Archive of Our Own ^beta

Somehow, Ryan knows Shane for months without knowing he’s an earthbender.

And like, it’s not just that maybe when they were first introduced, Shane mentioned it and Ryan forgot, although that’s entirely possible; upon initially meeting Shane, Ryan didn’t think much beyond That is a very tall man with a very large head before his focus was tugged elsewhere. It was only after weeks of sitting next to each other that, slowly, Ryan came to think of Shane as someone other than Tall Deskmate; only after Shane made several surreal but hilarious jokes, shared his popcorn (butter and salt only, decent balance and pop), and in the course of one conversation brought up Back to the Future, Jaws, and The Thing, that Ryan started to pay attention to him. And at no point during any of that, or for many weeks after, did Ryan see Shane earthbend.

It’s unfathomable to Ryan. True, interning at Buzzfeed isn’t exactly a job that requires bending skills, but with the amount of time they spend together, both at work and eventually outside of it, it still seems impossible that a relevant situation didn’t present itself. And beyond that, well. Personally, the longer Ryan goes without firebending, the more he feels an itch building beneath his skin. He swears he can literally feel his blood grow hot. Not to be crude, but there’s a biological urgency to it, isn’t there, like needing to eat or piss or come. So maybe Shane’s not a showoff like he is, blasting off rings of flame for his college buddies’ amusement, but there have to be small things, little practical things, that his bending would help him with. Ryan’s never had to worry about his coffee going cold.

Ryan knew a guy in high school who would do skate tricks without a board, just his two feet gliding across the ground. There are all-earthbender construction crews who build giant skyscrapers without equipment, pro-bending champions who have taken the title with a well-timed blast of rock. The military recruits earthbenders aggressively, same as they tried to recruit Ryan. (Ryan was even tempted—though he can hardly imagine it now, the alternate life he would have led if his mom hadn’t gently talked him out of it, if his family hadn’t been well-off enough to still send him to college without the subsidy.) Ryan’s an adult now: he watches the news and sees the footage his parents used to try to shield him and Jake from. He knows the destruction those specialized earthbending units can wreak.

Shane plays with a little ball of clay.

Ryan thought it was a stress ball. So shiny and smooth and perfect, it could have been made of anything. Shane would leave it on his desk when he was typing, or roll it around in his hands, or tuck it into a pocket when he was called into a meeting. It’s always around and sure, Ryan notices it, but he never sees Shane doing anything with it except lob it gently from palm to palm.

They’re filming the stupid Soylent video when everything changes. Ryan’s already past his breaking point; this morning, he was so disgusted with his first taste of sludge that without much conscious thought, he had thrust out a hand and lit the packaging on fire. (This set off his lease-mandated trio of smoke alarms and also produced a truly terrible smell, so he wouldn’t recommend it.)

At work, he finds Shane slumped listlessly in his chair, his arms hanging long and limp at his sides. Ryan’s “Hey, man” comes out like a zombie groan. Shane only manages a grunt in return, eyes staring forward into, Ryan assumes, the cosmic void. Absently, he follows the angle of his coworker’s gaze, and that’s when he sees it.

Hovering six inches off his desk and spinning lazily is Shane’s stress ball.

Ryan lets out some sort of embarrassing yelp, and Shane straightens, the ball returning to his palm with a dull smack. “Uh-oh,” Shane says, revived enough to have the energy to smirk. “Are you so hungry you’ve started hallucinating? ‘Cause you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Ghosts are real,” Ryan says automatically. He can’t believe they know each other well enough to have already argued multiple times about Shane’s incredibly misguided skepticism, but he didn’t know that… “You’re an earthbender?”

Shane blinks at him in surprise and Ryan feels his cheeks heat. This isn’t quite as bad as if he’d, say, just let it slip that he’d spent the last however many months thinking Shane’s name was “Sam” or something, but it’s still a pretty big, important thing he should have known about someone he sees almost every day. And then to blurt it out like a weirdo—what if he’d, random example, seen Shane macking on some dude, would he have bellowed You’re gay?! Well, maybe. But that didn’t make it any better.

“I have been known to direct some dirt, yes,” Shane says. His lips are still quirked, but now Ryan thinks he sees some confusion there. “You seem surprised.”

“Just…” Ryan unhooks his bag from his shoulder and collapses back into his own chair, buying himself time to think. “You’re so tall, isn’t the earth awfully far away? Can you even see it from all the way up there? Must be rough.”

“We can’t all be as lucky as you—always a plentiful supply of hot air.”

Shane’s grinning at him. Ryan laughs and takes the deserved hit. “I’m so hungry I almost set my apartment on fire this morning.”

Shane nods forlornly. “Have you ever thought about the texture of bread?”

Well, he is now.

But he also can’t stop staring at Shane’s hands: the long fingers moving over and around the clay. Now that he’s looking closely he can see that Shane’s not actually physically manipulating the ball: it rolls over and between his knuckles like a quarter in that old coin trick. Shane’s face is placid; his technique has something akin to a waterbender’s smoothness, even though this is all clearly a manifestation of anxiety, jitteriness, hunger.

“Mmm, bread,” Ryan says, and then because he’s feeling jittery too, or just competitive, he makes a small soft ball of flame leap to life in the palm of his hand. On a practical level, this makes no sense: bending burns energy, and he’s got precious little to spare right now. Yet there’s that familiar feeling of release, of pressure relieved. He settles back in his seat with a sigh.

Shane makes a noise like “Ha.” Ryan can’t tell if it’s mocking or appreciative, but neither would sway him. This feels too mindlessly good. Control has never been Ryan’s strong suit, but if he’s careful, he can rotate his wrist and roll the little fireball over the ridge of his thumb and across the back of his hand, then catch and cup it again in his palm.

“There you go,” Shane says.

Ryan lifts his face to grin up at him, and only then remembers that they’re in the middle of the office, blatantly fucking around doing bending tricks instead of working. He sees Shane realize it too. “They can’t seriously expect us to concentrate when they’re starving us though, can they?”

“Nah,” Shane says. “Hey, look: I’m a firebender too.” The clay ball twitches in his hand and then it’s formed itself into a shape resembling a cartoon emblem of a flame.

“Spirits protect us, the power!” Ryan’s laughing, but honestly, he’s impressed. This kind of delicacy is not what he associates with earthbending—with any kind of bending, really. “How come you never respond when they send around casting calls for benders?”

Everyone at Buzzfeed is scrambling to get uploads, and get views. Bending skills are rare enough on staff to almost guarantee you a spot in a video’s roster. Ryan had filmed “Firebenders Do Fire Shots” just a couple weeks before the Soylent thing, and it had been him and Eugene and Kelsey Darragh, not because they were the best—though Kelsey still argued that they were—but in fact the only options.

Shane shrugs. He looks entirely unconcerned with letting valuable opportunities go to waste. “It’s not what I’m here to do,” he says.

Ryan snuffs his flame and gives Shane a curious look. “But you’re here to drink sludge?”

Another shrug. “Jen asked. I couldn’t let the two of you suffer alone.”

“Very noble.” Ryan’s stomach gives an unsympathetic rumble.

“A worthwhile sacrifice, clearly,” Shane says. His ball of clay is a ball again, which he sets beside his monitor. Playtime is clearly over.

“Warn me if you’re going to start waxing rhapsodic about bread some more,” Ryan says, turning to his own computer, which he hasn’t even booted up yet. With a couple guilty clicks, he fixes that.

“Hmm,” murmurs Shane from next to him, not looking away from his screen. “Crusty. Chewy. Airy. Cakey.”

“Shut up, Shane. I will literally set your hair on fire.”

“Not if I encase you in stone first.”

The thing is, it shouldn’t matter to Ryan if or how Shane uses his bending, or doesn’t. Since they’re both working at Buzzfeed, it’s pretty clear that neither of them is a prodigy, or has some kind of major bending talent. Just like he’d had to accept at a pretty young age that he was never going to play professional basketball, it was made clear to Ryan a long time ago that he didn’t have the talent for the pro-bending circuit. But he still uses his gift, still appreciates it for the gift it is. He lifts, but he also practices his katas, runs through his forms, keeps his body and his mind honed and healthy. He can warm up a cooling cup of coffee, but he can also start and control a campfire.

He can pay a visit to Fire Sage Thomas’ temple and make an offering to the spirits to temporarily imbue his bending with the sun’s holy power.

“See?” Ryan says, launching a small fireball toward the looming hulk of the bridge. “Holy fire! Don’t try it, demon!”

“Oh Ryan, you’ve outdumbed yourself.”

Ryan toggles back and forth between awe and annoyance at Shane’s lack of fear in the face of ghosts and demons. He knows it stems from Shane’s stubborn—borderline suicidal—skepticism, but sometimes he can’t help but wish that, believer or not, Shane would offer to do something to protect them. He could have opened a hole in the walls of Waverly’s Body Chute and allowed them to escape into the safety of the fresh night air. Maybe them running up and down the tunnel like morons made for better content, maybe not; all Ryan knows was that in the moment, they were both scared—Shane too, dammit—and Shane didn’t do anything. Even during that anxious, awful confrontation with the guys who ripped them off in Mexico—a real, tangible threat if there ever was one—Shane had held Ryan back when he’d moved to blast flame at their feet. Ryan can remember the rage boiling inside him when he realized what was happening; even then, he’d only meant to fire off a warning—though it was just four guys, and only one a waterbender; together they could totally take them! But Shane hand grabbed Ryan’s arm and planted his feet, and in the end, they’d paid the extra money.

Ryan being a baby and feeling like his cohost didn’t always have his back was one thing; pure stats were another. They almost always got a boost in views—not to mention lots of love in the comments—whenever he did firebending in an Unsolved episode. It made sense: clever bending videos were wildly popular, and even though Ryan tended to do it more for comedic or practical effect (so many of the places they went were dark and cold) than actually impressive shit like the stunts those Dude Perfect twins pulled, it still meant hits. Logically, then: firebending plus earthbending would equal even more hits. So why wouldn’t Shane give him this? Even just a little? Did he not care about Unsolved?

“Maybe you’re just not all that good at it,” Ryan had said on their last shoot, at Eastern State Penitentiary. He’d asked Shane to try to coax some ghosts out with a little rumble and shake; Shane had declined. And then Ryan had said… that.

Shane had rotated his face toward Ryan, slow and purposeful like that creepy-ass owl in Secret of NIHM. For the first time, Ryan noticed that his hairline was glistening, his normally noodley body held ramrod straight. “I’m about to shit my pants, Ryan,” he’d said, and even if they hadn’t decided to cut Shane’s airport hotdog escapade out of the episode itself, Ryan knew the rest of the conversation would never have made it in. He didn’t need to rewatch any footage to know how he sounded: petty and mean.

But even some self-directed shame was not enough to make Ryan’s frustration go away. Ryan knew he could be… well, a lot, but he always gave everything a hundred percent. Shane wasn’t lazy, but he was so unambitious it made Ryan want to scorch the earth. Why did he insist on ignoring what had to be a major aspect of his identity, on leaving this talent on the table?

Ryan knew there had to be Unsolved fans who didn’t even know Shane was a bender. It wasn’t exactly a secret—Shane had to be registered, and government databases were easily searchable to even the most casual internet sleuth. But Ryan was pretty sure he’d never talked about it in any video, as part of Unsolved or for anything else for Buzzfeed. Any time viewers or Ryan himself had tried to draw the Post Mortem Q&A in that direction, Shane had artfully dodged.

What a weirdo, Ryan thinks. He aims a couple more firebending stances in the direction of the empty demon bridge, substituting sound effects for actual fireballs this time, then straightens up and retrieves the rest of his equipment from the trunk.

Shane’s in an especially feral mood tonight, dancing around and goating—goading! goading the demon to kill him. In a similar state, Ryan thinks his fingertips would be sparking, but Shane’s just mouthing off and jigging across the bridge’s boards. With his insanely long legs, he looks like a possessed Riverdancer. He threatens to steal the bridge from the Goatman and Ryan both wants to laugh and pee himself a little. This is all insane and they are going to die, but this is also Shane at his best. Ryan can already feel how good this episode is going to be, and they haven’t even gone to shoot the part where they get murdered in the woods yet.

They don’t get murdered in the woods, and Ryan only sets one small bush on fire (it was rustling!). The Ouija board thing they have planned is hokey, but with the salt ring and the candles and the two of them sitting cross legged across from each other, Ryan knows it’ll make for a fun visual.

“If you let anything super evil through, I’m going to incinerate you,” Ryan warns the planchette before resting his fingers lightly upon it.

After all that buildup, not much happens. They get an ‘S,’ kind of, maybe. Nothing that’s going to sway Shane, certainly. In fact, with the end of the shoot in sight, Shane’s crazed cockiness returns full-force.

“Hey, you demon fuck.” He’s chuckling too much to really sound threatening, but Ryan’s still gobsmacked into something like awe. “If you can’t spell your name then this bridge is officially mine.” He meets Ryan’s eyes across the board and Ryan thinks Shane’s gonna try to rope him into bridge ownership again, but instead he lowers his voice into a hiss and tells the demon, “You heard me! I’m gonna bend it up into a little pretzel and take it home in my pocket.”

“Oh fuck,” Ryan says.

“Too much?” Shane asks innocently—like he didn’t just threaten a demon with metalbending, like he didn’t just brag about his bending in front of the cameras, unprodded. Shane’s eyes look like they’re dancing in the candlelight, but there’s a sudden intensity to his focus, like he’s studying Ryan, watching for his reaction. “Yeah, too much. Okay, I’ll leave it, but only so people can tell legends of me here. People will come here and talk about math, and facts.”

Ryan laughs nervously, because there’s still a good chance they’re going to get ganked by a pissed-off demon, and also he doesn’t know how to say thank you. He doesn’t know if Shane even knows what he’s done, or can begin to understand what it means to Ryan. Ryan’s not even sure it should mean anything at all.

So instead he agrees to cosign on the bridge with Shane.

It ends up being one of their all-time best episodes, with millions of views. And that’s all Ryan really wanted. Really.

The moment Ryan sees Shane slouch into the shoot for “Amateur Benders Learn Pro-Bending Power Moves,” he knows Shane’s gonna leave Buzzfeed. He’s stony faced, not even faking his usual level of midwestern affability. He’s too much of a professional not to turn it back on once they start rolling, but for Shane to be visibly cranky, even off camera, is an anomaly.

Ryan tries to keep it light: “How they’d talk you into this? I hope you demanded an especially large bribe.”

“I wasn’t exactly given a choice,” Shane says flatly. “I was informed that they needed an earthbender, and I was the only suitable option.”

“The only—”

“Since they fired Niki, yeah.”

“Fuck,” Ryan says.

He’d kind of been looking forward to this: they were going to be taught the moves by real pro-benders—not any really big names, but still. It sounded like it would be physical and fun, and there was a chance he might actually learn something cool. And it was infinitely better than trying on women’s swimsuits or eating the travesty that is spicy popcorn or touching snakes in any capacity.

It seemed like a decent last hurrah.

Because he’s leaving too. Ryan hasn’t told anyone yet. He hasn’t said it out loud. But he knows he’s on his way out the door. Maybe the layoff was the moment for him; maybe this was inevitable. Either way, he feels weirdly at peace about it. He knows he’s outgrown this place.

It’s strange for Shane to be the one who’s riled up and not him. Ryan is right: Shane does put on his smiley game face once the cameras are rolling, but Ryan can tell how hollow it is; there’s a brittle edge to Shane’s grin. Even after they’re each paired off with their own pro-bender and Ryan and Shane are moved to opposite ends of the high school football field where they’re filming, Ryan can’t stop himself from keeping an eye on his friend. He knows he should be concentrating—the chance to learn some sweet moves is still not to be discounted—but Shane’s state of mind is making him antsy. It reminds Ryan of himself, right before he boils over: the mood that marked all the most destructive mistakes of his teenage years. Shane’s not going to accidentally set anyone’s curtains ablaze, but…

“No, no.” Ryan can just make out what Shane’s pro-bender is telling him—yelling at him, most likely, for Ryan to be able to hear it from across a football field. No matter the intent, he’s a big dude, and he has a big voice, and he’s blasting it in Shane’s face. “Bigger! Bolder! Don’t tap your foot, stomp! Stomp! What is this? You’re practically mincing.”

Ryan’s arms drop to his sides, fire gathering around his fists. Without a glance back at his own instructor, he bolts toward Shane.

What Ryan thinks he’s going to accomplish by running over is not really the point. It’s irrelevant anyway, because before he’s dashed more than ten yards, Shane rotates back on his left foot and grinds his right heel into the dirt.

The ground splits. It’s not a canyon, not a fiery pit to hell—though Ryan would sure like to dump certain present parties down one of those. It is, a moment after it’s happened, a not very impressive four-inch crack running down the length of the football field. But the ground still heaves as it’s opened. The two airbenders catch an updraft to avoid it. The waterbending “amateur”—an intern whose name Ryan doesn’t know—falls on her butt. Ryan himself has to skid to a semi-controlled stop.

Yelly Asshole, annoyingly, stays standing. “No, that’s not the move! Seal that back up and try again.” The look he gives Shane has Ryan seeing red. “Unless that’s too difficult for you?”

Shane’s risen from his crouch. His shoulders look steady again. “You know, I think I’ll let you handle it. I think I’m done. The homophobia’s weirdly unmotivating.”

Ryan hurries to catch up with Shane as he’s walking off the field. His hands still feel hot. The air in his mouth is scorching.

“You’re done,” he pants, falling into step beside Shane. “Do you mean…done done?”

“Yeah,” Shane says, casting him a swift, steady-eyed look. “I mean, assuming I didn’t just get myself fired.”

“They’re not going to fire us for walking off some stupid rando shoot,” Ryan says, and only then realizes that’s what he’s done too. Good. “That guy was way out of line, they never should have brought him in for this. Also, we’re too valuable to them.”

“You realize that’s fucked up, right?” Ryan realizes that Shane’s fists still haven’t unclenched. “We’re valuable commodities because we bring them views and ad dollars and licensing fees. But not valuable enough to give us artistic freedom, or to not slash our budget, or fire our staff…”

“You’re preaching to the choir, man,” Ryan says.

They’ve reached Ryan’s car. “Wanna get a drink?” he asks, and Shane slides into the passenger seat with little more than a nod.

“Sorry,” Shane says, once he’s got a sip of beer in him.

“For what?” asks Ryan, genuinely confused.

Shane runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up in even more directions than before. For some reasons, Ryan struggles with a sudden urge to fix it for him. “That you had to see me like that, I guess? I don’t like myself like that.”

“What, righteously angry? I think it’s a good look.”

“Typical firebender,” Shane mutters to the strip of label he’s peeling off his beer bottle.

Ryan snorts. “‘I don’t like me when I’m angry.’ Damn, you’re like. . .self-conscious Hulk.”

To Ryan’s delight, this earns a wheeze from Shane. “Hulk smash?” he says in a terrible Hulk voice. “Only if okay with you?”

“Hulk always angry,” Ryan counters in an equally terrible voice. “And Hulk’s anger always make Hulk sad.”

They’re both still wheezing when Ryan forcibly sucks in a breath and says, “Start a company with me?”

Shane doesn’t quite spittake, but it’s close. “What?”

“Let’s start our own company. You and me.”

Shane’s staring at him. Ryan had made the ask so impulsively, instinctively, that he hadn’t even had time to get worked up about it, but oh look, here’s the whole anxiety package now. Ryan lays his hands flat on the table so he doesn’t accidentally do something with them. The flame on the booth’s little votive candle still starts to flicker wildly.

“Are you serious?” Shane asks finally. “Can we do that?”

“What’s stopping us?” asks Ryan, with a confidence he doesn’t fully feel.

“I mean, literally: are we competent enough to do that?”

Good point. Ryan thinks. “Let’s start our own company,” he tries again, “you and me and Steven Lim.”

Shane’s still staring, even as he chuckles. “Wow, it’s like a bad joke.”

The flame gutters and goes out.

“Okay, never mind,” Ryan says, lifting his hands to lower them carefully into his lap.

Shane arm darts out, fingers folding over Ryan’s knuckles. A dangerous way to surprise a firebender, but Shane doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink.

“I just meant,” he says hastily, “that it’s like the setup to a cheesy gag. ‘An airbender, a firebender, and an earthbender start a company together…’”

“Oh,” says Ryan. He can feel the heat radiating off of his own skin; any second now, Shane’s going to have to let go.

Shane doesn’t let go.

“You know, that’s not actually a bad angle for—”

“Ryan Bergara,” Shane says, and Ryan feels a strange pang as Shane’s fingers uncurl and his hand finally drops back to the table. His voice is thick with faux shock. “You wouldn’t seriously attempt to exploit the profound spiritual beliefs of a fine and decent man like Steven Lim—”

Shane has a point: for Steven, airbending is much more than a useful skill or cool party trick—it’s a deep and very real component of how he relates spiritually to the world. But still— “He uses airbending to cheat at basketball!”

“Well, you can bring it up with him, then,” Shane says with a smirk. “At our first ‘company meeting.’”

Shane doesn’t actually make them, but Ryan can sense those airquotes. “I’m really serious, Shane,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned, this is our first company meeting.”

Shane is silent for a moment. Ryan realizes this is it; he’s really deciding. He’s either going to make a commitment, right here, right now…or he’ll politely demur. It’s all or nothing. Several seconds pass. Strangely, once again, Ryan feels oddly calm.

“Okay,” Shane says, and the light of the candle casts his face in gold. His knuckles brush against Ryan’s again: a whisper of a touch, there and then gone. He hefts his beer jauntily and nods toward the bottle. “We should probably stop drinking, though, if this is company time.”

Ryan grins around the mouth of his beer bottle and takes a big sip. “I’m not that serious.”

Shane may have suggested that the hangup to garnering a little extra publicity for their fledgling company would be Steven, but in actuality, Steven’s happy to talk at length about everything to do with airbending and Air Nomad culture, same as he’s happy to talk about anything that’s meaningful to him. (Getting Steven to stop talking about some of these things is often more of an issue; Ryan’s heard more than enough about how to handcraft different types of kites, thanks.) No, the hangup is, of course, Shane. Shane who’s got some weird issue about his earthbending.

He’s still got his little ball of clay. He fiddles with it in meetings—more openly than he did at Buzzfeed. There are a lot of meetings, so much to plan and discuss, so Ryan gets to see Shane work that ball of clay a lot. Not only does he roll it around in his hands, sometimes he stretches it out, forms it into little coils, weaves it like strands of yarn between his fingers and against his skin. Ryan has no room whatsoever to call out anybody else’s nervous tics—Ryan who, when agitated, practically breathes flame—but it gets to be a little much. Watching Shane mentally manipulate strands of clay, Ryan finds himself spending too much time being reminded of the movie Venom, which makes him uncomfortable for some reason? But the very last thing he wants to do is make Shane uncomfortable with any aspect of his bending. He stays mum.

About this, anyway. About everything else, he has an opinion, and for what feels like the first time in forever, the freedom to have an opinion. There are no corporate overlords looking over their shoulders, holding reams of viewer data in one hand and brandishing red pens over their budgets with the other. So when Shane asks Ryan to help him spiritually resurrect Ruining History by costarring in Puppet History, Ryan cannot be more enthusiastic with his yes.

With all the logistics, finance, planning, Shane is rigorous about sharing everything he’s doing to prepare for the shoot with the team. But when it comes to the artistic element, he’s much more secretive. Ryan, certified genius that he is, figures there’s going to be puppets involved in a show called Puppet History, but he hasn’t seen any of them yet—not even the “host” puppet Shane described, a character called the Professor. At one point, Steven asked Shane for a picture and was handed a sketch of a stick figure in a hat. Ryan thought this was hilarious, Steven decided to meditate for a while, and Shane went back to shopping for doll clothes on eBay. Or at least, that’s what seemed to be on his monitor when Ryan surreptitiously snuck a look.

Then, about a week before they’re supposed to start filming, Shane approaches Ryan’s desk in their temporary office, cradling a messenger bag to his chest. He’s got dark circles under his eyes—none of them have been sleeping; none of them have had time.

The odd thing is not Shane’s fatigue; it’s his tentativeness. “Look,” he says. “This isn’t done—there are still finishing touches I want to make. But would you…take a look and tell me…”

“You sound like you’re about to whip out your dick,” Ryan says, because remember, he’s punch-drunk-tired too.

Shane halts the motion of his hand toward the flap of his bag. “Why would I say I’m still making finishing touches to my dick?”

“Uh…” says Ryan. “Not circumcised yet?”

Which is not a good answer, for many reasons. Among them the fact that he is now thinking about Shane’s dick and its status, cut or uncut. He’s thinking about that and trying very, very hard to keep his eyes on Shane’s face and not let them drift down to the vicinity of Shane’s shorts.

“Fair,” Shane says. His tone is so level Ryan’s half-convinced the sudden pinkness of his cheeks must be unrelated. “But believe it or not, I did not come over here to talk about adult circumcision or show you my dick.”

“I guess that tracks,” says Ryan, convinced that at any moment flames are going to shoot out of his toes. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

“Anyway,” says Shane. “What I wanted to show you was…” He flips the flap of the bag and gently removes something fluffy and extremely blue. “…Him.”

“Aww, it’s a puppet!” Ryan smiles without even trying. It is a very cute, and somehow very Shane creation. It is indeed wearing a hat. “It’s the puppet?” Ryan asks, reaching a hand out in case Shane wants to let him hold the puppet, which Shane himself seems unsure about. “The Professor?”

“Yeah,” says Shane, sounding weirdly shy. He comes to a decision: the puppet is placed gently into Ryan’s outstretched hand. Ryan turns it over carefully, inspects all the little details. Its artificial fur is soft, its mouth a big friendly Sesame Street-style watermelon curve. Shane’s put him in glasses and a tan jacket and a little red bowtie. The whole thing has kind of “those two scenes in every movie where Indiana Jones is a hot professor” vibes. Or like Shane took both his and Ryan’s treasure-hunting costumes and combined them into one nerdy puppet outfit.

“You made this?” Ryan asks.

Shane shrugs. He looks kind of bashful, which gives him a wholesome, mid-Century America aww-shucks quality that Ryan finds disarming.

“I mean, made, modified, yeah,” Shane says.

There’s an opening in the puppet’s back where Ryan could slip his hand in to actually try it out, but that seems sacrilegious all of a sudden. This is Shane’s; Shane worked so hard on this. And Ryan never saw him with it in the office, which means he made it at home, at night, on his own time. He made this thing for them, for the company.

Ryan’s fingertips tingle with heat. He has the strangest urge to, to… He looks up at Shane, wanting to say something, say the right thing. But when their eyes meet, all the air leaves Ryan’s lungs. Ryan ought to check his surroundings, make sure Steven isn’t carrying out a covert assassination attempt from behind a plant, but he can’t tear his gaze away. There’s something heady about Shane’s expression, something expectant. His lips are parted, the pink tip of his tongue visible, but he isn’t saying anything. He’s waiting for Ryan.

But Ryan’s frozen. He can feel the puppet slacken in his grip, muscle control overwhelmed by…he’s not even sure by what. There’s a vibration in the ground beneath his feet, in the space between them, and then just as suddenly there’s not.

Shane crouches down and carefully retrieves the puppet from Ryan’s limp hands. Just as carefully, it’s returned to the safety of the bag. “Anyway,” Shane says brusquely, straightening up, “like I said, he’s not quite finished.”

“He’s awesome,” Ryan says quickly. But it sounds too quick now to his ears, his sincerity failing to shine through. He hates how bad he sucks at sincerity. So he babbles: “He’s gonna be iconic. We’ll make t-shirts.”

“Well, so long as there’s an angle.” Ryan jerks his head up, but Shane’s smile seems genuine. “Thanks, Ryan.”

He lopes back to his desk, and it’s all fine, all normal again. There’s just so much to do, and the only way they can succeed is if they all do it.

Still, after ten minutes Ryan realizes he needs to go outside for some “fresh air.”

Fortunately, they all work till well after dark, so by the time they leave, the fresh scorch marks on the brick wall are barely visible.

The first day of filming for Puppet History rolls around and Ryan doesn’t know what to expect. Rather, he knows from Ruining History that a lot of the final product is in the after effects—the animation, etc.—and while they’re filming he’s going to have to use his imagination to fill in the gaps. Shane’s said he’s using a lot more props for this version—presumably the puppets of the title—but the Professor’s the only one that he’s actually seen.

The set—Shane’s little theater, the “old-timey” chest, chairs, globe, and grandfather clock—he and Steven helped haul into place, so Ryan plops his butt down feeling secure in his environs at least. They’ve been filming so much content, so quickly, it’s all kind of a blur. But he’s excited by this one. He’s happy for Shane. Ruining History shall be avenged.

Yet the moment the Professor pops up and starts talking, Ryan gets the giggles. He must have been expecting Shane to do a voice, but this is just…Shane, speaking slightly breathlessly. And then the puppet’s little glasses keep falling off. If it were Ryan behind that curtain, he knows he’d be freaking out, daunted by anything less than a perfect showing, but Shane seems all right, seems like he’s rolling with it.

Then, the Professor’s puppet lips still flapping, Shane starts talking about bacteria, fleas, and rats. And from stage left rolls a small ball of clay.

Ryan watches, jaw hanging open in a manner he knows can’t be flattering on camera, as the ball splits into three separate pieces, each of which wriggles around unsupported in the air before forming three distinct shapes. The rat and flea are obvious—and the clay flea disturbingly cute. The little clay squiggles are, Ryan assumes, bacteria.

“Whoa!” Steven says, appropriately.

Ryan is speechless. That is not appropriate, as his whole role in this is to crack dumb little jokes and make stupid remarks that clearly reveal that he’s never, ever paid any attention in history class. He’s not supposed to sit there, dumbly, and stare at Shane’s dancing clay vermin, and look into the eyes of his puppet alter ego as some part of his brain finally unfreezes and he thinks, Oh shit, I wanna put my mouth all over you.

Shane, not the puppet. To be very, very clear.

Thankfully, Ryan has had a lot of practice in compartmentalizing and controlling his emotions, because if he hadn’t he’d be an active fire hazard who’d never be allowed to rent an apartment or office space, even with all the extra firebender insurance. Somehow, after an unknown number of seconds of dead air, which they can cut out, he manages to tuck this little revelation away and focus on the task at hand. He tells a pretty funny story about a high school teacher of his who reacted to a rat falling from the ceiling onto a girl’s desk by earthbending said desk and rat straight back up into the particle board, almost taking the girl with it. He only accidentally hits on the Professor a little.

Still, by the time they’re done shooting, Ryan is antsy and sweaty. When Shane finally emerges from the little theater, Ryan half expects to see him reborn as some Harlequin hero: muscles rippling, hair blowing in some undefinable breeze, the ground literally rising to meet his feet. The man of his dreams. Instead, he’s Shane. He stands up and groans: “Oof, my knees just cracked like a pair of walnuts.” He walks over and confers for a moment with Mark, thanks the crew, then circles back to Ryan and Steven. Standing with his hands on his hips, he looks like someone gave Peter Pan a good stretching. “Well!” he says. “I think that went well! Thanks, fellas.”

Steven says all the correct, complimentary things, while Ryan stares more, and shuffles his feet, and almost makes the rug combust. Steven, ever professional, has now switched to offering some constructive notes for the next episode. Ryan tries taking some deep, meditative breaths. He swears his mouth tastes like sulfur.

Finally, he can’t take it anymore. “Shane!” he says, rudely interrupting Steven. “Can I talk to you, over, over…” He gestures vaguely in a direction that fortunately seems to encompass one of the studio’s recording booths.

“Uh, yeah, okay.”

Before following Ryan, Shane pauses to make sure his Professor puppet is arranged as if sitting in Ryan’s former chair. Ryan’s heart flips over in a burst of piquant affection.

“What’s up?” Shane asks, once the booth’s door has clicked closed. Whether his tone is naturally neutral, or deliberately so, Ryan can’t discern.

“You—” Ryan starts. You make me want to kiss you, he wants to say: putting the blame squarely where it belongs. “You… made all that.”

Shane gives a guileless little nod, like he’s fucking Jimmy Stewart, like this is a very weird, very gay Frank Capra movie. “Made and modified, yeah, like I said.”

Ryan shakes his head, hot with frustration. “You, you earthbent all that.”

The trio of plague-spreading organisms had been only the beginning: there had been full scenes, intricate backgrounds, all made of moving earth and clay. Some had been so complicated, Shane hadn’t been able to operate the Professor while he was controlling them; “We’ll have to edit it together later,” he said, apologetically. He’d apologized for it.

“Yeah,” Shane says again.

“You know that’s amazing, right?”

“Amazing might be something of an exagger—”

“ARGH.” Ryan’s hand leaves an ashy palm print on the wall. “I don’t understand, I don’t get it! Why are you ashamed, why do you hide it?”

“Ashamed?” Shane’s hands drop to his sides. He’s looking down at Ryan; they are standing so close. This is a genius place to have a certain type of conversation, but not the one this is turning out to be. “I don’t— What am I meant to be ashamed of here, exactly?”

No matter how Ryan’s feelings for Shane have evolved, it seems he’s never lost the ability to make Ryan feel completely insane. “Your earthbending,” he mutters, already less convinced of his entire premise.

“You think I’m ashamed of my bending?”

“You—”

“Just because I choose not to make it into some big posturing thing? Because it’s not my entire identity? Or not something I’m constantly showing off or bragging about or using to start stupid fights?”

“I don’t—”

“I’m not saying you—”

“No, I just pressure you into using it for cheap views. Like how I use my own firebending. Right? Isn’t that what you’re saying?”

“No. Ryan, wait—” Shane looks genuinely flabbergasted. “This isn’t about views, or… I—I actually have no idea what this is about. Why are we fighting?” he asks. There’s a note of bona fide misery is his voice.

“Because—” Ryan starts, in a tone that implies he wants to keep going. He feels ready to ignite, it’s true, yet even through that haze of heat he knows he’s got this all wrong. Just like a block in a person’s chi can inhibit their bending, Ryan’s emotions—his frustration and worry and awe and lust—are all knotted up.

“Because,” Ryan tries again. “Because I want to kiss you so bad, and it’s very confusing.”

Shane makes a strange choked noise. After a couple of heavy swallows, he says, “Ah, what’s, um, confusing about, ah…”

“Well, it’s obviously a terrible idea,” Ryan says, because that’s the thought that’s been circling his brain like a shark for the last three hours. “I mean, I’m so intense about everything, I literally make stuff spontaneously combust, and you, I’m not sure you even have human feelings. Until today, I maybe wasn’t sure you weren’t just going along with the idea of this company because, I don’t know, it’s better than having a real job.”

Ryan clocks Shane’s mildly offended expression, but it’s too late; the only way out of this at this point is, maybe, through.

“I know, I know you don’t really think that. You wouldn’t have…have worked so hard and created your puppet and written your crazy little song and made…fucking art with your earthbending if you didn’t care. But this is just so important. You’re not just my friend, you’re my business partner. You have to understand why it’s a little scary to contemplating putting all my eggs into the basket that is you.”

Shane seems to be taking a moment to absorb being called a basket. Ryan ploughs on. “I’m just… everything about me’s out here on my sleeve, Shane. When I’m mad, smoke literally comes out of my ears. You…you’re a lot harder to read.”

“I thought I’d been pretty open,” Shane says. “About how I feel. About all of it.”

“Yeah, maybe by your standards, Mister Stony Rock Man. But I’m telling you I need a little help translating.”

“Ryan.”

Shane looks Ryan in the eye. He lets out a long breath. He plants his feet.

“I’ve been trying to put all my eggs in you for months.”

Ryan feels a cool wash of relief followed by a hot spike of alarm. “Um,” he says, “just to clarify, this isn’t you confessing that you’re secretly some egg-depositing species of alien, because I’ve read some fan theories and—”

Shane wheezes, softly. It’s his Wheeze of Fondness, and Ryan has a moment in which to realize he’s categorized Shane’s wheezes before Shane lifts a hand and touches the backs of his knuckles gently to Ryan’s cheek. His skin is cool and dry. Ryan shudders, heat pooling in his belly. It feels so different to the heat of anger—slower, more liquid. He tilts his head up into steady slide of Shane’s fingers down the curve of his neck.

“This is nice,” he breathes, “but I’m still going to need you to be crystal clear.”

“Don’t worry,” Shane says. “I’m planning on being explicit.”

His thumb strokes past Ryan’s pulse point. Shane can surely feel the racing of Ryan’s blood, the heat of it, but his touch stays slow and steady, committed to its motion. His face is hovering above Ryan’s face, lips close but not quite touching. Ryan can taste his breath, a hint of the tea he drank earlier, herbaceous and earthy. Shane’s hand has moved, massaging, to his collarbone. Ryan has to fight every impulse to squirm, to surge up, to scream kiss me kiss me KISS ME.

Ryan’s pretty sure he’s seconds away from accidentally engulfing them both in flames when Shane’s lower lip finally brushes against his. Time squeezes, then speeds up. Ryan’s back hits the wall. Shane’s mouth is everything, but Ryan’s definition of everything is expanding by the minute: it’s Shane’s big clever hands and the press of his long body and the heat and hardness of him against Ryan’s thigh; it’s him whispering shh shh shh into Ryan’s open mouth as Ryan makes desperate guttural noises and threatens to permanently remove these pants from the filmable rotation.

“Ryan. Ryan.” Ryan’s still making a pretty good show of humping Shane’s long, beautiful thigh, even as Shane draws back. “Ryan, slow down. You don’t really want to do this here, do you?”

“Huh? No, here’s fine. I’m a big fan of here.”

He lunges forward again, but Shane grips Ryan’s shoulders. With his feet planted, Shane proves irritatingly immovable.

“Listen, I’m sad we never made out in the booths at Buzzfeed too, but that’s what our still freelancing there is for. This isn’t our studio, though, and if we mess up this booth, we won’t get our deposit back and Steven will murder us. He’ll spin us around in a rage tornado until we’re both nothing but beaten and battered corpses and that’s how we’ll die.”

“Wow,” says Ryan. “You’ve really thought this through.”

It sends a pang of worry through Ryan: that Shane has remained so steady, so calm and level-headed. His own blood is still pulsing to the rhythm of Shane’s heart, his skin is still pinpricked with heat. He still wants Shane so bad, he’ll burn this whole place down if that’s what it takes to have him. Fuck the deposit.

Shane nods slowly. “Yeah,” he says in a low voice, “I’m thinking about taking you home, spreading you out on a real bed, and really taking my time with you.”

“Oh,” Ryan says. “That’s a pretty good thought.”

“There’s only one problem,” Shane says, and Ryan’s gratified to see his pained wince as he adjusts his stance. “We booked the studio for a full day. We’ve got to film another episode. Like, now.”

“Oh fuck,” Ryan says. “Whose dumbass idea was it to start a company again?”

“Don’t say that,” Shane chides. “I love our company.”

Ryan’s heart turns over. He kisses Shane again, and Shane allows himself to be kissed, and then Ryan somehow summons the strength to break away. “Can you buy me five minutes? I need some…outside time.”

“I would,” says Shane, “but I, in fact, also, am very much in need of that.”

They look at each other from a moment, then together pronounce, “Steven.”

Steven Lim, being a truly enlightened man, will not ask questions if you emerge sweaty-haired and wild-eyed from a sound booth to tap him on the shoulder and hiss “distract everyone.” In fact, when you come back inside after ten minutes, still itchy-skinned but significantly less red in the face or tight in the pants, he will still be chatting amiably with everyone about different types of kites.

And when they all leave the studio, a few hours and one more episode later, either no one notices or no one remarks upon the palm tree with the oddly singed fronds, or the strange pile of rocks that has appeared at one end of the parking lot. Or that Ryan gets into Shane’s car and not his own.

Ryan’s ready to pounce as soon as they get to Shane’s apartment, but Shane indicates that he needs a couple minutes to feed his cat. Which again is very wholesome, but come on. Ryan’s starting to feel like a little kid whose mom won’t get off the phone. Shane Shane Shane SHANE. Pay attention to meeeeeee…

Now Shane’s fucking around with Obi’s weird kitty water fountain, and Ryan can’t keep it together anymore. “I’m going into your bedroom and taking off all my clothes!” he announces. “Join me whenever that starts being more interesting than—cat hydration.”

Having made this declaration, Ryan knows he has to follow through. Leaving the door to Shane’s room tantalizingly—he hopes—open, he kicks off his sneaks, tears his shirt off, wriggles out of his pants. At the boxer stage, he realizes he feels a little weird about fully disrobing to lie alone on Shane’s made bed. Getting under the covers would be even weirder, though. He feels briefly jealous of ladies and their sexy lady underwear and then he’s imagining himself waiting for Shane in something all silk and lace, and he’s so eager to get his hand on his dick that logistical concerns go right out the window.

Ryan’s stroking himself, just trying to take the edge off, when Shane comes strolling in in sock feet—Ryan bets he put his shoes away on their rack, like a monster. Shane is obviously going for a cool, unconcerned approach, but he stumbles a little in the doorway—stumbles when he sees Ryan. That, at least, is gratifying.

But he seems to recover himself. “Oh dear,” he says. “Is the cliché about firebenders true? That you’re hot, but you boil over too quickly?”

Ryan halts his hand, which doesn’t stop his cock from leaking all over his belly. It takes all his self-control to grind out, “Is the cliché about earthbenders true?”

“What, that we’re rock hard?”

Judging by the state of Shane’s pants, this is not untrue.

Ryan narrows his eyes. “That you just sort of lie there?”

“You’re the one lying there,” Shane says, fingers working open his fly. “Ready and waiting for me.”

“Then get over here already!” Ryan says, legs spread like a challenge.

Shane strips off: shirt, pants, socks. There’s a wet patch spreading across the front of his boxers. He climbs onto the bed, walks on hands and knees till his body is covering Ryan’s. “Are you sure you don’t want to take it slow?” he asks.

“I’m going to murder you.”

Shane just chuckles. He slides a thigh between Ryan’s legs.

“No,” Ryan amends, “I’m gonna die of sexual frustration, then come back as a ghost and haunt you.”

“That seems highly unlikely.” Shane’s skin scrapes against Ryan’s skin. Ryan can feel every hair, feather-light. Moving slowly, deliberately, Shane captures Ryan’s right wrist, then the left, drawing them away from his middle, from the touch-starved curve of his cock, and up, up, one after the other, holding them firmly above Ryan’s head.

“Are you Fifty Shading me?” Ryan asks, though certain key components of his body apparently have no objection to that.

“I’m trying to teach you some patience,” Shane says, nipping at Ryan’s lower lip before proceeding downward in an interesting direction. “Don’t you know that good things come to those who wait?”

“I think those who are actually touched come again and again and again,” Ryan says, lifting his hips encouragingly. “Shane, please—”

“No,” Shane says, pinning Ryan beneath his weight, grounding him to the bed. “Wait.”

A beat passes, one, two, silent except for their breath and a few notes of Ryan’s whimpering. When that, too, is reduced to nothing but gasped air, Shane’s lips form a grin, then lower and latch onto Ryan’s nipple.

Ryan mewls, and bucks up, but Shane is an all-too-effective anchor. Ryan knows how powerful he himself is, knows that he could blast Shane back with a fireball or wrench his way free through sheer physical strength alone, but either he doesn’t actually want to, or Shane’s exerting some other mystical force. Ryan stays pinned and quivering as Shane works him over, laving both his nipples to peaks, one after the other, small, deliberate strokes building to more and greater pleasure until Ryan is twisting atop the comforter, rucking it with his feet. Shane hasn’t even laid a finger on his cock and Ryan thinks he’s going to prove him wrong about patience, because this alone is almost enough, oh fuck—he’s made so many jokes but he’s going to come just from Shane playing with his—

And then Shane stops, Shane lifts his head. “How you doing there, Ry?”

Ryan says something like, “Whaa?” and just stares at Shane indignantly, like he doesn’t know where the nice feeling went.

“Stay,” Shane commands. Ryan, too confused to do anything else, complies. Shane’s lips look puffy, but still he whistles to himself as he scooches back off the bed and slips his fingers under the waistband of his boxer shorts. He tugs them down, revealing an enormous, red-tipped cock. “Uh,” says Ryan, in horny alarm.

Shane, meanwhile, is walking his underwear over to the closet, where he opens the door and deposits it in a laundry basket. When he closes the door and turns, he must see something of the look on Ryan’s face. “Gotta stay tidy,” he explains.

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” is what Ryan tries to say, but it mostly comes out as vowel sounds.

Shane swings back up onto the bed, his ridiculous fifth limb swinging with him. Ryan should be appalled. He is, a little—and yet he remembers thinking, I want to put my mouth all over you, and he still does, he really really really does. He nods his head toward Shane’s cock, like a seal. “Want.”

“Yeah?” says Shane, a slow drawl of delight. “You like? As you can see, it is circumcised, I remember you asking. You can have a taste, if you want.”

Ryan wants. He wants Shane to straddle his face. He wants Shane to dip the tip of his dripping cock into Ryan’s open mouth, let him lick and suck at it a little, like a treat he’s supposed to mostly be saving for later. Ryan doesn’t want to save it for later. Ryan wants Shane to hold him down and fuck his mouth, but after only a few seconds Shane pulls back. Ryan whimpers again.

He’s so hard. His poor cock feels so neglected. “Shane,” he bleats. “Come on, touch me. Please touch me. You don’t have to prove anything, I get it, I get it, slow is good, slow can be nice, but I’m dying here…”

“You seem alive to me,” Shane says, ghosting a hand over Ryan’s straining dick, but it’s nothing, a whisper, and Ryan lets out an embarrassing moan. “I’m getting there,” Shane says. “Turn over first.”

Oh, oh—Shane wants to fuck him. Shane’s gonna fuck him. Ryan rolls eagerly onto his front and lifts his ass in the air. “Okay, come on, then, come on—” and then he groans out a “Yessss” when Shane grabs him roughly by the hips.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful.” Shane’s voice is honeyed with admiration, and Ryan blushes, preens, sticks his ass out further. He can feel Shane tracing the curves of it. He’s never been touched like this—not there, maybe not ever, not so reverently. Shane’s big hands massage his ass cheeks, squeeze them, gently start to pull them apart.

“I… well, I gotta ask,” Shane says. “Have you ever…?”

Ryan’s unthinking: “No, but…”

Shane’s hold loosens. “Ahh, okay.”

“No, no!” Ryan says desperately, awkwardly craning his neck around to alternately glare at and plead with Shane. “But I want to, I really really want to.”

“I’m glad, Ryan, I’m so glad.” He plants a kiss between Ryan’s shoulder blades. “But we gotta be careful, then. We have to take it slow.”

“ARGH,” says Ryan. “This is anal sex entrapment!”

Shane sits back on his heels. “We can do something else instead, it doesn’t have to be this.”

But now the idea is in Ryan’s head, dammit.

“Shane,” he declares, “lube me up, stretch me out, do whatever you gotta do, but I swear to the Eternal Flame, if you don’t end this evening by putting your ridiculously big dick in me, I will set this bed on fire.”

“I mean, you make a good case,” Shane says. “Not the negative reinforcement, the negative reinforcement is terrible, but the positive—the positive stuff is very good.”

Then he literally kisses Ryan’s ass, which—is it affirmation? Commentary?

Oh. Oh, no: apparently it is a prelude to sticking his tongue— “Oh fuck,” Ryan says, squirming beneath another darting flick. “This is so wrong.”

“Do you want me to stop?” Shane lifts up for a moment and Ryan’s whole world crumbles.

“Fuck no, shut up and get back in there. This is your whole…urrrf…your whole job from now on.”

“Now there’s a way to get views,” Shane says, before diving back in.

Ryan swears his eyes roll back into his head. He starts to desperately hump the mattress, but before he can get any good friction going, Shane tightens his grip on Ryan’s hips, keeping them elevated. This is either the greatest thing ever or a unique form of torture. Nerves Ryan never knew he had are alight, he’s making obscene noises and gripping Shane’s comforter like it’s the only thing keeping him clinging to life. “Please, Shane—”

Despite the plea, Ryan almost sobs when Shane eases off. He hears a rustle, a drawer opening, and then Shane’s slicked fingers are back, running slowly up the crack of Ryan’s ass. “You ready?” Shane asks.

“You don’t want me to answer that,” Ryan growls. “I’m seconds away from drilling a hole in your mattress, dude.”

“Gross,” says Shane, cheerily.

He circles a finger around Ryan’s newly sensitized entrance. Ryan can feel it quiver. He realizes he’s shaking, arms weak like he just did a brutal round of push-ups, as if that’s why he’s trembling here on his elbows. “I’ll stop anytime,” Shane promises.

“Don’t you fucking dare!”

Shane seems to take him at his word, sliding a finger in. It’s a little strange but not outside of what he expected. And weirdly, it’s exciting. Ryan wants more; he wants to see what he can take.

Trust him to become competitive about assfucking. But listen, if Ryan Bergara is going to take it, he’s going to take it like a champ.

“More,” he demands. “Come on, I saw the size of your cock, there’s no way one measly finger is enough.”

Shane lets out the little puff of laughter that means he’s embarrassed. Right, so: Shane Madej—shameless in every way…except when it comes to his beautifully artistic earthbending and his ginormous wang. Sure.

With the second finger, Ryan really feels the stretch, but he still likes it. He likes it a lot. And then all of a sudden, Shane moves a certain way and he loves it. All at once, everything is fireworks, and he’s finally, fucking finally gonna come…

Shane reaches around and squeezes the head of Ryan’s dick.

Ryan is too breathless to scream. He wants to scream; he can feel it burning in his chest, hot pants emerging from his mouth like the air from an open oven. Tears are streaming out of the corners of his eyes.

“Almost,” Shane murmurs. “Almost the right moment, I promise. You’ve been so good. You’re so good, Ryan.”

The fingers wrapped around his dick loosen. The ones inside him ease out, and Ryan feels bereft and confused: there’s simultaneously too much sensation and not enough.

As he sways there, dizzy, he hears a choked gasp, and through bleary eyes sees that Shane’s biting his lip as he slicks himself up. “You maniac,” Ryan pants. “You’re driving yourself crazy, too.”

“Well, yeah,” Shane says. “What, did you really think this was all for you?”

He belies his words immediately, ducking down so Ryan can twist weakly, stretch to frantically kiss his lips. He tangles his fingers in Shane’s hair and tugs just enough to hurt. “You’re such a bastard,” Ryan says, and thinks things too big to say when this is one day old and he’s come a total of zero times.

“Yow,” Shane says, pulling back. “I think I burnt my tongue.”

“I was sterilizing it,” Ryan says ominously.

So Shane is laughing when he rearranges himself again, when the head of his cock presses against Ryan’s entrance.

“I think you’re finally ready, how ‘bout you?”

“Olympic athletes don’t prepare this much, Shane. Fuck me into next week already.”

“Okay,” Shane says, and does.

All right, so he still takes it in stages, and is in general far too careful and solicitous of Ryan, but once he gets going—fuck, it’s so good. It is in fact the why and wherefore of the word “fuck,” and Ryan can’t believe it’s taken him nearly thirty years to figure that out. Somehow, fists clenching Shane’s covers and his ass in the air, legs cradled in the hairy junction of Shane’s thighs and sweat dripping down his back while he’s absolutely ploughed from behind—it’s the manliest thing he’s ever done. He feels like a fucking Sun Warrior.

“Oh fuck, yes. Shane, give it to me.”

“I’m giving it you,” Shane says, like some sort of weird porn robot. But maybe he does have feelings after all, because then his voice stutters and breaks, “I’m giving—oh fuck, Ryan. Are you ready? You ready to come for me?”

“Yes, yes, Shane, I’m gonna come so hard.”

“Yeah you are. Go ahead, come on my cock. You earned it, baby.”

Now, Shane says “baby” like twenty times a day. But this doesn’t feel like that “baby.” This is a different “baby.” It undoes something in Ryan’s chest, and with a hot, guttural sob, he’s coming. Spirits, is he ever coming.

Ryan swears he almost passes out. He can feel Shane trying to hold him, but Shane’s lost control too, and they’re together as they cry out and collapse on the bed. Shane rolls a little so as not to stab Ryan with all his bony limbs, and for a long time, they just lay there, gasping.

“See,” says Shane eventually, “it’s all about waiting for the right moment.”

“You’re insane.” It’s pretty much the usual, what Ryan feels for Shane in that moment: a mixture of terror, indignation, and awe.

It’s several minutes more before he’s able to unpeel his sweat-slicked eyelashes and take stock of them both. Unfortunately, the first thing he sees widens his eyes in horror: ten round, black-rimmed holes in Shane’s navy blue bedspread. “Er,” he says. “Remember how I threatened to set the bed on fire?”

Shane blinks a wary eye open. “Yes?”

“Well, I didn’t quite do that.”

Shane presses up to observe Ryan’s terrible destructive power, then slumps back down, tugging Ryan with him, away from the wet and crispy spots. “Eh. Fortunately I like you a lot more than I liked this comforter.”

“Words that would melt any man’s heart,” Ryan says.

Shane huffs out a wheeze and pulls Ryan closer. “Like you need any help melting stuff.”

“Like you need any… earthbending joke,” Ryan says sleepily, and definitely doesn’t nuzzle into Shane’s chest.

Shane lets out a contented little yawn. “One of us,” he seems to force himself, “should be an adult, and point out if we don’t clean ourselves up, our future selves will be very unhappy with us.”

“I have no sympathy for future Ryan and Shane. Let them deal with it. Cuddles and naps now.”

If Shane has an objection, he doesn’t voice it. He falls asleep breathing soft, mellow breaths into Ryan’s hair.

“Our past selves were jerks!” Ryan declares, when they wake up some hours later. Everything is very sticky.

“Yeah! Fuck past Shane and past Ryan! Those guys are canceled!”

Ryan looks up at Shane. Shane looks back.

“I guess we have to shower together now,” Ryan says. “Like, to save water.”

“The environment is very important,” Shane agrees.

They start toward the door, but at the last second Ryan bars it. “Okay, but look, here’s the deal.”

“I’m all ears.” The slight way Shane’s shoulders stiffen, the small hint of nerves in his voice are gratifying, even if unintended.

“We can fool around in the shower, but this time we’re gonna do it my way, got it?”

Shane’s shoulders have relaxed and he’s clearly trying to suppress a laugh. “And that is?”

“Fast, filthy, and smokin’ hot—firebender style.”

Ryan punctuates this with dual finger guns. Shane holds it together about two seconds longer than Ryan expects him to, which honestly—impressed.

“But my bending is the source of embarrassment,” Shane says, on the tail of the last choke of laughter.

“Hey, I didn’t ask you to be sexily mysterious,” Ryan says. “That was a choice you made.” He swallows. “You’re a hard man to really get to know, Mister Madej.”

“But you know me,” Shane says.

“I mean, you’re literally standing stark naked in front of me right now, so…”

“Ryan. You know me.”

There’s more Ryan wants to say, a different word he wants to use. But it’s too soon for that. He has to wait, and find the right moment.

So he just says, “Yeah. I guess I do.”

And for now, it’s perfect. It’s enough.