Noah crossed the room slowly. He was still in the clothes from the party, dark jacket, collar opened deep to show off his ripped chest. He was completely present like Piper was the only thing in the room worth paying attention to, and Noah had decided this without any difficulty at all.
Noah pressed play on his Spotify playlist.Say It Rightby Nelly Furtado came on first, the opening beat instantly changing the atmosphere in the suite. He liked to build a soundtrack to a night like this. A night that he hoped at least would give him more dopamine than four quarters on the field.
Fuck, he thought. This man is beautiful.
“Is this a fucking sex playlist Noah?” Piper asked.
“It is the sex playlist.”
“That’s ambitious.”
“Dude, just go with it, it’s only five songs,” Noah replied.
“You are going to last that long?” Piper smiled as he said the words.
“Who said we are going to have sex?” Noah said with a smile.
The track built under the conversation. Neither of them moved. They stood close. Waiting for the moment when they could collide.
Piper walked around the room surveying the situation. “Did housekeeping refuse to clean your room? I am appalled.”
Noah looked over at Piper as he judged his surroundings.
ThenGimme Moreby Britney Spears flooded the room.
“God, I love this album,” Piper said.
“Blackoutwas Britney at her best.”
“Stop. She shaved her head and was put under conservatorship during that time. Her dad ran her life until she was kissing forty,” Piper said.
“This is the best opening to a song ever, though.”
Piper laughed.
“Then get over here, bitch.”
Noah reached for Piper’s shirt, the first real touch of skin where the collar met his collarbone, and the contact hit, like something precise, like a calibration, like his body finally getting what it had been waiting for since the bathroom at the studio and the party and the elevator and every space in between. Every space had been littered with people and now they were finally alone.
He stayed exactly where he was.
The kiss came sideways, off-center, both of them adjusting, and then it found itself in the groove. Noah’s hand moving to the back of his neck and holding without force. Piper exhaled into it.
Noah backed him toward the window. Cool glass against his spine. Piper caught their reflection for a second, two men in a hotel room crossing a line that had been drawing itself since the first warmup throw on the opposite side of a football field, and then Noah laughed, low and almost surprised by his own delight, and pulled him sideways and down.
“Britney wants more, let’s give her more,” Piper said.
Noah laughed. “Can you bottom tonight?”
“I didn’t eat anything at that party, so ya,” Piper answered.
“PrEP?”
“Two years.”
“Then let’s FUCKING go.”
They landed on the floor with clothes half removed. Elbows bumping, knees catching. Piper ended up on his back on the carpet, breathing hard, as the weight of what they were doing settled in.
