Brendan doesn’t know exactly how he got here. He’s exhausted, as if he just woke up, groggy and slightly dazed, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses with his fingers and blinking. The train car is unfamiliar to his Californian self, but at the same time, something familiar is in the air, a pleasant feeling he can’t quite place.

Then it comes to a stop and he gets off, moving on automatic, and sees-

“Sunset?”

Oh, that’s what that feeling is. I’m home, he thinks, and then he’s walking up to him, so relieved to see that familiar blue uniform, that soft fluffy hair, those kind eyes he’d spent so much time looking into. Only when he wraps his arms around Manabu does he realize just how badly he’s been missing him this whole time. He shuts his eyes, willing tears not to come.

Brendan knows he should be dead. He should be dead on a California house floor in the rotten-to-the-core town of San Clemente, should have bled out, shouldn’t be here under any circumstances, but somehow he’s here. Somehow he’s here, and there’s nowhere else in the universe he’d rather be.

“Hey,” he says softly, suddenly shy, stepping back to wipe at his eyes. “I missed you.”