Archive of Our Own ^beta

“He left the paper tray empty, again,” Wylan huffed, pulling open the paper tray in the large photocopier in the staffroom, a printer that seemed almost as old as he was, at this point, and he was twenty-seven. It was so easy to just shove another stack of printer paper into the tray, he couldn’t understand how the man couldn’t do it himself after printing a hundred pages of activity worksheets for his classes.

“Who, Jesper?” Matthias asked from where he was standing at the counter, stirring sugar packets into his coffee mug. It was an exhausted complaint, at this point, Wylan complaining about the history and novels teacher. And not just about his lack of refilling the printer tray, but about just about everything he did, leaving an empty mug on the counter, allowing his class to get rowdy as Wylan’s chemistry classes next door were taking exams or completing experiments. Wylan could always find something about the man that would make his blood boil and his face pinch into a frown. 

“Of course, Jesper,” Wylan huffed, poking a finger at the printer buttons again to get his music sheets copied and printed. Because of course Wylan didn’t only teach four periods of chemistry, he also taught two orchestra classes to make a bit more money, and also because he enjoyed it a lot. “I swear, that man only thinks about himself.”

“Who only thinks about himself?” Nina asked as she walked into the staffroom, chunky heels clicking on the tile floor, colorful file folders of papers tucked into the crook of her arm. She had the habit of grading biology homework and quizzes and tests during their lunch period. The three of them usually sat at a table in the staffroom together and chatted and graded and ate lunch together, but on some Friday’s they went out to the nearby sandwich shop instead. 

“Who do you think?” Wylan huffed again, sighing out when his copies finally started printing. It was the cello and bass parts for the last piece they would be playing for the winter concert. He had been meaning to get them handed out to his students days ago, but was finally getting around to making all of the copies. 

“Ah, your work boyfriend, then,” Nina smirked, shimming into a hard plastic chair next to Matthias, dropping her folders onto the table with a dull thud. Wylan rolled his eyes but said nothing, Nina loved to call them work boyfriends, even if they annoyed the hell out of each other most of the time and had never really been any more friendly than the required ‘civil’ that the school’s principal, Kaz Brekker, demanded of them. According to her, they fought like an old married couple, but Wylan couldn't see it. If he were married to someone, he’d be far nicer and far less irritated. 

Though, they hadn’t really started out on the best foot, to begin with, anyway. It was over a year ago, when Wylan had just started and was still finding his way around the large, multistoried high school he called his workplace. He had hoped he had finally found the teacher’s staffroom, and had opened the door, only to be immediately bumped into and have hot coffee spilt all over his cream sweater vest. It had been Jesper Fahey, of course, a teacher he hadn’t even met yet but had heard about. 

Jesper had immediately cursed and apologized and got to dabbing at Wylan’s vest with paper napkins, and Wylan had flushed red with embarrassment and shock and a little bit in pain as the hot coffee had seeped past his sweater vest and his shirt and onto the skin of his chest. Wylan still cringed a bit at the way he had pushed Jesper’s hands from patting at his chest, how he had squirreled away down the hall and to the private staff bathroom to rip off his sweater and assess the damage in the mirror. 

It hadn’t gotten any better after that initial meeting, however. They’d bicker and annoy one another, make little jabs and voice complaints about each other and their classes. Jesper would complain about the volume of the videos Wylan sometimes played for his chemistry classes, and Wylan would complain about how loud Jesper’s classes got in the middle of exams. Not refilling the printer tray was just another piece on top of the large mountain of things Wylan didn’t like about his colleague. 

He didn’t get it, he had tried being polite, and Jesper had apologized for spilling coffee on him and had even offered to pay for the dry cleaning, but they just never got past it all, instead just dissolving into bickering and arguing instead. 

“Hey, Matthias, Nina… Wylan,” Jesper had come back into the staffroom, nodding at Nina and Matthias before side-eyeing Wylan, nothing in his hands. Wylan just pursed his lips and gathered his copies, taking his time to shuffle them into a single pile before slipping them into his own file folder so Nina didn’t accidentally drip salad dressing on them, since she had a habit of talking animatedly with a fork in her hand. 

“Jesper, how are you doing?” Nina was friendly with practically everyone, flirted with even more people. Jesper always flirted right back with her, with a dazzling smile and bright gray eyes and dimples, none of which that Wylan ever felt flustered by, thank you very much. If Jesper liked arguing with him, he seemed to like flirting with Wylan even more, just to see him frown and his brows pinch together. 

“Splendid, thank you for asking,” Jesper said it a bit dramatically, like he was trying to rub it in Wylan’s face how well he and Nina got along. Wylan didn’t care, and just sat down on the other side of Matthias, pulling out his blue bento box and opening the lid. 

“Oh! Jesper! Before I forget, Inej and I will be extra chaperones for that history museum trip you’re doing with the juniors,” Nina said around crunches of lettuce, and Wylan bit into his sandwich, vaguely remembering something about this year’s museum trip. It was a multi-day trip, with a long day at the large museum a few hours away, followed by a day at the science center, and then the last day was always to tour Ketterdam University and see a play, whatever was showing that year. Jesper always ran the trip as the history and literature teacher, but Wylan had never gone. He was pretty sure they left on Thursday this week for it. 

“Great, thanks! I’ll send you the info for it. Still need another chaperone for the boys’ hall, Matthias?” Jesper pointedly did not look at Wylan as he asked, and Wylan tried not to scowl. Did he want to browse the history museum and then the science center and then see a play? Yes. Would he volunteer and be stuck with Jesper Fahey for four days? Absolutely not. 

“Sorry man, the hockey team has a tournament this weekend,” Matthias shook his head. He coached the junior varsity and varsity hockey teams at the school, and the weekend of the trip was the same weekend as the varsity team’s semi finals tournament. Nina perked up beside him, and Wylan’s eyes started to widen as he noticed the scheming smirk crawling across her face. 

“But Wylan would love to chaperone with us!” Nina grinned a little evilly, and Jesper’s mouth flapped open and shut like a gasping fish. Wylan had never seen him speechless before now, Jesper always had something to say, a quick comeback, a jab or a joke or a flirtatious comment. 

“I’m sure–”

“I don’t really–”

They glared at each other, both stopping their sentences at the same time as they had begun talking over each other. 

“Oh please, you know that no one else is going to volunteer in time, it’s literally happening in two days,” Nina flapped her hand in the air at them both, like she knew they would deflate and agree with her. She was convincing in that way, the only thing she hadn’t been able to accomplish was getting them to become friends. “And don’t even try to tell me you have weekend plans, Wylan, you and I both know you aren’t doing anything that doesn’t involve wearing pajamas and eating popcorn,” Nina pointed her fork at him, and Matthias had to move his coffee mug, lest she drop a piece of lettuce or tomato into it. 

Wylan knew he was blushing a stark red, but did his best to ignore it, instead just rolling his eyes and squaring a look at Jesper, who was still standing in front of their table. He was wearing a garish combination of colors, royal blue slacks and a yellow paisley button up shirt with a lime green waistcoat on top of it. Wylan didn’t know how any of his students ever focused, when Jesper dressed so brightly every day. 

“Fine. If you can’t find anyone by Thursday, I’ll go. I’ll talk to Kaz about setting up a substitute,” Wylan crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair and trying to ignore the way Jesper was looking at him, one eyebrow raised. Jesper was tapping a foot and fiddling with the folded cuff of his shirt at his elbow, which ended up showing off the dark skin of his forearms, and the end of a tattoo that he could barely see. He wondered what the tattoo was of. Wylan looked away. 

“Sure, fine, thanks, or whatever,” Jesper mumbled, looking around the room like he couldn’t remember what he had even gone in there for. Apparently remembering, Jesper started rummaging through cabinets, and Wylan returned to his lunch, popping off the top section of his bento box to get to the bottom, which was filled with cut up strawberries and green grapes and blueberries. 

~🏺🧬🎭~

“Alright, everyone’s accounted for, we can get going,” Jesper said to the bus driver, having just finished taking a last attendance count before they drove four hours to Ketterdam and far away from their small suburban high school. Inej and Nina had called dibs on sitting in the back of the bus, leaving Wylan and Jesper to sit at the front and make sure none of the kids got too rowdy or loud or stood up from their seats. According to the schedule, they’d be making one bathroom break halfway through the drive, and then would arrive at the hotel they were staying at in time to have lunch and head to the museum afterwards.

Of course, Jesper had not been able to find a replacement for the trip, so Wylan had been stuck going with them. He didn’t mind getting to explore the sights and art and science, it was being stuck with Jesper Fahey for four days and having to share a hotel room with him, that was the problem. 

“So, what’s the point of chemistry, anyways?” Jesper asked after a bit, drumming on his knees, words bursting from his mouth like he couldn’t stay quiet a moment longer. Evidently, talking to Wylan, someone he never got along with, was still better than sitting for four hours in silence. 

“What?” Wylan visibly startled back a little, caught off-guard by the question. He was far more used to people asking him what the point behind music was, not science. 

“Chemistry, why do we even teach that? Do the kids even use any of that?” Jesper gestured between the air between them and over his shoulder at the chattering teenagers. 

“You literally take Adderall, Jesper,” Wylan looked at him, continuing before Jesper could retort with something. It was just a statement, not with judgment, because it would be hypocritical for Wylan to judge him for it. “We need chemistry to make basically everything, food, medications, clothes, gas, makeup. We teach it now so kids can go off to college and become chemists and continue making all of those things and learn better ways to make them,” Wylan tried not to be defensive about his subject, but felt like he needed to, against someone like Jesper, who taught the history of the world and literary analysis. He felt like they couldn’t be any more different. 

“I guess,” Jesper muttered, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. He was in green slacks today, with a plaid vest and baby pink button up shirt underneath. Wylan, himself, was in his most comfortable pair of jeans and another sweater vest, a striped button up under it in case he got too warm and needed to take off the vest. 

“What’s the point of literature, then? History, I get, teaching them what happened in the past to try and prevent the repetition of all of the atrocities of the past, but literary analysis? I can’t remember ever using any of that after high school,” Wylan bit back, crossing his own arms over his chest. Yes, he was more biased against enjoying literature and writing and reading after how it had impacted his childhood, but he stood by it, that it hadn’t really seemed to make a difference in his adulthood. 

Jesper just sighed, and Wylan swore he saw the man rolling his eyes next to him. It’d be like that, Wylan just knew it. Jesper had been the one to start it, but Wylan was not about to let him get away with it. No, Wylan could give it right back to him, and wasn’t going to shy away from it, not when they still had so much driving to do.

~🏺🧬🎭~

Of course, they spent the entire drive like that, debating and mildly arguing and bickering about anything and everything under the sun. Wylan was sure that the bus driver was probably sick and tired of having to listen to them. Wylan realized with heated embarrassment that some of the students around them had stopped talking as well, just to be able to listen to their debating. About the best kinds of weather, if homework was beneficial or not (of which they were actually on the same side of, but still felt the need to debate it), breakfast foods, the most important subjects that were taught in school. 

Wylan wished he could just run off the bus as soon as it pulled up to the hotel they would be staying in for the extended weekend, but unfortunately Jesper was in the aisle seat, and his lanky legs were taking up so much foot space that Wylan would have to climb right over his lap to get off. He would rather jump out of the bus window than do that, so Wylan just sat with a flushed face for the last few minutes as Jesper stood in the aisle and gave his instructions to the students. They had an hour to get all of their bags up into their rooms before meeting back down in a conference room in the hotel lobby for lunch, an hour to eat, and then they would be climbing back onto the bus to drive down to the history museum, about twenty minutes away. 

Wylan climbed off of the bus when Jesper finished and stepped off himself, helping him open the swing doors on the outside of the bus where all of the bags were being kept. He was reaching in and grabbing out his own bag so it would be out of the way for the students, and when he leaned back out, the back of his head made contact with the edge of the swing door with a harsh thunk, pain immediately radiating out from the point of contact. 

He hissed, a hand flying up to cup the back of his head and hopefully rub out some of the sharp pain there. He heard a chuckle behind him, and turned to face them with a deep frown. Of course, it had been Jesper, who was doing a poor job of hiding his laughter at Wylan’s clumsiness. 

“Ha ha, yes, very funny,” Wylan snarked, rubbing his palm over the back of his head some more as he stepped up onto the curb, watching as all of the students and Nina and Inej climbed off of the bus and began grabbing their own bags. 

“It was,” Jesper said after he finally got his laughter under control, hands shoved into his pockets as they waited for everyone to get off of the bus. “You wait and watch them, I’m going to go and get all of the hotel key cards,” Jesper said, not waiting for Wylan to respond before he was turning away and dragging his wheeled suitcase behind him. Inej and Nina joined Wylan on the curb then, sharing stories from the drive as all of the students got their bags and formed their hotel room groups. There would be four students in a room, and Inej and Nina would be sharing a room, while Wylan would be with Jesper. At least he would have his own bed. 

Wylan did not have his own bed. 

Jesper and Wylan stood in the doorway of their shared hotel room, frozen just past the threshold as they both realized the lack of a second bed in the room. Instead of two full-sized beds in the room, there was a single full-sized bed, not even a queen. 

“There’s gotta be a mistake,” Wylan gaped at the bed, there was no way they would spend the next three nights sharing a bed like that. 

“I’ll go down to the front desk, there’s bound to be another room they can put us in,” Jesper nodded, leaving his suitcase next to Wylan and leaving the room again. Wylan didn’t even want to settle in or put anything down, there was no way they could use this room, and he was not about to sleep on the floor. There wasn’t even a couch, just an armchair and a desk and rolling chair tucked underneath it. 

There was not another room they could be put into. 

“They said all the rooms are booked for the rest of the weekend, so we’re stuck as is,” Jesper scrubbed a hand over his face, exasperated and frustrated. Wylan just pursed his lips before sighing and dragging his bag over to the desk. “What are you doing?” Jesper was still by the door, not having moved to do anything yet.

“Well, might as well just accept it. And I’m not sleeping on the floor,” Wylan shrugged, unzipping his bag on the table and pulling out his toiletry bag so he could freshen up a bit before they headed downstairs for lunch with the rest of the group.

“Well, neither am I,” Jesper huffed, stepping into the room proper and placing his bag on top of the low dresser and unzipping it. 

Wylan ignored what he was doing in favor of slipping into the bathroom with his toiletry bag and closing the door behind him. It was easy to fix up his red curls in the mirror, a little bit of curl cream on his fingers and some water emulsified together in his hands and ran through the strands. He even curled a few with his fingers, getting the curls to lie against his forehead the way he liked. 

Wylan left the bathroom once Jesper knocked on the door, a rapid, impatient tapping of his knuckles on the wood.

“Alright, alright,” Wylan yanked open the door, and Jesper almost fell over from where he had been leaning on it. It was a little shuffle for them to trade places without bumping into each other, and then Jesper closed the door behind himself without another word. Wylan used a spare shirt to dry his damp curls, fluffing them up in the reflection of the black tv screen. 

They didn’t talk much before leaving to go back downstairs to the lobby, a bit earlier than the students would be so they could make sure everything was running smoothly. It was, all of the food they had catered for the weekend had made it to the right place, all separated out for people to help themselves to. 

The four chaperones sat together at a table as the students all got their plates and sat in groups around the room, chatter slowly growing in volume but staying relatively tame. 

“Wait, they only gave you guys one bed in your room?” Nina cackled, hunching over her plate as she gasped for breath. Jesper had just grumbled to her and Inej about their less-than-stellar room situation. 

“Yes, and when I went back down to the desk, of course all of the other rooms were booked,” Jesper rolled his eyes and stabbed his fork into another piece of food angrily. Inej shot Wylan a look, and Wylan just pursed his lips and continued eating. 

Yes, it was annoying to now have to share a bed, but Wylan was trying not to linger on it anymore. Luckily, the conversation shifted quickly, onto various things, but mostly of Nina explaining her latest attempts of wooing one Matthias Helvar, someone she had been flirting with for the past year. They were great friends, but Matthias didn’t seem to be responsive to her advances, other than mild blushing and stuttering over his words. Wylan had tried to advise Nina to give him more time, and she was, but she still liked to talk about it with the rest of them. 

“I just don’t get it!” Nina bit angrily into a roll, ripping it apart with her teeth. Inej patted her gently on the shoulder in sympathy, she had her own situationship going on with the principal of the school they all worked at, she didn’t really know how to help Nina with her own relationship issues, or lack thereof. 

“He’s probably just intimidated by you,” Jesper laughed, nudging Nina in the arm. Nina just nudged him back, harder than he had to her, and it sent Jesper tipping to the side and straight into Wylan. Jesper tried stopping himself before he fell completely in his lap, but that just left him having to keep himself up with a hand, a hand that had come down and landed square on the top of Wylan’s thigh. 

Wylan tried not looking at the large hand on his leg, instead just clearing his throat and shifting his shoulder into Jesper’s, of which had been placed right in front of his as he had tipped over into Wylan’s space. 

“Get off me, already,” Wylan bumped him again, and Jesper did, gripping the table to be able to pull himself upright again and off of Wylan’s lap. There was a beat of silence, and then Nina was laughing again, and even Inej was giggling behind a hand on her mouth. Wylan frowned at his plate, trying to ignore the lingering heat on his leg from where Jesper’s hand had pressed into him. Why was he thinking so hard about the accidental touch from someone he didn’t like?

Jesper cleared his throat before standing, ignoring Nina’s mocking words and jabs at him as he stepped away from the table to be able to address the whole room of students. It was a flurry of movement from the hotel and back onto the bus and down the winding streets of the city before they got to the large history museum that was the first destination of their weekend away. 

With their large group signed in and having been given red paper bracelets, the students broke off into small groups to wander the museum as they pleased, there was no reason to breathe down their necks the entire weekend. Wylan hoped the students appreciated it, being treated like adults to make their own choices and spend their time how they wanted. He would’ve appreciated it when he was younger. Wylan walked into a room full of incredibly old-looking ceramic pieces, but he didn’t know what era it was from. The sign above the open archway to the room probably said it, but he had become so used to not bothering to try and read them that he didn’t look before walking in. 

Jesper was standing in front of a large glazed vase, it was an off-white and black in color, and was placed onto a pedestal, glass surrounding the whole piece. 

“What is this?” Wylan asked, stepping up next to him. If Jesper was surprised to see him, he didn’t show it, instead he just fiddled with the hem of his sleeve and nodded at the art piece. 

“A depiction of Sankta Neyar, and her battle against Sankt Kho and his clockwork soldiers,” Jesper gestured at it, and Wylan looked at the figures drawn on the side of the vase. He had never really gotten into the history of the Saints, but he knew the basics of the story. “The forging of the Neshyenyer, the blade so sharp it could cut through shadow, and how she fought for three days and nights to keep her people safe,” Jesper looked like he wanted to keep going, but forced himself to stop before talking for the next hour straight. Wylan may not have liked the man all that much, but he couldn’t lie and say his voice wasn’t… soothing. He’d never admit it, however. 

“Do you have a favorite point in history that you like to talk about?” Wylan said, a bit hesitant. Jesper hadn’t been completely aggravating like he usually was, but he didn’t know why. Was it school, being there and with the stresses of teaching that made them so unpleasant to each other? Maybe because Jesper was somewhere he knew a lot about, or something like that. Wylan couldn’t place it, but didn’t question it. 

“If you asked me that five years ago, I would’ve laughed and said Sankt Emerens, Patron Saint of Brewers,” Jesper looked over at Wylan, a smirk tugging at his lips. Wylan just rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, unamused. 

“Sankt Emerens died in a grain silo, trying to drive out rats,” Wylan retorted with a shake of his head, and Jesper laughed, nodding. Wylan tried to remember if he had ever heard the man laugh genuinely, and not because he was mocking Wylan for something. He didn’t think he had. 

“So, you know your history, then,” Jesper, just like that, was back to mocking, his words patronizing and just a bit infuriating. Wylan just pressed his lips into a thin line to keep him from saying something he’d regret later. 

“And if someone asked you, now?” Wylan said instead, ignoring Jesper’s jabbing comment and trying to remain at least a bit polite. He was on thin ice already, and was pushing it, and it was still only the first day. 

“The history of blacksmithing,” Jesper sighed and nodded, actually trying to be genuine about it. Wylan hadn’t expected that to be his answer, but Jesper didn’t seem willing to elaborate on the answer. Wylan didn’t push. 

“Wouldn’t have thought of you as being big into blacksmithing,” Wylan said instead, following as Jesper started wandering to another glassed-up piece of art, something else from Shu Han that Wylan vaguely recognized. 

“So you’ve thought of me? Late at night? What was I wearing?” Jesper shot over his shoulder, and Wylan stopped in his tracks, cheeks red and mouth spluttering. That was not what he had meant in the slightest, but from Jesper’s grin, he knew he knew that, too. 

“You wish, Fahey,” Wylan pointedly tugged down on the bottom hem of his sweater vest and started walking with more purpose, soon passing by Jesper and continuing into the next large room. There were a few groups of students around, but he didn’t see Inej or Nina, but that was fine. There were plenty of things to look at, and he had no issue doing it by himself. 

~🏺🧬🎭~

The rest of the time at the museum was unremarkable, other than all of the amazing artful and cultural pieces that they got to look at and learn about. Wylan had a great time looking around, and had forgotten that he was there as a chaperone multiple times, instead losing himself in the incredibly old pieces of history behind panes of glass. 

They spent several hours wandering around the museum, the students talking about their favorite sections and pieces and anything else. There had not been any assignments given for the trip, there did not seem to be a point in dampening the fun by forcing them to fill out worksheets or create presentations. Jesper did, however, ask a few people what their favorite things to see had been once they got back onto the bus, allowing anyone to share their thoughts as they waited for everyone to board the bus and for a final headcount to be taken.

Nina had said her favorite piece was of a beautiful, large tapestry depicting Sankta Alina’s destruction of the Shadow Fold. Inej had also shared about her favorite things, some older versions of things from the Suli people, pieces of clothing and photographs of the caravans. A few other students shared their favorite things from the museum, and then they were driving back to the hotel to have a late dinner and settle in for the night.

There was also apparently a pool and hot tub in the hotel as well, and with the students being given permission to use it, Wylan knew where he and the rest of his colleagues would probably be required to be for the night. Wylan didn’t swim, but he could at least make sure no one ran around the pool’s edge. 

He didn’t even bother packing anything to swim in, so he just stripped off his thick sweater vest and sat on a lounging chair in the pool room with his phone and some earbuds, planning on catching up on some emails and hopefully an email from his substitutes for that day. He could see Nina and Inej relaxing in the hottub. 

Jesper came down and sat in the chair next to him, swim trunks on and a graphic t-shirt having replaced his earlier button up and waistcoat. It was loud in the pool room, voices echoing off the walls and ceiling as the chlorinated water sloshed around the pool’s edges. He could actually see most of his tattoo peeking out from under his shirt sleeve. It appeared to be a winding tree branch, covered in small, delicate blossoms, but Wylan couldn’t be sure what kind.

“Listening to something good, I hope, if you’re not planning on swimming,” Jesper sighed and leaned back in his chair, hands tucked behind his head and ankles crossed. Wylan perked up and pulled out an earbud, looking at him. Jesper still had his eyes on the various students swimming and walking around the pool room, but spared a glance at Wylan for a moment. 

“Just my emails,” Wylan looked back out at the students himself, not returning to listening to his emails, yet. 

“Listening to emails?” Jesper raised a brow, it didn’t seem very fun to him. 

“Making sure my substitutes didn’t have any issues,” Wylan raised his phone up a little as an answer, he knew that Jesper knew about his dyslexia. Everyone in the school knew about it, even his students. Wylan had gone into the teaching world with his disability out in the open, and Kaz Brekker had given him a chance when other schools hadn’t. 

“Ever the dedicated teacher, aren’t you, Hendriks?” Jesper said it like it was a bad thing, and Wylan frowned, Jesper cared a lot about his own classes and students, so he didn’t understand what he was getting at. 

“You say that like you're not the one to plan and organize this trip every year,” Wylan’s brows crinkled. Jesper shrugged, uncrossing his ankles and crossing them again the other way. 

“Just surprised to see you doing it instead of swimming, or something,” Jesper continued, and Wylan couldn’t decide if he was genuinely asking, or trying to rile him up again. Wylan didn’t understand him, and couldn’t get how anyone could. 

“I don’t swim,” Wylan stated simply, crossing his arms over his chest. He swore he could see Jesper mockingly mouthing his words back from the corner of his eye. He snapped his head to glare at him, and Jesper grinned stupidly. “What is your problem?”

“You just always seem to have a stick up your ass,” Jesper shrugged, unperturbed from Wylan’s icy glare. He kept his eyes out over the large pool room and all of the swimming students. 

“How do you mean?” Wylan asked slowly, words pushed out from behind gritted teeth. Jesper knew nothing about him. 

“No swimming, I never hear you talk about anything other than school and chemistry and orchestra, you never talk about anything that doesn’t have to do with school,” Jesper started ticking the things off on his fingers before just waving his hands around in the air. 

“Because we only talk at school,” Wylan retorted, fully removing his earbuds and snapping them back into their case and back into his pocket, email forgotten. They were grown adults, why did every conversation they have dissolve into meaningless bickering? It was tiring, but Wylan couldn’t just let it slide, for some reason, he needed to prove himself to Jesper, that he wasn’t just some stuck-up teacher who thought he was better than everyone else. Wylan didn’t want to be like his father. 

“Like that ever stopped me, or Nina, or Inej from talking about other things,” Jesper swung his feet off of the lounger and to the floor in between their chairs, his elbows coming down to rest on his knees, hands clasped together in the empty space between. Wylan bit his lip and looked at Jesper’s tightened face, before looking back out at the room. The excuse of watching over the students buffering his lack of maintaining eye contact. 

“You know nothing about it,” Wylan said coldly, not saying that he didn’t really have a life outside of school, his only friends were those he worked with. After school, he just went back to his one bedroom apartment, only a few plants and his cat there to keep him company, and didn’t really do anything else with his time. Jesper was boisterous and loud, made friends with seemingly everyone, and probably went out on Friday nights and had fun. He wouldn’t understand. 

“Because you never allow anyone to know anything about it,” Jesper just kept pushing, and pushing, and Wylan couldn’t understand why he cared so much. Why did Jesper care to know him? He was pretty sure Jesper hated him, and bickered with him and flirted with him for shits and giggles. 

“Whatever, I’m not doing this,” Wylan muttered, climbing from his seat and walking out of the pool room. The hallway was instantly quieter, and Wylan let out a long breath, briefly closing his eyes and allowing the silence to drift over him. He hadn’t realized how overwhelming the echo chamber that was the pool room had become for him. 

He continued down the hall and back into the lobby, the liminal space oddly quiet, with no one but a person behind the front desk in the room. He would’ve expected more people there, or even his own students, but they all seemed to either be already at the pool, or up in their hotel rooms. He spotted the beautiful grand piano in the corner of the lobby, tucked behind some potted plants and a pillar. He hadn’t even seen it before now. He didn’t move to play it. 

Instead, Wylan sat on a couch in the lobby, pulled out his headphones and his phone again, and picked up where he had left off on his emails. His substitutes had had no issues with both his chemistry and orchestra classes, the students had been well-behaved and had diligently done their work. He had left simple chemistry worksheets for them to do together as they pleased, and had informed his orchestra classes to work on the pieces for the winter concert in their individual sections. 

How was he supposed to get through another two and a half days of this?

After making sure all of the students were back into their hotel rooms that night, Jesper and Wylan got ready for bed themselves, a tense silence casted over the room. Wylan brushed his teeth and washed his face in the bathroom after Jesper had come back out, already changed into his pajamas of flannel pants and a random shirt. 

Jesper was already laying in bed when Wylan emerged again, under the covers and lying on his back. Wylan sighed and put away his things, Jesper was taking up a little bit more than half of the bed, and it wasn’t a large bed to begin with. Wylan walked around to the open side of the bed, and shuffled in, making sure that they didn’t touch as he extended out his legs and covered them with the duvet again. He was right on the edge of the mattress, even lying on his side and trying to take up as little space as possible. 

“You're really not making this easy on me, you know,” Wylan huffed, pillowing his head on folded hands, for his actual pillow was not all that comfortable. Apparently, the hotel could afford a grand piano but not decent pillows. 

“Shut up, I'm sleeping,” Jesper mumbled back, and Wylan let out a disbelieving noise, half shifting back on his shoulder to peer at the man over his shoulder. Jesper had turned onto his side to face away from Wylan, ignoring him. It did give Wylan a bit more room to shift back onto the bed some more, so he didn’t say anything in return. 

Wylan set an alarm for the morning and closed his eyes, hoping to just get through the next few days peacefully. 

~🏺🧬🎭~

When Wylan woke up the next morning, it wasn’t to the alarm. The sun was still barely rising in the sky past the closed curtains, and when Wylan tried to move, he found himself trapped. He was still on his side like when he had fallen asleep, but there was something warm and heavy around his middle and keeping him stuck on the bed. 

Looking down at himself, Wylan saw a long, dark arm wrapped around his waist, hand pressed into his stomach and gripping at his shirt a bit. It was Jesper, of course, who had rolled over in his sleep and had strung an arm over Wylan’s body in the middle of the night. Wylan could feel his nose pressed up lightly to the back of his neck, lightly brushing at his red curls and breathing into his skin. 

Alright, this was fine. He just needed to move out of Jesper’s hold before the man could wake up and see what had happened. It would save them both from the embarrassment. Wylan tried not to think about how grounding and secure the arm around his waist felt. He told himself he was just touch-starved and it wasn’t anything personal. Jesper had grabbed him in the middle of the night searching for warmth, not because he wanted Wylan, or because he liked him. Jesper didn’t like him. 

Wylan shuffled as close to the edge of the bed as he could, one hand closing around Jesper’s wrist and prying it off of his middle. Jesper was strong, however, even in his sleep, and his fist curled tighter around the fabric of Wylan’s shirt, his nose nuzzling deeper into his hair. Wylan ignored the heat crawling onto his cheeks and down his neck, instead just grasping onto Jesper’s wrist again and tugging it away from his body. 

He must have tugged a bit too harshly, because then Jesper was inhaling abruptly through his nose, a sure sign of waking up. Jesper muttered something and then his hand was detaching from Wylan’s shirt. He was there, and then suddenly he wasn’t, body completely removed from his and out of the bed entirely. 

Wylan shuffled out of the bed and onto his feet, stealing a glance at the man behind him. Jesper had slung the arm that had been around Wylan, over his eyes, like he couldn’t bear looking at Wylan after realizing that he had cuddled him in his sleep. Wylan just cleared his throat a little and walked to the bathroom, mumbling out something about hotel breakfast being available soon. Jesper just grunted back at him, not even a word formed from the sound. 

They didn’t speak as they got dressed and walked down to the lobby for breakfast, each dressing cups of coffee as much or as little as they liked. Wylan shook a single sugar packet into his mug, while Jesper didn’t even seem to be counting how many packets of sugar and creams he was upending into his mug. They met with a tired-looking Nina and thoroughly-awake Inej, already tucked into their plates and their own cups of coffee. 

“You look as miserable as I feel,” Nina said to Jesper from over her plate of waffles, and Jesper just raised his eyebrows and nodded. 

“Didn’t…. Uh, sleep the best,” Jesper provided, and Wylan shoved a bite of toast into his mouth before he said something. They hadn’t acknowledged the accidental cuddling at all, and he was not about to be the one to bring it up, and especially not in front of his colleagues.

“Excited for the science center, Wylan?” Inej asked, and Wylan nodded, covering his mouth with a hand as he swallowed and spoke. 

“Yeah, I haven’t been since I was in high school,” he said, and he and Inej talked a bit longer about it all, what exhibits they remembered from childhood, what they hoped to see there, what new things may have been added over the years. 

“I feel outnumbered here, all of you are STEM people,” Jesper stabbed at a piece of egg, for even Nina had jumped into their conversation about the science center. Poor Jesper, who taught history and literature, was indeed the odd one out, compared to Wylan and Inej and Nina’s chemistry, mathematics, and biology, respectively. 

“Oh, you’re fine!” Nina swatted him on the arm lightly. “You had the museum yesterday and the play tomorrow, that’s like your bread and butter,” Nina used it as reasoning for him to not be upset about it, and Wylan chuckled. Jesper just stabbed another piece of scrambled egg and washed it down with his pale coffee. 

~🏺🧬🎭~

Wylan had forgotten just how much he loved the science center. It was like he was seeing it for the first time all over again, walking in through the front doors, immediately captivated by the tall, arching ceilings and the wonderfully-made sculptures hanging down over them. There were a handful of them, large sculptures with crossing, shining rings and clusters of metal in the center, an artistic representation of the atom. 

Wylan had to spur himself from looking around with a dropped jaw in favor of making sure all of the students were accounted for and that everyone got checked in correctly. He could see Jesper at the front of the large group, talking to the person at the front desk, his head and shoulders standing several inches taller than all of their high school students. It was always easy to spot Jesper in a crowd, if not just because of his height, but also for the clothes he wore, always of bright colors and clashing patterns. 

Today, Jesper was wearing a blue waistcoat covered in gold stars, his orange pants with a perfectly-pressed crease down the front, making his long legs appear even longer. Wylan could even spot Jesper’s gold earrings from where he was standing, about halfway back through the group of teenagers, only some shorter than him. Wylan was wearing another button up and vest combo, all earthy brown and green and cream in color. Nina was wearing a beautiful deep red dress, and Inej had opted for a deep green sweater dress and striking black boots. Wylan was sometimes taken aback at how stunning his colleagues–friends–were. 

Wylan found Jesper again later in the actual science center proper at a giant plasma globe, standing in front of it with a handful of students, all pressing their fingers and palms onto the curved glass to get the streams of plasma to connect to them. 

“Mr. Hendriks!” One of his students had spotted him, moving to the side to give him space to come closer to the large plasma globe. “You have one of these in your classroom, don’t you?”

“I do, I should turn it on more often, shouldn’t I?” Wylan smiled lightly in thanks, slotting in between the teenager and Jesper, pressing the tip of his pointer finger onto the glass. 

“You have one of these?” Jesper mused, mouth pulled up into a smirk as he flattened his whole palm onto the glass, the side of his thumb brushing against Wylan’s own hand. Wylan hummed and nodded, adding all of his fingertips onto the glass, looking at the way the plasma beams split between his fingers and Jesper’s hand. 

“Yeah, it’s on a shelf by my desk, but I haven’t brought it down for the students in a while,” Wylan shrugged, he’d need to incorporate some more fun things into his routine to keep his students engaged and excited about science. Jesper grinned and moved his hand on the glass, up and down and side to side to make the beams move around on the other side of the glass. 

“You should, they love stuff like that,” Jesper agreed, finally pulling his hand off and stepping back to allow another student to take his place. Wylan did as well, watching the group of students surround the giant plasma ball and listening to their sounds of excitement. 

“I’m heading over to that constellation planetarium show, it starts in ten minutes,” Wylan shuffled backwards a bit, he had been heading over there when the plasma ball had distracted him. Jesper hummed, shoving his hands in his pockets as he spun on a heel and followed along with Wylan down the hallway. 

“Sounds cool, should finish up in time for lunch afterwards,” Jesper shrugged, and Wylan had to keep himself from bringing up the easiness of their conversation. He couldn’t understand him, and that was maybe why he didn’t like him. Jesper Fahey confused him, so he was defensive. 

They sat next to each other in the planetarium show, surrounded by many of the students with them, along with some other patrons, not a part of their school’s group. It was easy to lean his head back and watch the stars shift around on the ceiling and listen to the soothing voice of the narrator, talking about the formation of galaxies and stars and how so many stars have already died but their light still reaches the planet now, millions and billions of light years away. Wylan was an amateur space-enthusiast, so there was still plenty for him to learn. 

Jesper was drumming on the shared armrest between them, fingers thumping on the hard plastic over and over in ever-changing patterns. Wylan sighed a couple times over the thirty minute presentation, but Jesper either didn’t pick up on it, or did, and chose to ignore him anyways. It wasn’t really all that big of a deal, and honestly, Wylan almost found it comforting, little, rhythmic hits on the armrest, and sometimes he could name the songs Jesper was drumming with his fingers. 

Wylan stretched his arms above his head after the presentation, blinking his eyes as they readjusted to the bright, warm light of the room after being in darkness for so long. 

“I don’t know how people can remember all of those star names, it's just a bunch of random numbers and letters shoved together,” Jesper stretched as well, bending over to each side. Wylan hummed, he hadn’t paid too much attention to the star names, he was too distracted by the moving constellations and galaxies and the light sound of Jesper drumming on the armrest throughout the whole thing. 

“Me neither, but I guess it’s not too different from a bunch of chemical formulas and compositions,” Wylan agreed, he had a billion and one things memorized and stored away in his brain, what was a few more?

“True,” Jesper breathed, and they made their way down to the cafe to meet with the rest of the students for lunch. Wylan got caught up talking to a few students from his orchestra class about the planetarium presentation, about their favorite parts and galaxies and then the impending collision between their galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy. It wasn’t something that would happen any time soon, but the two galaxies were slowly moving towards one another, and there hadn’t been any mention of it in the presentation, but the conversation had somehow drifted there. 

“Wait, you’re telling me in, like, five billion years, our galaxy is going to collide with another one?” Jesper said over his shoulder, and Wylan flinched just a little, not having heard his approach. 

“Four, actually,” Wylan nodded and turned to include Jesper into their small circle of people. They were all standing in the lobby of the cafe, waiting their turn to get to the front of the line to get lunch. 

“Damn,” Jesper whistled, rocking back on his heels and forward again. Wylan chuckled a little, because yeah, damn. There wasn’t much else that could be said about it. Jesper asked the students about it as they shuffled forward in line, and Wylan listened, because they knew a lot more than he did on the subject.

~🏺🧬🎭~

“Sorry, about what I said yesterday,” Jesper said into the darkness of their hotel room. They were both lying on their backs, not touching, but Wylan could feel the warmth of his arm next to his. “It was uncalled for.”

Wylan pursed his lips, eyes still trained on the ceiling, and he knew Jesper was looking there, too. It was odd, to be having this conversation in the dark, in a bed, next to each other. Far more intimate than what was warranted for them. 

“Thanks, but you weren’t entirely wrong,” Wylan sighed, finally. Wylan didn’t talk to others at work about anything other than work, so he couldn’t really blame Jesper for calling him out on it. He thought he didn’t like Jesper because of how cocky he was, and how seemingly inconsiderate, but he wondered if Jesper didn’t like him because of this, because Wylan didn’t make it easy to make friends. “I… have a hard time opening up to people, I guess. Explains my lack of social life.”

“I’m not doing much better, I suppose, I just sit in my pajamas and grade papers and homework all night over a glass of wine,” there was a shuffling noise as Jesper turned his head on the pillow to look at him, and Wylan turned his head to face him, too. It was hard to see the features of his face, but the stark grayness of his eyes was bright from the bit of moonlight seeping in from the thin curtains. He expected Jesper to say he went out for drinks with friends, went and did things with people. Jesper was far more charismatic, more popular, he couldn’t imagine Jesper sitting alone at home by himself every night.

“That’s all I do, too. Just cuddle with my cat and find music compositions to use and look at experiment data,” Wylan smiled a little, he was missing his cat, but his mother was watching him at her house, so he knew the fluffy cat was probably being spoiled to the nines, right now. 

“You have a cat?” Jesper’s mouth fell open, and Wylan nodded against his own scratchy pillow.

“Mmhmm, his name is Tortellini,” Wylan provided. Jesper laughed, sharp and loud, like he hadn’t anticipated doing it.

“Lemme guess, he’s an orange cat, matches your hair,” Jesper pulled at the blankets a little to free his hand, he was an animated talker, even if they were in bed and settling down to sleep. 

“No, he’s a brown tuxedo, actually,” Wylan giggled, rolling onto his side entirely to face Jesper. Jesper followed suit, and then they were just lying there, facing each other, talking about Wylan’s cat and their lack of social lives.

“So dapper,” Jesper mused, and Wylan had to tear himself away from staring at his perfectly-shaped lips. Why was he thinking about Jesper’s lips? “Maybe it’d be less boring to grade papers with someone else, instead of drinking a bottle of wine all alone.”

“Yeah? That’d be nice, I think,” Wylan chewed on his lip, was he really turning from hating the man to making plans to grade student work together? What had this long-weekend trip turned into? The conversation faded as they agreed they should try and get some sleep, they had an early wake-up the next morning to tour around the nearby university, and then the play afterwards that evening. The busiest day, by far, and the last full one. 

~🏺🧬🎭~

It was cold that morning as they piled into the bus, the sun barely above the horizon and their breaths visible in the air. Wylan hadn’t brought proper winter gear for it, so he had to keep his hands shoved into his coat pockets and succumbed to a cold nose and cold ears. He knew they would be red as tomatoes by the end of the morning, but there was only so much he could do.

“Did you not bring a hat?” Jesper asked, stepping up next to him as they waited for all of the students and Nina and Inej to get off of the bus in front of the university entrance. 

“No, I wasn’t expecting it to frost over like this,” Wylan hunched his shoulders up to attempt to cover his ears. It was fine, yes, they would be outside a lot, walking between buildings, but the time inside would be enough to defrost him.

“Here,” Jesper was wearing both a dark green beanie and a plaid scarf, and Wylan looked over to see the man unwinding the scarf from around his neck.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t–”

“Please, I’m worried your ears will fall off otherwise,” Jesper almost scoffed, forcing the scarf around Wylan’s shoulders. Wylan blushed even harder than what the cold was doing to his cheeks, pulling his hands from his pockets and tugging the scarf up and around his ears the best he could. 

“Thank you,” Wylan said softly, trying not to look at him as Inej and Nina made their way off of the bus last, making sure everyone else got off in front of them. Neither of them said anything about the scarf exchange as they walked up, and Wylan wondered if they even knew it was actually Jesper’s. Jesper just nodded at him with a close-lipped smile, shoving his beanie further down over his ears and clearing his throat to greet Nina and Inej. 

They split up into smaller groups for the tour, only into two groups since they had a limited number of tour guides available, and there were not all that many students on the trip anyways. Wylan ended up with Nina, the two of them lingering at the back of the group to make sure no one got left behind. Besides, they had both gone to the school for their degrees, so they didn’t need to really pay much attention to it. 

“So, how’s it been, sharing a room with Jesper?” Nina asked, absentmindedly snacking on chex-mix from a bag in her pocket. 

“Fine,” Wylan sighed out, adjusting the thick scarf around his neck. It smelled like him, and he had to refrain from just upright shoving his nose into the fabric to sniff it. He might be able to pass it off as trying to keep his face warm, but just the thought of doing it made his face heat up. He decided he definitely wouldn’t tell her about how Jesper had accidentally cuddled him the first night, or how he had woken up that morning with his own arm thrown over the man’s stomach and his face shoved into Jesper’s shoulder. Especially not with so many students within hearing distance. 

“You two have been getting along better since we got here, you know…” Nina said suggestively, and Wylan spluttered, even pulling his bare hands out of his pockets to wave them around in front of him.

“Oh! No, nonono,” Wylan said quickly, trying to dissuade any thoughts Nina had on the subject, even if the notion did something to his brain chemistry. He refused to think any further into it, physically shaking his head to jostle the thoughts from his mind. 

“Alright, alright, I was just curious,” Nina was still smiling, though, so he knew she didn’t entirely believe him that nothing had happened, but at least she wasn’t pushing on the matter. “At least you haven’t torn each other’s faces off, that conversation at the pool the other night seemed heated.”

“Yeah, that,” Wylan pressed his lips together and had to close his eyes for a moment, it had been so unprofessional to argue like that in front of the students. “We already resolved that, it's fine.”

“Good. I just want you to be happy, you know?” Nina wrapped one arm around his shoulder, they were just about the same height, so she had to lift up her own shoulder a bit to get her arm to sit right. “You don’t have to be friends with him, but at least you’re not fighting all the time anymore.”

“Right, yeah,” Wylan agreed. He wasn’t sure if he and Jesper were friends now, but at least they didn’t seem to hate each other as much anymore. He wasn’t sure if he had ever really hated Jesper, he just found some of the things he did incredibly annoying. But he also had never really given himself the chance to get to know him better, and neither had Jesper. Maybe they could work on that more after this trip. “How’s it been with Inej, then?” He knew they hung out a lot outside of school hours as it was, so it was probably just like another fun weekend together. 

“Oh, great!” Nina beamed, and proceeded to go on about the face masks they had done the night previous and the movie they had watched on Inej’s laptop before bed and how they had lovingly cuddled up together under the blankets. Wylan was a bit envious of the easy-going friendship, but just nodded and kept up with it all anyways. 

They had lunch at a restaurant near the university, one where they had called ahead for the large party before the trip had even begun to make sure they could get everyone fed. The four teachers sat at a table together, picking from each other’s plates a little and reminiscing on their times at school. Inej and Jesper had gone to different universities outside of the city, and Nina and Wylan hadn’t actually met while in school since they were a year apart and had never crossed paths, so they had a lot to share. 

Jesper talked about how he couldn’t decide what subject to specialize in, and that’s how he had ended up doing both history and literature instead of just one over the other. Wylan had been in a similar situation, and had instead overloaded his course schedule to be able to do both music education and chemistry, but he didn’t regret it for a second. Nina and Inej had both competed in their respective sports of volleyball and gymnastics all throughout their lives, and the coaching positions had been open when they joined their small-time high school, so they had both fallen into the responsibility of running them. 

They all realized that they mostly spent their nights alone, grading student work and eating alone on their couches, and agreed to start a rotating schedule of getting together to grade instead, with plans to include Matthias and Kaz, if they wanted. Kaz didn’t technically have student work to grade, but they all knew the man took far too much work home with him every day. 

The group meandered back to the bus afterwards, full from lunch and tired from walking around all morning. They had quite a few hours until the play that evening, so the students had lots of free time to nap or swim or hang out, the only rule was to not be too loud and to stay inside the hotel. Wylan decided to take a nap himself for a bit, and Jesper talked about going to the pool, and he hadn’t caught what Inej and Nina talked about doing, his brain was turning off by the time he made it to the elevator to go up to his room. 

Jesper was already in there when he opened the door, inside the bathroom but he hadn’t bothered closing the door as he changed into his swim trunks. 

“Oh! Sorry,” Wylan snapped a hand up to block his gaze from seeing into the bathroom as he walked past and further into the hotel room, face heated and searing red, even though he hadn’t seen anything more than Jesper’s lanky legs.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had someone look at me and say sorry before, thanks,” Jesper emerged from the bathroom, voice dripping with sarcasm. Wylan peeked out from behind his hands, seeing Jesper now in his swim trunks and a t-shirt. He dropped his hands, but almost brought them up again to hide the redness in his cheeks. Jesper was grinning hard, lips pulled taut and teeth showing as he tried not to laugh. 

“Sorry– uh, I mean,” Wylan clenched his hands into fists to stop them from doing something else and abruptly turned towards the bed. “I was going to rest, for a bit, so I’ll just… be here.” He began toeing off his shoes, then, pulling Jesper’s scarf from around his neck and unzipping his jacket. 

“Alright,” Jesper said easily, but Wylan could still hear the chuckle in his voice. He didn’t look at him as Jesper slipped on his slides and grabbed something from the table, presumably his phone or room keycard. “I’ll be back up before we have to wrangle everyone for the play, tonight.”

Wylan hummed, back still to Jesper, and listened to the man open and close the hotel room door behind him. As soon as he was gone, Wylan spun around and collapsed back onto the bed, his back bouncing a bit on the mattress before settling. He didn’t even bother moving up any further onto the bed, he just laid there with his legs dangling off the edge and closed his eyes. 

Wylan woke up a bit later to the room’s door closing, and he blinked open his eyes and looked up to see Jesper standing in the doorway, rubbing a towel over his shoulders. 

“Did you sleep like that?” Jesper nodded at his legs, half asleep from the way he had left them hanging off the bed. Wylan hummed an affirmative and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and checking his phone for the time. They still had over an hour before the bus would be back to pick them up and take them across town to the theater, but Wylan wouldn’t allow himself to fall back asleep. 

“How was the pool?” His voice was a bit groggy-sounding from his nap, and he could feel where a few of his curls were stuck to his face. He got up and stretched, waiting for Jesper to change again in the bathroom so he could use the mirror to fix his hair. 

“Wet,” Jesper called from the bathroom, and Wylan laughed, loud and sharp because he had not been expecting that answer, even though with Jesper, he probably should have. 

“I’d hope so,” Wylan said as he brushed past Jesper and into the bathroom, getting his hands wet from the tap and fussing with his curls. Jesper came back in and leaned against the doorframe, watching as Wylan tried to make his hair a bit more presentable. 

“You missed a spot, here,” Jesper pressed off of the door jam and gestured to the back of his head, and Wylan turned in the mirror to try and see where he was pointing to. He obviously didn’t grab the right spot, because then Jesper was reaching around him and wetting his own fingers with some water and reaching up to do it himself. 

Wylan held still, watching Jesper’s face grow concentrated as his fingers pinched at a spot on the back of his head. Wylan saw as Jesper twirled some of his red hair around his fingers, reforming the curl and helping it hold its shape again. He could almost feel the heat radiating off of him at his back, and suddenly it was incredibly hard to breathe in the small hotel bathroom. 

Jesper, with a final adjustment to the curls at the back of his head, stepped back from Wylan, clearing his throat a little. 

“Thanks,” Wylan whispered, their eyes meeting in the mirror for a few moments before Wylan looked away. Had his gray eyes always been so piercing? Jesper nodded and mumbled a you’re welcome and backed out of the bathroom again. Wylan gave himself a few extra moments to suck in a breath before leaving the bathroom himself to pull out his smarter clothes for the play. 

It wasn’t necessarily required for them to dress in a specific way to the theater, not the one they were going to, but Wylan had adopted the habit when he was young and attended with his parents, and it had stuck, even into adulthood. 

Jesper began telling a few stories of his time down at the pool, of the games the students had played and how he and Inej had yelled across the pool to tell some kids not to run at the same exact time. Wylan nodded and followed along, participating as well as he could as they got dressed. Wylan was starting to feel a bit overdressed, but one could never be overdressed in the company of Jesper Fahey, who wore the biggest and brightest pieces of clothing one could even imagine putting together. Wylan had settled on a matching navy pants and jacket, with a simple button down shirt and loafers. He used to wear ties, but hated the tight feeling on his neck, and had quickly ditched wearing them once he realized he could.

Jesper was in the loudest print shirt he had ever seen, but the man somehow made it work. His pants were a bright pink, pulling from the small pink flowers in his shirt and making them stand out all the more with it. Wylan sat on the edge of the bed to slide on his shoes as Jesper fiddled with his shirt cuffs, fingers fiddling with the small buttons and trying to get them to cooperate. 

“Come here, let me,” Wylan reached his hands up for Jesper’s wrist, and the man stepped closer, one knee almost in between Wylan’s as he kept his arm outstretched. Wylan did his best not to touch Jesper’s hand as he fiddled with the tiny button, but the edge of his pinky ended up brushing along the long plane of Jesper’s palm as he got the button to pop through the buttonhole. “Need the other one, too?” Wylan let go and reached for the other hand, not looking up at Jesper’s face as he did it, instead keeping his gaze fixed on a faraway spot somewhere between Jesper’s other hand and the wall in front of him. Jesper wordlessly switched hands, giving his other wrist to Wylan to button his cuff. 

The room grew stiff with tension as Wylan worked at the other cuff, and he looked at the way Jesper was holding himself, still as a statue, other than the almost-constant movement of his free hand at his side. Wylan thought he looked almost… nervous. He had never once in his life seen Jesper Fahey look nervous. 

“Thank you, Wylan,” Jesper said once Wylan had dropped his other wrist, leaning back on his hands on the bed to create a bit of space between them. Jesper stepped back as well, adjusting his sleeves so they sat right on his arms. Wylan nodded, pushing back a few curls from hanging in his face. He felt a drop of sweat drip down from his hairline and used the back of his hand to wipe it away. 

“We should probably go downstairs,” Wylan said instead, standing up after making sure his shoes were on and his socks pulled up properly. 

“Right,” Jesper gathered his own coat and they left the room, walking down the echoing hallway and into the elevator like nothing had even happened. Jesper immediately just returned to drumming his hands on his thighs and telling a story about what his students had done the week previous when they acted out a scene from Hamlet. 

“Mr. Hendriks!” His first chair violist and a few others from his orchestra class bounded up to them as soon as he and Jesper had stepped out of the elevator, their eyes wide and smiles big with excitement.

“What is it, Laney?” Wylan asked, looking around a bit just to make sure it wasn’t an emergency. He had never been the best with reading faces. 

“Will you play the piano for us? There’s one in the lobby,” Laney continued, obviously being the spokesperson for the group of teens in front of him, the others nodding along. 

“Please?” Charlotte, a cello player, chimed in, hands clasped in front of her like she needed to ask extra nicely. Wylan’s mouth dropped open but nothing came out, before it snapped shut again and he looked up at Jesper next to him, who had been watching in rapt amusement. 

“How long do we have until the bus comes around?” He asked, maybe he could squeeze in a few songs before the bus came. Jesper hummed and looked at his phone before sliding it back into his pocket. 

“A little over twenty minutes, plenty of time,” Jesper nodded at them all to go towards the piano, nestled behind some couches and armchairs in the lobby. Wylan sat at the bench and raised the fallboard, dragging his fingers over the porcelain keys before playing a quick scale to check the tuning. It sounded fine, fine enough for his casual playing as they waited for the bus. 

Even from just the simple scale, the entire lobby quietened, the sound of music always carrying an air of magic that made Wylan love it so much. A few more students gathered closer, piled onto couches and armrests and leaning against pillars. With one last deep breath, Wylan pressed down on the keys again, allowing the sound of music to fill him and direct his movement.

He played a song he knew like the back of his own hand, one he didn’t even need to consciously think about to play anymore. It was easy to lose himself in it, foot working at the pedals near the floor and fingers stretching to hit all of the right keys. He couldn’t remember the last time he had just played to play like this, not for class or for any other reason than just because he wanted to. 

He sat for a long moment after the song finished, eyes still shut and fingers still pressed down on the last chord. It was so silent, he could hear a pin drop. Wylan opened his eyes, blinking rapidly as the world narrowed back in to the hotel and the lobby and the piano he was sitting at surrounded by students and Jesper and Inej and Nina, who had both shown up sometime in the middle of his playing. 

“Wow,” Jesper was the first to talk, seemingly unable to let the silence go on for any longer. Wylan peered up at him. Jesper was leaning on the pillar to the side of the piano, hands shoved into his trouser pockets and legs crossed at the ankle. Wylan couldn’t read the expression on his face, his eyebrows were raised and there was something swirling in his gray eyes. “Play some more, we still have time.”

Wylan looked around at the rest of the lobby, and all of the students just nodded and Nina clapped her hands a little. Inej smiled at him, her long hair pulled back into a braid. Wylan just nodded back at them all and returned his gaze to the keys in front of him. He started another song, one with a completely different atmosphere to the previous one, this one far more upbeat and sharp. 

It filled the room with a buzzing energy, he could feel tingling in his fingertips as they moved along the piano, moving with a mind of their own and pressing exactly where they needed to go. He kept the notes short and sharp this time instead of soft and drawn out, pushing through the song with a posture his mother would have been proud of. 

He kept going. Every time he finished a song, he would look back up and out at the lobby, seeing more and more people around until he was sure every single student and even some other hotel guests crowded in the lobby to listen. He swore he even saw the hotel manager standing close to listen. All the while, Jesper was right there, leant against a pillar only a few feet away, his own eyes never leaving Wylan’s form or his hands on the keys. 

“Oh, the bus is here,” Inej chimed towards the end of another song Wylan was playing, her voice quiet but enough to cut through the sound of the piano. Wylan cut himself off immediately, in the middle of one of his favorite parts of the song, a bit disappointed that he couldn’t finish it. He chuckled a little when he heard a few groans around him as well, the atmosphere that had filled the room slowly dissipating as everyone gathered themselves from their seats and spots against the walls to start walking towards the doors. 

“I know, I know, but the play will be great, too, everyone,” Nina clapped her hands together once to help motivate everyone to move, and Wylan let out one last sigh before he closed the fallboard once more and stood up. Jesper didn’t talk as he followed behind Wylan, but Wylan could feel the man’s gaze searing into the back of his head. 

Wylan slumped into the window seat on the bus, Jesper remaining standing to do a headcount before they left for the play. After a few moments, Jesper sat down as well, leaning forward to talk to the bus driver before leaning back again. His arm brushed against Wylan’s as he did, but neither of them moved away, leaving their shoulders pressed lightly together. 

“I assumed you were a good musician, since you teach it, but, damn, I wasn’t expecting that,” Jesper said softly, their shoulders jostling together as the bus turned around a bumpy corner. Wylan tilted his head away, unable to fight the small smile from pulling at his lips. “You’re amazing.”

“Thank you. I grew up mostly playing the flute, but the piano is a close second,” Wylan cleared the thickness in his throat to be able to answer, his head lifted again but facing the front of the bus instead of Jesper next to him. He wasn’t sure what he would see in the man’s eyes if he looked at him right then.

“I almost didn’t want to go to the play at all.” Wylan could see Jesper shaking his head out of the corner of his eye, his hands tugging at the material of his bright pink trousers and then spinning the golden rings around and around his fingers. Wylan finally looked over at him, eyes a bit wide and one brow raised. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to listen to him play over doing something else, let alone Jesper. He was just a normal music teacher, he was nothing special. He said that in response. 

“I’m nothing special, Jesper, I’m sure this play will be far more enjoyable,” Wylan sighed, looking forward again. Jesper just leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and ducked his head to the side to catch Wylan’s gaze again. Wylan stared at his sideways face, gray eyes swirling and bright and a dimple indented in his cheek. 

“I’m sure it will be a great play, but you’re selling yourself a bit short there, Wy,” Jesper raised his own eyebrows at him, daring Wylan to object. Wylan couldn’t get over the nickname that had slipped out of his mouth, Wy. Barely anyone called him that, not even Nina or Matthias, they usually just stuck to his full name. Wylan just pursed his lips and slumped back into his seat some more, pointedly looking away from Jesper in feigned irritance, even though he was really trying to hide the way his cheeks warmed at the thought of someone liking him enough to use a nickname for him. 

“Whatever you say, Jes,” the name slipped out of his mouth before he could think about it, and kept his face towards the window to keep from seeing Jesper’s reaction. He heard a little chuckle, but luckily Jesper didn’t call him out on it either. 

~🏺🧬🎭~

“Oh, that bit at the end made me sob,” Nina weeped dramatically into Wylan’s shoulder, looping her arm into his as they walked back out of the theater and through the lobby. Wylan just nodded agreeingly, patting the back of her hand a few times as his light eyes readjusted to the light. 

“I’ve always liked that play, first time seeing it live, though,” Wylan ducked out with her into the cold outside, but luckily the bus was parked close and they didn’t have to go far. Jesper and Inej were at the back of the pack of students, making sure all of them got out of the theater and back onto the bus without wandering. 

“So. You and Jesper.”

“Don’t you start with that again.”

“You weren’t looking, but the way he couldn’t take his eyes off you at the piano earlier… I’ve never seen him stand still that long for as long as I’ve known him,” Nina shook her head like she couldn’t believe it herself, and she tugged her arm from Wylan’s as they got to the bus. They had to wait a moment for the doors to be opened, and with that, Nina spun on her heels to look at him. 

“It’s nothing, Nina, trust me. We’ve finally gotten past the hating-each-others-guts bit, I’m not going to even deign to imagine us even really becoming friends, alright?” Wylan and Jesper hadn’t very much liked each other since the moment they met, and that was over a year ago, now. Could they really change that and become friends? Wylan didn’t really have many friends, just those colleagues that he talked to more than others and saw outside of work sometimes. It was interesting to imagine him doing that with Jesper. 

“Sure, whatever you say. I know what I saw.”

“Of course you did.”

The bus doors opened and they climbed in, Nina bounding to the back of the bus where she and Inej had claimed for the entire trip. Wylan sat in his normal seat in the front, tucked by the window and listened to the excited, yet tired-sounding, voices of the students as they climbed onto the bus and took their seats. 

“You good?” Jesper huffed as he sat down after doing a headcount again, his eyes a little wild. Wylan nodded, tucking his jacket around himself a little tighter, it was starting to warm up in the bus but he was always prone to being cold. 

“Yeah. Did you enjoy the show?” Wylan asked, and Jesper nodded back at him, but he could see a buzzing underneath Jesper’s skin, like he just wanted to run around and do something instead of sitting on a bus again after having to sit in a play for hours. 

“It was great, I’m glad it was still running for the student trip, you know?” Jesper drummed on his legs again as the bus peeled off from the curb and drove back to the hotel. They continued lightly chatting the entire drive back, about their favorite parts of the play and the funny things the students did during intermission. Wylan wondered when it had gotten so easy to talk to Jesper, when the words flowed so easily out of his mouth like it never had with anyone else before. Wylan was so used to listening over speaking, and Jesper was a talker, but also made it a point to give Wylan the space to speak as well. 

Wylan groaned as they got back to their hotel room, falling face-first onto the bed without even bothering to take off his shoes or jacket first. Jesper hummed, leaning on the wall next to the bed and leaning down to pull off his shoes, letting them fall on the floor without much care for where they landed. He took off his jacket as well, but gave more care in placing it over the back of the nearby armchair. 

Wylan, after allowing himself to just close his eyes for a few long moments in the covers, sat back up and got to undressing as well, tugging off shoes and his jacket and pulling his shirt from being tugged in his trousers. 

“You mind?” Jesper stepped up with his arm outstretched, and Wylan had to blink a few times at the sight of his hand and wrist before realizing what he was asking for. 

“Sure,” Wylan reached up to unbutton his shirt cuffs, hands a bit clumsier with tiredness as he tried to get the tiny buttons back out of the buttonholes. This led to his hand brushing more firmly against Jesper’s that it had earlier that evening, but they both tried to ignore it as Wylan finally got the button undone. He repeated the action on Jesper’s other cuff, their knees bumping as Jesper moved in front of his seated form, and he couldn’t bring himself to look up into the man’s eyes, instead he used the excuse of undoing the buttons as reason for keeping his gaze averted. “There.”

“Um, thanks, again,” Jesper hesitated before pulling away, and Wylan could have sworn he saw a tiny flicker of something in the man’s eyes, but it was so fleeting he wasn’t sure what it was. Disappointment? Something else? He just gnawed on his bottom lip and got to undoing his own shirt buttons to be able to change into a soft t-shirt and pajama pants. He didn’t even think about the fact that Jesper was still in the room, instead he just pulled the silken shirt from around his shoulders and walked over to his bag to pull out something to sleep in. 

Jesper cleared his throat from behind him, and Wylan bristled, suddenly remembering where he was and who he was with. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, tugging out a shirt and quickly slipping it over his head. Jesper just made a noncommittal noise behind him, and Wylan peeked over his shoulder to look at him. Jesper was getting changed himself, his back bare and turned to Wylan. His face flushed at the sight of so much bare skin, his head jerking back around to stare at the wall as he changed into pajama pants. 

With a dry mouth, Wylan walked over to the little complementary ice bin on top of the low dresser, opening the lid to see if there was any left from the time they had used it earlier. There wasn’t. 

“I’m going to go… and get more ice,” Wylan almost spluttered, the room was getting too hot and Jesper was still standing over on the other side of the room with no shirt on and he needed to get out. 

“What?” Jesper turned at the shoulder, looking back at him. Wylan caught a glimpse of his chest and hastily grabbed the tiny ice bin and a keycard and was out the door in seconds, still in just socks and his pajamas. He remembered where the ice machine was from his previous times getting it, and allowed his feet to take him there by memory. 

He busied himself with getting more ice, listening to the way the cubes fell from the machine and into the empty metal container. What was he doing? What was he going to do once he got back into the room? Just crawl into bed and pretend he hadn’t just rushed out of the room for no apparent reason? He didn’t even really understand why he had left, himself. 

“Wylan?” Jesper was suddenly behind him, and Wylan jumped, not having heard his approach in the slightest. The ice container jostled in his hands, a few ice cubes falling from the machine and missing the container to fall onto the carpeted floor below. “Are you alright? You left in a bit of a rush there.”

“I’m fine!” Wylan turned around on his heels, ice container still in his hands and only about half full, but at least the loud sound of ice dispensing had stopped now. “Perfectly, fine, just… getting ice, you know?”

“Right. Well, I just wanted to make sure, I thought everything was going okay…?” Jesper didn’t look like he believed him, he was leaning against the plaster wall and had a single eyebrow raised, his eyes critical on Wylan’s face. Wylan just looked between the ice container and back to Jesper’s face, then back to the ice again. It was easier to stare at frozen cubes of water than into Jesper’s gray eyes. 

“It was–is! Everything’s fine,” Wylan corrected himself, everything was fine, he was fine, Jesper was fine, the heat deep in his stomach was fine and he definitely did not feel like puking into this ice container right now, thank you very much. “Just– a little overwhelmed, I think, from everything over the weekend. Built up, you know? I’m not making any sense, sorry.”

“No, I get it, I really do,” Jesper pushed off of the wall and stepped closer, slow enough that if Wylan needed space, he could still get it. Wylan felt rooted to the spot, his socks melted into the floor and keeping him in place. Jesper was in a similar state, pajamas and socks and the warm smell of his cologne. “Are you sure you’re alright?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Wylan nodded, eyes tracking over Jesper’s face. He had freckles, he hadn’t noticed it before. Were they really standing close enough for him to see his freckles, even in this low lighting? Apparently, he was. He was sure Jesper could see his own freckles, or the flecks of gold and green in his eyes. He could feel the slight puff of Jesper’s breath on his face. 

He didn’t even realize what he had done until after he had done it. Wylan leaned forward and up just enough until their lips brushed against each other, featherlight and soft, before pulling away again. 

“Oh Ghezen, I am so sorry,” Wylan took a step back and lifted a hand to touch his lips, fingertips brushing along his skin. Why had he done that? All he knew is that he wanted to do it again. Jesper was stock still in front of him, hands frozen at his sides and mouth slightly parted. He had really fucked it up, now. “I’m just gonna–”

Wylan bolted, dropping the ice container on the counter next to the machine and booking it down the carpeted hallway. He had no idea where he was going, all he had was his room’s keycard and nothing else, not even his phone. He didn’t even have shoes on. He was going to lose his job, the one thing that got him out of bed every morning other than his cat screaming for breakfast. 

“Wylan! Where are you going?” Jesper called after him. Away from you, Wylan thought, and he didn’t look back at him. He didn’t want to see the man’s face, what had he just done?

He found his way to a staircase, and took them up up up until he had reached a mid-floor balcony. It wasn’t the roof, but instead a large balcony outcropping, high up the building and looking over the city. It was freezing, and his socked feet were almost immediately chilled to the bone. Wrapping his arms around himself, Wylan paced the railing’s edge, looking out at the dazzling city lights and all of the cars on the roads below. 

Time seemed to have stopped, when he had kissed Jesper, but looking out at the city, it seemed like nothing had happened. His life felt like it had just imploded on itself, but everyone else was just going about their business, living their lives. Time still went on, the world still spun on its axis. The moon still rose in the night sky and the clouds still swirled above him. He felt like an ant, a speck, in the great vastness of the world, like nothing he did or experienced really meant anything at all, in the grand scheme of things. 

“Wylan? You up here?” The door opened with a creak and Jesper’s voice filtered through the haze in Wylan’s mind. Wylan spun to look at him, eyes wide as saucers and breath caught in his throat. He was definitely going to lose his job once they got back. “There you are.”

Jesper seemed to let out a breath, walking across the cold pavement towards him. Wylan couldn’t move, what was Jesper going to do? He wasn’t sure if he couldn’t move from the cold or from the panic running through his veins. Jesper stopped a few feet in front of him, but Wylan couldn’t read the expression on his face. Was he disgusted? Disappointed? Angry? Confused? Wylan thought he might be confused, at least.

“J-Jesper, I really am sorry, I didn’t mean to do that, I–”

“Alright, calm down a second,” Jesper raised his hands in an attempt to stop Wylan from rambling a mile a minute, and they both took a deep breath. “I’m not mad that you kissed me.”

“...You’re not?” Wylan was sure that Jesper had not been expecting him to kiss him, or that he had wanted him to. It felt like a lifetime ago when they had not really liked each other, but had it really changed enough to warrant this? He felt like a teenager again, unsure if a crush liked him back. 

“Saints, no, I’ve been thinking about kissing you for ages,” Jesper chuckled a bit, looking sheepish and rubbing the back of his neck. 

“...What?”

“Yeah, I… I don’t know, I find you incredibly attractive, and I didn’t know what to do about it, especially since you seemed to hate my guts for so long,” Jesper explained, stepping a bit closer, until their socked toes brushed against each other. Wylan felt like the world was spinning like a top around him. Jesper liked him? Jesper found him attractive, had thought about them kissing, for ages? What was he supposed to do with that information?

“I don’t hate your guts, Jesper, I don’t think I ever really did, to be honest,” Wylan picked at the fabric of his pajama pants, wanting to wrap his arms around himself but refraining from doing so. “You just seemed so… after the whole, coffee thing, I didn’t know what to do around you,” Wylan cringed a bit at the memory of their first meeting, in which Jesper had accidentally spilled hot coffee all over Wylan’s sweater, their frantic words and Wylan sprinting away to the bathroom to avoid it all. 

“Ah, yeah, I am still really sorry about that,” Jesper tried to laugh it off a bit, and Wylan laughed, too, content to let it finally fade away into the background. “We never really got off on the right foot, did we?”

“No, we definitely didn’t. So, with this weekend, and with us actually getting along quite well…”

“So, you kissed me,” Jesper concluded for him, when Wylan didn’t seem like he was actually going to finish the sentence. Wylan nodded and flushed red again at the memory of their lips brushing. Jesper had very nicely shaped lips, softer than he had imagined. 

“Yeah,” Wylan wrapped one around his middle to clasp his hand around his other arm, grounding himself as Jesper seemed to gravitate even closer to him. 

“Do you… still want to kiss me?” Jesper asked slowly, his voice a deep baritone. Wylan’s gaze flickered between his eyes, not knowing which one to look at as he tried to decipher what Jesper wanted the answer to be. He seemed so close now, his eyes were starting to go crossed, trying to keep looking at him. 

“Yes,” Wylan whispered, and Jesper leaned in, hovering above his mouth for a long second. Wylan waited for their lips to touch, but soon realized Jesper was waiting for him to make the final move, unwilling to push himself on him, if Wylan didn’t really want to. Oh, how he wanted to. 

Wylan tipped forward off of the railing behind him, allowing their lips to press together, firmer than the butterfly-wing brush that had been their kiss earlier. This kiss was not that. This kiss lit a flame inside of him, sent electricity crackling along his skin, starting at his lips and spreading across his body. They moved against each other, slowly, steadily, deeply, lips pressed into lips and heads tilted so their noses were pressed into soft cheeks. 

Wylan steadied himself with a hand on the nape of Jesper’s neck, tugging him in closer so he didn’t have to strain his neck as much to reach his mouth. Jesper moved with his hand easily, shifting closer so one of his hips pressed against Wylan’s, his hand coming up to wrap around the curve of his waist. His hand was large, but gentle, fingers wrapping around him and holding him closer as they kissed. 

Wylan didn’t know if he had ever experienced a kiss like this, so perfect, so right. Jesper’s lips seemed a little desperate against his, not frantic, but like he wanted nothing more than to kiss Wylan, and keep kissing him. Wylan relished in the feeling of being wanted like this, Jesper wanted him, and he wanted Jesper. He put that thought into the next press of lips and the drag of his tongue, trying to get Jesper to understand. If the responding gasp told him anything, Jesper had gotten the message.

They eventually had to part, if only to breathe, but Wylan wouldn’t let Jesper go far. Instead, Jesper just let their noses brush against each other as he pressed his forehead into Wylan’s, breathing a bit heavily into the space between their mouths. Wylan’s eyes fluttered open then, thumb brushing along the smooth skin under Jesper’s ear, feeling the way he shuddered slightly. He wasn’t sure if it was from his touch, or the cold. 

“Wow,” Wylan breathed, he almost felt like he wasn’t in his own body, but at the same time, was grounded in it, so heavy that his knees might have given out below him. 

“Saints, you don’t know how long I’ve pictured doing that,” Jesper pulled back enough to look into his eyes, but not far enough that it forced Wylan’s hand off of his neck. Despite the cold, Jesper’s skin was blazing hot, and all he found himself wanting to do was tug him in closer and kiss his mouth again.

“Well, you don’t have to picture it anymore,” Wylan attempted at being suave, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was. Another wave of tight heat deep inside of him came as he saw Jesper’s face reacting to his words, leaning down again to connect their lips. If the first one was good, this kiss was magnificent, now that they had learned each other’s mouths. 

They fit together like two puzzle pieces, both of Jesper’s hands grasping his hips now, Wylan’s hand firm on the back of his neck and teasing the short curls of his hair, his other hand braced on Jesper’s chest for stability. Wylan felt his back being pressed lightly into the railing, of being pinned between it and Jesper’s hips. He gasped against his lips, the cold of the railing biting through the fabric of his pajamas. 

“Shit, sorry, are you okay?” Jesper pulled back hastily, like he thought he might have pressed too hard or did something wrong. 

“Yeah, just, cold,” Wylan explained, his breath ragged. He moved the hand from Jesper’s nape to cup around his cheek, thumb brushing the soft skin underneath his eye. Jesper’s gaze pinned him in place, gray eyes swirling in what Wylan now realized was lust. Had Jesper been looking at him like that earlier? When he was playing the piano?

“Wanna go back inside? We don’t– I don’t mean that–” Jesper started and stopped, despising saying the wrong thing and making Wylan think he was expecting something. 

“Let’s go,” Wylan, feeling weirdly confident after their kissing, tugged him by the hand back to the door and back inside. They walked in silence back down the stairs to their floor, footsteps echoing in the stairwell. 

They let themselves back into their hotel room, Wylan scanning his keycard on the door and pressing it open. Jesper shuffled in behind them, the room far warmer than the balcony outside. Wylan rubbed his arms to warm himself up, but paused when he felt Jesper’s hands on his shoulders instead. He dropped his hands, allowing Jesper to rub his hands up and down them instead. 

“Let me warm you up.” Here, they could do anything they wanted, and nothing they didn’t. And they did exactly that. 

~🏺🧬🎭~

“So, how was your first date?” Nina was grinning from ear to ear. Wylan, blushing, of course, sat down next to her in the staffroom during their lunch period. 

“Perfectly pleasant, thank you very much,” Wylan tilted his head back and crossed his arms over his chest. 

“I’d say a bit better than pleasant, Wy,” Jesper ran a hand over his shoulders as he sat down next to him, leaving one arm wrapped around the back of his chair as he sipped a mug of coffee. 

“Yes, I suppose,” Wylan cleared his throat to clear the lump in it. He felt like he was being teased from both sides now, from Nina and Jesper, which felt a little bit baffling. He couldn’t find himself caring, not when Jesper’s fingers brushed over his shoulder blade that way. Jesper was grinning next to him, a bit too much like the cat that had gotten the cream, and Nina leaned forward to begin hammering the details out of them. Wylan refused to allow Jesper to tell her anything unwise for the workplace, but smiled about the storytelling, nonetheless. 

Who knew, a weekend to the city, surrounded by a bunch of teenagers, could bring two people together the way it had for them? Wylan would have been the last to say so. He had a feeling Jesper would have agreed.