It was getting late. Ryan had finished a paper for one of his classes half an hour ago, but he hadn't gotten up the strength to drag himself to bed until the clock reached 2:00 in the morning. Not even the thought of Zach in the bed could pull him off his ass and out of his chair.

But, as he walked out into the living room, he realized that Zach wasn't even in bed. He was perched on one of the couch's arms, tapping away at a Wii remote.

"Hey," Ryan said sleepily, draping himself over his boyfriend, careful not to jostle him too much in case there was money riding on…whatever this was. "This doesn't look like Halo."

"It's not."

"What is it?"

"Mario Kart."

That name seemed familiar. Ryan thought that maybe he had seen Brooke's little brothers playing it at one point. They may have even convinced him to play a round; Ryan couldn't remember all that well, especially when he was as tired as he was then. "Is this a tournament?"

"Nah." Zach slammed on a couple more buttons and jerked his arms to the left, causing Ryan to start in shock. "Sorry about that."

Ryan 'mm'ed in response and patted the shoulder that his face wasn't already resting on in a reassuring fashion. "So, if you're not getting money, why are you up at such an ungodly hour?"

"I could ask you the same thing. I thought this was a simple prompt, not a novel."

"It was harder than I thought."

"You could have asked for help if you needed it."

"I didn't want to wake you up."

"I was never asleep."

"Which leads me back to my question: why?"

Zach knocked another racer off the track and let out a quiet, victorious hiss of air. "Well, this round isn't for money, but there's some big money on a match next week. I'm a bit rusty on Mario Kart, so I figured I'd practice a little. It'd be humiliating to get curb-stomped by a bunch of high schoolers."

"Curb-stomped?" Ryan felt like he should know what that meant, but his brain was working at less than fifty percent of its normal functions at the moment.

"Utterly annihilated." He enunciated every syllable with slow deliberation, thankfully picking up on Ryan's current state of mind.

"Ah." Ryan stared at the screen, watching the colors flash by and blur together. "Can I play a round?"

Zach shot a look at him like he'd asked if he could fly. "Shouldn't you be getting to sleep? You look…bad. To say the least."

Ryan waved him off. "I'm fine. Hand me a controller. I'll wipe the floor with you." It would have sounded almost threatening, if he hadn't slurred most of the words.

Zach finished the race he was working on in first and got up to grab a Wii remote from his basket of controllers. Ryan didn't know how he ever found anything in it, with all the wires and over five different styles of controllers that all looked the same to Ryan's eyes.

When the Wii remote was in his hand, Ryan asked, "So how do I use this?"

Zach gave him a rundown of the important buttons—all three of them—and chose their race course. "I'll start you on Mario Circuit, since I don't think you're ready for Rainbow Road right now."

Ryan went for a nod that ended up as him bowing down his head and using all of his willpower and the first ten seconds of the race to pull it back up. "How are you already in first place?" he asked Zach, a bit disappointed that he was in last, but not surprised. Ryan didn't honestly think he had the energy to be surprised this late at night.

"Just luck I guess," said Zach gently, though they both knew that luck had nothing to do with it. Ryan stared wide-eye at the screen, both to keep his eyes from closing for good and to try to keep track of everything that was happening. But it didn't do much good. The bright reds and greens and yellows of the virtual race track all blended into an incomprehensible blur and soon Ryan was crashing into every wall he could, and even some walls that Zach thought shouldn't be possible.

When the race ended, with Zach in first and Ryan a lap behind eleventh place, Zach put down his controller and turned off the Wii. "Okay, Ryan. You got a round of Kart. Now you really need to go to sleep, okay?"

No response.

"Ryan?" Zach turned around to face his boyfriend on the couch. He was smushed up against his hand at an awkward angle, the Wii remote dangling forlornly from his wrist. Zach smiled and moved over to pick Ryan up. He slipped his arms underneath him, one under his neck and the other under his knees. Zach lifted up and then stopped. Ryan was heavier than he anticipated. "Nope," he said to himself. "Time for Plan B."

He pulled out some spare blankets from the hall closet and draped them over Ryan, gently taking the Wii remote and placing it back in the controller basket. "Looks like you're back to sleeping on the couch, love."