Archive of Our Own

You know, if Ryan knew Mikey had ulterior motives when he told him about the job opening at the bakery-cafe-thing across the street from the CVS where he worked, he never would have applied. That’s a lie, really, because he loves his coworkers, but somehow playing the middleman in the most ridiculous mutual pining he’d ever seen over the past five months has been, frankly, the worst.

He probably should have gotten suspicious right after he got hired, when Mikey came out to him. He didn’t though, so maybe this whole thing is his own damn fault.

June

Ryan’s minding his own business on the living room couch when Mikey hands him a gift bag, stating an overly cheery “happy birthday!”

“You know it isn’t my birthday, like, at all, right?”

“Just open it,” he rolls his eyes, but the way he shifts on his feet tells Ryan he’s uncharacteristically nervous. Suspicious, he opens the bag, only to see Ditzy staring up at him, as confused as he is. She doesn’t seem to actually care, though.

“This is our cat.”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks, I guess?” He scratches the top of her head, “though if Matt found out you gave her away he’d be pretty upset.”

“Is it really giving her away if you also live here? And, it’s. You have to take her out.”

“You’re so weird,” Ryan sighs, but scoops her up with one hand anyway. “I don’t see wha- oh.”

Tied around her collar with ribbon is a small piece of paper that reads ‘I’m bi.’

“Guess the cat’s out of the bag,” Mikey tentatively smiles, doing what’s probably the weakest finger guns he’s ever done.

Ryan stares at the sign, then at Mikey, then at Ditzy who won’t stop wiggling now that she’s out of the safety of the bag. He unties the note and sets her down, and she just flops over at his feet, pawing at his socks.

He isn’t really surprised per say, but he doesn’t really know what to say either. Until, that is, he remembers that Dylan sent them screenshots of a Facebook post in their group chat like, three days prior of some girl doing this exact thing.

“You couldn’t even come up with your own coming out idea?”

Mikey laughs, relieved. “It was either this or I was going to hide in the hall closet and text you to come find me. I didn’t want to just sit there and wait, though.”

“Why would I have even looked for you?”

“Because I could have been in distress!”

“Sure.”

“You’re the worst brother ever.”

Ditzy chooses that moment to sink her claws directly into his foot.

“Ow, what the fuck.”

“See? She agrees,” Mikey grins, picking her up and holding her to his chest. “Best cat.”

/

Six hours isn’t a long shift, obviously, but he’s gotten no more than three or four since he started - which wasn’t even a week ago - so he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do with the extra time. Tip - who refuses to put his first name on his name tag for some reason - is helping a customer when he finishes up the task their supervisor gave him. He stands awkwardly off to the side and sticks his hands in his back pockets.

When Tip ends up chatting with the customer for a painfully long time, turning up the charm in order to try to get a better tip, probably, he sighs and goes over to the supervisor, who’s really struggling with one of the two different ovens in the bake area while the other one goes off.

“Do you know what I should be doing?”

“I don’t, sorry,” Nate says honestly, “I’d ask Coach. I’m kinda busy right now.”

“Coach?”

“James,” Tip, evidently finished helping the customer, pops up next to him to say. “We call him Coach, usually.”

“Why.”

“Nate’s first day Coach told him to do something and he said, ‘okay, Coach.’ It stuck.” Tip explains.

Nate rolls his eyes. “Stop telling people that was me just to save Nic’s pride.”

“Sorry, no can do. He paid me twenty dollars to keep saying it was you. Eventually no one will believe you.”

Nate just gestures with his arms in a way Ryan takes to say ‘can you believe this shit?’ Which, yeah, he can. He’s worked pretty much solely with Tip since he got hired. This is pretty par for the course, as far as he can tell.

“Who’s Nic?”

“Oh, you haven’t worked with Nic yet?” Tip asks, leaning against the wall.

“No, I’ve just worked with you two, really. Just started, remember?”

“So you haven’t met Alex or Dylan either, then?” Nate asks, finally fixing the one oven so he can tend to the one that hasn’t stopped beeping.

“Uh, no.”

“What time are you done today?” Tip asks, and Ryan wonders if he doesn’t have anything else to be doing. So far, even though he’s only been there for a handful of days, they didn’t seem to do much. Then again, maybe it’s just because they don’t want to overwhelm him. That’s what James - Coach, right - said when he got hired.

“Eleven.”

“Dylan’s in at eight, so you’ll see him today.”

“Oh, okay, cool,” he nods, even though he has no way of knowing whether or not it is.

“Not really,” Nate shakes his head. Oh. Great.

As it turns out, it was actually less cool than he thought it would be. When Ryan’s in the middle of trying to get a little oven to function so he could just heat up a customer’s muffin, the door opens and a familiar voice startles him.

“Ryan McLeod!”

When he turns around, Dylan Strome’s clocking in, a huge grin on his face.

“You work here?”

“Yup. And you do too.”

“Why did I not know that.”

“Wait, you know Dylan?” Tip questions, silently taking over the whole muffin situation. Ryan, thankful, tries to make note of how he did that.

“Unfortunately.”

“Shut up, you love me,” Dylan says and wraps Ryan in a hug, squeezing him too tightly.

“You’re my least favourite, actually,” he says, and Nate comes up to the front, takes one glance at the two of them, and walks right back into the back.

“Nathan!” Dylan lets go of Ryan and follows after Nate, his voice fading as he walks away. “Did you want a hug too? Sorry to leave you out.”

He meets Nic and Alex that weekend when Coach scheduled him to work in the afternoon instead of the morning.

“I do work opens sometimes,” Alex says when he’s in the middle of showing Ryan the proper way to date food. “So you’ll see me more than Nic, probably.”

“I’m not allowed to work with Tipsy anymore,” Nic adds from where he’s doing the dishes. “So.”

“Uh, why not?” Ryan asks, because it didn’t seem like they wouldn’t get along or whatever. Truthfully, from the way Tip talked about Nic he’d have assumed they were close.

“Don’t ask, dude,” Alex shakes his head.

“Coach hates fun,” Nic points with the rag at Ryan, which, honestly is answer enough. Definitely friends, then.

/

It probably shouldn’t have surprised Ryan the first time he saw Mikey come into the bakery, especially considering he was the one that told him they were hiring in the first place, but really that only takes one trip in. Or even just past it, considering the signs are in the front windows, and past it makes even more sense since Mikey has to go past it to get to and from work anyway. He’s pretty certain Mikey doesn’t even like coffee, but Tip starts making the cup the moment he walks through the doors, so apparently he does, and apparently he comes in a lot.

Dylan clocks in about fifteen minutes after Mikey leaves, and if Mikey really is in that often, then he’s probably known about it.

“Hey Dyls,” he greets while fumbling around with one of the coffee pots, trying to figure out what exactly he’s doing wrong that the coffee refuses to brew for him. The little stop sign is blinking and everything.

Dylan doesn’t even ask, just takes it from him and does it himself. “You had the stopper up.”

“Oh,” because duh. “That isn’t what I was going to ask you, though.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” he moves on to the next coffee that needs to be brewed, actually managing to do it properly this time. “Mikey was in here earlier?”

“Oh right, this was your first open on Mikey Day.”

“Sorry, what,” he says, turning to give Dylan a look, because. What .

“Mikey Day,” Tip throws a paper cup at him.

“I’m missing something.”

“Nate’s scared of him, and it’s pretty fucking hilarious,” Dylan says, as though that explains it, and Tip nods.

“You didn’t see him run off when the door opened?”

“No,” Ryan shakes his head. Even if he did, he would have assumed it was some sort of weird shift emergency. Nate seems to have those constantly, anyway. “He did?”

“There was one time Mikey was later than normal,” Tip starts, and Dylan interrupts.

“Oh my god, yeah. We were busy and Nate had to help him. He looked like he was going to cry the entire time.”

“Does-” Ryan starts, stops to greet a customer that Tip goes off to assist, then looks at Dylan to continue. “Do you know why?”

Dylan shrugs. “Nate’s weird.”

With that, he leaves to start doing whatever it is exactly that he does for the first twenty minutes of his shift.

Ryan just stares at the door for a moment, only snapping out of it when Tip asks him to go restock something or another. He really only took in half of what he said. A great start to the day.

“Why,” he asks Mikey when he gets home and sees him staring down an apple at the kitchen table.

“Why do they call them red delicious when they’re easily the least delicious apple.”

“First of all, you’re wrong. Sec-”

“Name a less delicious apple.”

“Granny smith?”

“Hm,” he shrugs with one shoulder and bites into the apple, as though that was the final nail in the coffin for him deciding whether or not he should eat the thing.

“Second,” he continues like he wasn’t interrupted in the first place, “what did you do to Nate?”

Mikey nearly spits out the bite of apple. “What?”

“My supervisor?”

“No, I know, I.” He makes a face and looks down at the apple, like it’s the source of his problems. He doesn’t look back up. “What do you mean?”

“Dunno,” Ryan pulls out the chair across from him and plops down in it, letting his bag hit the floor beside him. “Dyls just said he’s scared of you or something. He’s probably fucking with me, but Tip said-”

“Scared?” Mikey looks at him again, looking kind of like someone just kicked his puppy. Like, a metaphorical puppy, because Ryan is pretty sure if someone kicked Ditzy Mikey would kill them. Then again, obviously she isn’t a puppy, so-

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t-” he frowns and shoves the apple away. “Fuck.”

He gets up and leaves, and Ryan has no idea why he’s so frustrated, or whatever exactly that was. He catches the apple before it rolls of the table, contemplates it for a minute, then eats it on the way back up to his room.

He opens again the next day, and he almost completely forgot about ‘Mikey Days,’ so he’s momentarily confused when Tip points to the clock and tells him to keep an eye on Nate.

Sure enough, Mikey walks in shortly after, and the moment he makes eye contact with Nate, Nate rushes off to the back of the store.

“I don’t know,” Mikey sighs when he walks up to the register and Ryan gives him a questioning look. “I didn’t do anything.”

He has the same look on his face as he did the day before, but this time it’s somehow worse, like having it confirmed to him was the worst thing possible.

Tip pats his arm sympathetically when he hands him the coffee.

He doesn’t stay to talk this time, just leaves right after paying, and Nate only cautiously makes his way to the front several minutes later, visibly deflating with relief when he sees the store is empty again.

Maybe Dylan’s right. Maybe Nate is just weird.

July

“There’s this boy,” Mikey says from where he’s laying on the floor, his legs up on the couch. He’s had maybe just a touch too much to drink, and he throws his arms out to his sides dramatically.

“Uh huh,” Ryan says, shoving his foot away when Mikey pokes him with it.

“And he’s like,” he raises an arm to gesture with it for a moment before letting it fall again. “You know?”

“Obviously.”

And it’s just,” he makes a face, “ugh.”

“Of course.”

“I’m not making sense am I.”

“Nope,” Ryan shakes his head, popping the p.

Mikey groans for a long enough time that Ryan wonders how he still has any air left in his lungs before he gets up, only to collapse onto the couch next to Ryan. “Sucks.”

“Sorry, man.”

/

One of the best parts of his day, Ryan thinks, is not actually just one part. It’s many parts. Really, it’s any time the oven timer goes off. The sound is the most annoying thing in the world - a persistent high pitched beep beep beep that’s loud enough to be heard from outside sometimes - but Nate’s reaction to it every single time it goes off is probably some of the best entertainment he gets on a daily basis.

“Shut the fuck up,” he begs as he comes back over to the bake area after the oven goes off as soon as he took a couple steps away from it. “Please. Please. I just walked away.”

“It misses you,” Alex jokes. “It knew you were leaving it.”

“Yeah,” Tip nods, “beep beep beep is oven-talk for Nate Nate Nate.”

Nate takes the bagels out, walks away to do something else, the timer goes off again, and Ryan, Tip, and Alex all chant ‘Nate Nate Nate’ in time with the beeps. He stops the timer and gives them all an exhausted look that has them doubled over with laughter.

“It’s like the world’s most clingy boyfriend,” Nate sighs, resetting the timer. “I can’t leave him alone.”

“Separation anxiety,” Alex nods, “Like a puppy.”

“Boyfriend?” Tip questions, and Nate turns red. Ryan hadn’t even caught that.

“I- I mean, like,” Nate sputters, looking a mixture of embarrassed and panicked. “It’s-”

“Chill,” Tip walks over and pats him on the shoulder. Ryan wonders how often he tries to comfort people like that. “Me too, man.”

Nate blinks at him, then looks over at Alex and Ryan, then back to Tip. “Oh?”

“Yeah, I thought you knew that.”

Nate shakes his head, and Ryan feels like he should say something, but this is only the second time he’s had this happen, and this time it wasn’t on purpose. He doesn’t want to just be like ‘it’s okay,’ because while it is okay with him, that sounds too much like ‘that’s fine you’re allowed to exist near me’ which is pretty gross.

He also can’t just say ‘oh my brother is too,’ or some shit, and he’s kind of panicking, but Alex saves him by patting the side of the oven.

“So what’s your boyfriend’s name?”

Nate looks instantly relieved, laughing a little nervously. “I don’t know.” He looks at the oven for a moment. “Baxter.”

“Baxter?” Ryan asks.

“Yeah,” Nate points to the corner of the oven, where, sure enough, Baxter was written in big bold letters. “That’s his name.”

“Nice to meet you, Baxter,” Alex laughs.

/

Mikey is completely sober as far as Ryan knows the next time he goes to talk to him about The Boy, which means it’s easier to understand, but not necessarily easier to actually… do. Mikey is telling him this stuff for a reason, and he doesn’t want to make him feel like ha can’t do that, or that he’s uncomfortable or whatever. Because he’s not uncomfortable.

Mostly it isn’t something Ryan’s used to, this kind of ‘I am having feelings and I want to talk about them’ thing from his brother. Not that they haven’t ever talked about anything, of course, it’s just different somehow. It’s just going to take some getting used to. For both of them, apparently.

This time it starts by Mikey dramatically plopping face down on Ryan’s bed a while after he gets home from work. Ryan had been looking forward to sleeping in, since it’s his day off, but apparently Mikey had decided he’d slept long enough.

“What,” he whines, struggling to get his legs out from under his brother.

“This sucks.”

“You waking me up? Yeah, it does.” He pulls the comforter further up over his shoulder and buries his face in his pillow.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

Well, you’re in the wrong room. You’re second from the left, not first, so-”

Mikey pokes him in the leg. “Ryan.”

He sighs and sits up, pulling his knees up and resting his elbows on them. “What, Mikey?”

“This one guy comes into work like, every day,” he starts and rolls over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.

“The boy?”

“What?”

“Couple a days ago. You said something about a boy.”

“Yeah, him.”

“Okay,” Ryan folds his arms around his legs and rests his cheek on his knees, definitely not awake enough to function yet. “What about him.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

“You said that already.”

“Because I don’t.”

“I don’t know how to help you,” Ryan shrugs. It isn’t like he’s being given anything to work with.

“Me neither.”

It seems like the end of the conversation, but neither of them move, just sit there in silence, Mikey staring at the ceiling.

“Tell me about him,” Ryan says to break the silence.

“What?” Mikey looks over at him.

“Well,” he thinks for a moment, “you said he goes into your work every day?”

“Yeah.”

“What does anyone need from CVS on a daily basis?”

Mikey hums and sits up. “Red Bull.”

“Red Bull.”

“Yeah.”

“And you think you’re doing something wrong with the Red Bull guy?” Ryan questions. “What does that even mean.”

“I think he hates me? He just doesn’t talk to me ever, and if there’s another register open he goes to that one instead.” Mikey looks genuinely upset by this, and while Ryan can’t really understand why that would bother him so much if he never really actually talks to this guy, he still gets it. Kind of. He’s trying.

“Maybe,” he says after a moment, “maybe he isn’t doing it on purpose? And if anyone is buying an energy drink from CVS consistently in the middle of the night, maybe they’re just too tired to hold a conversation.”

“Four isn’t really the middle of the night. That’s, like, the morning.”

“That’s the middle of the night for most people, Mikey.”

“Not for you,” he pokes his knee, “you wake up before four.”

“I said most people,” Ryan rolls his eyes.

“So maybe it isn’t the middle of the night for him.”

“I guess,” he concedes. “Maybe figure out what he likes to talk about.”

“Huh?”

“If you want him to talk to you, find something that he’d actually talk about.” Really, it feels like that should be obvious, but who really knows with Mikey.

Evidently that wasn’t obvious to Mikey, because he lights up. “Right, yeah. I can do that.”

He leaves the room before Ryan can say anything else.

He looks at the clock, just barely after seven thirty, and wonders how his life got to this point.

/

After the whole Baxter thing, everything suddenly started getting names, and it quickly became the only way any of the staff referred to the appliances. Baxter was the only one that really stuck, though. Any time it went off, Nate was alerted - as though he couldn’t hear the timer go off himself - in various ways.

Baxter is calling you!

Nate, your boyfriend would like a word.

Can you please shut him up, Nate?

It was just another thing that made Ryan really like working with the team they had there. Everyone’s the same brand of weird.

Ryan’s hours go up a ridiculous amount pretty much overnight once his training time is over. He’s fine with it - glad, really - but on the other hand, it means more opens. More opens means more Mikey Days.

They, on principle, don’t bother him. He doesn’t mind seeing his brother, obviously.

What he does kind of hate, though, is how upset he looks when Nate keeps avoiding him. He almost wants to yell at Nate for it, but he also really has no idea why it should upset Mikey so much. If he’s honest with himself, it’s probably just because Mikey isn’t used to people not liking him.

The day Nate doesn’t run off the moment Mikey walks in the door is probably the happiest he’s seen Mikey when he’s been in the bakery. He almost feels like Nate didn’t notice him come in, and that’s the only reason he stayed. He doesn’t point that out, not wanting to ruin Mikey’s day.

But, to his surprise, he stops disappearing when Mikey comes in all together. He just. Keeps doing his thing.

It’s weird. But, again, Nate’s kind of weird.

“He doesn’t avoid me anymore,” Mikey says, poking his tongue out from between his teeth in concentration.

Ryan’s tempted to knock the controller out of his hands to make sure the game goes to OT. He’s not about to let Mikey win again. He doesn’t, though. At least not yet. “Huh?”

“The uh- the Red Bull boy.”

“Oh. That’s nice,” he’d try to have a more articulate answer to that, but Mikey’s crashing his net and - “fuck . That never would have gone in.”

“You’ve got twelve seconds, I’m sure you can tie it up,” he laughs, and his player wins the next faceoff. “Or, maybe not,” he sets his controller in his lap with a cocky grin when time runs out. “Sorry, Ry bread.”

“I bet you are,” he sighs and sets to pick a different team when they start up another game. “Real sorry.”

“The most sorry,” Mikey nods, moving around his lines instead of switching teams - as though he’d ever play as anyone but the Devils. “Sorry you don’t know how to play hockey in real life or in a video game. Must suck.”

“I’m sure you’d know.” Ryan’s Canucks actually win the opening faceoff, and he’s proud of himself. It’s the little things, sometimes.

“So,” he says after he scores with a couple seconds left in the first period. “What’d you do to get him to stop avoiding you?”

“I don’t know,” Mikey shrugs, then points to the screen when the intermission stats report comes up. “Your passing sucks.”

“You suck.”

“Which is why I’m winning.”

“I’m winning.”

“Sure, this game, but like, in life? I’m winning.”

Ryan shakes his head and they go back to the game. “Right, which is why you only just got someone to stop avoiding you. A real winner.”

Mikey kicks him, which makes him drop his controller, and Mikey takes the opportunity to score. “Tie game.”

“Cheater.”

“Tactical.”

/

Tip is in pretty early with Ryan since they started getting morning rushes earlier, so he’s there when Mikey gets in more often than not. The first time he walked in and Mikey was talking to Ryan, and Nate was still on the line, trying to get the cinnamon sugar to stop being all clumped up, he looked like he might fall over.

After that, he gets used to the change pretty quickly.

There are still days when Ryan is on his own in the mornings, and one of the first times it’s just him and Nate on Mikey Day - he really needs to stop referring to them as such, it’s weird - Nate actually waves to him when he comes in. Both Mikey and Ryan do a double take, and Nate goes into the back before Mikey gets the chance to return it.

“Holy shit,” Ryan says to himself.

“Yeah,” Mikey agrees, and he’s beaming, tongue poking out between his teeth with both thumbs up.

Tip doesn’t believe him the next day.

It becomes a regular occurrence, though. Nate always looks really awkward when he does it, almost like it pains him to just wave, and Mikey always looks like it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

It’s a pretty strange dynamic, but, knowing the two of them, it’s pretty fitting.

/

They go outside to mess around with a basketball when they share a day off, and Mikey’s bouncing it in front of him a couple of times, his mind clearly somewhere else.

“Hockey,” he says, catching it when it comes back up to him.

“No. Basketball.”

Mikey gives him an unimpressed look, to which Ryan shrugs.

“He likes hockey.”

Ryan catches the ball when Mikey throws it him, only slightly lightening the blow of it hitting him square in the chest. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re telling me,” he shoots, making a face when the ball hits the backboard and bounces back at him, “that you only just found this out?”

“Yeah?” Mikey asks, making grabby hands at him instead of just asking for the ball. “What’s so weird about that?”

“Well,” he throws it to him, “it took you that long to see if he liked hockey.”

“And?”

“Mikey.”

He seems to consider it for a second and shrugs, making his first shot - perfectly, naturally - and looks over at Ryan, smug as ever.

“Leafs fan?”

“Yeah.”

Ryan hums and only just dodges the ball when Mikey throws it at him again. “Why.”

“Why not?”

/

He doesn’t have any open shifts for a while, and, truthfully, he’s pretty thankful. Well, kind of. Later shifts are a bit of a win/lose in his opinion. Don’t have to wake up at three in the morning, but face the busiest hours of the day right away and then do nothing for several hours. It’s not an ideal balance.

It’s been nearly a week since the last time he opened when Dylan nearly knocks him over the moment he clocks in.

“Hi, Stromer.”

“Ryan,” he grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him a little.

“That’s me.”

“Nate talked to Mikey today. Like, actual words.” He looks like he doesn’t believe the words he’s saying, and, frankly? Neither does Ryan.

“Sure.”

“No, okay, I’m serious. Would I lie to you?”

“Yes,” he nods, “many times.”

“When have I ever lied to you?”

“The fact that I don’t even know where to start with responding to that should be enough.”

Dylan nods, knowing full well that Ryan’s right. “Okay, but I’m not lying this time.”

“Right, sure.”

“You’ll see,” Dylan points a finger directly in his face, “I’m not lying.”

“Uh huh,” he takes Dylan’s wrist and moves his hand away, “okay, Dyls.”

/

Mikey comes home from work looking stupidly happy, and he sits next to Ryan, plucking a strawberry out of his bowl.

“What’s up?”

“He actually, like, talks to me now. Not just about hockey.”

Ryan probably should have expected that, that it would be something to do with the Red Bull dude. Why else would someone look so pleased after working a nine hour overnight shift.

“That’s good,” he offers, not awake enough to really say anything else. Besides, he still really isn’t used to having these kinds of conversations with Mikey. Even though he probably should be by now.

“Yeah, it is. Honestly, most of what he says doesn’t make sense, but-”

“What time does he come in again?”

“Like quarter after four?”

“That’s why.”

“I think he might just be weird,” Mikey shrugs and takes another strawberry.

“Is that bad?”

“No, it’s- he’s- I like it.” He’s smiling the same way he always does when he talks about whoever this is, and Ryan definitely still doesn’t know how to handle that either.

“Well. That’s good, then.”

“Yeah, it’s good.”

/

He’s not exactly thrilled the next time he opens, but he’s not exactly upset by it either. He hasn’t seen Nate very much, so it’ll be nice to work with him from open again.

“Thank god you’re here,” Nate says as soon as he unlocks the door to let Ryan in. He looks about four seconds from collapsing, the dark circles under his eyes bested only by Dylan’s.

“Did you get hit by a bus?”

Nate turns and walks back over to the muffins he was finishing up. “Haven’t slept. Ran fifteen minutes late. No caffeine.”

“Ouch.”

So Nate’s behind and tired, what a great start to the day for all of them.

“So please make the coffee.”

“Sure thing, boss,” he says with a mock salute.

The moment the coconut coffee beeps, Nate appears beside him and nearly gives him a heart attack. He pours two large cups and disappears into the office, muttering a “please make sure I’m still awake in ten minutes.”

Ten minutes later, Ryan slowly opens the office door, truly ready to just let him nap if he’s already sleeping. He looks up from the papers in his lap, only looking slightly less dead, but still awake. Then again, both of the cups he’d taken were already in the trash, so that’s probably why.

Later, Mikey walks through the door right on time, but instead of coming up to the register right away, he walks down the line and leans over to start talking to Nate, who now looks oddly considerably better, given that nothing has changed over the past twenty minutes. He had another cup of coffee, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to make him look that much better.

“What’s going on with Mikey and Nate?” Alex asks, sipping from his cup of coffee as he clocks in. “I thought Nate was like, scared of him.”

Right, he hasn’t been around this early in a while, and while Ryan hadn’t believed Dylan - who was, evidently, not lying - he at least knew Nate got over whatever it was that made him dart off.

“I dunno,” Ryan shrugs, squinting slightly when Nate practically lights up. “Nater’s been having an off morning.”

“Go see,” Alex says, pushing at his shoulder. “I’ll take register. Tell me what happens.”

“You could just go over there yourself,” he rolls his eyes, but he actually does want to know what’s happening, so he goes anyway.

“I owe you my life,” Nate sighs, the Red Bull in his hand opening with a loud pop. The sound alone seems to have made him melt, content, and it takes a lot for Ryan to not laugh.

“You didn’t come in this morning, and I know you usually work Fridays, so I thought maybe you’d want that,” Mikey shrugs, clearly aiming for nonchalance, but the wide grin on his face really ruins the facade.

Nate turns slightly pink and nods, “yeah. Didn’t sleep well. Ran late. Y’know.”

In that moment, Ryan felt realization like the world shattering around him. It also, mostly, actually, made him feel incredibly stupid.

The boy Mikey talked about so often was Nate . Of course it was. God.

He walks back to the register nearly in a daze, just shaking his head when Alex asks what happened.

“Hey, Ry,” Mikey greets when he comes down the line.

Alex gently pats his back and goes to make Mikey’s coffee.

“Hey, Michael.”

“Wow, full name. Who shit in your cereal this morning?” he asks with a slight amused smirk as he digs in his pocket for his wallet.

Ryan pointedly looks over to where Nate is staring at the blue can like he wants to marry it before he looks back at his brother. “Remind me to kick your ass later.”

“Oh,” he replies slowly. “I mean, it’s-”

“Nope. Later.”

“I’m older than you, you know.”

“I’m not trying to get fired today.”

Something clearly clicks for Mikey, and while Ryan has no idea what that is, he nods and pays, taking the coffee from Alex. On his way out, he waves to Nate, who offers a slight wave in return, and walks right into the door with a smack.

“You’re supposed to use the push bar, not your face,” Alex chirps before laughing when Mikey flips him off.

He goes through the last five hours of his shift thinking about how he’d managed to be completely blind for nearly an entire month. Really it should have been downright obvious that it was Nate. Everything lined up too perfectly and he’s usually pretty good at picking up on this stuff.

The drive home isn’t long enough for him to fuss anymore, and he walks into the living room to see Mikey asleep on the couch. He gently lifts a napping Ditzy off his chest and sets her on the floor with a quiet apology for waking her up. Waking Mikey is a significantly less gentle process, quickly pulling the pillow out from under his head and smacking him in the face with it.

“Why,” he covers his face with one hand, rubbing the back of his head with the other.

“Nate?”

“I’m Mikey.”

He hits him with the pillow again.

“What?”

“All month you’ve been talking about Nate ?” he asks, because even though he knows it’s true, he wants to make sure.

“I never said I wasn’t,” Mikey responds, sitting up and stretching.

“You never said you were, either.”

“It’s not like I lied or anything. Just never said who it was.”

“Withholding information is a crime.”

“I’m not on trial.”

“You are now,” he says simply.

Mikey tries to catch the pillow before it hit him again, but he misses. “Can you stop that.”

“Maybe,” Ryan shrugs, but lets the pillow fall to his side. “Why didn’t you tell me it was Nate?”

“Didn’t feel important.”

“You don’t like coffee,” he sits down next to Mikey and sets the pillow in his lap.

“Not really, no.”

“Nate’s why you go in there.” He isn’t asking. Mikey knows this, and shrugs.

“I guess.”

“I’m guessing, then,” he looks at the ceiling, thinking. “That’s why you knew they were hiring.”

“You should be a cop.”

“I don’t think the police do the questioning.”

“Yeah they do. You’ve seen Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”

“They’re detectives and you aren’t answering the question.”

“Isn’t there supposed to be a good cop too? Can I call Dylan?” Mikey takes the pillow from him. “Yes, that is how I knew they were hiring.”

And yeah, Ryan figured as much. He more or less had all day to fill in the missing parts of the past two months himself. There was one thing he couldn’t figure out, though. “So why didn’t you just apply there yourself? You hate working at CVS.”

Mikey’s playing with the zipper on his jacket when Ryan looks at him. “I mean, it’d be really weird to try to get a job somewhere just because you thought one of the employees are cute or whatever. Pretty sure that’s creepy.”

Ignoring him calling Nate cute, he supposes Mikey does have a point. Except, “yeah, but telling me to apply there as some kind of Nate Spy is a thousand times weirder. You know that, right?”

Mikey hits him with the pillow this time. “That’s not what I was doing.”

“Sure,” Ryan nods, and Mikey tackles him, holding the pillow against his face.

“No witnesses!”

The next morning, Dylan comes in and looks at Mikey chatting with a slightly red but still smiling Nate. “What the fuck. Mikey’s still here?”

“Yeah, he’s been over there for,” he glances at the clock, “about forty minutes.”

“Is this,” he starts, opening and closing his mouth a few times. “I’m in a dream. Pinch me.”

“Are you on the clock yet?” Ryan reaches out for Dylan, who jumps back and bumps into the counter. He snorts and lets his hand fall back to his side. “You said they talked the other day, why’s it that weird?” Which, okay, it is weird, in a ‘I never saw this coming and I need time to adjust to it’ way, but still. Dylan did say he’d seen it before. Not to mention Dylan’s lacking a pretty important piece of information about the whole situation.

“Okay, by that I meant Mikey came in and Nate said ‘hi Mikey.’ That’s it.”

“Oh.” Definitely strange, then.

“I thought Nate was still scared of him. At least a little bit.”

“I don’t think Nate was ever scared of him,” Ryan realises suddenly.

“What are you talking about? He-”

Ryan looks at Nate’s face as Mikey laughs at something that probably wasn’t funny, and shakes his head. “I think it’s the opposite.”

“What?” Dylan repeats, but he looks back at the pair and practically mutters, “oh my god,” so Ryan thinks he gets it.

“Yeah.”

August

He really hadn’t meant to tell Tip about his - and Dylan’s, Dylan insists he gets credit for helping - theory about why Nate has been the way he was around Mikey, but also, he really didn’t intend to not tell him.

What he means is, he can’t exactly be blamed for grabbing Tip’s arm the moment he clocks in, blurting out “Nate has a thing for Mikey.”

Tip, of course, doesn’t believe him and just laughs it off. Ryan supposes that’s a valid response, considering he probably could have led up to that a little better, but whatever. Rip off the band-aid or however that saying goes. Then again, it isn’t really a band-aid in the case, more like a piece of tape that got stuck to your arm and you know it’s going to be mildly annoying when you take it off.

The point here is Ryan is really bad at whatever exactly this qualifies as.

Gossiping? Is it gossip?

“Earth to McLeod,” Tip snaps in Ryan’s face, “I thought I lost you there.”

“Funny,” he deadpans. “I’m serious, though.”

God, he sounds like Dylan.

“Alright, we’ll see,” and with that, he’s walking towards the office where Nate is definitely working on an invoice and definitely not in the mood to deal with this kind of thing.

He looks between the door and Tip and decides that anyone that comes in can wait a second while he tries to do his best Tippett Control, which is like crowd control, but one person. That doesn’t mean it’s any less difficult an operation, though.

“Mornin’ Nater!”

“Hey, Tipsy,” Nate doesn’t even look up from the stack of paper he’s staring blankly at. “Check the dates in the walkin when you get the chance.”

“Man I just got here and you’re already giving me shit to do.”

Nate looks up, his expression pretty dead. “That is my job, yeah.”

Tip rolls his eyes. “Sure boss. You’re so grumpy.”

Ryan can see where this is going, and - “Tip-”

“Guess your boyfriend didn’t pop in yet.”

“Oh my god.” So much for Tippett Control. He’s never been good at it.

“My. My what?”

“Once certain CVS employee?”

Nate turns bright red and starts sputtering, and Ryan feels like he can see the gears in his brain stop working and start smoking like in every cartoon ever. It’s pretty funny, to be completely honest. In an attempt to play it cool, Nate’s malfunctioning brain settles on “I don’t even know what CVS is.”

The little bell chimes, alerting them to the door opening, and Tip lights up. “Maybe that’s him now!”

“I’m sorry,” Ryan mutters to a still very red Nate when Tip makes his way to the front of the store.

“Hey, Mikey!” Tip greets loud enough for them both to hear. “How are you!”

After that pretty obvious confirmation of their suspicions, he seems to take getting Nate to talk to Mikey into his own hands. It’s almost a relief to know that Ryan doesn’t have to do all the work.

Except, like, he still kind of does. Because Tip’s advice is still Tip’s advice.

Never a good thing.

“Okay, Nathan,” he leans against the counter and shakes his phone. “I’ve got it.”

“Oh no,” Nate and Ryan say at the same time.

He clears his throat. “I looked up how to talk to boys.”

Nate doesn’t look up from baking. “Great.”

“There’s eighteen things here. Number seven-”

“What about one through six?”

“-touch him.”

“Makes sense,” Ryan supposes. Well, it makes sense in a very ‘I can see why someone would say that’ way, not so much in a ‘this is solid advice’ way. But what does he know.

“Hey, Ryan,” Tip grins, gently putting a hand on his forearm.

Ryan shivers and pulls his arm back. “Never do that again,” he points at a laughing Tip.

He goes back to his phone. “Eleven.”

“I feel like we’re missing important steps here,” Nate deadpans.

“Make him feel like you need his protection.”

Nate actually stops baking for a moment to give him a disbelieving look. “Why,” he runs a hand down his face, “are straight people like that.”

Tip starts laughing so hard tears start to stream down his face, and he has to go into the dishroom when a customer walks in.

He comes back after they leave, his phone still in his hand. “Thirteen,” he continues, “use simpler words.” He’s wiping his eyes, the laughter bubbling out of him again after reading that.

“Perfect,” Nate says, “I’ll just pretend I’m talking to a toddler.”

“Well,” Ryan hums, “that one might work. It is Mikey.”

Nate does his best impression of an unimpressed look, but a smile is obviously tugging at the corners of his mouth. Tip has to go back into the back, but he’s laughing loud enough that they can hear him anyway.

When Mikey comes in about ten minutes after that, Tip whispers “remember your training” to Nate, who just flips him off.

“I know everyone else knows your complicated coffee order by now,” Nate says to Mikey when they meet at the register, “but I’m pretty sure I’ll never remember it.”

Mikey just laughs. “Come on, it isn’t that bad.”

“It’s bad,” Ryan agrees and goes to make the drink so Nate doesn’t have to, because he’s considerate like that.

“Whatever, don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

“Speaking of,” Nate says and taps on the side of the display case. “Do you never get anything to eat?”

“Nah, we have cereal at home.”

“Cereal isn’t as good as baked goods,” Nate replies, sounding a little offended that someone would even think that. “That’s why they’re called baked goods .”

“If you say good anymore I am really going to feel like it isn’t a word.” Mikey’s looking at the stuff in the display case when Ryan turns around and pushes the coffee over to him. “I don’t even know what to get."

“What do you like?”

“Cereal.”

“You’re the worst.”

Mikey’s grin is about as cheeky as it gets, and Ryan intervenes. “He has the sweet tooth of a four year old in a candy shop. You’ve made his coffee before.”

He looks like he’s about to protest, but stops himself, knowing that Ryan’s right.

“Yeah, what he said.”

Nate hums and pulls out a slice of coffee cake. “I guess this is probably what you should go with, then.”

Mikey eyes it when it’s pushed towards him. “If this isn’t good I’m never coming back.”

Ryan adds it to his order. “That’s a lie and we all know it.”

“Yeah.”

Mikey pays and clearly contemplates trying it right there or in the car, but with one look at how stupidly excited Nate is, he pulls it out of the bag and takes a bite. He lights up and gives a thumbs up, and Nate returns it in kind.

“Good?”

“Mhm,” he nods, evidently deciding that maybe he shouldn’t talk with his mouth full.

“I told you.”

“Yeah,” Mikey puts the rest of the cake in the bag, “you did.”

He gets a piece of coffee cake every day after that, because of course he does.

“I have an idea,” Tip says on a particularly slow morning.

Ryan looks up from his cup of coffee. “That’s never good.”

“First of all, I’m full of good ideas.”

“You aren’t even allowed to work with Nic,” he points out even though he still doesn’t know why that is. He’d be willing to bet it wasn’t Nic’s idea, whatever it was. Though, really, it could go either way.

“Just so you know, that was a great plan and I’ll take that to my grave. Also, Coach said he might lift the no Hippett ban.”

“Hippett.”

“We’re working on it. I don’t like that one.”

“Hm. Nip,” Ryan says, barely managing to keep a straight face.

Tip flicks his arm, and he knows he deserves it. They both laugh anyway.

“So, the idea.”

Ryan downs the rest of his coffee in one go and sets the cup on the counter. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“New game. Next man that comes in is your future husband. The one after that is mine.”

“I mean,” Ryan shrugs. This could be interesting. “Sure. I’m in.”

“Are you excited to meet your soulmate?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“What are you two talking about?” Nate asks, walking up to them and drying his hands. “Wait. Do I want to know.”

“We’re about to meet the love of Ryan’s life,” Tip says. He refills Ryan’s coffee, unprompted, and stuffs it into his hands. “It’s gonna be great.”

“What.”

Ryan takes a sip of his coffee without questioning it. “The next guy that walks in is my future husband, and the second one is his,” he explains.

“You two realise that only old people come in here, right?” Nate tosses the paper towel at Tip, who just lets it hit him. “That’s it.”

“Maybe he marries him for his money. We don’t know,” Tip picks up the paper towel and throws it back at Nate. “Don’t judge his life choices.”

“What about yours?”

Ryan shakes his head. “Pretty sure we’re past that one.”

Nate just nods, and Tip doesn’t bother protesting.

“What about me? Do I get a future husband?”

“Nope. You die alone, sorry.” Tip barely dodges the paper towel that finally ends up too far away to be used as a projectile again.

“You can have the third dude,” Ryan offers.

Nate considers it for a second. “I don’t think I’ll want him.”

“Nope,” Tip folds his arms. “Too late. You’re in on it now.”

Ryan is in the back to get new bags of coffee grounds to restock the line when Tip calls back to him, “Ry! Come meet your man!”

He goes up to the front, arms full of coffee, just to see Nate and Tip both trying to hold back their laughter while a man that couldn’t be less than sixty-five opened the front door.

“He’s perfect.”

Tip is finishing up helping the customer when another walks in, a much younger guy. He’s probably in his late thirties, but that’s a pretty vast improvement over what Ryan got. Tip turns as red as his hair when he starts to assist him, probably a combination of embarrassed and trying to stop himself from laughing.

Nate can’t contain himself, though, and hurries to the back office, saying something about needing to check an email or something along those lines. Ryan wasn’t really paying attention.

“His name is Charles,” Tip says when the customer leaves. “He hates green peppers.”

“That’s a good base for your future together.”

“It is. That’s all I needed to know,” he nods and opens his mouth to say something else, but he snaps it shut before he does. Ryan goes to ask what the problem was, but he continues with “Nate wins,” loud enough that Nate can hear him.

“Oh yeah?” he asks from the office, and he starts to come up to the front.

Ryan looks to see what kind of character was on his way in, and, “I’d say that’s debatable.”

“‘Sup losers,” Mikey greets the moment he walks in.

Nate stops dead in his tracks, turns bright red, and walks back to the office, leaving Tip and Ryan nearly double over with laughter.

Mikey stops in front of the counter, visibly confused. “What’d I do?”

“Did you plan that?” Ryan asks when the store’s empty again.

“Not really, but I mean, I hoped.” Tip sits down on a crate. “That was better than I’d even hoped.”

/

His first words to Trent were because he was sleep deprived, okay. Honest. Were he a hundred percent awake and aware, he wouldn’t have greeted a new coworker with “wow, more red.” He probably would have started off with “hi, I’m Ryan.” But he didn’t. He went with the red thing.

Tip, however, thinks it’s hilarious, and never fails to bring it up any time they’re working together.

“We should start a team of superheroes,” he says only a couple days after Trent started. “It’ll be great.”

“Yeah?” Ryan looks up from the cinnamon brick he’s trying to break up for Nate. “What’s your superhero name?”

“T and I are the Red Twins, obviously.”

“Needs work.”

“No, it’s perfect, right Trent?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“See?” He looks back down at the cinnamon, frustrated. “Can someone get me a knife?”

“I’ll save the day for you,” Tip hands him a plastic knife. “Always here to help, Toothless Wonder.”

“If I kick your ass, is it a hate crime?”

“Pretty sure it’s just a crime.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’re kicked off the team.”

“Oh no.”

“Dylan’s your replacement.”

“Have fun with that.”

Dylan comes over from the bake area, looking about as lost as he usually does. “I’m Dylan.”

“You sure are, buddy,” Ryan nods, which earns him a punch in the arm.

“Why’d I hear my name?”

“You’re going to be the third superhero in our team,” Tip explains. “You can be Raccoon Boy.”

“Original,” Dylan deadpans. “Too bad I’m going back to Mercyhurst and can’t fight crime here at the same time.”

“What if your superpower is flight?”

“See a lot of flying raccoons lately, Tip?” Ryan tosses the knife out and closes the now unclumped cinnamon box.

“You’re the least fun person I know.”

/

“I wish Tip was here,” Nate says, probably just to himself, from where he’s standing down at the register.

“Why’s that?”

“Because,” he picks up the tip jar and shakes it a little, the three coins in it clinking around. “There’s like one fifty-two in here. Yesterday there was ten by now.”

“Everyone loves Tip,” he shrugs and walks down and takes the jar just to look at it. “We always make more when he’s here.”

“I know.”

“Sometimes,” Ryan starts, because he’s been wondering this pretty much since he got hired, and now was the perfect time to bring it up, “I feel like he only goes by Tip here as some kind of threat.”

“That’s because he does.”

“Sorry, what.” He really hadn’t actually believed it was true. At least not completely. Eighty percent at most.

“Yeah, he wrote Owen on his name tag for a while but switched it to see if it would work.”

“Did it actually change, or?”

Nate nods, his eyes wide, and he looks kind of like those people that get interviewed on bad paranormal investigation shows that swear they saw something no one would believe. “Yeah. He thinks it’s because he butters people up and when they go to see what his name is - especially when they get surveys - it’s like a reminder. ‘Hey, you liked me? Tip me’ were his exact words I think.”

“That’s… oddly genius.”

“And people don’t question it because-”

“Tippett. Of course.”

“It’s pretty incredible.”

“No kidding.”

Neither of them heard the door open, so when Mikey says, right beside them, “ooo, serious bakery business?” Ryan nearly jumps out of his skin. He doesn’t feel too bad about it, though, because Nate did too. Maybe even moreso.

“Hm. Jumpy,” Mikey teases.

“Shut up, oh my god,” Ryan rolls his eyes and goes to get the coffee cake, figuring Nate would get the coffee ready, since, you know, he’s behind the display case and Nate’s closer to the coffee pots.

Nate has other ideas, though, and practically shoves him out of the way, eyeing up the individual slices before mumbling a barely audible “there,” and picking one up.

Every day he wonders more and more why his boss is so weird. Maybe one day he’d get answers.

“I didn’t realise I was so scary,” Mikey laughs when he takes the bag. “Maybe I should work at a haunted house this year.”

“You won’t even need a mask,” Ryan slides the coffee over to him.

“I’m going to call your boss and tell him you’re being needlessly rude to customers.”

“Try me, Michael.”

Mikey flips him off, pays, and leaves, only saying a goodbye to Nate.

In reality, Nate getting the cake instead of the coffee isn’t the strangest thing he’s done, especially considering, even though he stopped avoiding Mikey, he still avoids making Mikey’s coffee as much as possible. Despite this, something about it was off to Ryan. Though maybe he was reading too much into it.

Only one way to find out.

“Why didn’t you just get the coffee?”

“Huh?”

“You were closer.”

“Oh, I, uh. Yeah.”

Ryan squints at him and Nate rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck. “There was a certain slice I wanted to give him, I guess.”

“Okay?”

He shrugs at that, and that’s the end of the conversation.

The next day, he watches Nate make the coffee cake, and sure enough, he puts a bunch of extra sugar topping on a small portion of it. It doesn’t really matter, though, because Mikey won’t be in until later, since he has to drive Ryan home. It isn’t like Nate knows that, and he doesn’t really think it matters.

He has seen Nate confused plenty of times, but frankly the look on his face when Mikey walks in at one in the afternoon after not showing up in the morning was pretty up there on the list of overly amusing Nate expressions.

“Mikey?”

“I’m here to steal Ry bread.”

He starts to pull on his jacket and empties the tip jar on the counter, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Nate pull the loaf of rye bread out from under the line, hugging it to his chest.

“You can’t have it.”

Too tired to bother dealing with the change, he just pulls the bills out and splits them into three piles. He leaves one under the register for Alex since he doesn’t know where he went, stuffs one into his pocket, and carries the third one over to Nate, holding it out to him. “That’s too bad, because he needs a nap, and doesn’t have a car right now.”

Nate wraps the arm that isn’t holding the bread around his shoulders and pulls him in against his side too. “Nope. Mine.”

He doesn’t bother struggling to get out of his grasp. “I’m gonna hit you with that bread if you don’t let me go.”

“How could you even say that?” He lets go of Ryan and holds onto the bread with both hands. “It did nothing wrong.”

“Bye, Nater,” he laughs and walks down to the register to clock out. “See you tomorrow morning, right?”

“Yeah.”

“See you tomorrow,” Mikey waves to Nate with a dumb grin on their way out, both of them returned in kind by the supervisor.

“I learned something new today,” Ryan says, buckling his seatbelt.

“Was it basic math?”

“You’re the one that can’t do math.”

“Fuck you, yes I can.”

In order to not have this de-escalate into the usual ‘yes I can’ ‘no you can’t’ ‘uh huh’ ‘nope’ type argument, Ryan just puts them back on track. “Nate makes your coffee cake.”

“You’re just figuring that out? I don’t even work there and I know Nate bakes all the-”

“No, I mean the piece you get? Nate makes that. For you.”

Mikey pauses and glances over at him briefly as they roll up to a stop sign. “What are you talking about?”

Ryan rolls his eyes and lets his head hit the window. He snorts a laugh when he remembers Tip’s ‘use simpler words’ advice. Because, apparently, that is what it takes when it comes to talking to Mikey about Nate.

“What?”

“Nothing,” because that’s a whole conversation he doesn’t want to bother having. “The coffee cake.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s made in sheets.”

“Sheets.”

“Yeah, like,” he struggles for a moment to figure out how exactly to word that. “Just a really big cake, I guess. All at once.”

“Okay.”

“So the pieces should all be the same more or less when it’s done and cut.”

“Makes sense.”

“But they aren’t,” he makes a face, mostly still in disbelief that his boss is that gone on Mikey, “because he tops a square of it with a lot more cinnamon sugar.”

“Okay?”

“That’s yours.”

“I don’t. I”

“Okay I’m really out of ways to say this to you, now,” Ryan sighs and unbuckles his seatbelt when they pull up their driveway.

“No, I get it,” Mikey says and rests his forehead against the top of the steering wheel, smiling too big when he barely breathes out “wow.”

Ryan just shakes his head and gets out of the car. This is getting to be too much.

It kind of seems like something is bother Nate in the morning, and when Ryan goes to ask him why that is, Nate looks at him and kind of blurts out, “Mikey drove you home yesterday?"

“Uh, yeah? I told you my car wasn’t working and Matt had something to do, so I had to call Mikey.”

“Matt?” Nate looked like he needed to think really hard about who that was. “Dylan’s brother?”

“No, my brother. I wouldn’t trust Matty to drive me anywhere.”

“Oh,” he nods and goes back to baking, basically indicating the conversation was over.

Ryan feels like he should be used to weird with Nate, especially first thing in the morning, but apparently he isn’t, because that was, like, weird.

He’s still not his normal Nate self after that, but it’s better. He kind of wishes that Mikey had worked that night so he could cheer him up a little. Instead, the strange mood lasts the rest of their shifts. Well, at least Ryan’s.

“I’m getting free coffee for picking you up, right?” Matt leans over the counter. “Mom said I can’t actually ask you for money.”

“You were going to make me pay you?”

“I’m not a taxi, obviously.”

“What do you want, then,” he says, tired.

“Ryan,” Nate smacks his arm. “You can’t just-”

“Relax,” Ryan rubs his arm where Nate hit it, “it’s my brother.”

“Oh.”

“I’m Matt,” he waves. “And I don’t care, Ry. Get me whatever.”

“A cup of water?”

Matt gives him a look and Ryan just goes to get him a cup of whatever coffee they had the most of.

“I’m sorry that you have to deal with him all day,” Matt tells Nate like Ryan is the mess of the bakery.

“Yeah, no,” he says when he sets the coffee on the counter, “I have to deal with him.”

“I’m still your boss.”

“Are you, though?”

“Yes. My name tag says ‘supervisor.’ What does yours say?”

Ryan tugs on his name tag, “Ryan with a smiley face, remember?” Nate had taken it a few days prior and drawn the little smiley face next to his name and proudly handed it back.

“Yes, and you’re not being very Ryan smiley face right now.”

That makes Matt, who had just been watching the exchange, actually laugh. “When is he ever?”

/

Arguably, he thinks to himself, the worst development since Mikey and Nate started actually interacting - at least at the bakery, since apparently they’d been conversing at CVS. Ryan still really doesn’t understand that - is how Mikey has decided to actually turn up his really obvious flirting a couple notches.

The best part of that, though, is how painfully oblivious Nate is to it.

He doesn’t know that he could even count the amount of bad pickup lines his brother has tried on both hands over the past week or two. They do a pretty bad job of actually functioning as a pickup line, but they almost always make Nate laugh, which seems good enough to Mikey.

It would be funny, probably, were it anyone else.

“Hold on,” Ryan says when Mikey walks up to the register, “I don’t know where Nate put your piece.”

“He saved one for me?”

“I told you this already, he makes one for you.” He looks over at Nic, who is staring into one of the coolers like it holds the secrets to the universe. “Hey, Nic, where’s Nater?”

“I dunno. Hold on.” He leans away from the cooler and shuts the door, shouting towards the back, “hey boss man!”

“I could have done that.”

“You didn’t, though.”

Alex walks over with Mikey’s coffee, which he kindly wrote Michael Bastian on, complete with little hearts. Mikey doesn’t even get to argue before Nate makes his way up to the front, shirt soaking wet and suds on his chin.

“I told you I was doing the dishes,” he says, swatting at Nic with the rag he dried his hands on. “Why couldn’t you just come get me?”

Nic shrugs, and Nate looks over at Ryan, who just gestures to Mikey.

“Where’s Prince Charming’s slice of sugar?”

“Oh,” Nate turns red and wipes hurriedly at his chin.

Honestly, Ryan deserves a bonus for how often he has to fight rolling his eyes at his supervisor. Sure, he loses that fight more often than not, but that isn’t the point. He’d have to bring that up with someone.

“Aren’t you ever going to get anything else?” Nate asks, leaning into the display case to get the right piece of coffee cake. “The other stuff is good too, you know.”

“Nah, I love this shit,” Mikey says with a grin when Nate hands the bag over, and it’s big enough that Ryan knows nothing good is going to come from it. “Plus, it’s the second sweetest thing here.”

If he doesn’t deserve a raise for not rolling his eyes, fine, but he most definitely should be paid to have to hear this shit.

Nate scrunches up his face, confused, like he’s thinking really hard about something.

“Really?” he says after a moment. “It has the most sugar.”

“Oh my god,” Ryan groans, resting his forehead against the register. Alex is stifling a laugh beside him, and Nate is seriously the most oblivious person he’s ever met. And he’s related to Mikey.

What a combination these two are. Or, would be. If they weren’t both idiots.

September

Mikey comes in that morning, a beanie with the price tag still on it pulled down over his ears, cheeks red. He looks like he’s been standing in the walkin for ten minutes, not like he walked across the street in fifteen degree weather. Sure, it’s slightly raining, but come on.

“I need your jacket. And like. The largest hot chocolate.”

“So, a large.”

“And your jacket.”

“What happened to your hoodie? I thought you had it last night.”

“I, uh, don’t worry about it.”

Nic slides the hot chocolate across the counter and goes back to his conversation with Tip. The two hadn’t stopped since Nic clocked in, the Hippett ban temporarily lifted. Ryan just barely catches the Mr. Bas scrawled along the side of the cup. That one’s new.

He folds his arms and raises an eyebrow at Mikey, who sighs.

“Nate has it, okay? I’m cold and I wanna go home.”

Someone behind him spits out their coffee, and going off of Tip’s “no fucking way am I cleaning that up,” it was probably Nic.

“Nate has it,” Ryan repeats slowly.

“Yeah, he came in last night and it was raining and he was cold, so I gave it to him. Can I please just borrow your jacket now.”

“Nate has it,” he says again under his breath as he walks to the back to get his jacket, carefully stepping around Nic while he wipes down the little ovens. “Unbelievable.”

“I owe you,” Mikey sighs, relieved as he shrugs on the coat and zips it up.

“No shit.”

His jacket is hanging on his doorknob when he gets home, but Mikey is dead asleep, so it isn’t even like he got the chance to question him about it right away. He makes a mental note to do it later, because he’s pretty sure his brother doesn’t work that night, so he’d have time.

He falls asleep before Mikey wakes up, anyway.

The good thing, he guesses, is he can ask Nate about it in the morning.

The bad thing, well, not necessarily bad, is that Nate lets him in the next morning, and Ryan notices a couple of things.

One, he’s still wearing Mikey’s hoodie.

Two, it’s Mikey’s Devils hoodie. The one Ryan almost got orange juice on at breakfast a couple months prior and Mikey threatened him for a solid twenty minutes. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t gone within five feet of Mikey when he was wearing it since then. Better safe than sorry.

“Devils fan?” He asks.

Nate shrugs and locks the door behind him. “Not really. It’s not mine.”

He must think he’s going to be able to get out of the conversation that easily, because he immediately hurries off to the ovens again.

“Oh? Whose is it, then?”

Nate only falters for a second before he starts sprinkling the cinnamon on top of the coffee cake batter. His face is slightly pink, and the half shrug he offers before stating, “Mikey’s” is pretty hilariously bashful.

“How’d you manage that?”

“Don’t you have something to be doing?” Nate flicks some cinnamon at Ryan’s face.

“Technically, he responds, but leans against the counter, propping his chin up on his hands. “Spill.”

“I was cold and he gave it to me.”

“You need to work on your storytelling,” he sighs and pushes off of the counter. “Because it sucks, and you’re boring.”

He tells Alex the situation later, and it’s only through the power of combined annoyance that they ever end up getting more than that out of Nate.

It really isn’t all that much, but still, it’s better than nothing. Sure, maybe it’s prying, but Ryan is pretty sure that, at this point, he’s allowed to pry.

After an entire shift of poking, they managed to acquire the most basic of information.

Nate went to CVS in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep and couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. He had forgotten to wear a jacket, and it started to rain while he was in there, so Mikey gave him his hoodie.

They didn’t get a response to “why was your first choice CVS,” but it isn’t like they didn’t already know. The avoidance was pretty telling anyway.

“I’m giving it back tomorrow,” he says when Ryan asks how or even if he’s returning it. “That was the next time we’d both be working.”

The next morning, Nate’s pretty pouty about Mikey coming in later, not wanting to give the hoodie back. He doesn’t say that, and is obviously trying to hide the disappointment, but Ryan has gotten pretty good at reading him, especially when it comes to Mikey.

Nate’s got his heart on his sleeve, and if it were because of anyone but his brother, it would be really sweet. As it stands, it’s a lot.

And, as it stands, it’s Mikey’s sleeve Nate’s heart is on.

When he comes in, Nate’s in the back panic-baking muffins because someone bought all of them, every single muffin, and they need to be restocked quickly before they get busy in about a half hour.

“I’ll get him,” Trent says, but Ryan waves him off.

“Nah, I got this,” he responds, waiting until the moment before Mikey opens the door to call out, “hey Nate can you come up here for a sec?”

He starts shouting a response before he even walks to the front. “Ry I told you I need to get these muffins done. What could you possibly need ri- oh, hi Mikey.”

The annoyed look on his face had melted into something much softer the moment he saw him. He takes off his gloves and sticks his hands in the pocket of the hoodie, smiling like an idiot.

“Hey, Nate,” Mikey smiles back, his face red.

Ryan, not wanting to look at either of them anymore, turns to make Mikey’s coffee, but he just gets to see Trent already finishing it up.

Fuck you, he mouths when Trent turns around and grins at him. He just shrugs in response.

Neither of the idiots have said anything else, so Ryan sighs and enters the drink into the register. “Are you gonna pay or what?”

“Ryan,” Nate looks at him in that way he does when Ryan talks like that to customers - always people he knows, obviously.

“What? I’m allowed. He’s not even a real customer.”

“If I’m not a real customer do I not have to pay, then?”

“Shut up and just give me the money, Mike.”

Mikey sticks his tongue out at him, reaching into his pocket for his wallet.

“Guess you need this back,” Nate says, tugging on the hem of the hoodie.

Mikey hands Ryan his card and looks back over at Nate, his smile small. “Nah, I- hey, come here.”

“What?”

“Like just,” he reaches over and tugs on the hoodie strings until Nate leans across the counter. “You got something - cinnamon.”

Ryan turns to give his brother his card back, only to see him wiping gently at Nate’s face with his thumb.

“There,” he nearly whispers, but he doesn’t move his hand.

The silence lingers for a brief moment before Ryan holds out the card and asks, effectively ruining the moment, “do you want your receipt?”

Nate flinches and Mikey pulls back his hand like he touched something hot. “Oh, uh, no.”

The oven timer starts beeping, and Trent calls out, “oh Nathan, your boyfriend wants you!”

“Shit, I gotta go, uh,” he starts to pull the hoodie over his head, but Mikey quickly grabs one of his wrists.

“No, keep it."

“Wait, really,” Nate asks, his face half sticking out of it.

Ryan barely manages to swallow his laughter at the sight.

“Yeah, it- you look good in it.”

“Oh.”

He just stands there, slowly pulling it back on properly.

“Nate. The muffins,” Ryan reminds him, and Nate immediately turns and almost runs into the back, calling out a goodbye to Mikey on the way.

“Can you not do that shit right in front of me?”

“Nah,” Mikey says, the dumb smile on his face not faltering for a second.

“You’re insufferable.”

He shrugs, takes his coffee and leaves, offering a lazy wave on the way out.

Stromer finally comes back that weekend, and the first thing he does is laugh at a very exhausted Nate staring at a board of burnt bagels with probably the most dead expression Ryan has ever seen him have. It disappears the moment he hears Dylan, immediately replaced with a wide grin.

“Oh, hey!”

“What’s up, boss?”

Nate dumps the bagels into the trash and starts spewing off a bunch of supervisor shit that Ryan is constantly thankful he doesn’t have to deal with, and when it seems like Dylan is going to explode with all the information, Ryan goes over to rescue him.

“How’s school Dyls?”

“Boring. How’s work?”

“Same.”

“Any new developments around here?”

“Other than the usual shit?” He eyes Nate, who doesn’t seem to follow and therefore goes back to baking new bagels, “nah. I mean, beside the uniform change.”

“The-” Dylan starts, but he stops himself when he sees Nate’s hoodie, then he just mouths “oh.”

Ryan nods and walks back to the dishroom, and Dylan follows suit, leaning against one of the sinks. “So Connor,” he starts, and Ryan pauses scrubbing a pan to give him a look.

“Connor.”

“Yeah, like-”

“No, I know, dude. Just didn’t know you were on a first name basis.”

“Yeah, I guess. I think maybe we’re friends?” He picks up a rag and starts drying off the dishes as Ryan hands them to him.

“You think you’re friends?”

“I’ve only been talking to him for like four days, okay? And friends work different for people that are famous.”

“I know, I’m in the group chat that you yelled about it to, and I don’t think that’s true.”

“Why not?”

“Famous people are still people, Dyls.”

“Anyway,” he presses, stacking up the plates next to him. “He might be able to come to Matt’s birthday party, if that’s okay, obviously. I mean I didn’t ask him or anything yet, because it isn’t my place, but since it looks like Ryan might be able to make it, then-”

“Dylan.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sure you can bring your new best friend Connor if you want,” he says, raising one hand to do air quotes as he said best friend.

“He’s not my best friend,” Dylan mutters, but he’s smiling as he carries the plates back up to the front.

He doesn’t stop talking about Connor all day. Well, Ryan really only knows about the rest of his shift, which was only about an hour after Dylan got there, but still. It’s endless. How he has so many stories after just four days, he has no idea. But he doesn’t stop.

It’s more of the same the next day, and when Ryan leaves he can’t help but wonder if this is how his life would always be. At least Dylan is running everyone’s ears off, not just his.

Later in the week, they get an unexpected rush for seemingly no reason at all, and it really takes the wind out of his sails. Not that it really takes too much to do that so early in the day, but still. That was bad.

“I’m done, that’s it,” he throws his hands up, kicking four milk crates far enough apart so he can lay down on them. “Nate, I’m going home.” He dramatically throws his arm over his face to cover his eyes.

“Okay. Don’t come back,” Nate deadpans.

“I won’t.”

“Hey,” Tip kicks one of the crates and Ryan moves his arm off to flip him off. “Just because you ,” he pokes Nate in the chest, “have a big gay crush on his brother doesn’t mean you can play favourites.”

“Right, because I was actually going to - wait. Who said I have a thing for Matt?”

Ryan sits up so fast he gets lightheaded.

“What?” Tip blinks.

“You said-”

“Do you have a thing for Matt?” Ryan asks slowly, “because I think Mikey would cry, and I really don’t want to deal with that.”

He also really doesn’t want to threaten his boss either, and he really would have to if that was the case.

“No! That’s why I asked Tip why he thought that.” Nate crosses his arms, or maybe he’s hugging himself. Ryan can’t tell.

“I didn’t-” Tip stops himself and his eyes go wide. “Nate.”

“What?”

“How many brothers does Ryan have?”

That’s a stupid question, and Ryan opens his mouth to say as much. He shuts it, however, when Tip holds up a finger to stop him.

Nate looks between the two of them a couple of times, clearly confused, before he slowly guesses, “one?”

“Oh my god,” Tip runs a hand down his face.

“Wait,” Ryan stands up and puts a hand on Nate’s shoulder. “Please tell me you aren’t serious.”

“Yeah, no, it’s. There are more of you?”

“Mikey, bro,” Tip pats Nate on the back, like he’s comforting him. Which, maybe he was.

“No?”

“Uh, yeah,” Ryan nods and lifts his hand off his shoulder. “Did you not know that?”

“How was I supposed to?”

“Dude, you have eyes,” Tip laughs. “I know they work at least sometimes.”

“I don’t-” Nate covers his face.

“I think he’s broken,” Tip says, and Ryan nods.

Later, Mikey comes in to pick him up, and Nate looks between the two of them, mutters something inaudible, and rests his forehead on the counter.

“Is he okay?” Mikey asks when they walk out into the parking lot.

“I think Tip broke him earlier.”

“What?”

“Apparently,” he leans his head against the headrest when they get in the car, “he had no idea we were related.”

“What? Tipsy knows-”

“No, Nate. You really picked a good one.”

“Wow,” Mikey laughs, and it takes him a couple of minutes to calm down enough for them to actually head home.

/

Anyone that comes in within the first twenty minutes of opening is immediately on Ryan’s shit list for the day. Finally giving in to Coach insisting he learn how to bake has really only made that a thousand times worse, so when the door opens yet again before the clock even hits six, he looks up from the oven, trying his hardest to not look exasperated.

“Why,” is the only thing he says when he sees Nate stuff his hands into the pockets of his red plaid pajama joggers.

Nate walks over to where he’s stood over some slightly lopsided cinnamon muffins and shrugs. “I haven’t been home in several hours. I just bought these-” he sticks one leg out “-at Walmart two hours ago."

“Felt like showing them off?”

“I just need some fuckin’ coffee before I get home. I gotta get gas, too.”

The person Tip was helping leaves, so Nate slides - literally slides - down the line and rests his forearms on the counter. “Hit me with that sweet, sweet hazelnut.”

The door opens again, and Ryan waves when his brother walks in. “Hey, Mikey.”

The moment the words leave his mouth, Nate turns so fast Ryan felt the whiplash from across the bakery.

“Nate?”

“Oh, hey Mikey.”

Something flickers across Mikey’s face that Ryan doesn’t understand, and he’s caught off guard when the oven timer goes off. He doesn’t catch any of the conversation the pair started to have until he brings the muffins over to the display case to start putting them out.

“-and I don’t have to pay for the coffee, so I’ll manage with just that.” Nate shrugs and takes his cup from Tip.

“Makes sense, I guess,” Mikey takes his cup and eyes the baked goods in the case and squints at Ryan. “Do I trust you with my food?”

“I didn’t make you a sugar pile with some cake hidden under it if that’s what you’re asking me. Not all of us like you that much.”

Mikey sticks his tongue out at him but shrugs anyway. “I guess I’ll try it.”

“Still just the coffee cake?” Nate teases, bumping Mikey’s shoulder with his own.

“You give me shit for that all the time, but you only ever buy regular Red Bull.”

“I don’t know that I’ll like the flavours.”

Ryan hands Mikey a slice of coffee cake and he rolls his eyes. “And I don’t know that I would like any of the other stuff here.”

“But you would,” Nate protests, “I promise.”

“I’ll try other foods if you try other Red Bull flavours,” Mikey puts his coffee on the counter and holds out a hand.

Nate shakes it. “Deal.”

Mikey beams and lets Nate’s hand fall. “I uh,” he picks his coffee back up and gestures to the dining room, “I don’t have anywhere to be if you want to sit for a while?”

Nate just blinks at him and nods, grinning. “Yeah. I’ll get something, then.”

Mikey turns and walks out to put his things at a table.

“Shit, Nater, get it,” Tip laughs, and Nate rolls his eyes at him, his face rapidly turning pink.

Ryan goes back to baking, and he looks at the clock when Mikey and Nate finally get up and leave.

Two hours.

They were there for two hours.

Surprisingly, Mikey’s awake when Ryan gets home, unsurprisingly eating mac and cheese right out of the pot he made it in.

“We have bowls.”

“More dishes? Nah.”

Ryan just ignores that and starts to make himself a peanut butter sandwich. “So,” he says, turning to Mikey as he spreads some on a slice of bread, “how was your date with Nate today.”

Mikey points his fork at him. “It wasn’t a-”

“Mikey.”

He lowers his fork and stares into the pasta for a moment, avoiding the question with “I didn’t think he existed outside of his uniform. It’s like seeing your teacher in normal clothes.”

“How is that even remotely similar.”

“It just is,” he makes a face and shoves a forkful of macaroni in his mouth. “And the not-date was nice.”

Ryan ignores the ‘not’ and sits down across the table from Mikey. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. We talked about the Devils’ preseason. I didn’t even know he liked them.”

“He didn’t,” Ryan says simply, taking a bite of his sandwich.

“Huh?”

He just shrugs and says nothing.

Mikey looks at him, confused, but the look on his face shifts. Ryan can tell he understood what he meant, if the small smile he has is any indication.

He really isn’t sure how these two would survive without him. It would probably be a disaster.

Well, more of a disaster than it already is.

He doesn’t ask Nate how the date went, despite how badly he may want to, if only to make fun of him for it being most definitely a date, no matter what he might say to argue that. Tip does it enough for the two of them anyway.

One thing he does notice after that, though, is that something seems slightly off with Nate for a few days. It isn’t bad enough that it raises any alarms or anything like that, mostly he just looks lost in thought more often than normal.

He was mentally practicing how he was going to ask about it while he brewed some more coffee, when Nate’s voice behind him startles him out of it.

“Okay, I’ve really tried to figure it out but I can’t,” he says from where he’s seated on a milk crate, staring down at the sleeves of his hoodie as he plays with one of them.

“What’s up.”

“This is a Devils hoodie.”

Ryan just blinks at him. “Seems like you have it figured out to me.”

The looks he’s given at that is unimpressed, and Ryan returns it.

“I mean, why does Mikey have a Devils hoodie.”

“Well he doesn’t anymore.”

“I hate you, you know that?”

“Yeah, but you have a crush the size of a mountain on my brother, so you deal,” he shrugs and plops down on the crate beside Nate.

He ignores that and tugs slightly on one of the strings. “Seriously, though.”

“I dunno. He’s been a Devs fan for like two years now, I never really questioned it.” He leans back against the wall and looks up at the ceiling. “Sometimes it’s easier to just let Mikey do his thing.”

“Have you ever even been to New Jersey?”

“I mean, we’ve visited Matt at college in Buffalo, but that’s as close as we’ve gotten.”

Nate hums, but before the conversation can continue, they hear the door open and stand up in sync, silently moving to their respective places.

Nate’s sitting on the floor in front of the smaller oven when Ryan walks in the next morning. The door is open and there doesn’t appear to be anything inside.

“Cold?”

“Very.”

“No hoodie?” he questions, kicking lightly at his side. Honestly, since Mikey gave it to him, Ryan isn’t sure he’s seen Nate’s uniform shirt. It’s weird to look at, now.

“It’s in my car.”

“Then go get it?”

“No, I don’t want to like, ruin it,” Nate shakes his head and shuts the oven door when Baxter’s timer goes off. Ryan reaches out a hand to help him up and follows him over to it instead of starting his morning tasks.

“What do you mean, ruin it?”

Nate huffs as he pulls the coffee cake sheet out of the oven to put more cinnamon mix on top. “I asked Mikey why he had it this morning when I went in. Like, how he’s a Devils fan in Toronto, y’know?”

“Okay?”

“Well it just seemed important to him, I don’t know. So the hoodie’s important. I don’t want to ruin it.”

Ryan let that seep in for a second. He rests a hand on Nate’s forearm and waits for him to look at him.

“Maybe if it’s that ‘important,’ then there’s a reason he gave it to you.”

Nate silently looks back down at the coffee cake. “Oh.”

Ryan leaves him with that and starts to brew the coffees, going a little faster than normal to get everything ready for open to make up for the lost time.

By the time Mikey comes in, Nate’s wearing the hoodie again, and there’s something different in the way they interact. Nate’s small smile is really soft and fond, and Mikey returns it in kind. Normally he’d find it pretty gross, but there was something oddly sweet about it.

Just this time, though. Honest.

It isn’t until he walks into the kitchen nearly two hours after he got home from work and sees Mikey making some kind of ice cream monstrosity that he thinks about what Mikey could have told him that got Nate so worked up over it. If it really was such a big deal to his brother, he honestly felt a little bad for not asking about it any sooner.

He grabs a spoon out of the drawer and hops up on the counter next to him, pulling the container of ice cream into his lap.

“Isn’t one thirty a little early to be having ice cream?” he asks, shoving a spoonful in his mouth.

“I’m an adult, Ry.”

“Sure,” he replies, and a little ice cream runs down his chin. He wipes at it and stuffs the spoon back in the container after a moment of consideration. They’d probably finish it in this sitting anyway. “Then so am I.”

“Nope,” Mikey shakes his head and puts practically half a bottle of chocolate sundae syrup in his bowl. “Not for another three days.”

“I’m still gonna eat this, though.”

“Obviously.”

“Where are the strawberries?”

“Still in the fridge.”

Ryan contemplates getting down to get them, but decides it isn’t worth the effort and just picks up some of the sprinkles and puts a fair amount in the tub.

“You never told me,” he starts while he stirs them in, “why New Jersey?”

“What?” Mikey pauses dumping most of what was left of the sprinkles in his bowl.

“I mean out of nowhere you just. Decided you liked them. You never really said why.”

He seems satisfied with the mess of sugar he made and shoves the stuff out of the way and sits on the counter next to Ryan, somehow managing to fit a dripping spoonful in his mouth before he tries to reply. “Oh wait, is Judes home?”

“Nah.”

“Okay, cool.”

“I wouldn’t have even thought about sitting up here if she was.”

“Good call.”

They eat in relative silence, save for the disgusting noise whatever slime that’s in Mikey’s bow makes every time he puts his spoon in it. The quiet is finally broken by Mikey.

“It’s pretty stupid.”

“Well it’s you, so.”

Ryan laughs when Mikey bumps their shoulders together, looking a really poor imitation of offended. He gently knocks his ankle with his own after, though. “I’m sure it’s not stupid.”

“I had this dream once. It was pretty scary vivid,” he’s absently stirring the ice cream, now. “You and Matt were there. And it was NHL draft day.”

Ryan nods when he looks over at him for a moment to show he’s still listening.

“The Devils’ GM got on stage and he called my name. In the first round. Something about going on stage and pulling on that jersey in that dream felt too real, you know?”

He doesn’t, but he nods anyway.

“A lot of the dream from there is a blur, but I do remember getting home to the Stromes decorating our house with red and black streamers.”

He thinks back to when Ryan was drafted, and the five of them getting Islanders shirts or jerseys. “That does sound like something they’d do,” he hums. “So this dream is why you like the team?”

“It felt so real, Ry.”

“I believe you,” he bumps their shoulders together again and smiles when Mikey looks at him. “People like teams for worse reasons.”

“Yeah,” Mikey agrees and goes back to eating.

“Must really like Nate to have given him that hoodie, then, huh?”

Mikey nearly chokes on the ice cream and shoves a laughing Ryan off the counter.

The next time Ryan sees Mikey come in, he spends half an hour down by the bake area, leaning over the glass to talk to Nate. Every time he walks past them, they’re talking about the Devils’ upcoming season.

He isn’t sure that Nate knows how important that probably is to Mikey. Unless maybe he does. He’s never really had any questions about how well they’d work out if they managed to get their shit together, but this kind of thing - taking interest in a team just because Mikey likes them that much? It’s reassuring.

As annoying as all of their nonsense is, it’s good for them.

It’ll be worth it.

/

It isn’t his fault that he forgot, or that Nate looked so sad when he asked why exactly he was giving him a muffin the moment he walked in the front door. Five is really early, okay, and he didn’t sleep well, and, well.

So eighteen isn’t not a big deal, but it’s also not a big deal.

Mostly Nate should have waited, is all. Ryan isn’t fully competent until at least five twenty and he should know that by now.

He does apologise, obviously.

“It’s fine,” Nate shrugs. “You can’t eat it yet anyway.”

“Uh. Why not?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Is the surprise poison?” Ryan asks, sitting on the prep table. “Because it’s kind of messed up to kill someone on their birthday.”

“You didn’t even remember it was your birthday.”

“So? Doesn’t make it not my birthday.”

The “surprise” comes with the least surprising part of his day. Mikey walks in right on time, a balloon in one hand and a candle in the other - both obviously taken from his work.

It’s pretty stupid, but Nate looks so excited when he puts the muffin on the counter for Mikey to add the candle that he doesn’t say anything. Besides, it’s a nice gesture, honestly. He really does love Nate.

Mikey puts the candle that’s shaped like an eight in it and lights it, doing a ‘ta-da’ motion with his hands. This just makes him let go of the balloon, and the three of them watch it hit the ceiling.

“Nice,” Nate laughs. “Way to go.”

“No one?” Ryan gestures to the muffin.

“Hm?” Mikey looks back at him, evidently having gotten distracted by Nate again.

“Eight.”

“Oh. We were out.”

“Sure you were,” he shakes his head, knowing his brother far too well to believe that for a second.

“We were!” Mikey insists.

He blows out the candle anyway, and before he can even take it out so he could finally eat the breakfast he was promised two hours prior, Nate leans against his side nearly enough to knock him off balance.

“What’d you wish for?”

Ryan looks between his boss and his brother, to the muffin, then back at Nate.

“For you two to stop being such idiots.”

October

Ryan makes it four days into October before he gives in and calls Matt after Mikey leaves for work.

“What’s up, Ry?”

“We’ve got a problem.”

“What kind of a problem,” Matt says slowly, clearly ready to shift into Big Brother Mode™ if he has to.

Ryan lets his head fall back against his headboard and sighs. “I can’t take Mikey anymore.”

“This is hardly news.”

“No, okay, this is driving me fuckin’ crazy, Matt.”

“Alright, I’ll bite, what did the angel do?”

Explaining this while tiptoeing around the whole Nate being Nate thing - he still doesn’t know if Mikey came out to Matt or not - was going to be difficult. “He has these feelings for someone I know, and it’s so bad. It’s so bad.”

“Someone you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Does this someone have a name?”

Ryan bites at his lip, trying to come up with some kind of response. He should have thought this through a little bit before he called, apparently. “Is that important?”

“I guess not. It’s not Dylan, is it?”

“God, no. It’s definitely not Dylan.”

“I’ve been wondering about that since-”

Matt cuts himself off, and Ryan hears muffled swearing away from the phone. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to continue at all, so he presses.

“Since what?”

“Nothing, Ry.”

“Did. Did he say something about Dylan?” He wonders how Nate would take that. Not well, probably. That would be really sad to watch happen. Honestly, he’d probably chew Mikey out for that one himself, considering how he’d been-

“No, nothing about Dylan. Don’t worry about it, bud.”

In that case, the reasonable explanation is that Matt knows too. Mikey has no reason to trust him any less, and it’s honestly even more likely that Matt knew first. To check, he sends him a quick text, just because he knows he’s always on his phone during his shift.

did u tell matt abt the bi thing?

The response, as expected, shows up immediately.

Yeah, why?

he asked me if you had a thing for dyls

What the fuck

“So how’d he tell you?” Ryan asks Matt, ignoring the string of confused texts from his other brother.

“What?”

“He made me take Ditzy out of a bag to reveal a piece of paper that said he was bi. Because the cat was out of the bag.”

Matt laughs, and Ryan may have seen him a couple weeks ago, but he still misses him a lot. It’s always nice to hear.

“That’s fucking ridiculous,” he says after he catches his breath. “I don’t know if that’s better or worse than sending me a snap of a black screen that said ‘sure is dark in here’ followed by a video of him flinging the hall closet door open. That one said ‘mind if I come out?’”

Ryan doesn’t know if he should groan or laugh, and somehow end up making a noise that’s a combination of the two. “That is so much worse.”

“I definitely wasn’t expecting to open that in the middle of my calc lecture, that’s for sure.”

“Back to the problem at hand,” he stresses, getting back on topic now that he knows he doesn’t have to worry about details. Or pronouns, as the case may be. “You know Nate.”

“Your supervisor? Tall kid. Kinda weird.”

“Yeah, him. Also, weird that you call him kid when he’s like, a couple months younger than you, but sure.”

“Yes, I know him. Wh- Is that who you were talking about earlier?”

“I have to watch those two flirt constantly. Every. Single. Day. It’s been months. I can’t take it,” Ryan sighs dramatically, throwing an arm across his face for good measure, even though Matt can’t see him. It’s the thought that counts.

“It can’t be that bad, Ry.”

He doesn’t even know where to start with just how bad it really is. It’s something he couldn’t even begin to stress. Something you’d have to see.

“You’re home this weekend, right?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to leave my jacket at work Friday. Saturday morning I’m going to get it and you’re coming with me.”

“How early are we talking here?”

“Six.”

“No way, bud.”

“Four. Months.”

“Fine. Fine. What is this supposed to accomplish?”

“You’re going to sit at a table, and you’re gonna have to listen to what I have to deal with four times a week at least. Then you’ll see.”

“Isn’t Mikey supposed to be the dramatic one?”

“You’ll see.”

When Matt comes home Friday night, Ryan’s glad to see him - sure, he’s always glad to see him, but this time it’s a little different, because he’s going to finally have someone on his side.

Dylan was supposed to be on his side. He just laughs whenever he complains to him.

Mikey greets Matt and says goodbye in the same breath, only just managing to be there when he arrived before he had to go to work. The moment the door shuts behind him, Ryan stuffs his hands in his pockets and grins.

“Get some sleep. I’m waking you up at five thirty.”

“You’re the worst brother,” Matt shakes his head, pushing Ryan out of the way, but he’s smiling too.

Matt heads up the stairs, and Ryan follows suit.

“I’m the best brother.”

“Mikey isn’t making me wake up at five thirty in the morning on a Saturday.”

“No, but Mikey is why you’re waking up at five thirty in the morning on a Saturday.”

“Guess that means I’m the only good brother,” Matt says with a smug look and shuts his bedroom door.

“Debatable!” Ryan yells at the door, and gets ready for bed himself.

Getting Matt to actually get out of bed that early was far from easy, but with the promise of free coffee, they somehow made it in the car. The five minute drive never felt longer than it did with a whining almost twenty-one year old in his passenger seat.

“Okay, you don’t even have to talk to anyone, just sit in the dining room and I’ll get you your coffee,” he says when they pull into the lot. “Just make sure you’re able to see the line from wherever you sit.”

“When did you get so bossy?” Matt grumbles, but he does go straight to a table the moment they walk through the door. It’s probably because he’s tired and doesn’t want to stand more than it’s because Ryan asked him to, but he’ll take it.

“‘Sup, Ry?” Alex greets him, leaning over the counter. “Miss us?”

“Always,” he grins, giving a thumbs up. He walks behind the counter and gets two cups of coffee. “Just left my jacket here.”

“Right. I saw that.”

“I didn’t miss the main event yet, did I?”

Alex laughs and takes a seat on a crate beside the register. “Nah. That why you brought backup for a coat run?”

“Figured I’d treat him to coffee and a show while he’s home,” Ryan shrugs and puts the drinks on the counter.

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll hate it.”

“That’s the plan. Where’s our fearless leader?”

“Probably fighting with the cheesecake again,” Alex stands when the door opens, ready to help the customer. When he sees it’s Mikey, he sits back down and lays his head back on the counter. “Well, not for much longer.”

“Hey, Mikey,” Ryan waves, making sure to have spoken loud enough that Nate would hear him from wherever he was.

“Why are-” Mikey starts, but he’s interrupted by Nate appearing, saying his hello, and just overall being too cheery for this early on a Saturday.

“Did you like the blue one?” Mikey asks, apparently completely forgetting about Ryan’s presence.

Alex gets up with a sigh to make Mikey’s coffee.

“Eh, it was okay,” Nate shrugs and leans over the display case, his forearms dangling over the front of it.

“What? You liked the green one but not the blue?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it, I-”

Mikey props his elbows up between Nate’s arms and rests his chin on his hands. “The blue is the best, Nathan.”

Nate, who’s rather red - presumably because Mikey managed to put his face a little too close to Nate’s - shakes his head. “Nope.”

“ Fine ,” Mikey relents and straightens up, “so what do you got for me today?”

Nate lights up and leans back, pulling a muffin out and handing it over.

“A muffin?” Mikey asks as he takes it. “I’ve had muffins before.”

“But these are my muffins. So they’re better,” he crosses his arms like he’s daring Mikey to disagree.

He considers it for a moment and shrugs, apparently deciding Nate had a point. He bites into it, and his face brightens almost immediately. “Holy shit.”

Nate looks ridiculously proud, and Alex stifles a laugh, going off to do something in the back.

“Told you.”

Mikey takes another bite, and, predictably, talks with his mouth full. “Please marry me.”

“Me or the muffin?” Nate asks with a lopsided smile, and Ryan’s almost proud of him for not being a total wreck. His boss is growing up. Well, unless he’s actually asking for clarification.

Honestly, he wouldn’t be surprised.

To be fair, though, he also wouldn’t be surprised if Mikey did actually mean the muffin.

“You, definitely.”

“I’ll consider it, as long as you don’t eat all my muffins.”

Mikey throws his hands up dramatically. “Then what’s the point?”

Nate rolls his eyes and laughs. Mikey looks pleased and as proud as he always does when he makes Nate laugh. Which is, like, way too often to still be that proud about it. There is not one single person on this planet that Ryan knows can make Nate laugh as easily as he can, and frankly, it’s ridiculous.

Ryan glances over at Matt, who looks like he’s about to collapse and explode at the same time. Right. The coffee.

Something covers his face and he pulls it - his jacket - off.

“So you don’t forget it again,” Alex laughs when Ryan gives him a questioning look.

He pushes Nate to the side so he can get Matt an apology bagel, and he goes without question, too focused on whatever topic he and Mikey switched to. He’d heard quite enough for his day off and reverts back to his usual tune-out-the-flirts mode.

It isn’t a skill he would have predicted he’d develop, but he sure is glad he did.

“See you,” Alex waves and goes to help the customer that just walked in.

Ryan brings the coffee and bagel over to Matt and sits across from him, sliding the items over. “You catch that?”

“Unfortunately.”

“That wasn’t even that bad,” he takes a sip of his coffee, “it’s usually like-”

Matt nearly chokes on a bite of bagel, and Ryan turns to see they’d moved down past the register, Mikey gesturing with one hand while the other is placed on top of Nate’s where it’s resting on the counter.

“Like that, yeah.”

“No, it’s-” Matt waves a hand around while still trying to recover from inhaling his breakfast, “-isn’t that Mike’s hoodie?”

“Yeah. He gave it to him like a month ago.”

“He. He gave him that hoodie?”

Ryan just shrugs and Matt blinks at him, evidently more awake, now. “Wow.”

“Can you see why I called you?”

“Yeah, okay, I get it.” Matt nods. “God.”

They sit and wait until Mikey leaves to head home, the subject having switched mostly to Matt’s season, and Ryan promises to try to make it out to the game in Mercyhurst even though it’s further away than Buffalo - not without telling him he’d wear Dylan’s jersey, though.

“You said they’re like that every day?” Matt asks when they get in the car.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Gross.”

“Oh yeah.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“What?”

“The plan?”

Ryan looks over at him when he pulls up to a red light. “What plan?”

Matt rolls his eyes like it should be obvious. “Clearly they need an intervention.”

“Oh, of course . No, yeah. I’ll get right on that. Sit them down, slam a folder on the table, tell them,” he puts on his best businessman in a movie voice, “‘listen up dumbasses you both have obvious things for each other and we are not leaving this table until you sort it out.’ That’s perfect, Matt.”

Matt punches his arm and the light turns green. “No, smart shit, that’s not what I meant.”

Ryan glances at him and doesn’t respond, waiting for an explanation.

“We need a plan.”

“You already s-”

“I didn’t finish.”

Ryan takes one hand off the wheel to raise it defensively.

“A.. setup or something. Make them figure it out on their own. But with a push in the right direction, you know?”

“You realise no one does this in real life, right? Movies aren’t real.”

“Do you want to keep dealing with this or not?”

He considers it for a second when he pulls into the driveway. He sighs, “alright, we make a plan.”

Matt gives him a thumbs up and gets out of the car.

“You watch too many Hallmark movies,” he points out, “I hope you know this.”

“They’re fun.”

“They’re all the same.”

“So?”

“When did you become our mother?”

Ryan just raises the jacket in his hand when they walk into the living room and Mikey opens his mouth to question him.

Ditzy jumps out of his lap and does her ‘I’m totally not excited to see you, I just want you to pay attention to me, duh’ half run over to Matt, rolling onto her side at his feet.

“It’s not fair that she likes you better,” Mikey complains when Matt picks her up and she starts purring in his arms. “I live here.”

“Yeah, but everyone likes me better. Can’t blame her.”

“Ryan likes me better.”

“I do?”

Ryan successfully dodges the pillow Mikey throws at him.

After Mikey goes to his room to get some sleep, Ryan lays on the floor in Matt’s room while his older brother sits in his desk chair and continuously clicks a pen.

“Do you have to do that?”

“It helps me think.”

“Your classmates must hate you.”

The pen hits him in the side of his head, and for a second he wonders, not for the first time, if Tip is a long lost McLeod. He seems to enjoy hitting Ryan with projectiles as much as his brothers do.

His hair is the only definitive evidence against it, really.

“Do I even have to be here while you figure out your ‘plan?’ Can’t you just fill me in on it later?”

“You know Nate and I don’t.”

He has a point there, so Ryan sighs and sits up. “Fine. Any ideas?”

“Well,” Matt all but hums and grabs another pen off his desk to start clicking. “You can’t exactly do anything while you’re at work.”

“The only time they’re ever in the same room is when they’re at work, though.”

Matt lets his head fall back and it makes his entire desk chair wobble precariously. “Okay, then figure out some way to make sure they’re in the same place at the same time."

“Yeah? How do you plan on making Mikey do anything. I definitely can’t make Nate do shit.”

He groans. “Work with me here, Ry bread.”

“I’m trying.”

They sit in silence - save for the erratic clicking of the pen, and Matt nearly jumps out of his skin when Ryan suddenly sits up.

“Your party.”

“What about it?”

“Invite Nate to the party.”

Matt points a finger at him, “you’re onto something here.” He stretches out to nudge his shoulder with his foot. “Look at you.”

Ryan rolls his eyes at his brother, but he’s grinning nonetheless.

“So from there we just have to. I dunno. Shit,” Matt curses and starts chewing on the cap of a different pen. “This usually goes smoother in the movies.”

“That’s because they’re movies.”

Matt flips him off and leans back in his chair again.

“Do you think we can pull a cliche high school party move, and-”

“If this sentence is going the way I think it is going,” Ryan presses the palms of his hands into his eyes to try to avoid picturing this anymore, “I need you to realise the only people that would agree to that is Dyls and the alternates, right. And I am not risking putting my face anywhere near Dylan’s.”

Matt’s face contorts as he considers that and nods. “Good point.”

“Not to mention none of us are in high school.”

“At least I’m trying.”

Ryan pulls a blanket off of the bed behind him and wraps it around his shoulders, tucking his knees up to his chest and resting his chin there. “I haven’t watched a bad movie in too long, dude.”

“Me neither.”

He doesn’t buy that for one second, and he shoots Matt a look that says just that.

“All I can think about is just locking them in a room until they figure out their shit. That’s a trope or something isn’t it?” He says when Matt doesn't respond.

“Yeah, but how would we do that?”

“I guess,” Ryan sighs and presses his forehead into his knees as he continues, “I guess I can watch Hallmark with Mom tomorrow and see if I can get anything from that.”

Matt nods. “Okay, so invite Nate, and lock them in a room. Seems simple.”

“Yeah which is why it won't work,” he hums thoughtfully. There's really truly no way a simple a b plan would work for those two. “They're idiots.”

“Okay, then what, since you know everything.”

“Maybe we have to make them think about it, like, how much they're already dating.”

“How much they're. Well how do we do that, then?”

“Dunno,” Ryan sighs, frustrated. “Have someone say something?”

Matt lights up at that, and he props his chin up again to raise an eyebrow at him.

“Ryan.”

“Yeah?”

“No, Big Ryan.”

“Oh shit, he’s coming?”

“He said he was. The Oilers have the day off and they play in Philly two days later so he was able to stop by.”

“Oh, nice.” He hasn’t seen Ryan in a long time, so it’ll be nice. Not to mention that means all six of them would be in the same space again. A recipe for chaos, really.

And they’re adding Nate to the mix.

“But, uh,” he stretches his legs out in front of him, “what about him?”

“He’ll take care of it, probably. You know him.”

He thinks about it for a moment and nods. Ryan Strome is pretty straightforward most of the time, and with the way the two of them act all the time, it would be weird if he didn’t say anything. Matt nods when he says as much.

“Exactly.”

Ryan hums. “So is that it? Invite Nate, hope Ryan says something, lock them in a room?”

“I guess.”

“Getting Nate to the party is going to be an issue,” he says after a moment.

“Why.”

“I don’t know, he’s Nate.”

Matt doesn’t really know what that means, but he accepts it anyway.

“You be Nate, I’ll be you.”

“Matt-”

“I’m not Matt.”

Ryan sighs and plays along until they run through every possible excuse Nate could throw at him. Well, any that Ryan could think of, at least.

He wonders, briefly, how his life got to be like this.

Matt leaves that night, and makes sure to remind Ryan that he said he’d try to figure out the holes in ‘phase three.’

“Phase three?”

“Of the plan?”

“Since when are they phases?”

“It’s cooler than steps.”

That’s how he ends up watching Hallmark with his mother on his day off. Mikey even joins them when he gets home from work until he falls asleep against Ryan. Their mother just laughs when he complains about the drool on his shoulder.

“I learned nothing,” he says the moment that Matt answers his phone.

“Damn.”

Ryan flops face down on his bed and sighs. “Can’t we just forget something somewhere and make them go get it.”

Matt is silent for a second, and he’s about to say something when his brother finally speaks. “That’s actually good.”

“What?”

“You’re onto something.”

“Oh.”

It takes fifteen minutes of rattling off ideas before they finally settle on a plan, and Ryan thinks that this ridiculous setup might just work.

He doesn’t work with Nate until Tuesday, so he has a couple of days to work on how he’d approach ‘phase one,’ and run over all the responses he and Matt came up with.

Despite the carefully crafted plan, Ryan just ends up walking up to Nate right after clocking in, nearly blurting out, “come over this weekend.”

Nate stops stabbing the cinnamon sugar and looks up at him, confused.

“Okay, well, more specifically Saturday night. Matt’s going to be home and we're throwing him a birthday party. You should come.”

Nate gestures with the cinnamon covered plastic knife for a couple seconds without saying anything.

“Gonna need you to open your mouth. I can't read minds,” for a moment, he briefly thinks about if he were able to and had to be here when Mikey came in. God.

“I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to.”

“I just invited you.”

“No, because I'm your supervisor.”

He goes back to stabbing the cinnamon sugar, but stops again when Ryan shrugs the statement off with, “so? Dylan's coming too.”

Trent rolls his eyes and slides the box of cinnamon over and starts working on breaking it up himself, and Nate mutters a thanks.

“Why's Dylan going?”

“He's Mikey's best friend?”

“Oh.”

Ryan sighs and shakes his head. “Don't look like I kicked your puppy, dude, you knew that already.”

“I don't even really know Matt, though.”

Ryan’s just glad he'd went over everything with Matt to prepare for this, because that really is a good point.

“Who cares, you're my friend, and Mikey is going to be there.”

“I'd hope he'd be at the birthday party for his own brother at his own house,” Nate says dryly.

“Watch your shit, Nathan. Just come to the fuckin’ party.”

Trent bursts out laughing, Nate gives him a look, and he apologises without looking even half an ounce actually sorry.

“Fine, fine.”

He nods with a grin, glad the plan is starting to come together. “Wear a costume too, because Halloween is Matt's favourite, so it's a Birthday-Halloween party.”

“I'm not wearing a costume,” Nate states it like it's a fact, and he won't be convinced otherwise.

“Why not?”

“I don't like Halloween.”

Trent drops the plastic knife, and he and Ryan speak at the same time, “what?”

“I don't like Halloween.”

“You're not human,” Trent shakes his head, “I'm serious. Who doesn't like Halloween.”

Ryan nods in agreement, and Nate just shrugs.

“Fine. It's just a costume party, then. You're not coming in the house unless you're in some kind of costume, Bas.” He pokes his chest and goes into the back to hang up his jacket.

He sends Matt a quick ‘Phase 1 complete.’ before pulling on his hat and getting to work. Hopefully the rest of the plan isn't as frustrating as that was, but then again, it is Nate and Mikey he's talking about here. This was never going to be easy.

Luckily Ryan is only scheduled to work one day the rest of that week that Nate would be there and Mikey works. Only one more day of their nonsense before - hopefully - the plan works and they can chill with the flirting. They probably won’t, even if it works, and he knows that, but he can still hope.

Perhaps even more luckily, he’s actually busy when Mikey comes in that day, so he doesn’t even have to deal with it at all. He’s never been more thankful for a group of fifteen year olds in his life.

Saturday comes pretty quickly, and, like always, the Stromes - actually including Ryan this time - are early to help “set up,” which pretty much means steal cheese and crackers and sit around. Sometimes Dylan offers what he thinks is constructive criticism on their decorations, but that’s as helpful as they’re known to get.

He comes down the stairs when he hears the front door open, stopping before he even gets to the bottom when he sees that that’s who it is.

“Right, I forgot you live here.”

“How could you,” Dylan asks, “that hurts.”

He shakes his head and continues down the stairs, leaning against the railing. “Nice costumes, by the way. You’re all really original.”

All they did was switch jerseys.

“I think I make a pretty good Ryan,” Matty throws an arm around his brother’s shoulders.

“I’m a better Dylan than Dylan,” Ryan says, laughing when Dylan shoves him for it.

“Unfortunately Matty was the only one left,” Dylan pats the logo on the jersey. “So I have to be the dog.”

“You were always the dog, dude,” Mikey appears from the kitchen with a half-eaten cookie in his hand. “I thought you knew that.”

Dylan just takes the cookie from him and shoves it in his mouth before pointing a finger at him. A couple of crumbs fall out of his mouth when he says, “fuck you.”

“At least we have costumes,” Matty says, gesturing at Mikey and Ryan, who are still both in their pjs, despite it being about two in the afternoon.

Mikey crosses his arms. “Don’t tell me what to wear in my own home, Matthew.”

This devolves into the usual lighthearted bickering which lasts until Judi calls them into the kitchen to help. Predictably, the Stromes just sit at the island and eat the cheese that’s sitting there. She doesn’t scold them, Ryan knows, because she has a second plate in the fridge for the actual party.

Eventually, around the time guests start to arrive, the Stromes move to the living room, and Ryan and Mikey go upstairs to start getting ready. Ryan really hadn’t thought about an actual costume, and his emergency plan of simply throwing on an old jersey was pretty much a no-go now.

He stares at his closet for a while and sighs in defeat when he can’t think of anything except. Well.

He’s out of options.

He walks into the living room wearing a black t-shirt and black jeans he stole from Mikey - who was still trying to decide between three superhero hoodies - complete with a nose and whiskers drawn on with a marker he really hoped would come off easily, and Matty immediately laughs when he sees him.

“Hey Ry bread?” Dylan says, “I think you left your latte in the kitchen. Pumpkin, right?”

“Listen,” Ryan starts, but he’s interrupted by the doorbell ringing. He pauses to see if anyone feels like getting it, ignoring whatever chirps Dylan is throwing his way.

The doorbell rings again, Mikey is still in his room upstairs, and Matt is interacting with people like some kind of good host, so that leaves Ryan as the one that has to answer the door. He still thinks they should have just left it open and let people just walk in like a normal party, but Matt would have killed anyone if they let Ditzy out. He wouldn't be gentle about it either, probably. When he left for college, he'd gone into explicit detail with both him and Mikey about what he'd do if he found out that ever happened.

So, yeah. The door stays shut.

He opens the door, the generic “hey, thanks for coming, food on that table, gift on that table, love your costume, et cetera, et cetera,” that his mother had them actually practice earlier dying on his tongue when he saw Nate on the doorstep. When he got hired, he wouldn't have thought he'd ever open his front door to see his supervisor nervously shifting on his feet, wearing his brother's Devils hoodie and three dollar Walmart devil horns, but there he was. Doing just that.

“Nice costume.”

“It better count, because this is as good as you're getting.”

“No, it's great, uh,” he debates whether or not he should say the next words for a moment, but ultimately decides fuck it, because it's kind of the point of inviting Nate anyway. “Mikey’s gonna love it.”

Nate's face heats up, and he opens his mouth to say something, but he's cut off by Matt stepping into the entryway.

“Shut the door.”

“Mikey has Ditzy, dude,” Ryan rolls his eyes, but moves to the side and gestures for Nate to walk in.

“Oh holy shit,” Matt says when he sees Nate.

“What?”

“Nothing. Lookin good, bud.” He does finger guns and retreats back to the party.

“I'll go get Mikey. Dylan, Matty, and Ryan are in the living room if you wanna go talk to them or something.”

“You're Ryan.”

“No, big Ryan.”

“What.”

“Dylan's Ryan.”

“Dylan has a Ryan?”

“Oh my god, just go in the living room,” he says, resting a hand on the railing to the stairs, “I'll be down in a second.”

“I don't know where your living room is,” Nate responds, stuffing his hands in the pocket of the hoodie.

“While I'm sure you'll find it, I guess I'll hold your hand and take you there so you don't get lost,” Ryan grabs his hand, lacing their fingers together and swings their arms between them. “Now let's go, kiddo.”

“For the record, I hate you,” Nate sighs, but he follows without even trying to let go of Ryan's hand. “Just so you know.”

“And yet, you're here, in my home, on this, the day of my brother's birth.”

“What?”

“You know, your vocabulary is incredible. No wonder Coach hired you,” Ryan teases, tugging on his hand to get him to turn into the entryway of the living room.

“Hey Nater,” Dylan waves, lifting one hand from where he was pinning Matty to the floor. This just gives Matt the opportunity to flip them over and sit on Dylan's chest.

“No fair, what the fuck.”

“Nope,” the other Ryan says with a grin as he stands up from his place next to them on the floor. “Matt wins fair and square. Seven straight for Baby Strome.”

“Is seven not enough for you to stop calling me baby Strome?”

“We'll see.”

“The fuck.”

“Uh, Ryan?” Nate barely whispers beside him, and he looks a little spooked when both of them turn to him.

“Sup?”

“Ryan Strome is in your living room.”

There is a brief pause before all the Stromes burst with laughter, and Ryan has to use a lot of willpower to not join in.

“Yeah, Nate. What did you think I meant by Dylan's Ryan?”

“Not. Not Ryan Strome.”

He gives in and doubles over laughing, pressing the back of Nate's hand into his knee for support.

“God,” Dylan wipes at his eyes. “Good thing Davo didn't come after all.”

“Davo might as well be a houseplant at parties anyway, dude,” Matty shrugs and finally rolls off of Dylan when he shoves at him.

“Davo, like…” Nate says slowly, glancing around the room like he's a skittish animal about to dart.

“McDavid, yeah,” Big Ryan nods.

Nate seems frozen, and Ryan uses the leverage of their clasped hands to turn him so they're facing each other, and wraps his free arm around his back.

“Look what you did. He's been here for two minutes and you broke my favourite supervisor.”

“I'm hurt,” Dylan clutches at his chest dramatically. “What about the Strome-McLeod bond?”

“The McLeod-Strome bond,” Mikey corrects, stepping into the room. “We've been over this.”

Nate practically jumps out of Ryan’s hold when he hears Mikey, and Ryan doesn’t miss the way his brother glared at their folded hands in the brief second before they separated.

“Hey, Mikey.”

“Hey, Nate.”

There’s a momentary flash of something on Mikey’s face before he reaches out to take Nate’s hand in his own. Nate’s face goes slightly pink, and Mikey looks rather pleased with himself.

“Did Ry get you anything to drink?”

Nate, unable to form words, apparently, just shakes his head.

“I have to do everything,” he rolls his eyes, but the look he shoots Ryan is far too sharp before he turns to lead Nate to the kitchen.

“Oh holy shit,” Ryan Strome glances around the room. “What the fuck was that?”

“Weird,” Matty stares at the entryway they’d just left through, squeaking when Dylan tackles him and shouts, “round eight!”

The oldest Strome sighs and sits next to the flailing mess of his younger brothers to referee yet again.

Ryan goes into the kitchen and walks up to Matt, tapping on his shoulder.

He stops mid-sentence and apologises to Tyler, their neighbour that Ryan honestly mostly forgot about, and raises an eyebrow at his younger brother once Tyler wanders off.

“I think there’s been an accidental phase,” he whispers just loud enough for only Matt to hear him.

“An accidental… What are you talking about?”

Ryan tilts his head to where Mikey and Nate are leant against the counter, shoulder to shoulder with plastic cups in the hands that aren’t woven together between them. Both of their ears are a little red, and it’s pretty disgustingly sweet.

“Jealousy.”

“What did you do?”

“I was holding Nate’s hand and I guess Mikey didn’t like that too much.”

“Smart,” Matt nods and lightly punches Ryan’s shoulder. “Good idea.”

“Yeah. It was definitely on purpose.”

“Ryan.”

“What? Don’t you hold your boss’ hand sometimes?”

“No.”

“Then you need a better boss.”

“Better boss? Talking about me?” Dylan asks, poking his sweaty face between them.

“No, and you’re gross,” Ryan shoves his face out of the way and wipes his hand off on Dylan’s shirt.

“I may be gross, but you’re looking at the superior Strome.”

“Winning one out of eight wrestling matches against your younger brother doesn’t qualify you as superior.”

“Yes it d-”

“Matty beat you seven times?” Matt laughs.

Dylan folds his arms defensively. “He cheats.”

“Sure.” Matt nods and turns to walk into the living room. “Ryan, you owe me ten dollars!”

“Soooo, what’s the deal with those two,” Dylan asks, and Ryan follows his gaze to see Nate putting the plastic horns on Mikey’s head. Both of them are smiling like idiots, standing close enough that their middle school English teacher would be very disappointed in them for failing to leave any room for Jesus. Not to mention Mikey’s hand is definitely on Nate’s hip.

“I wish I knew.”

“Hmm. Hey, do you think we can get a repeat of the Battle of the Matts?”

“No way.”

“Why not?” Dylan pouts.

“Because that’ll lead to another Battle of the Ryans, and I am not getting my ass kicked again.”

“Shut up, he’s soft. You could win.”

“No. You are not convincing me to do this again.”

“Oh come on, I wanna see Matty beat your brother.”

“Just because he beat you doesn’t mean-”

“Bet.”

Ryan looks between the direction of the living room and Dylan a couple times before sighing and stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Fine.”

“Yes!” Dylan cheers, momentarily drawing the attention of some of the neighbours that are stood around the veggie plate on the island. “Tomorrow’s tips?”

“Deal,” Ryan relents, and they shake on it.

“Battle of the Matts,” Dylan yells as they re-enter the living room.

“No.” Matty looks up from where he’s sprawled out on a couch.

“I’m in,” Matt grins, sticking his wallet back in his pocket. “As long as this one-” he jabs a thumb against Big Ryan’s chest, “isn’t officiating this time.”

“Why not?”

“Because you obviously favoured Matty.”

“I did not.”

Matty raises a hand, “you kind of did.” He lets his hand fall back to his chest with a dull thud.

“Okay, fine, but Ryan isn’t allowed to either.”

“I never volunteered anyway,” Ryan shakes his head, mostly trying to stay out of this entirely so he wouldn’t end up in the mess.

“I’ll do it,” Dylan shrugs, only to be shut down immediately by a chorus of “no,” from everyone else in the room.

“Why not?”

“Did I hear there was a Matt rematch going on?” Mikey walks into the room, but this time he’s under Nate’s arm. “I’m in.”

“Mikey can-” Matt started, before being met with another chorus of no’s.

“What can Mikey do?” Mikey asks.

“Nothing, obviously.” Dylan laughs.

“What about him?” the oldest Strome points at Nate.

“Me?”

“It could work,” Dylan agrees.

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Nate asks, tightening his grip on Mikey slightly.

Ryan pats him on the shoulder. “Looks like you’ve been chosen to ref the next Battle of the Matts. Good luck.”

“Oh shit,” Mikey muses, “have fun with that Nate.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Basically,” Matty says, finally sitting up and stretching, “the only rule is there are no rules.”

“Doesn’t that just-”

“Last Matt standing wins,” Dylan finishes.

“I won last time,” Matt grins.

“Did not,” the Stromes say at once.

“You can see why we need an outside party,” Ryan says, shoving at the small of Nate’s back. “So have fun and just make sure no one dies.”

“Move the coffee table this time,” Mikey says, moving out from underneath Nate’s arm to start pushing it himself. Dylan moves to help him, and Nate turns to Ryan, looking panicked.

“What the fuck is going on, Ry.”

“The basic run down? Mistakes were made like 4 years ago and it hasn’t been settled since. Just seriously make sure neither of them die.”

“That’s a lot of pressure.”

“Nah, you’ll really just have to sit on the floor and watch. Matty wasn’t joking about the no rules thing. Usually Ryan is in charge of this stuff, but, y’know.”

“No! I don’t!”

“You’ll get used to the McLeod-Strome stuff soon enough,” Mikey says, returning to wrap an arm around Nate’s waist. Everyone else in the room freezes for a second at that, Matt making eye contact with Ryan to mouth ‘wow’, before they return to normal. Mikey and Nate didn’t seem to notice.

Big Ryan shoves Matty off the couch and sits down on it, folding his legs under him. Ryan and Mikey occupy the other couch, and Nate seats himself on the floor between Mikey's legs. Mikey leans forward and plays with Nate's hair while the Matts take their places in the middle of the floor.

“Is this how you thought your twenty-first would go?” Ryan asks from where he's decided that whole couch might as well be his.

“No, but I'm not surprised,” Matt shrugs and cracks his knuckles.

“This is long overdue,” Dylan states, plopping down on top of his older brother's legs.

“It is,” Matty nods and holds out a hand that Matt dutifully shakes. “Good luck.”

“You too.”

Nate takes one of Mikey's hands out of his hair and holds it against his shoulder, and Ryan wonders if he's going to have the strength to get through the night.

Once it began, the noise the not quite fight created drew some of the neighbours into the living room to see what was going on. A number of the faces that Ryan recalled seeing last time this had happened left the moment they realised what was going on. It was probably for the best.

It takes almost ten minutes for Matt to end up straddling Matty’s torso, holding his arms above his head with one hand, the other pushing into his face.

Mikey nudges Nate with his foot to call it, but Matt yelps and pulls his hand back from Matty’s face, and Matty kicks him off.

“Did he just bite him?” Nate asks.

“Yup,” Dylan confirms. “Advanced tactics.”

“Toddler tactics,” Mikey laughs.

“Toddlers are great fighters,” Dylan points a finger at Mikey, who raises his free hand in surrender before carding it back into Nate's hair.

Another several minutes pass, and Ryan wonders how they have the energy to be doing this still, but Matt ends up on his stomach, out of breath. Matty sits triumphantly on his back, bowing and waving.

“Strome victory,” Nate declares, but it comes out as more of a question than anything.

“Fuck yeah!” Dylan cheers, throwing a fist in the air then pointing at Ryan. “Your tip money is mine.”

Matty slides off of Matt, who just rolls over with a groan.

“When the fuck did you get so big.”

“Around the time you stopped growing,” Matty laughs and helps him up. “Not my fault you're the shortest.”

“It's bullshit.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan sees Mikey tug slightly at Nate's hair. He leans back to look at him, questioning.

They must have some kind of silent conversation that Ryan missed, because Nate stands up, only to sit down half on the couch and half in Mikey's lap.

“What's your name again?” Ryan asks, looking over at Nate while he makes a mess of Matty’s hair.

“Me?”

“No, me,” Mikey grins, poking Nate in the side. “Yes you, dummy.”

“Oh. Nate.”

“Hmm. Okay.”

Mikey rests his head on Nate's shoulder and quietly plays with the sleeve of his hoodie until Nate grabs his hand again to make him stop.

“Okay, your turn,” Matty says, pointing at both Ryans.

“No, I already said no. Dylan, tell him I said no.”

“I have no memory of that.”

“You're a fucking traitor, Stromer.”

Big Ryan smiles slightly, but shakes his head when his brothers shove at his side. “Nah, you two needed to go again because last time went undecided. We had a clear winner.”

“I have work tomorrow, I don't need another broken wrist.”

“Please don't break him,” Nate pipes up. “We don't have any employees to spare and I actually like this one.”

“Fine. That's fair,” Dylan concedes and sinks back onto the couch.

The neighbours all cleared out over the course of that conversation, going back to where the food was. Matt cracks his back and sighs, announcing that he had to go be a good host now. After he washes his hands, of course. Thanks, Matty.

“You know,” Ryan says when he sits back down next to his brothers, “you'd think someone here would have told me Mikey got a boyfriend, but I guess not.”

Ryan sees Nate visibly freeze, and the quiet “what” that escaped him was barely audible, even though he was barely two feet away from him. Both Nate and Mikey turn slightly red, but neither of them move, save for Mikey tightening his grip on Nate’s hand.

“No it’s, we’re not-” Mikey starts.

“They aren’t dating, idiot,” Dylan smacks his brother in the face with a pillow that had been squished between him and Matty.

“Oh, I thought- the hoodie and- sorry.” He runs a hand down his face. “It’s just how Dyls and-”

“Ryan. I’m going to kick your ass,” Dylan nearly hisses, “shut up.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Mikey takes the out that’s been handed to him on a silver platter, and it obviously makes Nate relax.

“Nothing. I don’t know what he’s talking about.” Ryan has never in his life seen Dylan as red as he’s turning in front of him. He’d blend in with Nate’s - Mikey’s, right - hoodie if he were the one wearing it.

“Hiding something, Stromer?” Mikey asks, smirking.

If anyone else notices Mikey gently rubbing soothing circles on Nate’s shoulder, they don’t say anything.

“No!”

There’s a moment where everyone stares at him, and he deflates, mumbling, “I may have a thing for Connor.”

“Okay? No shit,” Ryan shrugs. “He’s like ninety percent of what you talk about at work.”

“Wait.” Nate sits up slightly, nearly dislodging Mikey’s head from his shoulder. “Connor. Is Connor McDavid.”

Dylan just blinks at him. “Did you not figure that out earlier?”

“Dude,” Matty says, bumping his shoulder against his brother’s. “Didn’t you say he didn’t know Mikey and Ryan were brothers until like, last month. Why is this surprising."

“You didn’t know that?” Ryan Strome laughs.

“How was I supposed to know!”

“You have eyes,” Dylan sighs, “I’m pretty sure they work.”

"That's what Tip said," Ryan nods.

“That’s not fair,” Nate pouts.

No one has the chance to respond before Mikey reaches up and pokes his lower lip with a dumb smile on his face. “Totally fair.”

It’s enough to get Nate to stop pouting, and Ryan really needs to not be sitting right next to this any longer, thank you very much.

“I’m gonna go find out when they plan on cutting the cake if we didn’t miss that already,” he excuses himself and stands, stretching until his back pops. “Be right back.”

“‘Kay,” Matty says, and Ryan doesn’t miss the sympathetic look the oldest Strome throws his way before he leaves. Dealing with their brother’s pining must be some kind of Ryan curse. Why couldn’t it be a Matt curse?

He waits for a moment where he can catch his brother between conversations, which luckily doesn’t take too long.

“What now?”

“I think it’s time to move on to the next phase.”

“Really?”

“For my sanity? Yeah. Also, Ryan followed his script pretty well.”

“Obviously.”

“So where’s Ditz?”

Matt points to where she’s sitting at the window next to the door, her tail flicking back and forth as she stares at the squirrel that’s just on the other side of the glass. “Where else would she be?”

Ryan just waves him off and passes the cake - already missing pieces - on his way to scoop the cat up in his arms. “Sorry, D,” he whispers to her when she makes a little noise of complaint. “It’s for the best, I promise.”

He hurries up the steps as quickly as he can without making too much noise. He makes his way over to Mikey’s closet and places her on the floor, giving her head a couple of pats before shutting the door.

“Sorry, girl. Please don’t pee on his shoes,” he tells her through the door and hurries back down to  the living room.

“We missed it,” he announces before turning to where Mikey and Nate are - predictably - still cuddled up on the couch. “Have you seen Ditzy?”

“No?” Mikey says at the same time Nate questions “Ditzy?”

“Our cat,” Mikey explains. “Not since I came down here.”

“Well Matt can’t find her, and you were the last one to see her, and if she’s lost…”

“Shit,” Mikey curses and sits up. “Okay. I’ll go find her.”

He gets up off the couch and doesn’t even make it half a step from it before Nate looks like a lost puppy.

“Why don’t you help him look, Nate? You’ll get done faster,” Dylan suggests before Ryan got the chance to. He wonders for a moment if Dylan has some idea of what’s going on, or if he’s actually just worried about Mikey’s fate provided he doesn’t find the not-actually-lost housecat. Really, he’d be right to worry if this were an actual situation they’d ended up in.

Nate nods and looks immediately relieved, accepting Mikey’s hand when he holds it out, and the two leave the room, Mikey suggesting they check her favourite hiding spots upstairs first.

Their footsteps disappear up the steps, and ever-perceptive Matty raises an eyebrow at him.

“Where’s the cat.”

“Mikey’s closet,” Ryan shrugs and sits on the now vacant couch.

“Wait, what?” Dylan asks, raising his hand like he’s in class.

So just worried, then.

“Ditzy’s fine. I’m gonna have to go up and check on them soon, though. They do need to actually free her from the closet.”

“I’m confused.”

“It’s a setup, dumbass,” Matty rolls his eyes.

“Can someone seriously tell me what is going on? I’ve only been gone for a month and I’m behind on everything. Those two seriously aren’t a thing?” Ryan asks, gesturing wildly, only narrowly missing smacking Matty in the face.

“Nope. They’ve been pining like middle schoolers for the past five months. It’s exhausting.”

“I can see why,” he muses. “They’re cute, though.”

Dylan makes a face. “Too cute.”

Matt pokes his head in the room. “Don’t you three know there are other rooms in the house?”

“None of them have this sweet ass couch,” Dylan grins and stretches across his brothers, who, after a shared look, shove him off.

“I’m fine,” he says, face in the carpet.

Matt shakes his head and turns back to Ryan. “We should probably go upstairs.”

“They’ve only been up there for like, two minutes.” He stands up anyway, and turns to follow his brother out of the room. “Get the brain bleach ready,” he tells the Stromes.

Matty and Dylan give him a thumbs up, and they’re on their way.

“This better work. I’m trying to not quit my job,” he complains at the foot of the stairs, the whining only met with Matt silently shushing him.

There’s a gentle thud from Mikey’s room, so at least they made it to the right place in a pretty decent time.

“She’s gotta be in here somewhere,” he overhears Mikey say when they make it outside his room. “It’s the last place I saw her.”

“I mean, it’s a cat,” Nate pokes out from beside a dresser. “It has legs. That I assume work.”

“Well she isn’t anywhere else, so she-”

“Wait.” Nate cuts him off.

“What?”

“I thought I heard something.”

Ryan makes panicked eye contact with Matt, and they move to inch away from the door, but Nate makes a beeline to the closet and opens the door.

“Found her.”

Matt lets out a barely-there puff of a sigh of relief, and Ryan’s honestly right there with him. For different reasons, probably. Matt was probably more concerned with Ditzy being in there than being worried that they’d been spotted like Ryan was.

Mikey scoops her up and scratches her ears as he sits down on his bed, luckily facing away from the door.

“Guess I musta shut her in there. Sorry, Ditz.”

Nate sits down next to him, leaving a good foot between them. Ryan wonders what the point of that is, given that they’ve been attached at the hip all night.

Ditzy wriggles her way out of Mikey’s arms and lays down in Nate’s lap, stretching out in a way that cannot possibly be comfortable.

“Hey, girl,” Nate greets her quietly. He starts scratching under her chin. “Closets aren’t really fun, are they?”

Something about that causes a laugh to bubble up out of Mikey.

“What?”

“Nothing. A cat in a closet, it’s just-” he turns to Nate and looks a little shy, which is a very weird expression to see on his face - before continuing. “It’s just kinda like how I came out to my brothers.”

“You’re-”

“Bi,” Mikey shrugs, obviously aiming for nonchalant. Ryan supposes it might work if you didn’t know him super well, but to him it’s pretty transparent.

“Oh.” Nate looks back down at the cat, who started wiggling restlessly because he stopped petting her.

“Do you think it’s working?” Matt whispers, the sudden speech beside him making Ryan jump.

“Hope so.”

“How’d you do it?” Nate looks back over to Mikey, and Ditzy lazily gets up and jumps off the bed, clearly over what’s going on.

Ryan could relate.

Standing through the retelling of the coming out stories was almost as bad as living through them. Almost.

They made Nate laugh, though, so he supposes it could be worse.

There’s a moment where the only noise is the party below them - it sounds like Dylan convinced everyone karaoke was a good idea again, and it makes Ryan feel as though he was somehow simultaneously watching and living in a teen movie. A glance at Matt made him think he probably felt the same way, if the look on his face was anything to go by.

Intrigue and vague discomfort.

“I liked your costume,” Mikey says and pokes at one of the plastic horns that are still on his head.

“Yeah?”

“It’s cute. It’s. You’re cute.”

Matt pinches the bridge of his nose, and Ryan gently pats his shoulder. At least he’s used to this shit by now.

“Thanks, uh. Ryan told me I had to wear something and it was the only thing I could think of.”

"Well it works. You look good in red," Mikey says, barely loud enough for them to hear as he tugs on the string of Nate's hoodie. "It looks right."

Nate laughs and tugs at one of the sleeves. "Right?"

"Gross," Matt whispers.

"What?"

"Mike's face."

Okay, yeah, gross indeed. The only time he ever looks at anyone like that is around Dylan, but this is so much more. Intense? It's too soft and shy. Like, there’s we’ve been friends forever and I love you to death Dylan soft, and then there’s this. Ryan feels like he's seeing something he shouldn't.

Then again, technically, he is.

"Yeah, uh, remember when I said why I liked the Devils?"

"Yeah?"

"Maybe you were there too."

"Was I?"

"Well no, that was before I met you. But I think you would be. On my line, even."

Nate turns red and keeps playing with one of the sleeves, not looking at Mikey anymore. "You think we'd be teammates?"

Mikey thinks for a second and rests a hand on Nate's knee. "I think it'll always be the two of us."

"Okay, I've seen enough," Matt groans quietly. "I can't take this shit anymore."

"How do you think I feel? I've put up with this for months."

Nate finally looks up, his face slightly pink and just as sappy as Mikey's.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Uh, maybe we should go before we see anything we don't want to see," Ryan says, backing up slightly.

"We are so fucking past that," Matt shakes his head and follows suit. When they're out of earshot, he stuffs his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. "This isn't how I expected to spend time at my own birthday party."

"Hey, you agreed to help."

"That's because I'm the best brother."

"When my options are between you and Mikey I couldn't say that's too much of a feat."

"I'm telling him you said that."

"He deserves it."

Matt goes back into the kitchen, and Ryan goes back into the living room, collapsing onto the couch that Matty had moved to, dramatically sprawling over his lap.

“Brain bleach?”

“Sorry, dude,” Matty pats his chest sympathetically.

“It couldn’t have been worse than usual,” Dylan says through a bite of cake. “I mean, I’ve seen some shit.”

Ryan rolls his head to give him a look, “you have no idea.”

“Damn.”

He doesn’t move, surprisingly comfortable where he is, and Matty just lets his forearms rest on Ryan’s chest. It’s pretty warm, he’s tired, and the only thing that manages to keep him awake is when the topic changes and the four of them argue about NHL teams playoff chances - carefully avoiding the Isles and Oilers, of course.

“I’d bet my left foot-”

“A weird thing to bet,” Matty interrupts.

“-that the Knights make it to the second round,” Dylan continues, like his brother hadn’t said anything.

“Well that depends on who th-” Matty starts, but stops dead in his tracks when Nate and Mikey appear, still hand in hand, in the doorway.

Ryan is positive he isn’t the only one that notices Nate’s hair is messier than usual, especially given the amused smirk on Dylan’s face, but none of them say anything about it.

“Did you find the cat?” The oldest Strome asks, even though Ditzy is half-asleep in his lap.

“The-” Mikey looks confused, but it’s like he suddenly remembers when he continues, “oh yeah. Yeah, she’s, uh.”

Nate elbows him and pointedly looks back at Ryan, and Mikey looks embarrassed when he sees the cat. “Right there. Huh.”

Everyone but Mikey laughs at that, Nate included, and the pair sit on the floor in front of the couch, one of Nate’s legs draped over Mikey’s.

“So,” Mikey says, disconnecting their hands to put his arm around Nate’s shoulder, “what were we talking about?”

The conversation picks up right where it left off, and it was starting to devolve into an argument when Nate yawns loudly and practically melts against Mikey’s side.

“Tired?” Mikey asks.

“Mm. I should probably go home. Work tomorrow.”

Mikey hums and slowly stands up, reaching a hand out to help him up. “I’ll walk you out.”

Nate takes it, and says his goodbyes to everyone in the room, who return it in kind. The moment the two turn down the hallway, the four left in the room share a couple of glances and immediately scramble as quietly as possible to look around the corner to see what would happen.

They’re quiet enough that they can’t hear them, but Mikey has a light hold on Nate’s arm right above his elbow, and they both look pretty content to discuss whatever it was they’re talking about. When Nate reaches for the doorknob, Mikey grabs the hoodie’s strings and pulls him down.

Dylan cheers when they kiss, and Matty smacks the back of his head for it. The pair nearly jumps apart at the sound, both bright red. Mikey shoots them a glare, and Nate opens the door to leave, clearly stumbling over whatever it was he was saying.

Mikey looks between them and Nate a couple of times before pulling Nate away from the door and kissing him again, one hand on his shoulder and the other flipping the group off.

Matt, who apparently heard the door open, peeks out from the kitchen “shut the-” he stops in his tracks when he sees them.

“Oh hey, it worked.”

Nate, obviously flustered when Mikey pulls back, simply waves to Matt, quietly wishes him a happy birthday, and flees, pulling the door shut behind him.

“Not your boyfriend, huh?” Big Ryan steps into the hallway with a sly grin.

“You asked me a couple hours too early,” Mikey shrugs.

Dylan bounds down the hallway and drapes himself over Mikey’s back, wrapping his arms tightly around his chest. “Love is real.”

“Hey, Matt?” Mikey looks at his older brother, completely ignoring Dylan.

“Yeah?”

“What worked?”