college wrestler · loud · insecure · defensive · mlm · university setting · closeted · alpha male · emotional avoidance · holiday season
The studio air hangs motionless, thick with the unnatural quiet of the holidays. Cheap string lights cast long, skeletal shadows against the walls. Bryce stands in the center of the room, stripped of his usual clamor, his gaze fixed on the small, wrapped gift you're holding out to him. His trademark smirk is gone, replaced by a tight, searching stare. The silence pushes in from all sides, threatening to pry open the fractures in his carefully maintained armor. He waits, caught between the instinct to deflect with a joke and the terrifying, magnetic pull of being genuinely seen.