In the middle of it all, Wyatt looked alarmed, wide-eyed, even as he clapped right along. Hayden laughed awkwardly, offering another apologetic expression. Maybe it wasn’t the best introduction to his group of friends.
Or maybe it was, he wondered, when Wyatt chuckled in kind, eyeing him like this brand of weird wasn’t nearly enough to send him running.
The last two performances might as well have zipped by, before it was all over and everyone seemed eager to get out of the music hall, and greet the specific players they had specifically come to see.
“Hey, Hayden!” Ben called, scooting around the rest of their friends before the artist could think to prepare himself. “It’s good to see you, how have you been?”
It turned out, though, that Hayden didn’t really need to prepare himself. As if he could forget Ben Oliver was a big smiling goofball, who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
“Alright,” Hayden answered, feeling a bit like an ass for all his lonely ill wills as he took an affectionate side hug from the aspiring poet.
“There you are!” The various Advanced Classical piano students filtered out of the hallway adjacent to the auditorium, and Veronica came running up to them - in heels, no less. “What did you think? It wasn’t too boring, was it?”
“Bitch, you better play that shit at my funeral,” Ryker stated, catching the redhead around the waist a moment later. Ben presented her with a bouquet of roses and white frilly things, and she beamed, muttering You didn’t have tos as she kissed him on the lips.
“It was amazing, Veronica,” Hayden offered, on top of everyone else’s praise, trying not to feel like an ass again . He wasn’t even sure if he had said or thought anything particularly awful, but it didn’t take much to feel like an idiot for sulking so much.
She smiled, and hugged him, flower petals tickling his nose. “Thanks so much! You must not have heard all the times I fucked up. I’m trying to refine it before the end of the month. I’ve got two auditions before Thanksgiving.”
“You’ll knock them out of the park,” he said in earnest, letting her slip away to hug Ryan. He remembered the quiet blond at his side - as if he could forget.
“Veronica, this is Wyatt,” Hayden said before the anxiety could catch up with him, motioning between them. Only to stop short, when he wasn’t sure what to follow up with.
“He’s, uh...he’s-”
“I’m his date,” Wyatt piped in, a hint of amusement to his tone (unless it was imagined). Hayden couldn’t tell if he was just acting the part and being honest, or something else entirely, as another handshake passed in front of him.
“Thanks for coming, it’s nice to meet you.” Veronica couldn’t have known all Peter had schemed about, though, and she smiled without an ounce of hesitation. Hayden had anticipated overwhelming worry, but so far, he didn’t feel any at all.
Peter came trotting up to them soon after, tablecloths folded and tucked between his arms. “Hey, I’m done over there, I just have to put these away in storage because some people! ” He whipped over his shoulder, toward his club member friends collapsing the card tables. “Can’t be bothered to do it themselves!”
“We’re still going to dinner, right?” Ryan asked.
Hayden glanced at Wyatt, and found the dirty blond glancing back in unison. There were only so many hours a newcomer could handle with this particular group of people, and Hayden had a feeling they had wasted them all.
Not only that, but he had been vying for a true moment alone ever since Wyatt caught him in the hallway. As far as Hayden was concerned, he didn’t have to prove anything more.
“I think we’ll skip out, actually,” he confessed.
“Are you sure?” Veronica prodded. “I feel like it’s been forever since we’ve all been together.”
“Next time. I promise. They usually charge you for a group of five or more anyway.”
“Is that okay?” Wyatt murmured pointedly to Peter.
He appeared to consider it a moment, humming in extended thought, before finally waving his hand. “Yeah I guess so. Congratulations, Wyatt, you’ve earned yourself an Peter-Free merit badge.”
"I'll put that on my sash right away.”
They headed out in a group, separating with waved goodbyes and promises to see each other later. A look at his watch told Hayden it was past ten. With all those aspiring pianists churning out eight minute pieces, he wasn’t surprised.
“I’m not usually stuck in starched linen this long,” Wyatt intoned behind the wheel, thumbing open the top button at his shirt collar. Glancing back as Ryker and Ryan pulled out, he reversed the car.
“It wasn’t too bad, was it?” Hayden asked, hopeful, since he was still with Wyatt, and hadn’t been kicked to the curb.
The blond shrugged, eyes trained beyond the windshield. “Peter seems to have a knack for making people who disagree with him uncomfortable.” The artist could only concede to that, turning to look out the window while his pulse berated him for something that wasn’t even his fault.
“But I wasn’t too displeased to be sitting next to you the whole time. And the music was rather nice.” Wyatt trailed his gaze over, before returning his attention to the road aptly. Hayden decided that was just enough for him to breathe easy.
There was no argument over where they were headed. Hayden had three roommates, and Wyatt lived alone. Probably had a real bedroom, too, and Hayden was aiming to keep his curtained alcove to himself for as long as polite conversation would allow.
The drive was quick, since he lived close to the school, and after a handful of stairs that rivaled the two-story climb to Hayden’s apartment, they arrived at Wyatt’s door.
Inside was a minimal space with a minimalist atmosphere. Almost everything was visible from the front door, much like Hayden’s apartment. Only the appearance of more doors separated things like bathroom and bedroom from his wandering gaze.
"Do you want a drink?" Wyatt asked, toeing out of his shoes by the front mat, and pulling bobby pins out of his curls to free his kippah. "I have water and orange juice. I can make coffee."
A kind enough no thank you died on his lips the moment Wyatt ventured into the kitchen, and Hayden clammed up with the decision not to stop the forward trajectory. Maybe it was a good idea to have something to drink anyway, just in case his digestive system decided on an all out rejection of the single cup of wine he’d had that night. Sometimes his skinny, stupid body couldn't decide what it could and couldn't handle.
Hesitantly, Hayden followed the example set with his shoes, and inched up to the counter alongside Wyatt as the blond reached up and rifled around cabinets. The artist took the opportunity to glance around the humble space. Small, but comfortable. Livable, anyway, and nice-smelling. With a real bedroom and no noisy roommates.
Of course, his gaze eventually wandered back to Wyatt, still clad in his business casual recital-wear. Hayden couldn’t quite stop himself from trailing his eyes down muted shades of green and tan, remembering all those desperate, tense claims about what modelling meant to Wyatt and how it made him feel.
"Do you want to change?" he asked softly, thinking water or orange juice or coffee could probably wait for Wyatt to make himself comfortable in his own home, away from prying eyes and judgmental minds.
Wyatt glanced down, as if he had forgotten what he was wearing altogether. He closed his cabinets with a succinct click and nodded, already moving away from the counter.
The kitchen was narrow enough to almost demand a brush of their bodies when he tried to slip past Hayden, leading the way to his bedroom door instead. It was habitual to flick the kitchen light back off on his way by, leaving most of the apartment in the sort of darkness that only a parking lot light through the living room shades could offer.
Wyatt’s room was even darker - blackout curtains enveloping the window by his bed - and the dirty blond seemed perfectly content to reach his dresser without switching a lamp on.
This was a lot less conversation and touching
than Hayden had imagined, but he wasn't complaining. Comfort was first and foremost. And he was more than happy just to stare. Always had been. Mostly.
“Do you want something to sleep in?”
"Oh. No," Hayden answered not so diligently. Wyatt didn’t have to waste clean pajamas on him. That, of course, presented drastic alternatives - Hayden sleeping in his clothes, or stripping down to his briefs were two big ones.
"Unless you don't want me to sleep in my underwear. I'll take pajamas, if you want." Or maybe that would have been better anyway. He didn't know how long they were going to be up talking and it might be awkward if he was just sitting there, mostly naked. This wasn't a classroom, after all. It was gonna mean something , even if that something happened to be his own incompetence.
"Your choice," Wyatt answered, unhelpfully. “I don’t mind either way.”
Deciding what to wear for bed should not have been this hard. And yet that's exactly how it felt with Wyatt slinging the decision back to him, caught in a battle of humble gestures. Hayden watched Wyatt go to the trouble of putting out two complete sets of pajamas, like a functioning adult who didn't just drop into bed either to fall asleep in jeans or have the wherewithal to shove out of his clothes in time. Hayden didn't think he'd had a matching set of flannel since before high school.
Glancing between the neat stacks of clothes and Wyatt, facing him squarely now, Hayden had to wonder if the figure model really didn't mind either way. After everything he’d confessed, in heartbreaking earnest. Now was not the place to let social discomfort get in the way. They both knew why they were there.
"I think you mind a lot." Hayden breathed, almost surprising himself.
But this was the closest they'd gotten to a safe place that wasn't judgemental. The recital barely counted, and with all his roommates, Hayden's apartment didn’t either. Hell, this, here, might just be the real thing.
Looking up into those dewey brown eyes that got impossibly dark out of light and impossibly bright in it, Hayden huffed, and started on his buttons. Even if he was moving in the wrong direction, he still had to get out of these ridiculous clothes. Unless Wyatt decided the direction had to be the door instead.
It was all a little harder to accomplish when it wasn't spurred by a haphazardly strong kiss in the middle of a busy hallway, but Hayden didn't necessarily want that to be the impetus for every intimate reaction. There was a lot going on that made them both weird enough to be contemplating things like orange juice and flannel pajamas after spending the night at a piano recital. Acting that way, it was almost like the conversation on Thursday had never happened. Though Hayden couldn't imagine having gotten to this point any other way.
Wyatt loomed close in the mild darkness. If Hayden had any sense, he might have predicted that the blond would tilt forward to press their lips together, when he lifted his head. For the first time that night, without anyone to bother them. Utterly alone. And Hayden might have preferred it over any public display of affection, no matter what it was supposed to mean.
Gasping against the contact didn't keep him from sinking forward into the press of warm lips, though, hands falling away from his own buttons even as the last one remained unplucked. If he reached forward, he could feel the fabric of Wyatt's shirt against his fingertips, delicate and almost ephemeral, until he pushed forward enough for the material to become a barrier between him and warm skin. His hands ghosting to the middle where the folds nestled neatly buttoned on Wyatt's firm chest.
Rather boldly, the artist’s thumb and forefinger pressed a button and hole apart, somewhere in the middle of the stiff fabric. He’d have to go back in either direction, if he meant to finish the job, but he didn't mind at that particular moment. Not with Wyatt's mouth shifting against his, quietly languid as the fastens came away easily over a smooth chest.
All of a sudden nimble fingers caught Hayden beneath the jaw, and he might have paused if Wyatt hadn't surged forward with a gentle power that rendered the artist almost useless. Before he could become nothing more than a puddle under the sweep of Wyatt's tongue, Hayden squared up and tilted forward in kind, a subtle push and pull to the slow kiss it had taken them so long to get to. Definitely worth the wait.
Wyatt's hands sent shivers all down his spine and goosebumps up his arms, places he wasn't even touching as he skirted the open edges of Hayden's shirt. Pushing a little further, Wyatt slipped beneath the fabric, tracing the curve and dip of the artist’s body until the fabric was falling over the edges of Hayden's shoulders. He got all the way down to Wyatt’s shirt tails with his unbuttoning before his own top fell away, exposing already tingling flesh to the air-conditioned apartment.
Nothing could stop Hayden from the immediate burst of self-consciousness, with Wyatt seasoned in the art of public nudity and his own shirt coming off in front of the blond for the very first time. To think he was reacting this way, and he'd had his pants around his knees the last time.
To stave off that stifling feeling, though, Hayden figured the best route was the shared experience. The artist fumbled the rest of the buttons rather blindly, but managed to get them off all the way to the collar. The material behaved in such a way that it really only needed gravity to start shifting off, and Hayden couldn't help but break away just a little to get a load of all that smooth, flawless skin bathed in shadow.
Normally, Hayden didn't really care for being assessed, physically, but that’s what he left himself open to as they drank in the sight of each other’s half-bared bodies. There was a reason he wasn't doing what Wyatt was doing, whether for money or ease or whatever it happened to be. That was one of the first things he said to Wyatt. But that was back when it hadn't mattered.
Maybe it was the dark or the mirrored state of undress (or the intoxication), but now, Hayden didn't really mind Wyatt looking at him. Not like this, anyway, basking, fighting to get his breath under control as it huffed past pale lips.
Hayden didn't care where his shirt ended up, or Wyatt’s as he pried the tails away from khaki pants to join his on the floor. The desire to touch and caress was pretty strong, but there was more to accomplish - though, Hayden wasn't quite sure how to accomplish it. Just swoop to his knees? He didn't know if he had the gumption.
Stepping closer still, almost so that their chests we're touching, he slid his hands around the blond's waistband, hesitantly indulgent as firm cotton gave way to warm, soft flesh. Wyatt would stop him if he didn't want him touching there. Hayden new his own purpose, though, stopping to curl his fingers around the button and fly, that gave away with surprising ease.
Even the simple sound of Wyatt's breath had the artist's skin tingling, when increase or decrease in speed and volume indicated reaction - and not a bad one either. The pants slipped away from Wyatt's effortlessly toned thighs, until dropping away entirely, out of Hayden's grasp. He tipped his chin forward and captured the Wyatt’s mouth again, eyes fluttering shut when he had no hope of seeing the model at that distance in the lightless room.
The lack of buttons and zippers allowed Hayden to curve a hand over one shoulder, pulling them close together while his other hand skimmed back around Wyatt's hips, dipping back to a softer waistband hiding more flesh, softer still. Hayden braced himself against the yank of his own pants, until he was wading in the black material around his knees, shifting lower and lower every time he moved.
Even when his fingers stuttered with all the force of his own voice, Hayden convinced himself to slide his thumbs around the waistband of Wyatt's underwear and push down. He had come too far to chicken out now, when the blond had told him so much about what mattered to him. Hayden could only hope they were on the same level now, as the flimsy cotton fell away and he was left with an expanse of firm, milk-white skin against his palms.
Wyatt felt the way Bernini's statues looked (which was how people were supposed to feel, Hayden chided himself silently, but images of carved marble taunted him all the same).
A bit hasty at this point, as Wyatt's persistent
kiss threatened to have him sinking, the artist let go, only to reach around, bumping Wyatt's hands in an effort to get his own underwear down and off, falling into the pool of his slacks, around his ankles. Hayden stepped out and kicked their clothes away, a tangle of colors. Stark contrast to their pale bodies, as he tried to imagine what it would feel like to bare himself like this in front of a classroom. It was hard.
"I think this means something," Hayden whispered against Wyatt's lips - a promise and a prayer all at once
Chapter 13
The rest of the night consisted of rambunctious behavior that probably didn’t belong at a nice restaurant, and Peter stealing sips from Ryker’s cocktail since he was still a couple months away from the big two-oh. Should Ryker have been driving after that? Maybe not. But he did a damn good job of not hitting any trash cans when he pulled into his designated spot at their apartment.
"You weren’t all that excruciating to be around tonight, Ryker," Peter murmured idly, leaning against Ryker with almost all his weight.
"What are you talking about? I’m always a gem," Ryker retorted primly, bringing his keys to his face to make sure he had the right one in the dim of the hallway - only to lift them over his head trying to catch help from the streetlights outside against the glinty metal. Maybe he should get one of those keychain flashlights.
"Hurry up, I'm cold."
Apparently he was taking too long, because Peter decided to exact punishment by reaching around to pinch Ryker’s nipples through his shirt, giggling when he squealed - which Ryker resolutely decided was actually a highlander war cry. Peter’s aim was fucking spot on.
He finally managed to get his key all the way in the knob, and twisted enough to give way to their crouching bodies.
"Come'ere," Ryker grunted as the door bumped open, taking Peter up with an arm around his waist and half-dragging the shorter man inside. Kicking the door closed behind them, he set his mouth against the curve of throat and shoulder, worrying his teeth wherever it took to have Peter squirming and shouting, the sweetest flavor of revenge.
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