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When Wyatt goes back to Toronto, he’s not even the tiniest bit worried.
Sure, losing in the first round and not even taking it to the full seven games sucks—Wyatt’s not going to pretend it doesn’t, but the team’s beat up, and even through everyone’s disappointment, there’s a slight sense of relief permeating the room.
Like this year wasn’t this year, but that doesn’t mean it won’t ever be their year. They’re so close; Wyatt can feel it.
When he watches the Canes win it all on his parent’s couch six weeks later, he feels more certain than ever that the Stars are close. Everyone kept saying that Carolina wouldn’t get it done, and yet here they did.
Dallas can do the exact same thing next year. Maybe one more piece. Two, potentially. Wyatt isn’t even that worried about Robo’s deal, because it feels like he wants to stay and so does Jim. They just have to figure the money out and nobody’s better at that than the Stars GM, so Wyatt kind of tunes out the noise because like all big potential deals, there’s a lot of fucking noise.
Towards the end of June he starts working out in earnest again, beginning his summer training. He’s at the rink three, four, five days a week. Working hard. Already feeling like he’s ready for the season to start up again.
Next year, he thinks, maybe he won’t leave Dallas. It’s getting a little weird to crash back in his childhood bedroom. Fine for a visit maybe, but not to stay, not to live. He lives in Dallas.
He knows Tom’s feeling the same, because they’ve talked about it. Maybe next year it’ll be the pair of them working together, training hard. Honestly, Wyatt couldn’t imagine anything better. Everything’s better with Tom around.
Their tentative discussions of next season and how Tom’s considering staying too, not wanting that two or three months of separation, finally heal over the rest of the wound from the Olympic break.
It’s all the same as every offseason, with a few minor variances, when one morning when he’s glancing at his phone, blender churning away at his morning smoothie, he sees something on his Insta feed that makes everything inside him freeze fucking solid.
He’s on his private slash burner account, the one where he doesn’t worry about who he’s following or who he’s messaging, which means he’s got all the hockey rumor sites in his feed.
And here’s the thing. There’s been trades that upset him. He hated losing Delly, but there was an inevitability to Delly wanting out that made sense. Delly wanted to play; Jim made sure he could play. Losing Mush hurt, too, and not only because Otter misses him a lot. Stank was painful; he still misses the guy, though he can’t begrudge him even the tiniest bit for the success he’s found in Carolina.
Even the Robo rumors don’t really bother him much, because they’re so ridiculous that Wyatt can only really laugh about them.
But this rumor?
This piece of tantalizing trade gossip?
It doesn’t make Wyatt laugh.
He can only stare at his phone and think, what the fuck.
“What the fuck.” He doesn’t only think it, apparently. It’s so ridiculous he’s saying it out loud. “What the actual fuck.” Again, even, because why not.
Trading Tom doesn’t even make sense, but it makes something cold and awful and nauseating harden in Wyatt’s stomach.
For a long moment, he just stares at the screen. His smoothie is on its way to liquidized baby food and nothing has ever mattered less. Jim wouldn’t. Tom isn’t. It doesn’t make any fucking sense.
“That doesn’t even make any fucking sense,” Wyatt says, out loud again. Like somehow that will be more convincing. But the rock in the pit of his stomach doesn’t shift. Doesn’t shrink. Doesn’t magically evaporate.
He flicks past the post and he tells himself that helps. That not looking at it any more means it doesn’t matter. That it never mattered. That it’s not true, and of course it’s not true.
It wouldn’t be true.
But every time he has a moment during his workout where he’s not actively focused on the task at hand, his mind wanders back to the post. He ends up an exhausted, sweaty mess at the end, the other guys in the gym looking at him funny, like they want to ask why he wouldn’t take any breaks, but they don’t.
Wyatt’s relieved. Or something. He doesn’t want to talk about it.
Maybe the concept is laughable, but Wyatt’s not laughing.
Despite the exhaustion pulling at his limbs, Wyatt can’t sleep that night. He tosses and turns, trying to forget what he read, but he can’t.
Finally, the clock reads after two AM when he grabs his phone and goes searching for the post. He’s on his tenth hockey rumor account when he finally finds it. There it is, in black and white.
Adding insult to injury, the account used a picture of Tom at this year’s Olympics. He’s in red and white, maple leaf on his chest, not even in Victory green. Like they’ve already written him off.
It’s not as awful as all the terrible renderings Wyatt’s seen of Robo in various other sweaters, about a dozen other logos, but those never made him want to curl up around the hard knot in his belly. Sometimes those fake pictures were baffling, others amusing. But they never, not once, made him feel like this.
And before this moment, Wyatt would’ve called Robo a very good friend. That if he did end up leaving Dallas, he’d certainly miss him. Tom’s his best friend, of course, so maybe that’s the difference. The distinction his brain and his body are making between the two.
Still, he stares at the graphic for way too long, until his eyes burn. But there’s no answers. No real information in it, even. Just the vague assertion that someone, somewhere, somehow found out that Tom’s been put on the trading block.
The vagueness should reassure him. Should make him feel better.
But it doesn’t really.
He does eventually fall asleep, but when he wakes up, he doesn’t feel all that rested and he drags himself downstairs.
The house is empty again, his parents already at work, and he decides he’ll go to the rink. He always feels better at the rink.
And he does, absolutely, until he’s back home a couple of hours later, absently scrolling on his phone and there’s another post.
Another rumor.
Well. The same fucking rumor.
The one that makes him want to hurl.
This is from a different rumor account. And this one has a legit name attached to it, one of the guys who Wyatt recognizes as working the Dallas sports beat.
He wants to throw up the protein bar he just ate.
His first instinct is to text Tom. To say, isn’t this the most ridiculous rumor you’ve ever heard and for Tom to commiserate that it’s dumb as hell.
But his fingers hover over the screen. What if it’s not dumb? What if Tom is actually worried about it? What if Tom texts back and doesn’t say it’s all bullshit and instead says, yeah, Andy’s been talking to me about it.
If any of that happens, Wyatt suddenly isn’t sure he’d . . .well, he can’t say survive because he would, obviously. Even if Tom got traded to the fucking Detroit Red Wings for Larkin, Wyatt would go back to Dallas in September. He’d train. He’d play. He’d do everything he was supposed to do. He’s worked too hard to do anything else.
But Wyatt already knows that if Tom was gone, his heart wouldn’t be in it.
He has so many friends on the team and despite that being true, all those guys he could hang out with, could joke around with, could somehow cobble together a new warmup routine with, it wouldn’t be the same.
Wyatt wouldn’t be the same.
It’s dumb as fuck for him to be sitting here throwing a pity party when for Tom, everything would change.
Wyatt would only lose one thing. But he’s beginning to wonder if it’s something he can’t afford to lose.
He’s never felt that way about anything or anyone before, and it’s freaking him out.
Wyatt tosses his phone on the couch, like it’s a snake and it’s bitten him.
He’s never, not once, not in his whole life, been a drama queen. He’s levelheaded. Notoriously known for it, in fact. There’s no good reason to be panicking about this and so he won’t. He just won’t.
But two days later, Ritzy texts him. what’s this rumor about tom
Wyatt stares at the screen. He has deliberately not gone back on Instagram since the second post. He’s ignored every NHL notification that comes his way, because there’s a part of him, buried deep, that is terrified that if he opens them they’ll say something he can’t face.
Nevermind that if it did happen, and the worst case scenario happened, there’s no way he’d hear about like that.
Wyatt doesn’t know what to say to Ritzy. it’s stupid is what he ends up sending, which is, by definition, stupid.
Tom’s texted him a handful of times in the last few days, and nothing has seemed out of the ordinary. He’s not brought it up. He’s not said once, so Andy called me today . . .
But Wyatt’s read everything he’s sent like a hundred times, trying to figure out if there’s some kind of double meaning, something Tom’s trying to tell him, written between the lines.
All of that is saying something because Tom’s sent three stupid memes, an Instagram reel of the Tkachucks being dumbasses—a favorite subject of his—and one picture of a sunset, which is lopsided because Tom’s absolutely terrible at taking photos.
Clearly, there’s nothing there.
Wyatt tried to make something out of the Instagram reel, because yes, Brady just got traded to Florida, but Tom sends that shit all the time, and so this one is hardly unusual.
Almost not even worth remarking on.
All of that, frankly, is bad enough, but Wyatt’s dealing with it, not letting it bother him—okay, not letting it bother him too much—but then, a week after the Larkin rumors, everything gets worse.
Zach Werenski, newly crowned Norris trophy winner, is suddenly kind of on the market.
And Wyatt could absolutely figure out an easy way to logic his way out any momentary panic over the Larkin shit. But Werenski, on the surface and frankly, even a bit deeper, is a whole different animal.
On his burner account, Wyatt follows ten more NHL rumor accounts. Then ten more. Even the ones that are really fucking crazy. The ones that post insane shit like Robo’s going to go play for the Golden Knights and that Auston Matthews is going to marry a Canadian and change his citizenship for the next Olympics. The National Enquirer level of rumors mills, really.
But Wyatt’s haunting his phone. He barely lets go of it. He’s refreshing Insta every other minute. Sleep is elusive.
He spends the whole night staring at the ceiling wondering what it’s going to be like if Tom’s not in Dallas next year but in Columbus.
Awful, that’s what it’s going to be. Absolutely fucking awful.
“Are you sure you’re doing okay, honey?” his mom asks one evening as he’s helping her do the dishes, his phone burning in his pocket. “Are you training too hard already?”
Ray gives Wyatt—and his dark circles under his eyes—a hard look only halfway through one of their sessions and tells him to get more rest.
Tom sends him three more memes and a compilation of Quinn Hughes seeing ghosts.
Wyatt dutifully responds to each and every one, working so fucking hard to be normal.
But it’s not normal. It’s not okay.
He’s not okay.
What will next season be like, if Tom’s not there to crush him into the boards? To crack the joke that makes the whole room relax? If he’s not there to shoot Wyatt a smile from across the locker room between periods, reassuring him that he’s got this, even when he worries he doesn’t? Who is Wyatt going to go to breakfast with? And lunch? Who’s going to eat all his cooking experiments and tease him mercilessly over them? Who’s going to beat him in ping pong and pool and video games and every other thing they compete at together? Who’s going to steal his stick during practice and refuse to give it back? Who’s Wyatt going to drag to his tailor?
Nobody, that’s who. Fucking nobody.
Wyatt didn’t even realize that they spent so much time together, until the possibility emerges that they won’t be spending any time together at all.
After the draft, the rumors only worsen.
Wyatt’s not sleeping at all. He texts Ray and tells him he’s sick.
He huddles in bed, compulsively refreshing and watching the memes that Tom sent him, wondering if maybe they’re actually code for something else. Something worse than making fun of Hughes for his perpetually fucked up face or the Tkachuks for their perpetually fucked up brains.
He has no reason to call his agent—who happens to also be Tom’s agent—and anyway, Andy’s busy, dealing with the Robo stuff. But he thinks about it. Way too much.
Andy doesn’t have time to talk to Wyatt about nothing, and even if he did know something, he wouldn’t tell him. He’d tell him to talk to Tom.
But Wyatt can’t talk to Tom.
Tom, always unexpectedly sensitive to his own perceived shortcomings, was feeling a bit raw at the end of the season. Silver medal and pointless in the playoffs and a first round exit. He hadn’t had the best season. And Wyatt refuses to turn the knife in harder. He wants Tom to feel more confident in what he brings to the team, not less.
Tom’s not even a very online guy. Maybe he hasn’t seen the rumors. Maybe they haven’t even been serious enough for Andy to mention them.
But Wyatt knows, for him, that things are getting dire.
Despite a real confidence before this offseason that he’d be wearing Stars green for the foreseeable future, maybe even with a letter someday, he’s suddenly formulating mental emails to Andy, asking about trade possibilities. Already imagining how quickly he could follow Tom, and how he could get Andy to get him traded to wherever Tom is.
It’s insane. It’s absolutely fucking insane.
Wyatt knows it, logically, but logic’s seemingly deserted him these days.
He seems to exist solely on a plane of these fucked up emotions that he doesn’t even really understand anymore.
Why is he so upset about this? Why does his brain keep filling in these additional gaps with thoughts like, but I never got to and then going mysteriously blank whenever Wyatt tries to figure out the rest of the fucking sentence?
But there’s no denying it. There’s a running thread of regret and grief and bad, wrong, terrible going through Wyatt’s head and he can’t shake it.
Can’t sleep. Can barely eat. Feels caught up in a sudden landslide of but I should’ve even though he can’t figure out what it is he should’ve done.
Win game six against Minnesota? After that thought, Wyatt replays it a hundred times in his head.
Maybe even if they’d won that series, they’d have lost the next. Maybe Jim Nill would still want Zach Werenski instead of Tom—even though there’s no actual proof that he does.
It’s nearly July when Wyatt finally loses it.
He texts Andy. Spends a good hour composing the message to seem casual. It probably isn’t. But Wyatt feels compelled to send it anyway.
Andy texts him back, only a few minutes later, telling him not to worry about it.
That’s insane. Of course Wyatt’s worried! Wyatt’s scared fucking shitless that he’s going to wake up the next morning and Thomas Harley is no longer going to be on his team.
That he’ll lose him, before he’s ever had him.
And there’s that thought again, the one that goes round and round in his head and won’t quit.
You’re going to lose him before you ever have him.
It’s so stupid because of course Wyatt has him. Tom’s been Wyatt’s best friend practically since he got called up the spring of Wyatt’s rookie year.
How else could he even have Tom?
But Wyatt’s beginning to be afraid that he knows. That deep down, maybe he’s already realized what else he wants. What he’s wanted for longer than he wants to admit.
Something insane. Something crazy. Something that Tom may never reciprocate. Something that, once he confesses, might mean Tom might never look at him the same way again.
It’s funny though, how the deeper Wyatt gets into his anxiety spiral, the less that matters.
He nearly invites Tom to come to Toronto half a dozen times.
Even types out one invite, in which he is dead serious, and Tom just brushes him off, with a ha are you that bored with ray
That’s the final straw.
Wyatt stares at that message until his eyes are dry and burning, barely able to blink.
Like Tom really believes that all Wyatt cares about is training.
Maybe before this reckoning he did, and that’s his own fucking stupidity, but he can’t keep being stupid. He can’t. He won’t.
Not when everything is balanced on the precipice of going to shit.
Fine.
If Tom won’t come to him, he’ll go to Tom.
Wyatt looks at the clock. It’s ten PM. If he gets in the car now, he’ll make it to Tom’s parent’s house by two. That’s not ridiculously late. Tom’s a night owl; he’ll still be awake, watching re-runs of Love Island or something equally dumb, like trying to find new compilation memes of Marchy being a rat.
It’s insane, but then, Wyatt feels like he’s sort of living there, these days.
He leaves his parents a note on the counter. Throws some shit in a duffel bag. Grabs his keys and his passport and just . . .leaves.
Fills his truck up with gas and his cup holder with shitty coffee from the convenience store, and gets on the freeway.
Weirdly, once Wyatt’s on the road, he feels better, like he’s doing something instead of just being forced to sit there and just passively accept whatever happens. Maybe he can’t stop Tom from being traded or Jim Nill from being stupid, but he can do something about the way his heart currently feels like its clawing its way out of his fucking chest.
It isn’t until he’s pulling into the Harley driveway, the house quiet and dark, that Wyatt thinks, what the fuck am I doing?
But he’s come this far. He’s not just going to turn around and drive home. He pulls out his phone and texts Tom. I need to talk to you.
But Tom either isn’t awake—unlikely—or he doesn’t want to answer, which is both likely and infuriating. Gets pissed off if Wyatt doesn’t respond to each and every stupid Instagram Reel he sends, but will absolutely leave Wyatt on read for hours.
Like right fucking now when Wyatt is literally sitting outside his house.
Wyatt waits ten minutes. Fifteen. Tom still doesn’t answer.
Wyatt’s getting antsy. Impatient. He drove all this way to talk to Tom and Tom can’t ignore him. He won’t.
Wyatt doesn’t know what the fuck he even wants to say, but he knows there’s something inside, beating its fists against his chest cavity, like if he doesn’t let it out voluntarily, it’ll just batter its way out, leaving destruction in its wake.
It’s that thought—the concept of even worse damage, cataclysmic damage, damage he can’t come back from—that propels him out of the truck and onto the Harley doorstep.
That’s the thing about him, Wyatt knows. Once he commits, he commits. And he’s committed now. Committed to the point of banging on the door.
His fist falls on the hardwood door in lockstep with the pounding of his heart. He can’t tell one apart from the other, but it doesn’t matter because nobody answers.
But Wyatt didn’t come all this way for nothing, to get nothing, and he keeps it up, his fist actually beginning to ache. For longer than he should. For so long he should probably be worried some neighbor is going to see him here, desperate in the middle of the night. For so long he should definitely be embarrassed.
But Wyatt’s left shame back in Toronto, back with his sanity.
They’re sleeping in his childhood bed together, right alongside his anxiety, and Wyatt’s here. On Tom’s doorstep.
Just when he thinks he really can’t do this for much longer. That he should really give up and admit that there’s nobody here, even though Tom never told him he was leaving—the door suddenly opens and Wyatt’s fist falls on silent, empty air.
Tom’s staring at him, hair wild around his face, eyes tired and an expression full of incredulity and shock.
“What the actual fuck,” he says.
Wyatt has a sudden realization that he should have spent the four hour drive here coming up with something to say that isn’t, you can’t leave Dallas. Or, even worse, you can’t leave me.
“Uh,” Wyatt says.
“Fucking eloquent.” Tom shakes his head. “What the fuck are you doing? Is everything alright?”
The word alright jars something loose in Wyatt’s brain and he opens his mouth to actually explain. Well, try to explain. But before he can, Tom’s grabbing him by the arm and dragging him into the house, kicking the door shut behind him.
The entryway is dark, but Tom doesn’t stop there. He drags Wyatt all the way into the kitchen and then shoves him onto a barstool. Turns on the light.
Doesn’t join him, just hovers on the other side of the kitchen island, a frown on his face.
“What’s going on?”
“Uh, should we be so loud?”
Tom makes a face. “Are you really going to fucking worry about that now? After you spent ten minutes trying to bang my parent’s front door down?”
“Um.” Unfortunately Tom has a point.
Tom sighs. “No. They’re at a conference in New York. Greg’s at some hockey camp before he goes back to school. I’m here by myself. I was sleeping.”
“Oh.”
They’re alone. That shouldn’t matter. They’ve been alone dozens of times. Hundreds of times. But somehow Wyatt’s pulse accelerates anyway. And then naturally what comes out of his mouth is, “Maybe I should go.”
“Are you fucking—you drove four hours to get here, Johnny. You were pounding on my door. And now you’re just gonna go and not tell me what any of this is about?”
Wyatt huffs. “You know what this is about.”
“You’re not—” Tom breaks off with a bitter-edged laugh. “You’re not freaking out about the rumors.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Wyatt demands. He slides off the barstool and pokes Tom in the chest. Hard. “You’re my best friend. You can’t leave. You just can’t.”
“Funny how I might not have a choice,” Tom says silkily.
“He wouldn’t—I don’t know why he even would,” Wyatt argues.
“It’s not serious,” Tom agrees. “At least that’s what he told Andy. Just noise. Like the Robo shit.”
Wyatt makes an agonized grunt in the back of his throat. Just noise and he hasn’t slept through the night in two fucking weeks.
“Wait, that’s really why you’re here?” Tom is staring at him like he’s never seen him before. “Why didn’t you just ask? You could’ve fucking texted me, like a hundred times, you idiot.”
Wyatt swallows hard. He knows that. “I know.”
“Then why didn’t you? You drove all the way here, at two fucking AM, to what, tell me I can’t go? Even though I damn well might have to? What the hell, Johnny?” Tom runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t get you.”
Wyatt opens his mouth and shuts it again. He doesn’t know what to say. How to even explain what’s taken over his brain ever since he heard the first rumor. There’s no way to tell Tom what it was like. That he felt haunted. Hunted. Destroyed by this feeling that’s eating him alive. That he wanted to crawl into his bed, under his sheets, and never come out, because if he didn’t, then the worst case scenario would never come to pass.
Well it might still. But he’d never hear about it.
He could still live in blissful ignorance.
But he doesn’t know how to say any of it, which is really why he says something way worse, instead.
“I think . . .I think I love you,” he stutters out.
Tom’s jaw drops. “What.”
He doesn’t look angry. Or disgusted. So that’s good. A positive. He didn’t think Tom would be, but then, nothing feels real right now. Even the ground under his feet isn’t quite steady.
“You heard me.” He doesn’t stutter this time. Just says it. Low and steady.
“I . . .” Tom swipes a hand through his hair again. He looks uneasy. Not upset. Confused. “You mean you love me like you love your friends. You don’t want me to go. I get it. I don’t either. And you’ve lost Stank and Delly and—”
“No.” Wyatt doesn’t know where he’s found the courage but he’s found something. “Not like that. I’m—” He breaks off. “I’m in love with you.”
Tom stares at him for a long moment. The tension builds and builds and builds and any moment it’s going to crack. Wyatt can feel it. Or maybe that’s him that’ll crack. Break apart. Never be the same again. Maybe this is shit he can’t say and go back from.
But then once he knew it, once he suspected it, there was no going back from it anyway. Wyatt notches his chin up higher and meets Tom’s wide, shocked eyes with his own.
“You’re joking.” Tom’s voice is unsteady. Wavering almost. He sounds nothing like himself. “You’re insane. Sleep deprived. We should get you to bed—”
“Yeah I’m fucking crazy. I know. I know. I’ve spent the last two weeks losing my fucking mind over the thought of you not being there. And during those two weeks, there’s one road I’d end up on, and you know what was at the end of it?” Wyatt stares at Tom, but he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t answer the question. Coward. So Wyatt answers for him. “At the end of it I kept thinking, and I never. We never. I didn’t even think that was something I wanted—”
“No shit,” Tom says, because now he can apparently speak. Wyatt glares. Maybe he loves him, but that doesn’t make Tom any less of an asshole sometimes.
“But I know now,” Wyatt finishes.
Tom leans forward, grips the edge of the counter with his fists. “What do you even want me to say?”
Wyatt knew there was a very good chance he’d come here and he’d say how he felt, he’d find out the truth, and then he’d turn and walk away and spend . . .he doesn’t know . . .the next two months trying to not lose himself in a well of self-pity and anxiety over the thought that he’s not just lost Tom to the Columbus Blue Jackets but lost his best friend, too.
It was always a possibility. But somehow, in the midst of all this fucking insecurity, not knowing was worse. Not saying it was worse.
Wyatt will stand by that.
“You don’t have to say anything. I just . . .I just needed to say it. For me.” Wyatt gathers up the shreds of his dignity—though he’s not fooling anyone, they’re not exactly covering him up at this point—and turns to walk away. Maybe he can find a hotel nearby. Sleep off this horrible spreading heartache.
He’s never heard of sleep curing a broken heart, but there’s no harm in trying it.
“Wait.” Tom’s voice is strangled and rough.
He catches Wyatt on the arm, and tugs him around. Doesn’t let go of him. That’s something, at least. Tom will still touch him like he always has.
“Do you really mean that?” he asks.
“I drove here in the middle of the night,” Wyatt says bewildered. Why would he do that and not mean it? “I pounded on your door. I’ve spent the last two weeks fucking losing my mind over this trade shit, Tommy. Why would I . . .” He breaks off. “I wouldn’t if I didn’t mean it. I wouldn’t.”
“Fuck,” Tom says with his unique brand of fatalism, and before Wyatt can even clock that it’s happening, Tom’s pulled him in closer and his mouth is on Wyatt’s mouth and oh my God, Tom’s kissing him.
It’s not a long kiss. Wyatt gets the impression of Tom’s mouth, firm and sure against his, his bigger body pressed against him for a few moments, warm and real, and then he’s pulling back.
Staring at Wyatt with eyes that look particularly light brown in the fluorescent kitchen light.
“I shouldn’t have done that—” Tom gets out but then Wyatt’s slinging a hand around his neck—it’s warm too and soft and firm, the skin perfect under his fingertips—and he’s pulling him back in.
Tom gasps into his mouth, stupidly surprised, like he didn’t kiss Wyatt first.
Wyatt makes sure this kiss lasts longer. That he gets a bigger sample size. Mouth moving more firmly and certainly against Tom’s. One hand cupping his neck still, the other digging into one of Tom’s broad shoulders.
Then Tom’s hands find his waist, drag him closer, making a soft, wounded noise in the back of his throat and his mouth is opening against Wyatt’s, and they’re kissing now like they’re running out of time.
Like there’s nothing else they need to do in this moment but feel each other.
Wyatt breaks off the kiss with a gasp when Tom’s hips collide with his own and he feels Tom’s undeniable erection.
They stare at each other for a long moment. There’s that tension again, and Wyatt thought it was because everything was going to break but now he wonders if it was another kind. Tension that might not lead to destruction, but tension that might lead to something a lot more pleasurable.
Tom wants him.
Tom also said, before Wyatt stopped him, I shouldn’t have done that.
“Why not?” Wyatt demands. He doesn’t move either of his hands. Tom’s strong; stronger than Wyatt, really. He could get away if he wanted to, but Wyatt can guess that he doesn’t really want to.
“It’s stupid, we’re being stupid, it’s . . .you don’t really mean it,” Tom mutters.
Oh, this bullshit again.
Wyatt kisses him for a third time. Winding his arms around him tighter, pulling hin in closer. Making sure there’s no way Tom can miss Wyatt’s dick, hard and aching in his shorts. He wants Tom. He’s pretty fucking sure it’s because he loves him.
Nothing else makes sense. Nothing else can possibly explain all these feelings swirling inside him. That Wyatt feels like he wants to die if he doesn’t have Tom in every single fucking possible way.
Tom groans as Wyatt kisses him harder. Tongue swiping more insistently against Tom’s. Wyatt hasn’t done a lot of making out in his life—hasn’t really wanted to, which is a thought to examine on a different day, at a much different moment—but he knows things are getting really hot and heavy.
Tom’s hand slips down from his hip to the curve of his ass. Groans even harder as he squeezes it. Wyatt’s fingers trace down the lines of Tom’s biceps in his old, threadbare T-shirt. He’s looked before, at the gorgeous curves of muscle on Tom’s body, and he always thought it was an aesthetic kind of appreciation. An appreciation of how hard Tom worked in the gym.
But it’s so much more than that. Wyatt can see that now. The anxiety and panic over losing him has scrubbed all the film away, and now Wyatt’s vision is clear.
He loves Tom. He wants Tom. Probably has for a long time now.
Tom’s lips coast past his, and down his jawline. Along his neck. It feels fucking perfect and Wyatt can feel the pulse of his dick echoing through his whole body. He’s so turned on, he needs them to do something.
But instead, Tom pulls back again. Not far, but enough. Wyatt frowns.
“Do you still not believe me?”
“No, I . . .” Tom’s face softens. “I guess I do. I just never imagined—I wanted, God, I wanted you so fucking bad, for so fucking long.”
Wyatt makes a shocked little gasp he can’t hold back. “What?”
“I never thought—it’s just hard to imagine that it’s not just me,” Tom confesses. Still sounding like he can’t quite believe it’s happened. That Wyatt’s here. That Wyatt wants him back.
He’s never done this before, but how hard can it be? Wyatt does it to himself. He puts a hand against Tom’s cock, tenting out his shorts, and palms it through the fabric. Watches as Tom’s whole expression fucking melts.
“God you really do.” Tom stares at him. Like he finally, truly believes. “You really fucking do.”
“I really fucking love you,” Wyatt says, because why not go for broke?
Tom collapses into Wyatt and the kiss he gives him is ravenous. His hands are everywhere, like he can’t stop touching him now that he knows.
Wyatt’s hand is getting squished between them but he’s still trying to give Tom some kind of decent stroking motion, make him feel good, make him feel the best. But then a second later, Tom’s lifting him up onto the counter, and Wyatt gasps into his mouth. Tom crowds between his legs and Wyatt wraps them around his waist, pulling him in.
“Fuck, I gotta—I have to touch you,” Tom murmurs against his lips, and Wyatt nods. Can’t do anything else. Wants it too bad to even dream of protesting. Especially when Tom’s hands are stripping his T-shirt off, warm and sure against his skin. Tracing over his pecs and his abs, calloused fingertips leaving trails of fire as he tweaks his nipples. “So fucking gorgeous,” Tom says. “Want you so bad. Wanted you forever.”
“Have me,” Wyatt begs.
Tom doesn’t hesitate either. He tugs Wyatt’s sweatpants down, and then his underwear, and Wyatt bites back a moan when Tom gets a hand on his cock.
He’s so turned on, he’s practically dripping with it. Tom uses the precome to ease his movement, but then he pulls back.
“What?” Wyatt is so confused. But his question opens his mouth enough for Tom to slide his fingers in. For a second, he’s shocked but then he groans around them. It’s so fucking hot. The way they slide in and out of his mouth. The faint way he can taste himself. The way Tom’s expression goes from hungry to desperate to insatiable.
“Oh, fuck,” Tom moans. “How are you so good?”
Wyatt sucks his fingers harder. Protests when Tom tries to take them out. Wants them deeper. Wants them in his throat.
Oh.
Oh.
When Tom pulls them back Wyatt opens and lets them go. Only so he can croak out. “I wanna—will you let me—”
Tom squeezes his eyes shut and pulls down his shorts.
Wyatt makes a bitten off gasp. Tom’s so big and hard and pink, and God, he does want to do this. He didn’t think he did, but the desire’s inside of him, so big and inescapable, how could he ever have doubted it?
“Not now, not yet,” Tom mutters. “Just like this. Wanna feel you come against me, want you to kiss me while you come.”
And then he slides their cocks together, and Wyatt cries out. The pressure and the pleasure are insane. He’s shaking apart with it, as Tom leans in and kisses him hard.
A second later he’s coming, a tide that’s impossible to hold back any longer.
When he opens his eyes, Tom’s staring at him, gaze unblinking, like he has to memorize every molecule of Wyatt’s face.
“So fucking—God, how are you so perfect?” Tom says and comes all over his hand and Wyatt’s softening dick.
Wyatt lets out a tired little laugh. Maybe things should be awkward. They just had sex in Tom’s parents’ kitchen. For the first time.
He told Tom he loved him. Twice.
Everything should be weird and uncomfortable, but instead, Tom’s right. It’s perfect.
Wyatt watches from his perch as Tom grabs paper towels and cleans up the mess.
“We . . .we should go upstairs,” Tom says. “We can sleep—if you want.”
“I do want,” Wyatt says. “But let me get my bag.”
Tom just laughs. “Of course you packed a bag. Came here in the middle of the night, freaked out about the rumors and you still packed a bag. God, I love you.”
Wyatt raises an eyebrow. “You mean like a best friend?”
The laugh Tom makes, perfect and carefree and so fucking happy, could probably be heard from space. Definitely from Toronto, but then Wyatt’s not there. He’s here. With Tom.
“No, you rascal. Like I’m in love with you.” Tom slings an arm around his shoulders, pulls him in for a surprisingly tender kiss. “Go get your bag and then we’ll go to bed.”
“You’ll still be here in the morning, right?” Wyatt asks before he can swallow the question down. Of course Tom will. It’s July. He’s not going anywhere. Not yet, anyway.
“No matter what,” Tom promises softly, like he gets what Wyatt’s asking. “Even if . . .even if . . .”
“Even if,” Wyatt agrees softly, swallowing around the lump in his throat. He looks up at Tom. “I’m gonna love you either way.”
“Good.” Tom says and kisses him again. “Now go get your bag. I’m tired and it’s late, Johnny.”