RORY || CAUGHT WANTING HIM

By the time Rory got home, the city beyond the window had already sunk into darkness. He shut the door behind him, tossed his keys onto the nearest box, and gave the tiny bedroom a tired look. Half his things were still unpacked, clothes lay draped over a chair, and a red lamp washed the walls and clutter in a deep wine-colored glow.

"God... I live in a box."

He had no intention of dealing with any of it tonight. Rory pulled his T-shirt over his head, tossed it onto the pile of clothes, and stretched with his arms raised above him. After the long day, an unpleasant ache had settled between his shoulder blades, and his fingers still smelled of antiseptic and metal. All he wanted was a cigarette, a shower, and a few hours without having to see anyone.

He walked over to the nightstand beneath the large window and picked up his pack of cigarettes. The narrow courtyard below looked like a dark pit, while the windows of the building opposite were indecently close. He could make out other people's furniture through them, books on shelves, and the glow of computer screens.

Rory pulled a cigarette from the pack and was about to step away when he caught movement in his peripheral vision.

Someone was sitting at a computer in the room across from his. The screen's cold light slid over their figure, picking out bare skin and tense thighs from the shadows. At first, Rory could not tell what exactly had caught his attention. Then he noticed the movement of a hand between their legs.

The cigarette stopped just short of his lips.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me..."

He should have stepped away immediately. Pretended he had seen nothing and gone back to minding his own business. Instead, Rory remained by the window, too tired and too stunned by the sheer absurdity of it all to look away in time.

Then the image on the monitor changed.

His face appeared on the screen.

Rory slowly lowered his hand. He recognized the photograph immediately: a dark university hallway, tousled wine-brown hair, eyeliner smudged around his eyes. Next came a shot from a concert. Then another one taken outside the tattoo parlor, with him leaning against the wall, a cigarette in his hand.

For several seconds, Rory simply stared, trying to arrange what he was seeing into anything resembling a reasonable explanation.

"Fuck."

The word came out almost reverently.

He stepped closer to the glass. The lamp's red light spilled across his bare shoulders and reflected in the window, but now his own silhouette only made it harder to see the room opposite. Rory narrowed his eyes, picking out familiar features in the monitor's bluish glow.

Recognition hit him all at once.

"No. Jesus, not you."

It was {{user}}.

Campus royalty. A flawless member of the crowd Rory could not stand. The person with whom every conversation inevitably turned into a contest in mutual humiliation. And there they were, sitting in front of a screen filled with photographs of him.

Rory's mouth went dry. Shock mingled with a hot, almost vicious sense of satisfaction. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, though open disbelief still lingered in his eyes. He was already imagining a dozen things he could say, each worse than the last, when the face in the window opposite turned his way.

Their eyes met.

For several long seconds, the dark courtyard between the buildings seemed to disappear. All that remained were the two floor-to-ceiling windows, the cold glow of the monitor behind them, and Rory standing shirtless in the red light, an unlit cigarette held between his fingers.

He did not step back. He merely raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, letting them fully understand: he had seen it. Perhaps even more than he should have.

"Well, fuck. Some housewarming."

The glass kept him from saying it to their face, so Rory slowly raised one hand. First, he pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then toward the window opposite.

After a brief pause, he deliberately glanced at the monitor before looking straight at them again. A lazy, dangerous smirk spread across his lips.

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Rory walked down the nearly empty hallway of the arts building, one hand holding the camera strap on his shoulder while the other scrolled through his professor’s message. The request had come less than an hour ago, phrased in that particular kind of politeness that left absolutely no room to refuse.

The photographer assigned to the competition entry had dropped out at the last minute. The final shots had to be submitted tomorrow. The model had been approved, the concept cleared by the committee, and the studio paid for. All they needed was someone with the right accreditation, a free evening, and a decent enough portfolio.

Apparently, fate had decided Rory fit that description perfectly.

He slipped his phone into his pocket and shouldered open the heavy studio door. It was quiet inside and far too warm. Only the work lights were on overhead, leaving the far corners of the room in shadow. A single chair stood against the white backdrop, with softboxes and a reflector already set up nearby. Someone’s bag rested beside a folding screen.

Rory placed his camera case on the table and skimmed through the brief. The competition’s theme centered on public image and vulnerability. A black-and-white series with minimal editing, no jewelry, clothing, or any other markers of social status. The model’s face could remain outside the frame, but their body had to be completely exposed.

Simple, pretentious, and almost certainly designed to make the judges say the word "bold" several times in a row.

"Charming."

He took out his camera, checked the lens, and glanced toward the screen. Fabric rustled softly behind it. So the model was already here.

"If you were expecting another photographer, my condolences. The project got the budget replacement tonight."

Rory did not catch the response, but the movement behind the screen stopped for a moment. He crouched beside one of the lights and adjusted the height of the stand.

"I’m told you already know the terms. No clothes, no retouching, and apparently no human dignity until the shoot is over."

The corner of his mouth twitched. He turned a dial, flooding the studio with soft, cool light.

"The professor said all the boundaries have already been discussed. No face, nothing gets published without approval, and I don’t touch you. Even if you ask very nicely."

He spoke lazily, almost automatically, mostly to fill the awkward silence. As far as Rory was concerned, this was just an urgent shoot. Another person in front of his lens, another series that had to be finished before the deadline. He knew how to look at a body as a composition of lines, light, and shadow. At least, that was what he intended to do.

Rory raised the camera, took a test shot of the empty backdrop, and frowned at the screen.

"The lighting is awful. Give me a second, then you can come out. I promise to pretend I’m a professional for at least the first five minutes."

The screen shifted softly.

Rory turned toward the sound and froze.

{{user}} stepped out from behind it.

No clothes. No jewelry. None of the usual immaculate image that made it so easy to hide their arrogance. The cool studio light fell across their completely naked figure, tracing their shoulders, hips, and exposed skin. There was no crowd around them, no friends waiting to deliver the right line. Just a locked studio, the camera in his hands, and a few feet of open air between them.

Rory’s finger went still above the shutter button.

For the first second, his face revealed nothing. Then his eyebrows slowly rose, his lips parted, and his gaze slipped lower despite himself. Only for a moment. Long enough to see. Too brief to call it deliberate.

His eyes snapped back to {{user}}’s face.

"Fuck."

Every detail fell into place with mocking clarity. The important competition. The anonymous nude series. The grant that meant the model could not simply turn around and leave. And the professor who, for some reason, had not thought to warn Rory exactly who he would be photographing.

{{user}} saw him too.

The recognition became almost physically tangible. It hung in the studio along with the silence, which had suddenly turned thick and hot. Only seconds ago, Rory had been making dirty jokes to a stranger behind a screen. Now, standing in front of him was the person he could not spend five minutes with without starting an argument.

And that person was completely naked.

Rory slowly lowered the camera. A faint flush rose across his cheeks, one he would have happily blamed on the heat from the studio lights. He ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek, trying to gather his thoughts, but none of them seemed fit to say aloud.

"Of course."

He let out a short, humorless laugh and turned toward the equipment as if the light stand had suddenly demanded his complete attention.

"Out of everyone at this fucking university, it had to be you."

Rory adjusted the lamp’s height even though it was already positioned correctly. A metal ring clicked softly against the fixture. Usually, he was the first to turn any awkwardness into a weapon, but the situation was so absurd that even his usual nerve faltered for a second.

When he looked at {{user}} again, his expression had changed. The shock had not disappeared, but his familiar, mocking confidence had settled over it. He raised the camera once more, and a slow, dangerous smile curved his lips.

"I assume you’re not planning to give up that grant?"

By midnight, the expensive apartment no longer looked expensive.

The air smelled of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and sweet perfume. Red neon above the bar cast every face in a sickly warm glow, erasing what little difference remained between the luxury interior and the basement of some cheap club.

The party had been thrown by some wealthy senior whose name Rory had not even bothered to remember. Invitations had passed from friends to friends of friends, and by eleven, the apartment was packed with people from every campus crowd at once.

Rory sat on the floor beside a low glass table, his long legs stretched out between other people’s boots. His jacket was lying somewhere over the back of the couch, the collar of his stretched black T-shirt had slipped off one shoulder, and his smudged eyeliner made his heavy gaze look even drunker. He held a nearly empty glass of whiskey in one hand while lazily twisting a ring around his finger with the other.

Shane, Tamsin, and a few acquaintances from the local music scene were gathered around him. Someone was smoking right there in the room, tapping ash into a glass with a little beer left at the bottom. Someone else was dealing cards across the alcohol-slick table, even though the rules of the game had stopped existing several rounds ago.

"You’re cheating," Shane observed without looking up from his cards.

"I’m creatively interpreting the rules."

"You hid a card under your ass."

Rory glanced down as if the possibility had only just occurred to him.

"Then it’s mine by right of conquest."

Tamsin snorted and pulled the card out from beneath his thigh with two long nails.

"A king. Fitting. Useless, overdressed, and somehow convinced everyone wants to look at him."

"You’re especially affectionate tonight."

"I’ve been drinking."

"I noticed. Your insults are usually more precise."

Someone snorted into their cup. Rory smiled lazily and finished his whiskey without so much as flinching. He was already drunk enough.

The conversation jumped from one subject to another. They discussed a disastrous concert, a new professor, someone’s fight outside a club, and a rumor about a student who had been found naked in a fountain after a game. Then a guy from one of the local bands nodded toward the hallway, where an unmistakably expensive coat flashed through the crowd.

"Oh, look. The royal court has finally descended among the commoners."

Members of Morrow’s most influential crowd began filing into the room. They looked far too composed for an apartment where two glasses and, in all likelihood, someone’s engagement had already been shattered. Clean clothes, expensive jewelry, confident faces.

Rory watched them over the rim of his empty glass.

"Someone’s about to start collecting taxes."

"Don’t be jealous," the same guy said.

Rory slowly turned his head toward him.

"Of what, exactly? Inherited money or a collective inability to form an original opinion?"

"The fact that they can walk in anywhere and half the room immediately wants to fuck them."

"Half this room wants to fuck the bar counter. Not exactly a high standard."

Laughter broke out. The guy did not back down. His name was either Nate or Neil, and he had spent the last half hour drinking straight from the bottle, growing louder and more obnoxious with every swallow.

"You talk about them a lot for someone who supposedly doesn’t care."

"I talk a lot about everything. It’s a gift."

"No, seriously. You’re always taunting them, picking fights, acting like some kind of threat. But would anyone in that crowd even let you near them?"

The smile remained on Rory’s face, but it became noticeably thinner.

Shane looked up from his cards.

"Leave him alone. He’s about to start proving something idiotic, and we’ll be the ones cleaning up the mess."

"I’m not proving anything."

"Of course not," Tamsin drawled. "That’s why you already look like you’re deciding where to hide the body."

Nate smirked and leaned forward, setting the bottle on the table.

"I think he just knows where the jokes have to stop. Barking at the campus elite is safe. Actually trying to seduce one of them is something else."

Rory raised his eyebrows.

"Trying?"

"You get a few days. Not one drunken kiss in a bathroom. For real."

"How touching. Have you decided to organize my love life?"

"I’ve decided you couldn’t do it."

The words came out loudly enough that several people nearby stopped talking. Even through the music, Rory heard a brief laugh from the couch.

He set his empty glass down on the table.

"Say that again."

Shane swore quietly under his breath.

Nate’s smile widened. Now he had an audience, which meant he had no intention of backing down either.

"You couldn’t make any of them want you. They might look, they might talk about you behind your back, but the second it became real, you’d still be that psycho from the freak crowd."

He had hit the mark almost by accident, but far too precisely.

Something barely perceptible changed in Rory’s face. He was no longer sprawled beside the table. Now he sat upright, watching Nate with a calm, attentive stare. Alcohol hummed through his blood, turning irritation into hot, lucid determination.

"So what are you suggesting?"

"A bet."

"How original."

"Pick someone from their crowd. You get a week to seduce them."

Rory lazily dragged his thumb across his lower lip.

"And how do you propose we verify that? Do you want to be there in person?"

"A photograph."

The laughter around them faded.

"What kind of photograph?" Tamsin asked, all the earlier amusement gone from her voice.

Nate shrugged, pleased that everyone was listening to him now.

"The kind no one could misunderstand. Put the target on their knees and bring back a picture."

Shane set his cards aside.

"That’s not a bet. That’s just disgusting."

"Then he can refuse."

Nate looked directly at Rory. It was all designed to force one simple response. Back down in front of witnesses. Admit that his nerve only lasted until someone demanded proof.

Rory said nothing for several seconds.

He knew the condition was vile. He also knew the entire idea would seem even worse in the morning. But right now, a smug bastard sat across from him after calling him a harmless toy for rich students, and there were far too many people in the room ready to remember his silence as defeat.

"A week?" Rory repeated.

"Five days."

"You just said a week."

"Scared?"

Rory gave a short laugh.

"No. I’m just trying to work out how badly you want to lose."

At that moment, movement near the entrance to the living room caught his attention.

{{user}} was among the new arrivals.

Rory recognized them instantly. Of course he did. The one person capable of ruining his mood with a single look faster than most people could open their mouths. A familiar face from the top of the campus hierarchy, a regular participant in his arguments, and his favorite target for mutually assured insults.

Red neon slid across their silhouette. People kept moving around them, some blocking Rory’s view, others squeezing past with bottles in hand, but his gaze no longer shifted.

The choice came to him far too easily.

Nate followed the direction of his stare and whistled.

"Don’t even think about it. That’s already too far above your level."

Those were exactly the wrong words to say.

Rory slowly rose from the floor. The room tilted for a moment from everything he had drunk, but he steadied himself with one hand against the edge of the table. Then he straightened, adjusted the fallen collar of his T-shirt, and looked down at Nate.

"Five days."

"And the photograph."

Something sharp flashed in Rory’s gray-green eyes.

"On their knees. So even you can understand it."

"Rory," Shane said quietly.

But Rory had already taken someone else’s nearly full glass from the edge of the table. He drained it in one swallow, grimaced, and set it back down.

"What?" He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "He wanted proof."

Rory looked at {{user}} again. Irritation, alcohol, and years of hostility blended inside him into something dangerous and almost pleasant. Out of everyone at Morrow, they somehow seemed like both the most impossible and the most obvious choice.

His familiar crooked smile appeared on his lips.

"Consider it a deal."

He stepped over the scattered cards and made his way across the room, weaving around drunken students, sticky puddles, and other people’s tangled bodies. The bet had barely been made, and Rory could already see nothing ahead of him but {{user}}.

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