The Studio Pact
The second floor of the Arts Faculty Building smelled like paint, coffee, and lightly scorched ambition.
Sam arrived first. He stood outside Studio 2B, balancing a precarious stack of materials: watercolors, glue sticks, a stapler shaped like a whale, and a sketchpad with a faint coffee stain that he had decided was now "part of the aesthetic."
He was nervous.
Not presentation nervous. Not even "I accidentally printed my essay in Wingdings" nervous.
This was... Hayden nervous.
Hayden arrived three minutes late and five degrees overdressed, wearing a navy turtleneck and gold-rimmed glasses that Sam was 95% sure were purely decorative.
"Morning," Hayden said, pushing open the studio door with an unnecessarily graceful flourish. "Did you know the vending machine downstairs now sells macadamia nut cookies? Because I didn't. And now I've eaten three."
"Hi," Sam said, blinking. "You look like an art history professor."
"Thank you," Hayden said, taking it as a compliment. "You look like someone who's about to win a glitter war."
Sam smiled in spite of himself.
They unpacked in silence for a few minutes. Sam spread out what was left of his collage: city maps, bits of string, a Polaroid of a pigeon mid-stride. Hayden gently smoothed out the feathered mask, now slightly warped and somehow more dramatic than ever.
"So," Sam said, tapping a pencil against his knee, "what's the plan?"
"Chaos," Hayden replied. "But structured."
He placed his script on the table and gestured grandly. "We fuse our projects. Yours is visual storytelling. Mine is monologue-driven performance. So... what if your art becomes my stage design? Interactive set? Immersive world-building?"
Sam raised an eyebrow. "You want me to build the world your character performs in?"
"Yes," Hayden said. "Exactly. Like walking through a dream while someone narrates it."
Sam blinked. Then slowly, a grin began to spread across his face. "Okay. That's... actually kind of cool."
"Of course it is," Hayden said, twirling a glue stick like a conductor's baton.
For the next hour, they brainstormed.
It was messy, chaotic, and full of overlapping thoughts. Sam doodled shapes in the margins while Hayden reworded lines out loud, pausing only to sip from a reusable thermos covered in theatre stickers.
Every now and then, they'd lock eyes and both smile — the kind of shy, crooked smile that only happens when you're a little flustered but don't mind it.
By the time they stopped to breathe, there were scraps of paper on the floor, storyboards on the wall, and something like electricity in the air.
"This might actually work," Sam said softly.
Hayden looked at him.
"You might actually be brilliant," he said.
Sam blushed. "Might?"
They both laughed.
And as the afternoon sun slanted through the high studio windows, painting them both gold, neither boy said what they were thinking — that something had shifted today. Not in a grand, cinematic way. Just quietly. Like a thread being tugged, gently, from both ends.
A little later...
"Hold still."
Hayden was standing on a chair while Sam crouched beside him, adjusting a paper-and-wire arch meant to represent a memory gate. It was part of their new hybrid concept: Dream Transit, a walk-through installation where Hayden's character would deliver a monologue while navigating a visual maze of lost dreams, torn tickets, and emotional baggage (some of it literal).
"I'm not moving," Hayden said, wobbling slightly.
"You're absolutely moving," Sam replied. "You're doing that actor thing where you perform balance like it's a character trait."
Hayden looked down, grinning. "I don't perform balance. I am balance."
Sam arched a brow and nudged his calf gently. "Then explain why I've had to rescue your mask from the floor four times."
"That's just its way of showing dramatic flair."
Sam huffed a laugh and stepped back, squinting critically at the scene. "Okay, now it looks like something out of a dreamscape subway station. This works."
"Which means," Hayden said, hopping down from the chair and landing too close, "you are officially the production designer of my slightly unhinged one-man play."
They were standing toe to toe now, barely a breath apart.
"And you," Sam said, "are officially the human embodiment of a theatre major having an identity crisis."
Hayden placed a hand on his heart. "I take that as the highest compliment."
There was a moment — not quite long enough to be awkward, not quite short enough to ignore — where neither of them moved. Sam could see the way Hayden's lashes caught the light, and Hayden could hear the quiet rhythm of Sam's pencil tapping against the edge of his sketchpad like a nervous heartbeat.
"Lunch?" Hayden asked, finally.
Sam nodded quickly. "Please. If I have to smell one more glue stick, I might lose consciousness."
They gathered their things, brushing hands once — twice — on the way out. Neither mentioned it, but both noticed.
Outside, the sky had softened to a gentle gray-blue, and the campus hummed with the kind of buzz that only happened between classes: students, food trucks, distant guitar strumming, and the smell of something questionably spicy wafting from the dining hall.
Sam's phone buzzed.
Emma: We're at the steps. Bring your actor boyfriend.
Hayden's buzzed right after.
Noor: Tell the artsy boy to come too. I want to judge his soul through his sandwich order.
"Do you..." Sam began.
"Wanna join forces for lunch?" Hayden said at the same time.
They both smiled.
Ten minutes later, the six of them sat in a chaotic semi-circle on the quad steps: Dev unpacking an aggressively organized bento box, Noor holding court with a chai latte, Emma eyeing Hayden with curious amusement, and Caleb already making up fake ship names.
As the wind picked up and laughter scattered across the lawn, Sam and Hayden sat side by side, knees brushing now and then.
Not on purpose, of course.
Definitely not.
But neither one moved away.
Lunch on the quad turned into a full-on picnic, complete with dramatic reenactments of childhood trauma (Dev), sandwich critiques (Noor), and an impromptu tarot reading using gum wrappers (Emma).
Sam sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, picking crusts off his sandwich and half-listening as Hayden described the plot of an experimental student play that apparently involved time loops, glitter cannons, and a sock puppet named Reginald.
"He died tragically in Act Two," Hayden was saying solemnly, "but made a triumphant return as a ghost sock in Act Four."
"Powerful," Noor said, nodding. "I cried."
"I choked on a Skittle during curtain call," Caleb added.
Emma leaned in and whispered to Sam, "I like him."
Sam blinked. "What?"
She smirked. "Your weird theatre boy. He's funny. And you look... lighter today."
Sam opened his mouth to reply, but Dev cut in.
"Okay, final question before we scatter: If you had to describe your creative style as a condiment, what would it be?"
"Hot sauce," Noor said immediately.
"Ketchup, but like... gourmet ketchup," Dev offered.
"Expired aioli," Emma said, completely serious.
Everyone turned to Sam.
He thought for a moment. "Peanut butter. Kind of messy. But it sticks."
They all laughed.
Then, without fanfare, they stood, stretched, and drifted apart — some to class, some to nap, some to that weird art history film screening with free popcorn.
Sam and Hayden lingered.
"Need a ride?" Hayden asked, jingling his keys.
Sam hesitated for half a second before nodding. "Sure. Thanks."
---
Hayden's car was a dusty blue hatchback with an overworked air freshener shaped like a lemon and a collection of mismatched CDs in the glove compartment. He let Sam pick the music, which resulted in them driving through campus streets to a playlist that Hayden would later call "existential soft indie for sad raccoons."
They didn't talk much.
Not because it was awkward — it wasn't — but because the silence between them felt easy, like they were both thinking the same thing but didn't need to say it just yet.
The sky was lavender by the time they pulled up in front of Sam's apartment building.
Sam unbuckled his seatbelt slowly, reluctant to move.
"Thanks for the ride," he said.
"Anytime," Hayden replied, his voice a little softer than usual.
Sam reached for the door handle, then paused as Hayden leaned slightly across the center console — not far, not close — and lifted a hand.
Then, gently, deliberately, he patted Sam's head.
Not ruffled.
Not tousled.
Just a soft, warm pat, like he was saying, you did good today, without needing to speak.
Sam froze, momentarily stunned.
Then he laughed — not loud, not teasing, just surprised and bright — and looked at Hayden with a crooked smile.
"That's... new."
"I'm experimenting with affection," Hayden said casually, turning the key to kill the engine. "Rehearsal for my role as a charming disaster."
"You're doing pretty well," Sam said, voice light but sincere.
"Good," Hayden murmured. "You're a good scene partner."
Sam stepped out of the car, turned back one last time, and gave a little wave. "See you tomorrow?"
"Wouldn't miss it."
And as Hayden drove off into the soft dusk, both of them wore smiles they didn't even try to hide.