I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about Chris’ and Peyton’s time at Mile High Brickspo! If you want to talk about this story or LEGO feel free to email me at [email protected]. I reply to every email!
Everyone is Awesome
Morning comes in soft and pale through the crack in the curtains, the kind of mountain light that feels cooler than it should. For a breath, I forget where I am.
Then I feel it: even worse than any other morning since Peyton and I stopped in the middle of it last night.
The Nike shorts cling tight against me, warm from sleep, and I become painfully aware of exactly how awake my body is. The elastic waistband sits low on my hips, familiar and foreign all at once. Peyton’s shorts are still on me. Still smelling faintly of being fresh from the factory and something underneath that’s just… him.
I shift carefully and immediately regret it.
The movement drags fabric against my skin, and I suck in a breath through my teeth, staring up at the ceiling like it’s a mirror, even though it is not.
Beside me, Peyton makes a low, sleepy sound and rolls toward me. His arm lands heavy across my waist, fingers splaying over my stomach. His thigh slides between mine like he’s still half-dreaming.
Except he isn’t. His breath changes first. Slower. Intentional.
“Morning,” he rasps, not fully awake yet, but not unaware either.
I swallow. “Morning.”
He presses closer, and there’s no mistaking it now. He’s in the same situation I am. The thin synthetic fabric between us does absolutely nothing to hide it.
A slow grin curves into his voice. “Those shorts look… motivated for a run this morning.”
I groan and cover my face with my hand. “Not on a Sunday.”
He laughs softly against my shoulder, warm and pleased. “Didn’t figure you were the religious type.”
His palm slides lower, resting at my hip, not pushing, not grabbing. The warmth of it burns straight through the nylon.
“You gonna pretend you’re not happy to wake up next to me?” he asks quietly.
“I was hoping you would,” I mutter.
Instead, he shifts, rolling partially over me, careful but deliberate. The mattress dips. His weight settles. Not overwhelming, claiming.
There’s no rush for us this morning. Nothing on the schedule we need to get up for.
Just morning light, warm breath, and the slow realization that neither of us slept enough to cool off what we started two nights ago.
His forehead touches mine. “Want to wait for it to go down, or help it?” he asks softly.
The question hangs between us, unhurried and steady. Not teasing, not pushing.
And that’s what undoes me. I nod once, even though every nerve in my body protests.
He studies me for a second, then smiles, small, sure.
“Okay,” he says. “Then we’ll take our time before we head down.”
His hand slides lower, fingers tracing the edge of the waistband before drifting down my thigh. The touch is light, almost teasing, and I feel every ridge of his fingerprint through the thin material.
"You know," he mutters against my jaw, "I've been thinking about these shorts all night."
My breath hitches. "You've been thinking about gym shorts?"
"No." His palm presses flat against my thigh, rubbing slow circles. The fabric drags against my skin, a friction that's somehow both soft and electric. "I've been thinking about you in them."
His hand moves higher, following the inseam until his knuckles brush against the evidence of exactly how much I'm not objecting. I gasp, my hips jerking involuntarily.
"Yeah," he breathes, grinning against my neck. "There it is."
His palm cups me through the shorts, and the sensation is overwhelming: the barrier of fabric somehow intensifying everything. I can feel the texture, the warmth of his hand filtered through synthetic threads, the way the material moves against me with each subtle shift of his fingers.
My head falls back against the pillow. A sound escapes me that I don't recognize.
Peyton watches my face like it's the only instruction manual he needs. His hand works slowly at first, learning the rhythm of my breathing, the way my thighs tense and relax. The nylon grows warmer, damp with want, clinging to me in ways that make every stroke feel impossibly intimate.
"That's it," he whispers. "Let me feel it."
I can't not feel it. My hips move against his palm, chasing the pressure, the frictionless slide, the unbearable pleasure of being touched through something that’s been so close to him as well. The shorts blur the line between us, him, me, fabric, skin, until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
"Peyton!" His name comes out broken, both a warning and a plea.
"Don't hold back." His voice is rough now, his hand moving faster, more certain. "Come on, Chris. Let it go."
The coil snaps. I cry out, hips thrusting up into his palm as pleasure rips through me, hot and overwhelming. I feel it soak into the fabric, wet and warm, staining the shorts I've been wearing like a second skin.
For a brief moment, there's only the sound of my ragged breathing and the distant chirp of morning birds.
Then the shame hits.
"Oh god." I press my forearm over my eyes. "Peyton, I'm so sorry. They….they were brand new. I just…"
His laugh cuts through my spiral, soft and warm. When I peek out from under my arm, he's looking down at the evidence with something like satisfaction.
"Don't apologize," he says. His thumb traces the damp spot, almost reverent. "I wanted to take them home like this."
I stare at him. "You... what?"
His grin curves slowly and sure. "Now I get to take a piece of you home with me."
For a few minutes, we just lie there, the weight of what just happened settling around us like another blanket. Peyton's thumb keeps tracing that damp spot on the mint-green nylon, almost absentmindedly, like he's memorizing it.
Then I shift.
He looks up, curious, as I roll onto my side to face him. My hand finds his stomach first, fingers splaying over the worn, soft microfiber of the Under Armour shorts he's wearing. The ones he stole from my drawer back home.
"I want to help you too." I whisper.
His eyebrows lift. "Yeah?"
I don't answer with words. My hand slides lower, palm pressing flat against him through the fabric, and his breath catches exactly the way mine did minutes ago.
"Chris," His voice is already rough.
"Shh." I lean in, lips brushing his jaw. "I learn from the best."
He laughs, breathless, but it cuts off when my hand starts moving. I match his rhythm from before: slow, teasing, deliberate. The fabric drags against him the same way it did against me, soft and electric, and I watch his face the way he watched mine.
His head falls back against the pillow. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
"That's it," I whisper, echoing his words. "Let me feel you in my shorts."
His hips start moving, chasing my palm. His hand comes up to grip my wrist, not stopping me, just holding on. The sound he makes is low and broken, and I've never heard anything better.
"Chris…" My name again, urgent now.
"Don't hold back."
His whole body tenses. He groans, deep and raw, and I feel him pulse into the fabric, wet and warm, marking my old high school gym shorts.
For a while, neither of us moves. His chest heaves. My palm stays pressed against him, feeling the aftershocks.
Then slowly, deliberately, I look down at the evidence and smile.
"Now that’s my take-home present," I say softly.
Peyton blinks at me, then laughs, genuine and surprised and utterly wrecked. He pulls me down against his chest, arms wrapping tight.
"Copycat," he mutters into my hair.
"You started it."
His laugh rumbles through both of us, and for a while, we just hold each other, the morning light growing warmer, the world outside our room still waiting.
For a while, we just lie there, breathing in sync, the morning stretching soft and golden around us.
Then Peyton glances at his phone on the nightstand.
“…Checkout’s at eleven.”
The words hang heavier than they should.
I sit up slowly. “Right.”
We don’t rush, we don’t need to, but the energy shifts the second our feet hit the carpet.
Peyton grabs his roller bag from the corner, unzipping it with that casual efficiency he does everything with. I gather my scattered clothes from the chair, the desk, and the floor by the bed. The room looks different now, less like a bubble, more like a temporary space we borrowed.
His old shiny Champion basketball shorts sit folded near the foot of his still made bed.
I hesitate before picking them up.
Peyton notices.
“You take ‘em,” he says lightly, stuffing a hoodie into his bag.
I look up. “Seriously?”
He shrugs. “Gives you an excuse to see me again, maybe in Seattle for BlockCon.”
It’s said too easily. No dramatic weight. But it lands anyway.
I fold them carefully and tuck them into my suitcase instead of handing them back.
The bed is stripped. Chargers unplugged. Bathroom checked twice. The pizza box from last night sits abandoned on the desk like evidence of something reckless and perfect.
Peyton pauses by the window, looking out at the parking lot where some other attendees are already loading luggage into cars.
“Con feels shorter than it is,” he says.
“Yeah.”
I don’t trust myself to say anything else.
Because the truth is settling in slowly and uncomfortably: this weekend had edges. It has an end. Airport gates are waiting. Separate states. Separate routines.
He pulls the handle of his suitcase out. “We’ve got time for breakfast before the morning sessions.”
I nod, dropping my suitcase to the floor.
We stand there a second longer than necessary.
Then he bumps my shoulder with his. “C’mon. Let’s get coffee before we get sentimental.”
“Too late,” I mutter.
He grins, but it’s softer than usual.
When we step into the hallway, the room clicks shut behind us with a final, mechanical sound that feels louder than it should.
Downstairs, the hotel breakfast is quieter than yesterday. Fewer wild-eyed speed builders, more subdued Sunday energy. We grab coffee and something simple: bagels, fruit, whatever looks least aggressive at just past nine in the morning.
Peyton scrolls through the Brickspo schedule on his phone while chewing. “Okay, what are we doing today? Vendor alley round two? Ninjago draft?”
I lean over, shoulder brushing his. “What time is that RainbowLUG meetup?”
He pauses, glances at me, and then back at the screen. His tone shifts: subtle, steady. “Ten a.m. Breakout Room C.”
There’s no teasing in his voice. No raised eyebrows. Just information.
My stomach tightens anyway.
“You wanna go?” he asks, like he’d be fine either way.
I take a sip of coffee to buy time. The room smells like syrup and burnt toast. Normal. Ordinary.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “I think I do.”
He nods once. “Cool. Then we go together.”
No speech. No pressure. Just a simple agreement.
By the time we make it back to the convention floor, the morning crowd is still sauntering in. We pass tables stacked with sealed sets, bins of loose parts, a teenager who never had his dark ages arguing passionately about BIONICLE lore. The usual hum.
Breakout Room C is smaller than the others. The door’s propped open. A hand-lettered sign taped to the wall reads:
RainbowLUG Meetup – 10:00 AM
Inside, maybe fifteen people are already there. A couple older guys wearing Pride pins on their lanyards. Two women sitting close together, hands brushing. A guy about our age fiddling with a minifig he’s clearly customized. A few others scattered in banquet chairs.
No spectacle. No rainbow confetti explosion. Just people who like the bricks like us.
Peyton doesn’t make a big entrance. He just walks in like he belongs there, finds two empty chairs, and sits. I follow, hyper-aware for half a second of everything: my hands, my posture, the space between us.
Then his knee nudges mine. Not by accident.
I glance at him. He’s looking toward the front where someone from the group is introducing themselves, nodding along like this is the most natural place in the world to be on a Sunday morning.
The knot in my chest loosens, just a little.
Breakout Room C fills slowly, chairs scraping softly against carpet. There’s no podium, no slideshow. Just a semi-circle.
A guy in his early forties with a neatly trimmed beard and a BlockFair lanyard steps forward, offering an easy smile.
“Hey everyone, I’m Stephen from BuckeyeLUG,” he says. “If you’re new, welcome. If you’ve been before, welcome back.”
His tone isn’t formal. It’s practiced, but warm.
“RainbowLUG isn’t really a local LUG,” he continues. “We don’t have monthly builds or a permanent display space. We’re kind of… a traveling one.”
A few people nod.
“We’re builders from other LUGs. SEATAC, Front Range, Lone Star, wherever. We come together at conventions because we share at least one thing in common.” He taps the small Pride pin clipped to his badge. “Pride. Whatever flag you identify with.”
There’s no applause. Just quiet understanding.
“You don’t even have to be part of a regular LUG. You don’t have to label yourself perfectly. You just have to want to build in a space where you don’t have to explain yourself first.”
Beside me, Peyton’s knee nudges mine again. Steady. Present.
Stephen steps over to a table on the edge of the room.
On it sits a modified version of 40516 Everyone Is Awesome. The familiar rainbow backdrop is there: but instead of fixed bricks forming a rainbow, the whole thing has been rebuilt with exposed studs across the surface, turning it into a kind of open platform.
“We’ve been doing this for the last few cons,” Stephen says. “Instead of the standard figures, we invite everyone to put their sigfig on it.”
A few people immediately reach into pockets or badge holders, pulling out carefully customized minifigures.
“Significant figure,” Stephen clarifies for a couple newcomers. “The version of you that shows up on your builds. However, you want to represent yourself.”
He smiles. “It’s not about perfection. It’s about showing that even if we’re scattered across different LUGs, we still come together.”
One by one, people stand.
A woman with short purple hair places her sigfig near the red stripe. Two older men step up together and set theirs side by side on orange. A college-age guy with a custom torso printed with a Pride heart carefully snaps his figure onto green.
The rainbow fills slowly and I hesitate just long enough for Peyton to notice.
He follows my gaze to my empty hands.
“Oh,” he says quietly. Not teasing. Just… understanding.
“You don’t have one, do you?”
I shake my head. “I always meant to make one. Just never did.”
Stephen’s voice carries again from the front. “There’s a playbrick area down in the public hall if you want to scavenge. We promise to sanitize after.”
A few people chuckle.
Peyton stands immediately and clips a figure from his pocket onto his name badge. “C’mon, Chris. Field trip.”
I glare at him. “There are children in there.”
“So? We’ll be respectful.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He grins anyway and holds out his hand.
I don’t take it, but I stand up.
The playbrick area is exactly what you’d expect: low tables, giant bins of mixed parts, kids digging with both hands like they’re panning for gold. Parents hover with coffee and thousand-yard stares.
The second we step up to an open bin, I freeze.
A little kid is actively chewing on a Batman figure three feet away.
I look at Peyton. He looks at me.
We both look back at the figure in the kid’s mouth.
“Yeah,” I say immediately. “We are washing our hands after this.”
He laughs under his breath. “Yes, ma’am.”
We crouch down and start to look.
The bins are chaotic: torsos mixed with different sized wheels, hairpieces tangled with Technic pins. It feels vaguely sacrilegious digging through something so uncurated after two days of pristine builds built from organized collections.
Peyton is the first to commit. He plunges a hand in and starts sifting like he’s searching for buried treasure.
“Okay,” he says. “We need Chris. But in LEGO.”
“That narrows it down.” I shrug.
He holds up a lime green mohawk.
“Absolutely not.”
He tosses it back and keeps digging, pieces clacking softly together, until his fingers pause.
“Oooh. Wait.”
He pulls out a medium-length brunette hairpiece: slightly tousled, simple, clean.
He holds it up next to my head and squints. “Okay. That’s actually kinda perfect.”
I take it from him, turning it in my fingers.
It is perfect. Not dramatic. Not aggressively styled. Just… me.
“Good find,” I admit.
He bows slightly from his crouch. “Thank you, thank you.”
I start searching for a head.
Most of them are chaotic: pirate grins, winks, exaggerated smirks, evil eyebrows angled like they’re plotting something against the Green Ninja.
Then I find one: Big round eyes. A small closed smile. Neutral, almost gentle.
I hold it up to show him.
Peyton studies it. “That’s very you.”
“Normal?”
“Someone I’d room with after just meeting them on Facebook.”
I roll my eyes, but pocket it.
Now the torso. This is harder.
I find one with a crimson sweater and a gray jacket layered over it. It feels academic. Colorado fall energy.
Then there’s another, a blue jacket, more casual, slightly brighter.
I hold both up.
“Thoughts?” I ask.
Peyton leans closer, serious, like this is a first round draft pick.
“The blue’s good,” he says. “But the gray jacket…”
He taps it lightly.
“That feels like you when you’re thinking too hard about something.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s accurate.”
He digs again and finds a pair of dark blue legs: simple pants, nothing flashy, and hands them over like an offering.
“You can’t go wrong with neutral.”
I start assembling the pieces in my palm.
Hair. Head. Torso option one. Torso option two.
I hesitate, then I glance at the figure he put on his name badge.
It’s wearing a high-vis vest, a white construction helmet, and blue jeans, holding a screwdriver: electrician energy fully embraced.
The gray jacket suddenly makes sense. It balances his.
“I’m going gray,” I decide.
“Solid choice.”
I snap it together.Hair clicks on last. I hold it up between us.
It’s… small. Plastic. Slightly worn because it came from a kids' playbin. But it feels like the person I’ve become at this con.
“You made one,” Peyton says, admiring it.
“Yeah.”
A kid bumps into my elbow chasing a wheel hub.
I immediately stand. “Okay. Bathroom break with soap immediately.”
Peyton laughs and stands too. “Yes, sir.”
We scrub our hands like we just performed surgery, which, in a way, I just did with an ABS version of myself.
Then we head back to Breakout Room C.
The rainbow is fuller now. Sigfigs scattered across every color stripe: some flamboyant, some understated, some clearly years in the making.
Stephen smiles when he sees us return.
“Find something?”
Peyton gestures toward me. “He did.”
I swallow and step forward.
The modified 40516 Everyone Is Awesome build looks different up close. Without the flat tiles, it’s more open. Studs everywhere, space for anyone or anything.
I hover for a second. Then I place my sigfig on the green stripe.
Peyton takes his and puts it right beside mine.
His is unmistakable: high-vis vest, construction helmet, confident grin.
Mine looks smaller somehow. But it fits.
When I straighten up, our shoulders brush.
Stephen nods at the growing display. “That’s what it’s about,” he says. “Different LUGs. Different states. Same building platform.”
I glance down again.
Gray jacket next to high-vis orange. Denver next to Seattle.
For once, I don’t feel like I’m pretending to belong somewhere.
Peyton leans toward me just enough that only I can hear him.
“Looks good next to mine.”
I bump his knee lightly.
“Don’t get used to it.”
He smiles like he absolutely plans to.
The convention floor feels different in the afternoon.
Louder, somehow, but thinner. As everyone knows, it’s the last stretch.
Peyton and I drift aisle by aisle in the displays, slower than we did on Friday. No frantic part-hunting. No rushing to workshops. Just taking it in before it all goes away.
We stop in front of a massive medieval castle first: towers, a working drawbridge, and tiny goats in a pasture. It’s impressive.
“Okay, that’s serious,” Peyton comments.
“Detail’s insane. But they recycled some of the Medieval Town Square.” I point out.
We move on.
A cyberpunk city pulses in neon across three folding tables. Custom lighting. Rain-slick streets made from trans-clear tiles.
A Star Wars fleet hovers mid-air with transparent supports so subtle they’re nearly invisible.
We linger at each one, talking quietly, not just about technique, but about risk. Story. Heart.
Then we turn a corner, and find ourselves peering over kids and even teens.
The Stranger Things collaboration build sprawls across what feels like an entire city block of tables.
Hawkins, Indiana: brick by brick.
The downtown storefronts are intact and cheerful on one side, then shift subtly darker as you move toward the wooded outskirts. There’s the Byers’ house. The arcade. The high school gym.
And then: Hawkins Lab. White, clinical, looming.
The façade opens to reveal sterile hallways, tiny minifig scientists, flickering trans-red lighting in the basement where the gate pulses open into the Upside Down.
Black vines snake through broken walls. The Mind Flayer coils above the forest canopy in brick-built shadow.
It’s not just big. It’s coordinated.
“You can tell like fifteen people worked on this,” I say softly.
Peyton nods. “But it feels like one person designed it.”
We walk along the perimeter slowly. Every building connects. The scale is consistent. Even the sidewalks line up.
Someone’s placed little Easter eggs everywhere: a minifig Hopper with a coffee cup, Eleven in mid-telekinesis, Barb by the pool.
Peyton folds his arms.
“Well,” he says. “There goes my vote.”
I glance at him. “You weren’t going to vote for yourself?”
He snorts. “I absolutely was not.”
“You should.”
He shakes his head immediately. “Chris... My Tacoma build is good. It’s not Best in Show good.”
“It’s detailed.”
“It’s a truck.”
“It’s your truck.”
He looks at me then, really looks.
“That’s the point,” he says quietly. “It’s mine. It’s personal. But that?” He gestures toward Hawkins Lab. “That’s collaboration. That's the scale. That’s guts.”
I watch a little kid press their face over a stanchion, staring at the Upside Down portal in awe.
“Okay,” I admit. “Hawkins Lab especially.”
Peyton grins. “Especially.”
We fill out our ballots together and the public hours wind down slowly.
The hum fades first. Then the crowd thins. Parents herd tired kids toward exits. Vendors start to offer deals, rather than pack things up.
An announcement echoes over the speakers, someone from the hotel, not Adam: “The public show floor is now closed. Thank you for coming. See you next year!”
The words hit harder than they should.
We don’t move right away. Peyton’s hand brushes mine.
This time, I don’t hesitate. I lace our fingers together.
Not dramatic. Not hidden.
Just… there. He squeezes once.
The closing ceremony gathers everyone near the main stage, builders clustering in groups, some already holding half-disassembled sections of MOCs like security blankets.
The organizers thank sponsors. Volunteers. LUG leaders.
Then they move to awards.
“Best TFOL Build…”
Applause.
“Best Microscale Display…”
Cheers.
We stand shoulder to shoulder, fingers still loosely linked.
“Best in Show…”
There’s a pause that feels intentionally dramatic.
Peyton’s thumb rubs absent circles against my knuckles.
“And the winner is — the Stranger Things: Hawkins, Indiana collaboration build by Happy Valley LUG!”
The room erupts.
The team behind the city whoops and half-hugs each other, one of them nearly knocking over a section of the forest in excitement.
Peyton leans toward me. “Told you.”
I smile. “Hawkins Lab, especially.”
They pose for pictures in front of the massive build, grinning, exhausted, proud.
I imagine what it would be like to be recognized by your peers like that, to build something that big with someone. To coordinate across basements. To plan for months.
The applause fades. The awards wrap. The room shifts into that strange, practical quiet that only teardown brings.
Tables that held entire worlds start clearing in minutes.
We head back to our displays. Peyton doesn’t have much to dismantle.
His Tacoma sits exactly as it did all weekend: clean, self-contained, unapologetically itself.
He lifts it carefully, turning it once in his hands like he’s checking for loose pieces.
“No dramatic teardown montage for you,” I say.
He snorts. “Perks of building a single vehicle.”
He lays a towel out flat on the table, the same one he used when he unpacked it Friday, and sets the truck in the center.
Peyton looks at it briefly, the one thing that perfectly encapsulates him. Classic, agile, and dependable.
“You did good,” I say quietly.
He shrugs, but there’s pride there. “It survived the weekend.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
His jaw tightens just slightly, like he wants to deflect.
Instead, he folds one side of the towel over the hood. Then the other. Tucks the edges in tight, careful around the side mirrors and light bar.
Efficient. Protective.
He lowers the wrapped bundle into his suitcase like it’s something fragile, even if he’d never admit that word fits.
Then he zips it shut.
Display gone.
Meanwhile, my teardown is… less streamlined.
Shermans. Tigers. Tank Crews. Rows of carefully placed foliage that took days of tweaking to get right.
I remove the minifig crews first: tiny helmets, binoculars, printed torsos with rank insignias.
Then I start wrapping tanks in bubble wrap.
“Want help?” Peyton asks.
“Only if you promise not to mix up the 22nd Armoured Brigade figs from the 131st Infantry Brigade figs.”
He grins. “I’m not a monster.”
He steps in anyway and passes me one of the destroyed Sherman Fireflys, then takes my Tiger Tank I wrapped up to see where in my divided bin it goes.
“You label everything,” he notes.
“Organization is a spectrum trait.”
“Explains a lot.”
I bump his elbow with mine and grab more bubble wrap.
We pack in quiet rhythm for a while, bombed out building carefully lowered into the box, Shermans nested carefully so their tracks don’t snag.
Around us, the room empties faster now.
The Stranger Things build is coming apart in coordinated sections. Hawkins Lab’s white façade disappears panel by panel. The Upside Down vines get lifted away in clusters.
It’s almost unsettling how fast something massive can vanish.
“My flight’s at six,” Peyton says eventually.
I glance at my watch. It’s later than I thought.
“You’ll need to leave soon.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves faster.
He closes the lid on my last storage bin and presses it down until it snaps shut.
“That’s the last one.”
I nod.
We haul everything toward the exit in stages: rolling bins, backpacks slung over shoulders, Peyton’s suitcase bumping rhythmically over the carpet seams.
The hallway outside the main hall feels strangely bright after hours under convention lighting.
As we round the corner toward the hotel lobby, I see it again.
The modified Everyone is Awesome display.
The rainbow backdrop still stands on a folding table near the registration desk, but now it’s quieter. Most of the surrounding signage has been taken down. The exposed frame for the dividers looks less like an installation and more like a foundation waiting to be packed away.
Sigfigs still dot every stripe. Ours are still there.
Stephen stands nearby with a small storage case open, carefully sorting back LEGO DOTS pieces into individual bins. He looks up when he sees us.
“Hey,” he says warmly. “Heading out?”
“Yeah,” Peyton answers.
Stephen gestures toward the rainbow. “Don’t forget to take your sigfig.”
The words land gently, not as a command, more like a reminder that this part belongs to us.
I step closer first.
Up close, the display feels different from what it did this morning. Less ceremonial. More personal.
My gray-jacket sigfig stands exactly where I left it: on green, shoulder-to-shoulder with Peyton’s high-vis version.
For a second, I hesitate. It felt symbolic when I placed it.
Now it feels earned.
Peyton reaches past me, popping his figure free with a soft click. He holds it in his palm, turning it once like he’s checking it survived the day.
I lift mine off more carefully.
Stephen watches with an easy smile.
“See you at the next one guys?” he asks. There’s no pressure in it. Just community.
Peyton glances at me before answering.
“Yeah,” he says. “You will.”
I nod. “Definitely.”
Stephen gives us a small salute with two fingers and goes back to packing the rest away, the rainbow slowly emptying stripe by stripe.
We walk to the next table.
The Mile High Brickspo mech booth is halfway dismantled when we pass it. T-shirts packed back into boxes
Adam is crouched behind the booth banner, unscrewing a support pole.
He looks up when our shadows fall across the table.
“Well, there you are Chris, you've been avoiding me all morning?” he says lightly.
Peyton laughs. “Just took him to another LUG he can join.”
“Really, are you moving to Seattle?” Adam asks.
“Not yet,” I shrug.
“So you guys are headed out?”
“Yeah, airport,” Peyton says.
Adam’s gaze flicks between us. quick, perceptive, but not prying.
“See you next year!” he says simply. Then to me, “Send pics when you finish that half-track you were talking about.”
“I will.”
There’s a pause, the kind that acknowledges something without naming it.
“Good con,” Adam says.
“Good con,” we echo.
And then we’re moving again.
The parking lot air is cooler than I expected.
The late afternoon sun sits low enough to cast long shadows across the asphalt. Cars are half-packed. Trunks open. Builders are doing that last-minute Tetris with storage bins, and last minute purchases.
We load everything into the bed of the Maverick carefully: my storage bins first, slid up against the cab. Backpacks tucked in beside them. His suitcase last, laid flat so the LEGO Tacoma inside doesn’t shift.
He presses the tailgate closed with a firm click.
That’s it.
No more packing. No more excuses. We both turn to each other.
The hotel rises behind us: concrete and glass catching the low sun. Automatic doors sliding open and close for other builders making their exits.
It looks ordinary again. But it doesn’t feel ordinary.
Peyton squints up at it like he’s memorizing it.
“Hey,” he says.
“Yeah?”
He hesitates, which he hasn’t all weekend.
“So… PNW BlockCon.”
There it is. I look back at the hotel instead of at him.
“That’s in September, right?”
“Yeah. Seattle. Early September.”
Third week of Junior year, back in Boulder. Dorm life. Everything structured and predictable.
A weekend in Seattle is not predictable.
“That’s tough,” I say finally. Honest. “Classes will have already started.”
Peyton nods once. He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t push.
“Just… think about it,” he says. “You wouldn’t even have to display. Just come for the weekend and stay with me.”
The way he says just come makes my chest tighten.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
He studies me like he’s trying to decide if that’s a polite brush-off or a real maybe.
It’s a real maybe.
“Okay,” he says quietly.
We climb into the Maverick and the drive to the airport is short. Too short.
We don’t turn on music.
Traffic is light. Late afternoon sun slants across the windshield, catching dust I should probably clean off.
Peyton rests his elbow on the center console, hand loose near the shifter. Not touching me.
Not not touching me either.
“You know,” he says after a minute, “I think you’d like it in Seattle.”
I huff. “If I went, what would I even see? I’d be busy at the Con.”
“Me.”
We both smile faintly.
Airport Blvd. is the next exit. I pull into Departures.
The curb is chaos: rolling suitcases, quick hugs, engines idling.
I park at the edge of the drop-off lane. Neither of us moves right away.
Then Peyton unbuckles. “I’ll grab my bag.”
I get out as well. We walk to the back together. I lower the tailgate. He lifts his suitcase out carefully, setting it upright on the curb.
The terminal doors slide open behind him with a mechanical sigh.
This is it. Neither of us says that.
He grips the handle of his suitcase, then lets go of it.
Peyton steps toward me instead.
He doesn’t ask. He just pulls me in.
The kiss isn’t careful. It isn’t composed.
It’s wet and a little messy and a little desperate: like neither of us wants to measure it or moderate it.
His hand slides up the back of my neck. Mine fist into the front of his shirt.
People move around us. A car horn honks somewhere down the lane.
I don’t care.
He kisses me like he’s trying to memorize this weekend, and then he pulls back just enough to breathe.
My chest feels hollow already. I could say something big. Something cinematic.
Instead, I just swallow and say, “Text me when you land.”
It comes out rougher than I expected.
He nods immediately. “I will.”
He leans in and kisses me once more: gentler this time. Slower. Like a promise instead of a question. Then he steps back, grabs his suitcase, and walks backward a few steps before turning toward the doors.
He looks over his shoulder once.
I’m still standing there by the truck.
He gives me a small nod. Not goodbye.
Just a later.
The automatic doors slide shut behind him, and suddenly, Denver feels very empty.
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