#bryuta

All his gear is with Claudio and Mox. All his toiletries, his clothes. Yuta left everything back at the arena, all of it likely gathered up and ferried to the hotel.

"You know they'll let you back into the room," Bryan says softly, trying not to sound so hoarse. "This isn't about you, Yuta. You didn't-"

"Bryan," Yuta stops him, pleadingly. He shifts in his chair, gripping Bryan's hand tight. "Don't."

So Bryan doesn't. They sit there in another moment of quiet, and Yuta moves his hand up from Bryan's hand to his neck, tracing down a chord of muscle. The bag left no marks, having been stopped by Bryan's beard - it feels impossible that there are no marks. Just some oxygen depravation, a check for a concussion, and then an overnight stay to watch him (because of his history, not because they thought he was in any ill shape).

It seems so impossible that the attack left so few physical wounds when Yuta feels like there's been a puncture in his chest.

"...They loved you," Yuta breathes, his fingers shaking on Bryan's neck. He doesn't say the rest - Bryan knows. He knows Yuta so well, he knows Yuta through Regal's betrayal, he knows Yuta through the traumatic way he cut his umbilical chord with Chuck and Orange.

They loved you and they did this. What will they do to me?

Bryan tuts and rests his head to the side, looking pointedly at Yuta.

"Wheeler, don't go there in your head. They aren't Regal, are they? Hm? They're Mox and Claudio," Bryan reminds him. Yuta swallows, not meeting Bryan's eyes.

"They're Regal to me," Yuta mutters. Bryan opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Yuta curls his fingers, now pressing his knuckles lightly to the side of Bryan's neck, soaking the warmth along his skin.

A few more minutes go by, and finally the nurse comes back, this time with a firmer tone and a threat to go get a security guard. Yuta could bite someone, he could punch and fight and get himself arrested, but then that would take him away from Bryan for longer than he's already going to be.

Yuta forces his own hackles down and looks apologetically at Bryan, though his mentor is smiling at him. Alive, smiling, not-

-Mox with the bag over his head, not letting go, not looking at him, not letting go, not letting go, not letting go-

"I'll be back in the morning. I plugged your phone in," Yuta says, barely able to hear himself. There's a tea kettle screeching in his head, the shrill noise drowning out all other sounds. He is disoriented with the sound of it, as the nurse taps his foot, eyeing Yuta as he backs up and finally drags himself out of the room.

The door is shut behind him, the curtains pulled over the window. Yuta swallows and looks back, but his mentor is out of sight, and the ringing in his ears is getting louder, worse. It's hot and loud and cooking his brain inside his skull, like an actual kettle, like someone's turned a burner on under his brain and now it's boiling.

He steps. One right after the other, his feet drag him out of the hospital, out into the frigid night air. It's cold, the tip of his nose already starting to chill, but he can still feel the heat inside, the steam rising and putting pressure on his skullcap.

What happens now?

Claudio struck Bryan. Yuta screamed for Claudio - if he'd done that any other day, Claudio would have come sprinting for him. If he'd screamed Claudio's name in any other situation, he would have held him and asked him what was wrong. If he'd screamed for Mox, he would have instantly stood by his side, teeth barred, ready to sink them into the threat.

But tonight, Mox didn't even. Look at him. Claudio's palm on his face, hitting him so hard he smelt copper. They hadn't hurt him. They hadn't hurt him, but. Why did that feel worse?

Oh. Well - violence is a language they taught him, and now, all of a sudden, they're speaking in another tongue. If they'd hit him, pummeled him, maybe things would be clear to him. But he didn't understand this foreign softness, the way they kept their hands off him entirely.

"Yuta!"

He frowns, turning his head. He could have sworn, through the screaming heat-death of his own brain, that he heard someone calling his name. When he looks around, he finds himself sitting on the sidewalk outside the hospital. When had he started walking? When had he stopped?

A shadow falls over him, and then someone's throwing a big puffer jacket over his shivering form. He'd left his BCC jacket with Bryan, because the hospital was too cold and he didn't like watching Bryan shiver under the thin hospital blankets. Which meant he was in a t-shirt.

Until now. Because someone put a jacket on him.

"Yuta?"

It's like a flashbomb had gone off in front of him. The shrilling, the disorientation. At least, that's how he thinks they work from Call of Duty.

"Hey! Look at me!"

Someone grabs the side of his face and wrenches his head to the side, and. He blinks.

Chuck has one knee on the sidewalk, his face all red across his nose and cheeks from the cold, his eyes wide. Orange is walking around behind him, coming to stand in front of Yuta, his skinny legs blocking out the streetlamp across the street.

Chuck's face is what starts to quiet the shrilling in his ears, cooling down his brain before it can melt into a soup, cementing the world around him. Slowly, all that fades away, and Yuta is back on Earth again. And he can hear his own heavy breathing, and the passing of cars, and the wailing of ambulances. He can see Chuck and Orange clearly, feel how cold he is.

"...If you're gonna kick my ass," Yuta breathes, his voice ruined, croaking over every word, "can you at least bring me into the hospital after? I want a bed next to Bryan."

Orange sighs and steps closer, holding his hand out in front of Yuta. It's not the limp half-five he usually gives, rather, he's holding his hand out as if he wants Yuta to take it.

"We're not here to beat you up," Orange says. "We're here to take you to the hotel. Figure you don't have a room."

Yuta frowns at Orange's hand, glancing between him and Chuck. This feels like a joke. This feels like he's a punchline.

"...Why...are you here?" Yuta asks. Chuck looks up at Orange, brows raised, lips pressed together. It takes a moment for him to meet Yuta's eyes again, looking first from Orange to the road, to the sidewalk, to Yuta.

"We saw what happened. You don't have anywhere to go, right?" Chuck asks, and Yuta knows he doesn't mean it in a cruel way. He knows he doesn't mean to ask it in a way that digs invisible fingers into the gaping wound in the center of Yuta's chest to irritate broken blood vessels, getting out more viscera, making it hurt more.

But it's true. Yuta doesn't have anywhere to go.

He should be home. He should be safe with Claudio and Mox. He should be laughing with Claudio and Mox.

"I...." he starts, stops. He's shaking, but he's warm. What does he say to that? He doesn't have anywhere to go, they probably saw. They sat and watched Yuta's family fall apart (again) (not even the first time with this family) and now they were here to give him somewhere to stay.

Because he can't stay with Claudio and he can't stay with Mox and the hospital won't let him stay with Bryan. And Yuta is so young, in the grand scheme of things. Twenty-seven, and he feels every one of those years on his heart. But it's young. And so he cannot fathom having loved two men like he loved Claudio and Mox, and to have them rip him apart.

Yuta loved them more than his years. And yet, he could not go home to them.

"...I think I fucked up," Yuta breathes, his voice hoarse and low in his throat. His lower lip quivers like he's a child, and Chuck swears under his breath as he wraps long arms around him like he's a father. Yuta falls into him, pressing his face into the neck of a man he'd attacked with car parts, a man who had stood across the ring from Yuta and targeted his lower back.

And Orange sits at Yuta's other side, a man who had just this past week landed brutal blow after brutal blow against Yuta's flanks. Yuta had repaid him in kind. Orange rests his head on Yuta's shoulder, looping an arm in Yuta's arm.

"It's okay, shh," Chuck says, hand on the side of Yuta's head. "It's all good. You're gonna be okay."

Yuta doesn't feel like it. In his gut, Yuta thinks that nothing is ever going to be the same again. In his gut, Yuta thinks he was just taught about what love looks like when it does something ugly.

"I want to be with Bryan," Yuta sobs, gripping Chuck's long-sleeve, one of the shitty old ones that Yuta always begged him to throw out because they were older than Yuta was. "What if...what if...."

"He's safe," Orange promises, simple but soothing. Still, Yuta shakes his head, and he feels that wound in his chest pulse with blood as he takes a rattling breath.

"...They love him," Yuta insists, then, "they went for his neck."

Yuta feels like he just reached the root of a nerve. Something looses inside him, unspooling like guts free from an abdomen, and his body goes slack against Chuck. He sucks in another breath and squeezes his eyes shut, and Orange squeezes his arm with all the effort he has left in him.

It strikes Bryan when he’s standing behind a camera, watching Wheeler give a quick interview. It’s something he says, in passing, so casual that Bryan’s stumbling over it as Wheeler continues on with his stream of answers. 

“I don’t want to be sitting at home anymore while guys like Daniel Garcia and Jack Perry are only getting better.”

Yuta doesn’t even look at him when he says it. He doesn’t even look like he wants to look at Bryan when he says it. Bryan, however, finds himself blinking as a realization starts to knot up in the back of his chest, worrying his heart with the implications of it all. Mox and Claudio are too excited to have Wheeler back, to watch him give interviews, to grab onto him once the cameras are off and rough him up and play-wrestle him until Yuta wiggles out from under them.

Wheeler was a perfect fit for the BCC. He always was. They had been missing a last piece all these years, but as old men, they figured that piece had gotten lost somewhere along the way. It had likely already passed them by. But it was Wheeler. Wheeler was the piece. They just had to wait a little while to find him, tucked away in a corner of the world where they had nearly stumbled over him. But he fit perfectly, at first.

And he fits, now. 

But there’s a part of him that’s curled up, dented, like a puzzle piece that had gotten soggy or had been forced too hard into a place where he didn’t fit. He still fits. There’s just…the lines aren’t smooth anymore. And Bryan did that. Bryan bunted the edge of Yuta and now there’s a gap somewhere that just won’t smooth out. 

—--

It’s only after Bryan realizes that there’s still that insecurity in Yuta that he picks up on other things. Like the way Yuta looks grateful whenever Bryan kisses him. Or the way his eyes light up when Bryan seeks him out to spend time together in the garden, or to sit next to each other on planes. Before, he just thought this was what it was like to be loved by Yuta, now that Yuta had matured and they’d closed up all those wounds that they’d opened up a couple years ago. It was just how Yuta loved, how Yuta wanted to be loved. 

Bryan had thought they were fine. Yuta had let him believe they were fine. But for the rest of that week, he notices the way Yuta is tense in training until Bryan offers to help him shower off when they’re done. After that, Yuta leans into him, lets the water roll over them, wraps his arms around Bryan. 

He had always thought Yuta was just touchy.

He did not realize Yuta was keeping Bryan in place.

—--

Did it not matter that Bryan was retiring? Or that Bryan had delayed that retirement because he could not bear to not spend another few months with Yuta in the ring? How could that not have changed the dynamic and assuaged some of Yuta’s fears? How on Earth could Yuta not see a light at the end of the tunnel?

Bryan tries to figure it out, watching Yuta, Mox, and Claudio fuck around with a slip-n-slide that they’d found at a yard sale and immediately set up in their yard. Bryan sits in a chair, nibbling on a slice of watermelon, watching how relaxed and easy Yuta is around Claudio and Mox. 

If it didn’t have anything to do with Bryan actively wrestling with him, then why was Yuta so afraid of the other rookies passing him by? It was illogical, first and foremost - Yuta made four steps for every one that everyone else made. He was so fucking good. He was unbelievable for his age. His attitude was what was going to carry him forward so fast, so far. But it also had everything to do with Bryan, he was positive. He could tell, because he could see, at Yuta said it, the sadness that had once been so potent.

It seemed like a well-worn shirt on Yuta now, that sadness. Was that why Bryan didn’t see it? Had the anxiety become part of his lover’s face?

—--

Yuta is sunburnt and exhausted, half-asleep from all the sun and play. Bryan is slowly rubbing aloe onto his bright red shoulders, with Mox and Claudio napping upstairs. Yuta had burned terribly, and so Bryan had insisted he at least slather on some aloe before crawling into bed with the other two. His other reason was a talk, long overdue.

“Yuta, I want to talk about your interview last week,” Bryan says, smearing more gelatenous green aloe onto Yuta’s neck. Yuta hisses a bit, shifting uncomfortably.

“Yeah?” Yuta asks, and Bryan slides his hand down Yuta’s spine, where he’s burned in a line down his back. Just evidence that Mox hadn’t actually been as careful wiith their sunscreen application as Bryan had insisted.

“You said something that I’ve been thinking about. You said that the other rookies were getting better and better, and you were sitting at home,” Bryan starts, choosing his words carefully. Yuta shrugs, and where before initiating a conversation like this would have made Yuta hunch in on himself, now he seems comfortable with it.

Now, it doesn’t seem like it bothers him. Like the scar had been around so long that it didn’t hurt. 

Or, it hurt. But the pain was part of his life now. Bryan had heard about chronic illness sufferers and how most of the time they just…have the pain there. It becomes woven into the fabric of their lives, only causing breakdowns sometimes. Other times, the pain is just…pain.

Had Bryan given Yuta a chronic pain?

“You’ve seen Garcia. He’s gunning for Ospreay right now - and honestly, he could win. He’s getting better really fast. And Konosuke is like, a beast. I had months on the shelf just stagnating while they were on TV,” Yuta reasons. “I need to catch back up. I just wish I didn’t come back so close to Forbidden Door, I don’t know how I’ll get a match booked with two weeks left.”

It is no secret why Yuta pointed out Garcia and Konosuke. It is not meant to hurt Bryan.

Yuta thinks this topic is obvious now.

…Yuta thinks Bryan knows.

His hands stop on Yuta’s biceps, where he’s dusted with sunburn. All of his back is sticky and slick now, and he’s going to have to sleep on his stomach to avoid pain and destroying the sheets. That must be all that’s on Yuta’s mind right now, while stares a hole into the back of his head. Sitting at the kitchen table like that, Bryan can see the pain he’s caused. The pain he got Yuta used to.

He needs to say something wise, something to soothe Yuta when the young man doesn’t even know that something is wrong. He needs to fix this. But Bryan, he’s growing older now, and his words don’t come as easy as they used to, and they stumble over his tongue. He feels desperate, when it comes to Yuta. He wants to impress him. He wants to help him. He wants to…fix this. 

But all he says is

“I love you, Yuta.”

It’s not enough.

Yuta tilts his head and turns in the chair, looking genuinely perplexed. But there, right under his thick beard, there is a slight twitch in his jaw. Nearly imperceptible to anyone who hadn’t watched Wheeler choke back tears as many times at Bryan had. 

Bryan furrows his brow and he grabs Yuta’s forearm, the sticky aloe smearing on his armhair.

“Why did you say that in the interview?” Bryan asks. 

“I…don’t want to fall behind,” Yuta says, tilting his head. “Are you okay, Bry? Do you need me to get Mox?” 

Bryan shakes his head.

“Are you dizzy? Like…is your head okay?” Yuta worries, sitting forward more, his hand resting against the bald spot on the side of Bryan’s head. “I know you got your head knocked in the match. Has it been bothering you?”

Yuta cares so deeply for Bryan. Whenever Bryan looks at him, it hurts to know how much he loves this young man. How much this young man loves him. 

And he could blame Orange Cassidy. He could blame Chuck Taylor. He could blame Trent. God, he could easily blame Trent.

But it’s not the same for Mox and Claudio, and if there is a common denominator here, it’s Bryan and the time he spent carving rules into the inside of Yuta’s skull until they became permanent. He shakes his head, and Yuta just looks at him, and the worst part is that Bryan wonders if it even hurts Yuta anymore. Does it even hurt him anymore?

“Yuta, do you still think I’ll stop loving you if you fall behind?” Bryan asks.

He could have punched Yuta in the face and the expression would have been less extreme than the one Yuta has on now. Like he’d spoken an unforgivable thing, Yuta looks at him accosted, sitting back, his chest sinking in. Bryan keeps his hand on Yuta when Yuta takes his own hand off Bryan’s head, and the answer is sitting plain between them. And Yuta’s response is sitting plain between them:

You didn’t know?

“Yuta,” Bryan breathes. “...I thought you knew. I thought we got past this.”

“We did,” Yuta lies. “...I know you love me.”

“You don’t think I’ll always love you,” Bryan says. “You think if you fall behind I’ll stop. It’s not about Garcia anymore.” And Yuta opens his mouth to speak, closes it. His jaw twitches. His eyes are dry and red. Gently, because Yuta’s been nursing an open wound for so long, working diligently to keep it from getting infected, Bryan scoots his chair forward until his knees are bracketing Yuta’s and he wraps his arms around him, pulling him in. 

It’s not about Garcia anymore.

Was it ever about Garcia?

When they made up, did Yuta just accept that Bryan loves him now? 

“Yuta, fuck. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t-”

“Yuta,” Bryan says softly, then, “Wheeler, when I said that I loved you, when we- when I thought we buried this thing, I meant that there’s nothing you can do to get me to stop loving you. You can break your neck and retire tomorrow and I’ll love you for however long we have left.”

And Yuta is so stiff in his arms, but his hands are creeping along his thighs, his hips, inching up to his waist. 

“...Can I…can I fucking. Take a moment, Bry?” Yuta asks. 

“Okay. I’m not letting you go, though,” Bryan says, fingers carding through the short hair on the back of Yuta’s head. 

And so he lets Yuta take a moment, and he lets Yuta breathe, and he lets Yuta have a moment to himself. Gradually, he feels the muscles in Yuta’s back soften up, and then his hands tuck up under Bryan’s shirt so he can hold onto his skin at his sides. Bryan hears a couple sniffs, but that’s all.

“I’m so scared of disappointing you,” Yuta mutters out of their silence. “I’m not scared of having to retire or not being able to keep wrestling. I’m scared that you’ll have done all of this and I end up still wrestling…but I’m not good. I’m scared that after everything I’ll be mediocre.”

Bryan blinks a couple times, then he sits back. Yuta’s head is ducked and he can’t look Bryan in the eye, but that’s not an issue for Bryan, who takes Yuta by his chin and makes him face him. 

“...You are already so far beyond mediocre, Yuta. You amaze me, every time I see you - fuck, I prolongued my career just because I want to share in all these insane things you do. You inspired me, Yuta. Why the fuck would you ever be- no, no, okay, it’s not. It isn’t even about that.” Bryan shakes his head. “Let’s say, in this impossible, imaginary world, that you end up being a mediocre wrestler. So long as you’re still Wheeler Yuta, I’m going to love you. It won’t change!

“What can I tell you now that I didn’t tell you last time? How can I make you believe that this,” and Bryan motions to both of them, “isn’t negotiable. It won’t end. How do I get you to believe that?”

And there is no cure for chronic illness, so perhaps Bryan’s metaphor wasn’t entirely accurate. Words and actions don’t assuage chronic illness. The pain is there, it cannot be cut out.

Bryan refuses to believe that is the case here. He refuses to believe he can’t fix this, can’t grab Yuta and turn over his brain in his hands until he finds a way to make his piece fit again.

“This…this is good,” Yuta says, and he leans forward, resting his forehead on Bryan’s. “...This is good.”

“Is it?” Bryan asks. “I don’t want you to keep thinking after this that you have to keep trying so hard. You shouldn’t want to improve for anyone but yourself, Yuta. There’s nothing else you need to do. Be the best technical wrestler because it’s what you want - everything else is locked in. Do you understand this time?”

Yuta swallows, and he nods. And all at once, he looks so unspeakably tired. Like how the pain had been ruining his stamina, his energy, his mind, for so long. And now it’s gone, for now, at least a little bit, at least as a start, and Yuta looks like he couldn’t bear to take another step until he’s had a long, long rest.

“Good. You should sleep now,” Bryan says. Yuta looks up at him again, finally, and,

“I love you,” he breathes. Relieved. 

“I love you, too, shithead.”

Yuta huffs out a laugh, and Bryan, because the emotional toll of a single emotional conversation has run him ragged, wraps an arm around his waist and stands them both up. Yuta makes a surprised noise when Bryan grabs him by the backs of his thighs to lift him up, making Yuta wrap his legs around his waist and his arms around his neck.

“This isn’t a passionate sex thing,” Bryan warns. “Your back is just burnt and I want to carry you to bed.”

So here he was, at a house party with half their senior class, and he had arrived with the intention of ensuring that his friend and his friend’s fling didn’t end up at a police station one week before graduation. For the most part, he’s been watching Yuta and Mox makeout on the ratty couch in the basement while some rap song vibrates the walls and a color-changing light douses everyone in a kind of magical atmosphere. The basement reeks of weed and the several cans of cheap beer that someone’s parent bought them.

“Bryan!” Mox shouts over the music, and Bryan looks up from where he was brooding, seeing Mox on the couch next to him, Yuta in his lap. Mox is beaming, his newly-cut hair tucked behind his ears and curling near his nape. Yuta’s hand is still cupping the back of his head, his other hand holding Mox’s beer.

“What?” Bryan asks, hoping Mox is about to tell him that they’re leaving. Instead, Mox glances at Yuta, and the both of them are smiling, faces red, lips swollen from each other’s teeth. When Yuta looks back over, there’s that bit of mischief in his eyes that’s unbecoming of a band geek. Bryan wants to think that it was Mox who had changed Wheeler Yuta from the gentle, shy kid who liked chatting with Bryan about books whenever they were stuck in the library together for homeroom, to the troublemaking little shithead he is now.

But then, Bryan thinks they’ve both been shitheads all along, and maybe he just attracts that kind of person. 

Yuta leans over, one hand balanced on Mox’s head, the other getting pulled up by Mox so he can take a mouthful of beer.

“Do you want to kiss us yet, Bry?” Yuta asks, lips right beside Bryan’s cheek. Bryan shivers slightly, and his empty hands grip his knees. He tries taking a breath, but the air is so acrid that it’s nearly impossible. Yuta smiles, Bryan can feel the curve of the lips against his cheek. 

Bryan hates Yuta and Mox. They’re menaces and they bring Bryan nothing but trouble. Without them, he probably could have rounded out that 4.0 GPA - he could have gotten into his first-choice college instead of falling back into NYU with the both of them. He could have made himself over a new, been a good kid, done more volunteering. Hell, he could be in college already, maybe even a sophomore. But no, because of them he’s sitting in a dingy basement surrounded by underage drinking and weed and he’s probably going to have to drive extra careful home so that they didn’t get pulled over. 

He turns his head and is greeted by Wheeler Yuta’s impossibly dark eyes, his forehead gritting against his black fringe. He’s starting to grow a bit of a beard - it’s patchy and itchy when Bryan presses his lips against his lips, but he thinks it’s going to look nice once it’s all grown out. 

“Ha!” Mox laughs, and Bryan can feel Mox’s lips press against his jaw, a sloppy, beer-rank spit spreading over his skin as Mox sucks a kiss onto him. “...Love you guys,” he says. It’s sad, the way Mox says ‘I love you.’ Bryan feels like it’s always for the last time. 

"Bryan, come on man. You're not so old that you can fake having passed away in your sleep. Probably," Yuta says, and Bryan cracks an eye open. He's looking for Mox or Claudio to back him up, but both men are missing from the bed, and it takes him a moment to remember that both of them are already at the arena, promising to see Bryan when he and Yuta arrived later. Something about media and recruiting against the Elite.

"Yuta," Bryan says, rolling onto his back and frowning at the young man who's standing right next to the bed, holding a plate of something...resembling a cake in his hands. "...What the fuck is that?"

"A cake! A birthday cake for you!" Yuta explains, a smile breaking across his face. He sits beside Bryan and puts the plate in his lap, letting Bryan get a better look at it. It's...a cake. If Bryan had to classify it against what exactly constituted a cake, it would definitely meet most of the criteria.

Shape is...circular, kind of, but it's lumpy and obviously Yuta had frosted the second layer too soon, because it's actively sliding off the bottom layer. The frosting, too white to be anything but the vegan brand that Bryan keeps in the fridge, is applied in a way that looks like Yuta really gave it his best effort. And there's sprinkles in abundance, covering practically every inch of the cake, some bunched up too much in one place.

But it's a birthday cake, with two big candles lit in the middle of it spelling out Bryan's age, and he can't help but to think back on forty-three years. At thirty eight, he doesn't think he could picture his life being the way it is now. He couldn't have possibly pictured Yuta.

"I made it myself," Yuta announces proudly.

"Really? Kroger didn't craft this masterpiece?"

"Okay, asshole, happy birthday. Here's a fork," Yuta says, passing a plastic fork from his pocket to Bryan. He sets the cake in Bryan's lap and crawls over his legs, coming up to curl against his side. Bryan opens his arm to make way for him, letting Yuta in closer. Yuta presses against him like he's trying to make Bryan absorb him into his body, as if the two couldn't get close enough.

Bryan looks from the cake to his fork, then to Yuta.

"It's seven in the morning, Yuta. Do you want me to throw up in the middle of my match tonight?" Bryan asks, and Yuta, waiting patiently for Bryan to take the first bite (because fuck slicing it, apparently), is still smiling like Bryan's not a massive prick. He's smiling and it makes Bryan want to smush his face into his palm, or knock him to the floor and put him in a leg lock, or chop him until he's bleeding.

Yuta then rests his head on Bryan's shoulder and makes his heart seep out from between his ribs.

"Just a bite, it won't kill you. C'mon," Yuta says, and he nudges Bryan. Try the cake that I made you, is what Bryan hears. I love you, I made it for you, you're still here at forty-three years old. Have a bite of cake.

Relenting, Bryan sticks his fork in the cake and takes a bite. It is, to his utmost surprise, actually a very good cake. The sugary sweetness isn't overwhelming, and Yuta must have finally figures out the ratios needed to give a vegan cake the texture needed to ignore the fact that it tasted vegan.

He chews it over, then swallows, and already he knows he's going to go in for a second bite. First, though, he looks at Yuta and his ever-expectant face, the same smile that makes Bryan want to bite him on his cheek, shake him around a little bit. Maybe dislocate a few of his joints just so he had an excuse to press his fingers into his bones and feel how they slot back into place.