'tis the season (to love you)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Here's the conundrum: the heart and the mouth are invariably connected, despite all good intentions to treat them as separate entities. There's a saying about that somewhere, or maybe a verse from the Good Book. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And god, yeah, but there's definitely a fuckload of abundance of something in his heart right now. That's not even a question.

But falling in love, it turns out, is a study in silence, for the most part. If not silence, then self-control. Brett Yang isn't particularly known for his restraint, so—it's a good time to start learning, because all the words he's got bouncing around in the pit of his throat sure as hell aren't gonna be happily received by the man he wants to give them to.

They're still trying to escape, though. Fucking traitors.

It's a test he's doing his best to pass with flying—hovering, more like—colors. He can barely manage to rein the words in, keep them locked within the crumbling jail yard of his mouth. It doesn't help either, the way Eddy's hair turns amber in the cold sunlight against the forest green, the way Eddy's muscles ripple under his skin as he wields the axe, the way he just is: a warm presence by Brett's side, unwillingly holding his heart in those hands.

Brett watches his best friend, observes and looks on as he always does. Now, it's different: rose-colored lenses, sentiments raw on his tongue, half-formed memories knocking on his heart asking to come in.

Falling in love, it turns out, just makes everything ache.

He ends up being pretty useless when they start decorating the Christmas tree, partly because he keeps getting so distracted by the DIY Brett-and-Eddy figurine, and also because Eddy keeps coming back to it even though it's already hanging on the tree, adjusting and re-adjusting it like it still needs fucking adjustments after he's tweaked it a dozen times already. It's a weird compulsion, maybe. Ridiculous. The sight still makes something in his chest quiver.

But it doesn't mean anything. Or rather: it doesn't mean anything he wants it to mean.

And so Brett forces his mouth shut, play-acts intimacy like he's on a goddamn award-winning soap opera on TV. Bring in the awards and the accolades; he is going to perform like his life depends on it. Anything to keep the words at bay.

(Words, it turns out, can build him up and tear him down in equal measure, easy peasy.)

• • •

Here's another conundrum, because he can't ever catch a fucking break, ever: he tends to jump into situations with reckless abandon whenever he's emotionally compromised. Case in point: he's got his mobile in his hand and Belle Chen's phone ringing at what must be an ungodly hour on the other side of the world before he fully realizes what he's doing.

He'd back out if he could, but then there's a litany of questioning hellos in his ear because he hasn't said anything since the call connected, and—well. Fuck.

"Hi, Belle," he says, because he is not going to play chicken with Eddy's sister. No way.

"Oh—hey, Brett, merry Christmas! How are you?" She sounds happy enough to hear from him, though he's sure he's probably intruding on her time. God, he's an idiot. "Is everything okay with Eddy over there? It's just—you never call me first, so I'm a bit concerned."

There's a question, there, in the last few syllables, because it's true: Brett never calls Belle up first. She calls him to ask after her brother and greet him on holidays and congratulate him whenever she hears about him winning competitions and such, but. He doesn't call her when he can text her.