A/N: Sorry for the delay—I had a family emergency and had to leave home right away, but here's today's chapter.
In some way Wyatt couldn't quite understand, going from starting to say "it's already very late and I have to go" to "being in the middle of a room belonging to two sixteen-year-old twins with a cot" had occurred in a period of time Wyatt calculated to be approximately twelve minutes, and which in retrospect he could trace with fair precision back to the exact moment Susan had asked an apparently innocent question.
"Do you need Matty to drive you to your hotel?"
Wyatt had opened his mouth to respond, and at that exact moment, his brain produced the information that there was no hotel for them to drive him to, because he hadn't booked any hotel—because when he took the plane in Houston that morning, the only concrete plan he had was to reach the address he remembered by heart, and everything that occurred afterward depended on variables he couldn't accurately calculate at the time.
The problem was that, apparently, he hadn't calculated that detail afterward either, because the following hours at the Bennett house had occupied his attention in ways that had left no room for lodging logistics.
The silence that followed Susan's question lasted exactly long enough for Susan to process the information that silence contained.
"You don't have a hotel?" she asked with a curiosity completely free of judgment.
"Not yet," Wyatt responded with the honesty of someone who knows they have no alternative version of the facts that sounds better than the truth.
From the sofa, Blaire slowly looked up from her phone and stared at him with an expression Wyatt classified as incredulity mixed with something that in other circumstances might have been amusement, but at this moment was mainly incredulity.
"You came all the way from Texas without booking a hotel?" Blaire said.
"I focused on other things," Wyatt responded.
"On what things?"
Wyatt looked at her and didn't answer anything, because the answer was obvious and they both knew it, and saying it out loud with the entire family present didn't seem necessary to him.
Blaire brought her hands back to her face.
Susan nodded with the expression of someone who had just made a decision. "You can stay in the boys' room," she said, looking at John and Ted with the naturalness of someone solving a simple logistical problem. "They have space."
"We don't have space," Ted said immediately.
"John's bed is free."
"John sleeps in John's bed."
"John can sleep with Ted for one night."
"John doesn't fit in my bed," Ted said.
"I have perfectly determined where I sleep," John said with dignity.
"We have the cot in the basement," Susan said without altering her tone. "I'll bring it up and that's it."
The horror on John and Ted's faces was simultaneous and perfectly synchronized, as befitted two people who had spent sixteen years processing bad news at the same time, and who at this specific moment looked at their mother with the expression of people who have been caught off guard by something they didn't expect but have no valid argument to contradict.
Blaire, from the sofa, brought her hands to her face with the slow movement of someone who sees something coming and can do nothing to stop it.
"I don't want to impose, ma'am," Wyatt said. "I can look for a hotel nearby."
"In Framingham in December at this hour," Susan said with the calm of someone who knows her city, "the ones left that are decent are forty minutes away or more." She gestured toward the stairs. "Here you have a bed and it's free."
Wyatt looked at Blaire, searching for any sign of what to do, and the expression he found on her face was that of someone who had reached the conclusion that the situation was already completely out of her control, and that anything she said at this moment would only worsen her position, so she held his gaze without saying absolutely anything.
"Alright," Wyatt said. "Thank you, ma'am."
"Susan," she corrected him for the second time that night before heading down to the basement.
Ted and John's Room
The cot Matty brought up from the basement was a folding metal structure with a thin mattress that produced a specific sound whenever someone moved on it, which Matty set up in the center of the twins' room with the efficiency of someone who had assembled that cot enough times to do it without instructions.
When he finished, he straightened up and stood in front of Wyatt with his hands in his pockets, looking at him with that evaluative expression Wyatt already knew well, though this time it had an additional component Wyatt identified as something between a warning and a declaration of principles.
Matty was not a tall man, which meant that to look Wyatt directly in the eyes he had to tilt his head upward, which he did without any sign of discomfort about it, like someone who had learned long ago that height has no relation to authority, and that in fact, the absence of it in this specific context could be an advantage because it forced the other person to look down at you, which created its own dynamic.
"Look," Matty said in a completely calm voice that was more effective than any raised volume. "I don't know exactly what you are to Blaire or what Blaire is to you, and I suppose that's between the two of you."
Wyatt nodded.
"But this is my house," Matty continued. "And in my house there are rules, and one of those rules is that guests stay where they are told to stay, and they don't go exploring the hallways at midnight acting funny or trying to sneak into my niece's room, because in this house that's not going to happen while I'm here."
"Understood, sir."
"And another rule," Matty said without changing his tone or expression, "is that I have a shotgun in the hallway closet and I know exactly where it is at any hour of the day or night, regardless of what I've had to drink that night, so keep that in mind too."
Wyatt looked at him directly. "I'll keep it in mind, sir."
Matty held his gaze for a second longer, searching for something he apparently found, because he nodded his head once. "Good," he said before turning toward the door and adding without looking back, "and don't make the cot squeak."
He left the room, and the silence that followed lasted approximately four seconds.
Ted was the first to speak. "He really does have the shotgun in the closet," he said with the tone of someone sharing useful information. "It's not a bluff."
"Thanks," Wyatt said.
"You're welcome," Ted responded, settling into his bed. "Welcome to the full Bennett house experience."
John, from his bed, stared at the ceiling with that quiet expression he had when he was processing something before turning toward Wyatt. "Are you hungry? Mom left empanadas in the kitchen."
"I'm fine, thanks."
"Are you sure? They're good."
"John," Ted said. "The man just had dinner with us."
"That was two hours ago."
"Two hours is not enough time to be hungry again."
"Depends on the metabolism."
"His metabolism is not your problem."
"I'm just offering options."
Wyatt sat on the edge of the cot, which produced the metallic sound it was going to produce every time someone moved on it over the next few hours, and looked at the two twins who had resumed their exchange with the naturalness of people who had spent sixteen years interrupting each other without any conscious effort.
"Hey Wyatt," Ted said after a moment with the tone Wyatt had already learned to identify as the signal that something unexpected was coming. "How did you get that physique?"
Wyatt looked at him. "What?"
"The physique," Ted repeated, waving vaguely in the direction of Wyatt's torso with the casual bluntness of someone who sees no reason not to ask that question. "That doesn't just happen."
"I train," Wyatt said.
"How much?"
"Every day, basically. There are seasons where it's two sessions a day."
"Twice a day?" Ted said with an expression that mixed genuine horror with something close to involuntary respect.
"In the offseason, yeah."
Ted processed that. "And what do you eat?"
"Mainly protein—rice, chicken, turkey, oatmeal before practices, vegetables at dinner, and nothing processed during the season."
"Nothing processed," Ted repeated with the tone of someone receiving information from an alternate world. "Nothing at all?"
"As little as possible."
Ted looked at John with an expression that contained all the necessary information. "See?" he told him. "I told you it was the diet."
"I never said it wasn't the diet," John responded.
"You said it was genetics."
"I said genetics was a contributing factor, which is scientifically correct."
"Genetics is a secondary factor," Ted said. "The main factor is discipline and diet."
"The discipline you don't have," John pointed out.
"The discipline I could develop if I decided to do so."
"And do you decide to do so?"
Ted genuinely thought about it for a full second. "Not at this moment," he responded. "But the option is open."
"It's always open," John said with the patience of someone who had heard some version of that same statement several times without the option having been exercised yet.
Wyatt listened to all of this with the same expression with which he had listened to most of the twins' conversations that night, which was that of someone following something happening at a speed and with an internal logic of its own.
"In any case, Wyatt," Ted said, turning back to him with genuine respect, "the work behind that is serious, and I recognize it."
"Thanks," Wyatt said.
"Though I have a more important question to ask you," Ted continued with that smooth transition he had from one topic to the next.
"Ted," John said.
"It's a cultural question," Ted said, ignoring him completely. "Wyatt, being from Texas and having traveled the country, I want your expert opinion on something."
"About what?" Wyatt asked with the reasonable caution of someone who had spent enough hours in this house to know that Ted's questions were rarely what they seemed on the surface.
"The Kardashians," Ted said with the same naturalness with which he might state the weather. "Specifically, the overall ranking from most to least attractive, and who you would maroon with on a desert island."
Wyatt blinked.
"It's a debate John and I have had unresolved since October," Ted continued. "And we need an unbiased external perspective, because when you spend too long debating something with the same person, you lose objectivity."
"I haven't lost any objectivity," John said.
"You have a statistically demonstrable bias toward Kylie."
"I have a preference, which is not the same as a bias."
"Wyatt," Ted said, turning back to him with the concentration of someone picking up the main thread. "Kendall or Kylie?"
Wyatt opened his mouth.
And closed it.
Because at the exact moment Ted uttered the name Kendall, Wyatt's brain produced, without any prior warning, the specific memory of a night in Miami in January after the All-American Bowl—in the hotel suite with the city lights in the background, which Wyatt had mentally cataloged under the category of things that happened, that were what they were, and that definitely do not need to be discussed with anyone, and especially not with two sixteen-year-old twins he had known for approximately six hours, in whose father's room there was a shotgun in the hallway closet.
"I don't have a formed opinion on the matter," Wyatt said with a neutrality he hoped sounded more natural than it felt from the inside.
Ted looked at him with his eyes slightly narrowed. "None?"
"Nothing special."
"At all?"
"At all."
Ted looked at John with the expression of someone who had just received information they genuinely didn't know how to process. "That's the first time in my life anyone has told me that," he said.
"Statistically very unusual," John agreed, looking at Wyatt with a curiosity Wyatt found slightly uncomfortable. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Wyatt said. "I'm just sleepy."
"John," Ted said without taking his eyes off Wyatt. "That man is hiding something."
"I notice it," John responded.
"I'm not hiding anything," Wyatt said, lying back on the cot, which produced the corresponding metallic sound. "It's been a very long day."
"Very long," Ted agreed with a smile. "And productive."
"Goodnight, Ted."
"Goodnight, Wyatt," Ted responded before turning off the light on his side of the room, leaving the darkness of the room illuminated only by the glow of the twins' phones, who clearly had no intention of sleeping in the next few minutes.
John turned his off eventually too, though Wyatt didn't register exactly at what moment, because by then he had spent several minutes staring at the ceiling of the Bennett room, with the cot producing a metallic sound every time he took a deep breath and the December Massachusetts cold seeping through the window one of the two had left cracked open.
He thought of Blaire across the hall in her oversized flannel and her stacked books, and that expression of hers that hadn't quite finished lowering her defenses completely, but tonight had lowered enough for Wyatt to know it had been worth taking the plane.
He thought of his grandfather in Katy, Texas, saying geography was a logistics problem.
He thought that tomorrow he would have to look for a hotel anyway, because one night on the Bennetts' cot was one thing, and staying longer was a completely different conversation.
And with all of that in his head, Wyatt Sterling lay staring at the ceiling of John and Ted's room with the quiet certainty that this had been probably the most impulsive decision of his entire life, and that he didn't regret it at all.
Author thought
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