Chapter 1 #2
“Where do you want me to put the robe?” It was actually cool that there had been one. Last year’s prof hadn’t supplied one.
“I’ll take it home with me and give it a wash.” Thor held his hand out and Auggie passed the robe over. It was folded and put into a leather utility bag, which Thor then slung over his shoulder.
“You ready to go?”
“Sure. You really don’t need to, though, you know that, right?”
“Yep. Come on, we’re doing this.”
“Only because I’m hungry.”
“That’s right,” Thor replied cheerfully, heading for the elevator.
Thor pressed the button and they stood, waiting.
“How many classes are you posing for?” Thor asked.
“Three. Both the beginner life drawing classes. And the advanced class. Same as last year.”
“Cool. So you know the routine.”
He nodded. “For the most part.” The damn elevator was taking forever, so he went and pressed the button a few times.
“That doesn’t make it come any faster,” Thor pointed out.
Auggie shrugged. It made him feel better, though. He pressed it a couple more times. Just because.
It was still another minute before the light on the button blinked out and the doors slid open.
“It’s my first year teaching this class,” Thor noted.
“Did you just become a professor?”
“Oh, I’m not a professor. I’m an artist. I’m filling in for a friend.”
“Oh, so you won’t be the one teaching every week.” Auggie was strangely disappointed about that. Well, maybe not so strangely—Thor was hot.
“No, I will be. He’s doing a sabbatical year in Spain, so I’ll be filling in this semester and next.”
“Spain? Wow, that must be nice.” He couldn’t imagine having a job that let you just drop everything and go to Europe. Hell, he couldn’t imagine having the money to do that. Living in Spain for a year had to be expensive.
“From what I’ve heard, he’s enjoying it.” Thor smiled and held the door to the student union open for him. “He’s painting his ass off. Says he hasn’t been this inspired in years.”
They went over to the cafeteria side and sure enough, a big sign proclaimed today’s special was pot stickers. Auggie grabbed a tray and nodded when the lady behind the counter asked if he wanted the pot stickers. “Anything else, hon?”
“No, thank you.” He did grab a can of Ginger ale from the fridge next to the cash register, though.
The total came up and he put in his card, wincing when the sale was denied. Shit, the drink from the vending machine earlier must have depleted his account. His shoulders hunched, his cheeks going red as he prepared to apologize and run.
“I’ve got this,” Thor said, handing over his card.
Auggie hunched his shoulders even more. “You don’t have to.”
“I owe you money anyway,” Thor told him. “For your sitting. I should have paid you as soon as the class was done, but I got distracted.”
Okay. Thor did owe him for sitting. For half the class anyway. It was still embarrassing to have your payment denied, but he had to give Thor props for smoothing the whole thing over like he did.
“Thanks,” he muttered, not looking at the cashier. He didn’t look at Thor, either, the sting of not being able to pay still needling him.
“There’s a bunch of free tables over on the terrace.” Thor pointed with his elbow and Auggie headed in that direction.
The smells from his plate were making his stomach rumble, and that faint feeling was back with a vengeance. No matter how embarrassed he was, he really did need to eat.
They sat and Thor grinned. “I just love these things.” Then he dug in, forking an entire pot sticker, dragging it through the sticky sauce before putting the whole thing in his mouth.
Auggie cut his pot stickers in half, but then he followed suit, falling on the plate like he hadn’t eaten since…
well, breakfast. He hadn’t skipped lunch on purpose, but he’d gotten busy and by the time he was thinking he needed to eat because he was really hungry, it was past time for him to go. As it was, he’d been late.
He ate four or five of the dozen or so pot stickers on his plate before he came up for air. He poured his ginger ale out into the provided glass and drank down a good half of it. Damn, it went well with the food.
“Feeling better?” Thor asked. “Less shaky?”
Auggie nodded because yeah, he was feeling a ton better. And now that he’d had something to eat, he could admit—to himself at least—that walking all the way home would have been horrid on his very empty stomach.
“Thanks for covering me.” He waved at his plate so Thor knew what he was talking about.
“My pleasure.” Thor pulled out his wallet and handed him a wad of twenty-dollar bills. “I should have remembered to pay you before we got to the cafeteria.”
Auggie frowned. “This is too much.” Even without counting it, he could tell it was more than he’d earned.
“I thought the fee was two hundred dollars a session. Did Douglas steer me wrong?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, no, no, that’s the right amount, but I was only there for half the session.” So, reasonably he should only get half the fee.
“Don’t worry about that. You were covered.”
“By you.”
“I’m already getting paid for the class, so it’s fine.”
“You should have half the sitting fee,” Auggie insisted stubbornly. He counted five of the twenties off the stack and put them in front of Thor. Then he added another one. “That’s for the food.”
“You don’t have to.” Thor pushed the bills back toward him.
Auggie refused to pick them up. “I’m not a charity case.” Money might be tight, but the only reason he’d skipped lunch today was because he’d been distracted, not because he couldn’t afford it.
“I never said you were.”
“Then I should only get paid for the amount of time I modeled. The rest is yours.”
“Okay.” Thor picked the bills up and returned all but one twenty back into his wallet. The last one was handed back to him. “Supper is my treat because I insisted.”
Auggie pressed his lips together, but one of Thor’s eyebrows went up, the expression very clearly saying that it was a done deal.
“Okay,” he finally said, grudgingly, and pocketed the last twenty.
Thor went back to eating, and Auggie did the same. He was going to be stuffed like a tick by the time he finished his plate, but that was okay; he was making up for his lack of lunch.
“So what kind of a name is Thor?” He snapped his mouth shut the moment the words were out. That was not polite. He was putting it down to the commencement of the food coma the pot stickers were bringing on.
Thor only chuckled, though, and didn’t look particularly put out.
“My mom’s family is originally from Iceland.
Thor is the Norse god of thunder and apparently there was a hell of a storm the night I was born.
Bad enough that she didn’t make it to the hospital.
And she was only fifteen when she had me so it’s not really surprising she went for a… unique name.”
“That’s actually pretty cool.” His name was August because that was the month he was born in. He’d always been thankful he hadn’t been a spring baby. April, May, and June were not boys’ names.
“I eventually thought so. It’s funny, though, because lots of people think I use a pseudonym for my artwork.”
“But you don’t, eh?”
“Nope. Although I did decide not to use my full last name, so it’s Thor H.”
“That definitely sounds artsy.” He almost added fartsy to that but managed to close his mouth in time.
Thor chuckled. “That’s exactly what I thought. Did you want some dessert?”
He did, but he shook his head. “I think I’d explode,” he admitted, as much to himself as to Thor.
“These were so good, but that was a big portion.” And he’d eaten every last one.
He should have saved half to bring home.
Not that he was hurting for money—although there were times like today when his account was very nearly empty—but it was easier to grab something to eat if he had leftovers in the fridge.
“Well, I’m going to go see if they have any of their chocolate mousse. It’s yummy. Be right back.”
Thor’s last words put a stop to his plan to shake the man’s hand and make his escape.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like Thor—the guy seemed super nice, not to mention he was hot as hell—but Auggie felt like an awkward idiot, between being late, being shaky from having skipped a meal and not being able to pay for his own pot stickers.
Still, it would be unnecessarily impolite to slip away now.
Besides, he wasn’t really looking forward to starting his hour-long trek home.
It wasn’t like Thor was gone long, either. He was back within minutes with a tray with two desserts on it. One on a plate, the other in a clear take-out container. Thor set the dessert on the container in front of him.
“I figured you could take it home with you and enjoy it later this evening. It really is an amazing dessert.”
Auggie blinked a few times before his manners kicked in. “Thank you. You didn’t have to.”
“But I wanted to.”
And that was that. Thor was far too nice of a guy.
“What if I don’t like chocolate?” Auggie asked.
Thor gave him a shocked look. “You don’t like chocolate?”
“Well, no, I do. But if I didn’t…?”
“Then I guess I would be the one taking it home to have later tonight. So it still would have been a win.”
Okay. It seemed the professor was a glass half full kind of guy.
Thor scooped up a spoonful of his mousse and put it in his mouth, then he made this very sexual noise. “Damn, so so good. You’ll have to let me know what you thought of it next week.”
“Sure.” He had to clear his throat because that had come out a little rough. “I can do that.”
He stayed until Thor finished his dessert, because it would have been rude to just leave after Thor had brought him one to take home, not because watching Thor eat the mousse was hot. But it totally was.
Once he was done, though, Auggie made his escape.
“Well, I should head off. Thank you for supper. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.” Thor pushed over a plastic bag that he hadn’t noticed on the tray. “For your dessert.”
“Oh, cool.” That would make carrying it home much easier.
He put his dessert in the bag and waved awkwardly. “Okay. Thanks again, bye.”
“See you next week, Auggie.”
He offered Thor a smile and headed out, feeling Thor’s eyes on his back. Somehow he felt more naked than he had when he’d been up on the dais modeling.