"Flattering as ever," he murmured, the corner of his mouth quirking up as his gaze moved from charcoal outlines to the brunette's face.
There was a beat of silence before the artist answered. "Thanks," he murmured, sparing merely a glance in Wyatt's direction. He gave no more than that, leaving Wyatt in quiet confusion.
How many times he had been truly caught off guard since embarking on this particular professional endeavor, Wyatt had to wonder, not quite able to think of a single other inWyattce. When one was embracing (however carefully private) this sort of employment and indulgence of self in a world made of archives and deities, there was no room for flinching. Only for precaution and surety.
Artists were easy to handle! They basked in compliments and stirred to argue at the right kind of criticisms. If they weren't blushing at the sight of him then they were staring, open and lewd, already prepared to blame their craft and the circumstances for any hint of an offense.
The point was, they were predictable and thus far easily manipulated, and yet, somehow, Wyatt stood before one now that he couldn't even read. Just ten days ago, he had been certain of attraction and a mere seven he had been convinced of interest. Even with the flush filling pale cheeks again, Hayden's face was about as useful as a closed book, written in Russian, with red ink on blue paper.
If Wyatt was smart, he would trot off and never look back. Accept defeat or an end for what it was. But the point here wasn't to fulfill whatever it was Hayden had anticipated getting out of their little tryst. It was the model who had fixated himself - on what, he couldn't quite articulate. The brunette art student wasn't exactly a goal or a finish line and Wyatt had already managed to drag a shaking, red faced climax out of him. So why was he even still standing here?
Maybe he knew full well why, and ignored it the same way he did the urge to back out before he made a fool of himself.
"It's too bad this class isn't canceled more often," Wyatt tried, just to see - really - if he was still having an affect at all. At least if he wasn't, there was no reason to keep trying.
Hayden’s movements stilled, almost as if he couldn’t devote so much attention to one thing over another. Wyatt might have called that success, judging by the bright red in pale ears. But he wasn’t nearly that lucky. Silence stretched on infinitely in moments like these, enough to leave the dirty blond tense and on edge in a way that he found rather irritating, considering he was doing this sort of thing for the precise purpose of escaping that sensation. He had plenty of tense silences in his everyday life, thank you very much.
Perhaps the worst part, though, was the uncertainty it caused. Confidence felt wonderful, even when it was a little ill-placed - at least for as long as he didn't know it was ill-placed.
"Listen," Hayden whispered after a moment, as if he were afraid someone might hear. Faced away from Wyatt, he appeared to speak to the drawings, rather than the real thing. "If this is meaningless, I’m not interested."
Being shown that confidence was ill-placed, though, was much worse than not feeling it at all.
The word meaningless probably should not have struck him so solidly and so pointedly as it did, but even with green eyes facing pointedly away from him, Wyatt could feel the cold fire in that gaze - convinced at any moment that it might set the sketch paper alight, or else frost it over like a window in the dead of winter. Instead, it drove a spike through his lungs, hot and cold at the same time.
"What?" he asked, almost a gasp, almost a laugh. Startled, to say the least, and confused because of it.
Taking a deep breath, Hayden turned to Wyatt minutely, finally offering his virescent attention.
"It doesn't mean anything," he uttered, "in a classroom in front of an artist."
Hayden turned away then, and gave little more than the haunting memory of a line that had truly come back to bite Wyatt in the ass. The artist dug around for a piece of charcoal, and took to finishing the drawing propped up on his easel.
Stunned to stillness, it took several heartbeats for Wyatt to finally drag his gaze away from eyes that had long since dismissed him. As if he had never been rejected before! Ridiculous. This sensation should be as familiar as his multiplication tables by now. Besides, what was the opinion of one art student to him? Wyatt Elliott had ignored and escaped more important judgments.
There being no necessary or appropriate retort, the dirty blond turned himself away, features schooled toward the usual boredom that served so well all other times he spent at the center of an idle and apathetic attention.
It was enough, at least, to make it through to the end of class. All attempts to garner or notice attention were ceased, his own awareness relaxed to middle space if it wasn't pointed intentionally away. Wyatt spent the last fifteen minutes with his eyes closed entirely, thoughts racing much more than they ever had in an environment that usually encouraged meditation.
Lingering in the back room to get dressed after class had been dismissed was no more cowardice than it was laziness, and if Wyatt was relieved to exit through a dark classroom without a single face in sight, then so what. There were plenty of other things that required his attention and focus.
***
The next Tuesday, he had a fever and a sinus headache that was more than worth staying home, even at the cost of a few hundred dollars (between his missed classes and missed employment, it certainly added up). Fortunately, Wednesday dawned bright and early with an air of recovery, and Wyatt was able to catch up his work before his first afternoon class.
After an entire day wasted on dispelling bodily fluids and suffering the slow bake of a daunting fever, Wyatt could only be relieved that his nose was clear and functional. Conscious awareness of that blessing was the only thing that made the scratchy burn of his throat and lingering muscle pain even remotely tolerable. Maybe he was lucky that the fever had broken in the same day, rather than holding him hostage for a whole week or so, but the dirty blond only had so much energy to be grateful and so many reasons to be miserable.
So, of course, circumstances would have it that today, of all days, there was just one more.
"Hey, your name is Wyatt, right?" the student behind him whispered, craning and leaning out of his seat to get within earshot. "I'm Peter Jackson, nice to meet you. You should join GSA, we meet every other Wednesday. It's actually a lot of fun, no matter what the football team says."
There was no helping the reflexive turn of his head toward his classmate's voice, especially saying his name, but Wyatt wished for all that he was worth that he had feigned being deaf instead. Especially when his lack of response (because they were here for the lecture, not to socialize) merited further chatter in a pitch that didn't quite know how to whisper. With Peter Jackson doing his best to win the yearbook superlative for "Least Subtle" the blond had no choice but to turn and answer him - hoping it could be an easy silencing tactic.
"No, thank you." Football team aside, Wyatt wasn't sure that he knew what GSA was - and what he suspected certainly wasn't something he was going to engage with while his parents still knew where he was. Praying the chatterbox would catch the hint, he faced forward again, pencil scratching out succinct notes while the professor droned.
"No thank you, huh," Peter Jackson murmured behind him, doing a very bad job of talking to himself. Apparently though, he didn’t care very much about his grade, or social cues, or both, because he tried again. The creak of a chair behind him was as close to warning as Wyatt got, and it was paltry at best.
"Hey, just so you know, contrary to popular belief, it's not a Gays Only club," he chirped, quietly still. "We weren't allowed to have that. It's the Gay STRAIGHT Alliance, so there's no reason for you to not want to join. Unless you're homophobic. Or maybe you don't want that association for some other reason..."
Of all the reactions he could have to a stranger's club invitation, it seemed pretty unfair that having his face heat up despite the stoic set of his expression was the first. It was extremely tempting to ask if Peter Jackso
n had ever actually managed to lure someone with the risk of looking homophobic - even more tempting to point out that there were worse atrocities committed for that shit than not attending a group hang.
"Mr. Jackson, would you like to share with us what is so important that you can't say in the countless hours you spend outside my class?" the professor called, doing his best imitation of a public high school teacher.
"Yes! Thank you. Vote me GSA president at the extracurricular fair next week, I know you'll all be there for the free food anyway." Unmotivated to continue his nagging after that, Peter remained mostly silent for the rest of Economics.
All but rescued from the harassment, Wyatt could only be grateful that he wasn't caught up in the accusation - after all, he went out of his way not to be considered disruptive (calling out bullshit from teacher and student alike did not count). Maybe Peter had made a name for himself in that aspect already. Regardless, relief escaped him in the form of a sighed breath as the attention was dragged away, no more whispers for him to ignore.
That wasn't quite enough to drag his own attention away, though - a fact which grated against the dirty blond's patience as he found himself drifting to and from the lecture itself, his notes stalling periodically. The last thing he needed on a catch up day was a distracted trail of thoughts leading from lack of participation being homophobic to the look on a certain art student's face when he parroted words that had never hurt anyone before. Doesn’t mean anything was supposed to be a release, an escape hatch (as much for himself as anyone he said it to), a protective excuse that prevented anyone from getting their feelings hurt because there were no practical consequences. Hayden wasn't the first one to get his feelings hurt about this sort of thing, though. So why did it feel like this now?
The only conceivable explanation was that Wyatt was the idiot with hurt feelings, this time. Hurt feelings because a pretty boy who stared at him like a shepherd at the appearance of an angel told him doesn’t mean anything wasn't good enough. And could he really claim all the rejection for himself, when Hayden had been so ready for a little more?
Shit. Maybe lack of participation was homophobic.
Chapter 10
Another Thursday came as if it had any right to be as ordinary as all the others. By the time he was shoving into his trousers at the end of class, Wyatt had come quite soundly to a conclusion. Not one that sat easily or securely, but it sure as shit wasn't going to leave him any time soon, either. Making it to the end of the semester seemed far fetched - and quitting was just intolerable in every direction. But he needed to do something. Worst case scenario, he did get to keep all the rejection to himself, and indulge the self pity long enough to get the fuck over it, instead of feeling like a guilty jackass.
With how quickly he knew Hayden could make a break for the exit, the dirty blond couldn't help the stumbled step that carried him across the classroom - gaze sweeping the lingering students just to make sure the brunette wasn't dawdling for other reasons. As he pushed through the door, though, Wyatt's breath caught in his chest, and he had no choice but to hold it for as long as it took to catch up to the form marching off to the stairs. He managed to reach out and grab Hayden by the elbow before he made it to the threshold.
"Wait," Wyatt half-grunted out, fighting for a new lungful of air as green eyes turned on him and they both came to a stop.
Suddenly, his heart - the actual organ - was in his throat, choking off his air as much as it was failing to pump blood through his body. It just echoed in his ears instead, a million miles per minute, while his mouth hung uselessly open and his extremities went tingly numb. Wyatt could have thrown himself off an interstate overpass easier than he could force air passed his tonsils. It didn't help that Hayden was staring at him, expression a cross between a cornered opossum and a kicked puppy.
Voice or not, the dirty blond all but growled at himself. His mouth was going to work for him! They were outside the classroom, but he was still in front of an artist - in front of a lot of artists, if the footsteps and chatter around them was any indication. But maybe that didn't matter.
Wyatt tipped forward on his feet and almost crashed against Hayden's lips, managing to catch his balance at the last moment. That didn't stop the slightly too hard bump of his teeth (an impact cushioned only by a sinfully plush mouth), like an idiot who had never touched another human being.
Wyatt almost apologized just for being a brutish freak, but if any words were going to make it through, he had to make sure they were good ones. Important ones. Which he should have been able to think up, line up, and spit out by the time his face loomed away from Hayden's again.
"I want it to mean something." Straightening rigidly, Wyatt resisted the reflexive glance around, focused enough on green eyes to miss any reaction beyond the scope of the brunette's face. A flood of bright red spread across his face faster than he could breathe, and despite being utterly powerless to discern whether that was a good or a bad thing, Wyatt found himself enraptured by it. The warmth that curled behind his ribs felt like hope - there were at least two best case scenarios he could conceive of - but the dirty blond had a feeling it was just affection. Because he couldn't just be turned on by cute brunette with gemstone eyes and plum mouths, he also had to be involuntarily charmed by quick blushes and a vocal tremor.
Those eyes softened with clarity, thank God. Wyatt wasn’t sure he would have been able to explain himself if Hayden didn’t say something first.
"It doesn't have to," the artist said, reassuring despite the breathless quality of his voice. "I'm sorry about what I said, last week. It was harsh, I just-" He paused, teeth clenching around syllables that just wouldn’t budge. "I got ahead of myself, that's all."
"I know," Wyatt answered, too fast - and too slow, with all the words Hayden had managed to sneak in on him. Processing should have been easier, considering it was all in his first language, but here he was, stumbling over the offer of an apology he certainly didn't deserve.
"I mean, you're right. It doesn't." There was a point somewhere, when he started, wasn't there?
"It hasn't, before," Wyatt continued in explanation, feeling just ridiculous enough for that dollar store romance novel line to close his eyes and shake his head like Hayden wasn't watching him internally scoff at himself. "It sorta does now and maybe it will suck and fail and ruin everything but maybe it won't and I couldn't handle a week of not knowing so if you want to find out too-" Shrugging helplessly, Wyatt finally released his grip on Hayden's arm. "We could go somewhere."
After moments that stampeded past them with the patter of his pulse in his teeth, Wyatt could feel his line of sight like a literal strand pulled taut from his pupils to Hayden's. He could feel the people shuffling around them, the wind of their movement, the vibration of their steps in the smooth concrete beneath his shoes, but as long as he didn't look, none of them were real. None of them were here. May as well not be (a notion that Wyatt started to grasp at pretty desperately as the moments kept ticking).
"My house is close," Hayden said, finally, stepping back as if to usher the way.
House! The dirty blond had the gall to think that a lack of response was daunting, but then the answer was almost worse! A ridiculous reaction, but that wasn't going to stop it from squeezing his throat closed again. As if there was anything at or about Hayden's house that was more dangerous or imposing than being alone in an empty classroom. In fact, Wyatt should have been rejoicing in the idea of privacy. Awkward conversations were easier endured somewhere other than short-backed booths in crowded public establishments.
Deciding that the clench of his ribs was probably some phantom terror from his teenage years, over being caught in his room doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing, Wyatt nodded quickly. He had the utterly unreasonable urge to reach for Hayden again as the brunette moved, but it was easy enough to follow along instead.
"I could drive," he offered simply, feeling like he was staring too much even as he clung to the notion tha
t no one else existed until he acknowledged them visually. It should have been just as easy to stare at his feet. At least, if they took his car, there was something resembling an escape if anything went as wrong as his pulse feared.
"That works," Hayden murmured, as they took the steps to the first floor, to leave the art school once and for all that week.
The dirty blond’s infallible plan to keep his vision narrowly aimed until his pulse got accustomed to the new world he had created by so much as kissing someone where there were witnesses was dashed when Hayden paused at the edge of the parking lot, and Wyatt swallowed against the swell of acid in his throat as he retrieved his keys and took the lead. At least in the confines of his own car, they could sit in uncomfortable silence for a couple blocks while the brunette pointed and murmured his directions without anything resembling an audience.
Reminding himself that he had chosen to kiss a man in front of witnesses for a reason - which was integral to the series of in potentia results spiraling into the future ahead of them, not to mention the only apparent escape from the decaying feeling that generally resulted from enormous, disappointing failures and missed opportunities - Wyatt had to break himself from hyper focus on the bulb of his gear sick once they were parked, and felt his pulse pick back up as he followed Hayden into a modest apartment building.
Absolutely ridiculous. It had already occurred to him that being nervous about every detail of the interpersonal interaction currently unfolding at the same time as how everyone else would react was not only pointless suffering, but likely detrimental to his own contributions. Watching the stairs disappear under his feet, Wyatt’s head and attention were drawn up by a stumbling question, after Hayden let them into an unfamiliar front hall, with a living room and kitchen on both sides.
"What changed your mind?"
"Nothing," Wyatt answered reflexively, not quite able to process the question at first. "I mean, I don't know. I don't think it changed." Something changed, but it wasn't his mind. There was a lot of things he could do without hesitation or concern when it was in a classroom in front of an artist. That was, in fact, the entire reason he had come here - to be alone, nowhere near a classroom, with Hayden (the gemstone-eyed auburn-brunette who made his blood rush just looking at him).
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