Wylan leaves in the morning.
He doesn’t plan to, not exactly, but he definitely doesn’t plan on staying, either.
Wylan is no stranger to one night stands. He can’t say he gets around very frequently, but enough to know the general plot of how they’re supposed to go.
Flirt, drink, fuck, leave. The order isn’t necessarily set in stone, but the list ends the same every time.
He has a good time, for the most part, and it’s always a welcome break from the awful chemical smell burned into the Tannery or the staleness of the empty rooms in cheap boarding houses (when he can afford them) that Wylan is used to. Wylan likes the freedom that comes with it, too. It’s liberating to go where he wants and do what he pleases; to not worry about who he’s seen with or sleeps with or what they might think of him after. And he likes feeling wanted, for a little while. He likes being reminded that he exists.
So Wylan does not make a habit of falling asleep with the people who take him to bed.
He doesn’t even remember falling asleep, really.
He doesn’t remember, and yet, Wylan wakes up with his head pillowed on Jesper’s chest. With Jesper’s arm draped over him. His breath is warm where it ghosts over the top of his hair, and if Wylan glances up he can see the way Jesper’s mouth— those lips— fall open in sleep.
It’s the best morning he’s had in months, possibly. Certainly the most comfortable.
Wylan looks at Jesper, still sleeping peacefully next to him, and he panics.
He’d woken up in Jesper Fahey’s arms.
He’d slept with Jesper Fahey.
Jesper has a reputation, and Wylan knows it, even new to the Barrel as he is. He’d heard about Dirtyhand’s second and resident sharpshooter plenty— Can’t resist a gamble, never misses a shot, and not just with bullets. Jesper Fahey is an excellent marksman, they say, with terrible luck with the cards, and a soft spot for pretty girls and even prettier boys.
Jesper’s played the field— multiple fields— went on a seismic world tour of fields.
Wylan is very good at not being noticed. He’s also very good at listening. People tend to look past him, they never pay any mind to the too skinny boy with the wild hair and the hunched shoulders and the grime that never seems to wash off completely after his long shifts at the Tannery. Wylan knows this, knows he’s very adept at being able to disappear, when he needs to.
So by the time Wylan actually meets Jesper, he’s well aware of his place in Ketterdam’s booming rumor mill. Jesper has many, and Wylan thinks by now he may have heard them all.
And yet, none of them do a thing to prepare him for Jesper.
Wylan had been nursing his drink for the better half of an hour, trying to come up with reasons not to go back to the sad cot he had waiting for him in a rented room, with the only window overlooking the brick wall of a dark alley.
So far, he’d only come up with the one.
Wylan had seen the tall Zemani man from across the room and hadn’t stopped looking since. He was flirting with a girl at the bar, twirling one of his guns in one hand demonstratively with a drink in the other. The girl— a curly haired blond— was giggling, hand pressed to her mouth with eyes that had very clear and direct intentions.
Wylan had almost resolved himself to a night of wasting the few kruge at his disposal with little to show for it, when the man had looked up and caught him staring. The man had smiled, twirling his gun with an extra flourish and then tipped his hat. Wylan smiled back, and gave a little wave. Embarrassing, He’d thought, stop it, he’s already with someone else anyway. He’d looked down, and stared at the near empty contents of his drink until someone sat down next to him and said, in a voice like apple butter and sweet syrup, “Can I get you another of those?”
Then Wylan had looked up into the eyes of the handsomest man he’d ever seen, and thought, he has the most perfect lips.
Out loud, he’d said, “I, uh, well—” His mouth was wide open, he’d realised, and shut it quickly. Again, the man had smiled. Again, Wylan had smiled back. “Yes, please.”
And that’s how he’d met Jesper.
Afterwards, they’d stumbled through the streets— I know a place, Jesper said, If you want to take this somewhere more private— until they’d passed a corner where a vendor was selling traditional Kerch sweets out of a cart.
“Stroopwafels!” Jesper had stopped. “I love stroopwafels!”
Wylan was tugging him toward the cart without really making a conscious decision to move, and Jesper had laughed, surprised and delighted.
Wylan bought them both stroopwafels and handed Jesper his with a shy smile and a shrug. “For the drink.”
Jesper looked at him consideringly, head caulked to the side, and Wylan felt himself blushing in the low light of the lamps. “You’re sweet,” he’d said eventually.
“Is that bad?” Wylan had asked, sheepish. Jesper was already shaking his head.
“It’s good. Just not that many sweet things to be had in the Barrel. It’s refreshing.” He’d bit off a piece of one of the waffles and smiled. “These are sweet too,”— he’d leaned in, smile still earnest but with something decidedly different underneath— “I like sweet.”
Jesper had not touched him like he’d been expecting to be touched. Jesper made no assumptions; he’d asked, about everything, in a way that was near gentlemanly if it wasn’t for the fact that he radiated trouble through his pores. Jesper was— not quite gentle, because Wylan had expected hot and heady and everything deep, and Jesper was all of that and more— but he wasn’t rough. He didn’t bruise, not if Wylan didn’t say yes first, and afterwards he’d laid back down and settled Wylan into his arms in a way that he had no real way of protesting— didn’t want to protest, anyway— and kissed him.
It was that that had scared Wylan the most, he thinks. Because Wylan is rarely kissed for the express purpose of it. It was always the promise of more— the rush of what was to come. But people do not generally tend to kiss Wylan for the sake of kissing Wylan. It’s different. Jesper is different, and Wylan can’t afford to be stupid enough to do something like get attached. Can’t afford much at all— really.
But Jesper had kissed him, pleased and lazy and warm, and at some indeterminate time later they had both apparently fallen asleep.
It was too nice. It hurt with how nice it was.
Wylan peels himself slowly out of Jesper’s arms, careful not to wake him, and decides then that he cannot stand to be here any longer.
Jesper Fahey is not what he’d expected, he’s better.
Jesper Fahey is lovely, and beautiful, and kinder to him than anyone has been to Wylan for almost as long as he can remember.
Jesper Fahey is more than he could have ever hoped for, and he isn’t going to stick around for someone like Wylan.
So Wylan leaves, and he doesn’t look behind him as he closes the door.
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