Shawn's body with the same sturdy grace Shawn knows so well from him in-ring. His arms about Shawn's waist and Shawn's arms about his neck. Bret's chin hooked over Shawn's shoulder. His face pressed into Shawn's hair. Shawn hoping Bret can smell the cologne sitting on his skin, just behind his ear. Shawn asking, barely above a murmur, "Does it have to be silly?" Winding a hand into the hair at the back of Bret's head. Saying, sweet: "I think it could be pretty nice."

"I got too much heat to stop," Bret says after a spell.

"You're too hot to stop cutting great goddamn promos," Shawn corrects. "Not to quit being a one-trick pony." The Hitman scoffs and pulls back some to tell Shawn off, but Shawn is too mesmerized by him to really hear whatever he's saying about hypocrisy and fame whoring and the like. With heart-eyes Shawn says his name over and over until he shuts up to listen. "Did I mention, 'you're too hot?'"

Bret exhales deeply, exasperated, and drags Shawn away from the corner with an iron grip on the waist, walks him out of the stall and into the big open space that feeds back into the main locker room. It's connected to the hallway leading out to the ring and everybody. Bret gets the two of them stood in the center of that space, and he's still got Shawn by the waist, and his hair is all in his eyes and clinging to tan skin. "Talk about 'pointed'," he says, just loud enough to carry. "Bitch and moan about one too many homo jokes on my part. You want that attention. 'What attention'—Planet Earth's attention, you exhibitionist, starting this drama out ringside in the first place, you hold no real anger about me or any acts I've associated with you in a beef—"