As time wore on though, the professor seemed to be working against him, of all days. Choosing probably off the top of his head, based on mood, to let it be one of those grueling two hour classes with no breaks between but self-imposed ones. No time for Wyatt to walk around if he wanted to. Or for Hayden to say something, which he definitely wanted to. The professor couldn't have known about what happened last class - unless Hayden was shittier at cleaning up than he thought.
More likely, the universe just decided that difficult things had to be extra difficult for Hayden Flores.
Neck aching, fingers stained, with layers of paper consumed by Wyatt’s form, they were released at the very end of the class period. Hayden breathed a sigh of relief. Collecting the little charcoal stubs discarded in the sill of the easel distracted him for a moment before he thought to look up again.
Wyatt had already run off, and all Hayden caught was a thick thud as the door to the back room shut.
He couldn't blame the guy. With the weather turning chilly, and the school skimping out on heating (and a host of other reasons why a well meaning adult wouldn't want to linger for a conversation in just his robe), it was pretty obvious why Wyatt left so quickly. Staring after the model, who he had done nothing but stare at for the last two hours, Hayden packed up his belongings. It took less time than he anticipated, and eventually there was little left to do but leave on halting, hesitant steps. Becoming too self-aware of how pitiful he was being finally carried him out of the classroom completely.
But it was next time now. Hayden couldn't live with himself if he just went home without saying a word.
Without even a watch to check, the poor artist reclined against the white wall, surrounded by chatting students or instructors going this way and that. Hayden wasn’t used to staying there for very long, usually bound for a classroom or the gallery or some office. Lingering made him feel more useless than usual.
After a couple glances that proved to be futile, Hayden finally looked up in time to catch the familiar head of gold curls come out the door - not quite before he had already succumbed to wallowing, but soon enough that he brightened from the sight alone. "Hey, Ss-Wyatt," he called, shifting on the heel of his sneaker as the model turned just enough to be facing away - his springy hair framing a circle of dark fabric.
Peter's shrill voice rang in the back of his mind. With the little hat and everything . Kippah, Hayden reminded himself, as if he could offend from the privacy of his own thoughts.
Wyatt turned in place, as if startled. All of a sudden, Hayden realized this was the first he had seen him dressed in anything other than that white robe. For a business major at a normal university who passed time posing naked for art students, Hayden wasn't sure to expect. The neatly ironed edges of a buttoned shirt and tan pants that qualified as trousers lived up to whatever expectations he had concocted. Other aspects of the wardrobe were still a little mystifying, though. It was amazing how easily clothes could reveal things about certain people. Class, culture, religion.
"Uh, are you going home?" Hayden managed to ask - questions greater than that piling up behind his eyes.
Wyatt straightened a bit at the question, offering no hint as to whether or not he knew why Hayden might care about such a thing.
“Yes. And you?"
Hayden wasn't quite smart enough to know whether Wyatt had forgotten, or something else, but with conclusions clashing in the artist’s head, he wasn't sure he could follow through with a proper request. As if he couldn't feel like a dumbass enough times that day.
"Yeah," he admitted finally, a thumb jabbing over his shoulder in the opposite direction. "I just had to grab something."
That was all he could will himself to accomplish, anyway, save a kind enough "See you next time," as he turned away to stride carefully down the hall.
“Next time,” Wyatt echoed, making no move to follow.
Try as he might to picture the model in his crisp clothes and yarmulke sucking him off in an empty classroom, Hayden couldn't muster the image. It could have been for any number of reasons, but the confusion and doubt having a field day in his brain were the most likely cause.
The whole walk home was wrought with all the thoughts Hayden had stacking up one on top of another. A car honked angrily when he stepped out onto the crosswalk without realizing the light was still green, and he hurried to the other side, before he became the victim of a hit and run. Feeling as lousy and annoyed with himself as he did right then, though, he wasn't sure he would have minded.
Wyatt was on his way home. But he told Hayden next time. He didn't talk to him the whole class, but just the other day they were doing much more than talking. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. Did it? Wyatt expressed interest in talking again. But that was days ago. Such was the internal argument unfolding in Hayden's head.
He climbed all the way up to their floor with the intention of letting himself in and flopping onto his bed to ignore his homework entirely, but the artist was stopped in his tracks when he reached the door. Peter sat in the corner between the hinges and the wall, head tipped back and arms over his knees. Before Hayden could say anything, thinking the frequent house guest to be asleep, he shot up, scaring the ever living daylights out of a guy who really just didn't need that right now.
"There you are! No one's home, I've been here for a fucking hour."
"You could have gone home," Hayden said, moving forward to unlock the door while his heart beat like a drum in his chest.
"I guess."
"Peter, don't you ever have homework?"
"Yeah but if I can't get it done in the two hours before I have class then I deserve an F anyway."
Letting themselves in, Hayden figured he could just go off and do what he had intended to do since Third Avenue, but Peter swiveled in front of him. Apparently, he had other plans.
"You had your people drawing class right? How'd it go? Did you get head again? Or did you give it this time?"
"No," Hayden murmured, just this side of sorry for himself. "It was a full class. I didn't even talk to him." Glancing at Peter, he wondered if it was worth mentioning the little detail he'd discovered. If anything kept his mouth shut, it was the fear of being right.
"Alright, maybe next time," Peter said, whisking himself away to the stairs on the other side of the room. "It sounded like your guy was all exhibition anyway. Maybe he'd like an audience."
"No," Hayden chuckled incredulously (the answer he preferred whether true or not). "Wyatt's not like that."
There was silence, except for the thud of Peter’s foot coming down on the first step. All of a sudden, he whipped around, hands clutching the banister like he might launch over it. "Wait! Wyatt?! Wyatt as in Wyatt ? That's the Jew in my economics class!"
"I thought you didn't know his name!"
"I'm not completely useless if you jog my memory! Oh my God!"
Peter seemed even more shocked than Hayden, but maybe that was because Hayden had already been working up to that conclusion, and at this point he was just hoping it wasn't true. All he could think to do was try to recall everything Peter had said about him the other week. Something glorifying, the littlest bit positive, please .
"Oh my God, I can't talk about this right now," Peter insisted. "I need Ryker here for this, he'd appreciate it. Holy shit!" With that, he raced up the stairs. All Hayden could do at that point was hide away and try not to dwell on all the miserable things he had learned that day.
Chapter 8
Having a class and a shift on the same day was as close to believing in hell as Ryker had been since at least fifth grade, convinced not by the eternal damnation of an after life but that hell was, in fact, an act that one could perform against another person. But only if one was an assiWyattt manager in a store whose security cameras didn't record sound enough to prove to the in-once-a-week general manager that he was a piece of shit undeserving of coffee and cigarette breaks, let alone the highest wage on the workforce.
D
ragging himself up the stairs, the brunette was pleasantly surprised to find the front door unlocked - indicative enough that somebody was home, even if it offered no clue as to who. The living room was empty (at least, by cursory glance standards) as well as the kitchen, and - despite the threat of a developing headache that no doubt had more to do with his forgotten water bottle than anything - Ryker took the stairs up to his room with all the active intent of a sloth climbing back up into the tree after climbing down to shit. Why couldn't he just shit in the tree and let it fall?
A smile ghosted across his face as the edge of his bed came into sight, broadening when he noticed the clear silhouette of a person on his bed. The options for who that could be had dwindled dramatically, even with the occasional drunk wanderer any time they had party friends over, but with a tuft of chestnut just above the fold of his comforter, Ryker was confident enough to slide up from the bottom of the mattress, hands aimless but insistent as he smoothed up jean clad thighs and over the bump of Peter's hip bones to skin beneath his shirt.
"Did you break into my house?" Ryker asked, his lips tracing the rim of a belly button before he swept higher, smoothing up and pressing cotton out of his way in lazy succession. He was rewarded with a gasp, Peter tensing in wakefulness beneath him.
"Hey you," he mumbled, a smile curling a bit smugly in the corner of his mouth. "Hayden let me in. He always does."
"Good man," Ryker offered in a quiet British accent, thumbing over a hardened nipple while his tongue traced up the center line of Peter's sternum. For someone who was practically fighting sleep just to toe off his shoes, he wasn't doing a good job of simmering down. Smelling like bleach and turkey juice, physically exhausted, Ryker was fully prepared and probably happy to die licking the faint taste of salt off of his almost-boyfriend's chest.
"I could probably get used to this," he murmured quietly, too tired to really imagine a future development that lead to this exact sort of thing but perfectly content to sink into the heated give of Peter's body, one knee cinched between warm thighs. A pre-heated bed was better than a preheated oven. Pizza still took at least twenty minutes but this? Instant relief.
“Me too.” Tucking his chin into the crook of the smaller brunette's shoulder, Ryker huffed a slow sigh, reaching up to rid himself of the pinch and poke of his frames with a grunt before he settled again. How easy it would be if this was just Peter’s address. With a second set of toiletries tucked together on the (newly decluttered!) bureau for when the little brunette couldn't bear to pull off a tried and true walk of shame or when he had to hurry up and get to some stupid class, he had basically claimed a portion of this apartment, however fractional. Most of those classes weren't that far from here, but his dorm was a fucking hike, and Ryker, the ever-concerned bedfellow, could only imagine what the trek would be like come winter. Living with four other people might not be Peter’s cup of tea, but it might beat dorm living. Not to mention, on-site fuck buddy.
Of course, it was pretty weird to live with someone who wasn't your boyfriend.
"I got paid today, wanna call the food fairy?"
"Oh, please," Peter groaned earnestly, adjusting against Ryker to snuggle closer. Unable to mumble much more than the word "chicken" as a suggestion for what should be ordered, Ryker was midway through the last huffed sigh before he settled into something resembling a nap when his pillow suddenly began to flail. Peter shot up, nearly knocking him in the nose.
"Hayden fucked the Jew!" Peter exclaimed, pulling Ryker up by the shoulders.
"The Jew?" he echoed helplessly, half incredulous, certainly not convinced he had heard correctly. It took quite a lot of time - not even suitable distracted by the yank on his arm or stumbling dangerously toward the stairs. Had he managed to get his shoes off, it might have been the death of him - to recall that they had recently discussed a Jew at all.
"Wait, back up," Ryker whined a bit, finding himself still upright at the bottom of the stairs, against all odds. "Fucked?"
"Okay, mouth-fucked," Peter conceded, maintaining his tight grip. "By the Jew. But that doesn't matter! Can we stop saying Jew?"
“That’s different!”
Pulling Ryker along past the den, Peter marched on to the little alcove draped in soft green curtains, where Hayden Flores lived and slept. Without any hesitation whatsoever, he released Ryker to shove the curtains aside, startling Hayden out of his headphones and a small spiral bound sketchbook.
"Okay, are you ready for the dirty details?" Peter asked.
"Oh is there a presentation?" Ryker teased wryly, settling in on the bed beside Hayden just to give his legs a rest. After an entire day of walking and standing, he could hardly be blamed for resting his head against the wall for this little tirade.
"I dunno," Hayden answered warily, pulling his headphones down around his neck, even while music filtered out of them. Even now, the infamous model was among them - much smaller, wrought in graphite between Hayden’s thumbs in his sketchbook.
Peter launched into it anyway, all gestures and wild expressions. "Okay so I don't know a whole lot about him, but like I said, he's kind of got a stick up his ass, especially the class I have with him. We're in the same major, sort of, but I’m not majoring in any of that econ shit. I dunno, he's just really...boring. I told you, I didn't think he was the kind of person to do nude modelling."
"I don't know if he has a stick up his ass though," Hayden muttered, looking like this was the opposite of whatever he might have wanted.
"Mm, then you probably haven't talked to him very much."
"How much stick can one have up their ass?" Ryker inquired, growing more present with every factoid delivered. The dichotomy of man was written into details like nude modelling and mouth-fucked and boring . Plus, Peter looked extra kissable when he was excited about something.
"So what happened today?" Peter asked instead of answering, settling his weight to one side and crossing his arms. "Why didn't you talk to him or like, I dunno, fucking like, ask him out?"
"I did," Hayden replied defensively, cheeks turning pink. "Sort of. But he said next time."
"Well, isn’t this supposed to be next time?"
"Not necessarily."
"You know what, I think I can see it," Peter said instead all of a sudden, glancing between Ryker and Hayden. "He's definitely the kind of guy who's gonna go off and get a cozy job and a cozy wife and a cozy house and cozy kids and wind up hating all of it, go get drunk after work, and fuck his co-workers who are in the exact same boat as him."
"That doesn't make me feel better," Hayden said, eyes wide.
"Maybe if I get to him first, he'll join GSA!"
"The Gay Semitic Alliance!" Ryker added excitedly, chuckling at the entire situation, even as he set a sympathetic arm around Hayden's shoulders (days off from what amounted to a fight about this sort of thing made the act feel minutely dangerous in front of Peter, but hopefully, either that had resolved itself or the bubbling brunette was distracted by his new machinations).
That was their problem though. As far as Hayden’s went, he knew jack.
Chapter 9
With plenty of practice under his belt by now, Wyatt had no cause to be concerned about class following the culmination on Tuesday. People who got their rocks off in a public space either didn't want people to know or didn't want to prevent a repeat performance, so it made for easy discretion. Hayden hardly seemed like the sort to try holding anything against anyone. Even if he did, which Wyatt highly doubted, his whole situation was orchestrated to be unable to harm him.
And yet, that strange sort of torment returned, perhaps even strengthened by his recently expanded knowledge. Wyatt might not be able to pretend that this was the first time he had crossed the easel, so to speak, though he was struggling to recall another time when he had faced the very same again. So few of his jobs were this kind of repeat performance, let alone so many times in a row, so reliably! Could he really blame himself for having a reaction at all?
It w
as just as likely that he was working himself up, again, over literally nothing. Being right about the fixation in green eyes didn't mean he was right about everything, after all, and if the pink shade in Hayden's cheeks never went away because he, by the very nature of this class couldn't look away, then all the better for Wyatt. Right?
So he thought, before he found himself all but rejecting the doe-eyed brunette in the vaguest way possible. But it wasn’t his fault! He was going home, and Hayden hadn’t asked for anything beyond his question. As far as Wyatt was concerned, he’d done the only thing he could. Now if only his pulse would settle every time he thought about it.
Another week of class passed by before Wyatt had the nerve to consider it settled, and life returned to normal. That didn't necessarily rescue him from being hyper aware of green eyes on him (or not on him) every Tuesday and Thursday evening, but it was enough to cease the efforts to delay his departure on the off chance of being caught in the doorway again. After all, Hayden wasn't pressing any issues - probably hadn't been at all in the first place, because obviously Wyatt was simply self-involved and paranoid.
Which, frankly, eliminated any real concerns about isolating himself. Unless he was going to give up the (easy, reliable, well paying) job entirely, the dirty blond really needed to get over this engrossing interest. A feat which the he had only one method of accomplishing - and if he was perfectly honest with himself, the likely outcomes were just as unpleasant as they were the opposite. But regardless, he would have a result, and whatever could happen until then was simply extra.
A fine enough reason on its own to put on his robe and stand when the professor called for a break, finally. Apparently the encroaching winter made the aging instructor more empathetic toward stiff limbs and aching bones. With his ridiculous pulse back under control, Wyatt was a little more collected than he had managed days ago, and made a point of wandering the nearest ring before settling behind Hayden's easel once more (as if he had any intention of even glancing at other artists’ work).
Figure Model Page 7