Archive of Our Own

hey, ben from new york and also high school. :) my building has a pool, wanna come by to smoke up and reminisce?

Ben stared at his phone until the screen went dim, and he had to frantically tap it to stop it from going dark. The text was still there. It’d taken him hours to compose an innocuous and casual-sounding “remember me? hitting you up now that I'm in LA” text, three months after they’d last seen each other. And to get this in reply, mere minutes after he’d sent it? Surely it crossed the line from plausibly deniable homosocial ambiguity to straight-up flirtatiousness. Right?

He imagined Johnny’s smirk, the way his lip curled up and his eyes brightened, like he loved mashing his thumbs all over Ben’s buttons.

Sure, sounds fun, he texted back, ignoring the way his pulse was hammering in his throat. When?

Johnny responded immediately again, and that was that. Ben’d flown all his stuff out to LA, moved into an apartment he’d only seen in photos, and within the week, he had a date – of sorts – with his high school “it’s complicated” crush.

Shit. He was gonna have to buy swim trunks.

~~~

The pool at Johnny’s place turned out to be in the courtyard of a midcentury apartment complex, its peach-pink paint faded and peeling. The pool itself was surrounded by a handful of loungers and umbrellas. Small and strictly rectangular, it compared unfavorably to the pool in Johnny’s parents’ house, every detail of which had been tattooed on Ben’s brain for more than a decade, not to mention Nate’s gleaming fairy-light-bathed sunset-view pool.

Johnny’d met him at the complex’s gates, smiling wide, and led him straight to the pool. Ben had harbored hopes of getting a glimpse of Johnny’s apartment – but maybe after their swim. Or – well. Whatever they were here to do. Reminisce. Return to unfinished business.

Ben shivered.

But any flirtatious vibes, ambiguous or otherwise, were dampened by the group of tweens splashing loudly and playfully dunking each other in the deep end.

“Buy us beer!” one of them yelled at Johnny, but he just rolled his eyes and flipped them off.

“Great atmosphere,” Ben said dryly, dropping into a lounger next to Johnny while he lit up the joint.

He cast his eyes over Johnny’s body in the early evening light, trying not to linger too long and get caught, but so eager for a glimpse he felt as though he could inhale him. The encounter at Nate’s party seemed like a long ago hazy dream: Johnny’s wet hair against his skull, water droplets on his eyelashes, the flex of his pecs, his trunks riding up his thigh. And in the driveway: his large hands cupping Ben’s head, his mouth against Ben’s, a shock of heat and pressure, far too brief.

In the LA twilight, Johnny tilted his head towards the splashing tweens, and flashed Ben a grin. “They’ll be outta here in thirty. Trust me.”

Ben cocked his eyebrow back at him. “Friends of yours, then?”

“Yep. At least with them I can be the mature one, y’know?”

He passed Ben the joint. Their fingers brushed, and tingles spread up Ben’s arm.

“Mature? You’re the one planning a wedding,” he said, half a reminder to himself and half to Johnny.

Johnny didn’t say anything, and when Ben glanced over at him, he was looking down at his hands on his lap.

“We broke up,” he said finally, slanting a look towards Ben from under his lashes.

“Oh,” Ben said stupidly. “Shit. Sorry.”

“Nah. It’s whatever. I’ve got some shit to work out, I guess.”

The words shot through Ben like lightning. Jesus. Did Johnny get off on being so mysteriously ambiguously bicurious that innocent gay dudes fell over themselves for the slimmest chance to blow him?

“How’s the working shit out going, then?” he said, willing himself to sound normal.

A slow smile bloomed on Johnny’s face, arrogant and smug and so goddamn hot. “Ask me again later,” he said, and Ben’s breath caught in his throat. Johnny glanced at him sideways. “Willing to say anything about boyfriends this time?”

“No, uh, boyfriend,” Ben said. Unlike the way it’d caught in his throat at Nate’s party, it didn’t make him feel like a gay loser to admit it this time. Never been kissed. Never had a boyfriend. Humiliating confessions spilling open from his chest at Johnny’s smirking invitation.

This time, it felt kinda like an invitation.

True to Johnny’s prediction, the tweens hauled themselves giggling and whispering out of the deep end within thirty minutes, and traipsed by the loungers draped in their brightly coloured towels. The lights at the pool’s edge were bright enough for Ben to make out the epically judgmental look that one of them shot him and Johnny.

Johnny waved cheerfully at them. One of them gave him the finger.

“Wow,” Ben said. “Best friends, I take it.”

“They love me,” Johnny said flippantly. “C’mon. I’m the only one who uses it after ten.”

He sat up and stripped off his shirt, and Ben choked back his reaction to how unfair that move still was, even in the dark. Especially when he was already high and feeling kinda horny. He followed suit, self-conscious in his brand new navy blue trunks.

The pool wasn’t heated, but even in the evening air, after the muggy heat of the day, it was refreshing. Ben dove into the deep end, hoping to clear his head. When he surfaced, Johnny was nearby, treading water and watching him, eyes dark and unfathomable. The warm pool lights bounced off the water, gilding his face in blue and gold. He looked like every daydream Ben’d ever had.

“C’mere,” he said, voice soft and earnest, and Ben’s heart thudded heavily in his chest. So much for clearing his head. Fifteen years ago he’d been a nervous, idiotic gay kid, foolishly hopeful of that exact same invitation. And he was an idiot ten times over, probably, but he was helpless to do anything except swim obediently closer, a magnet caught in Johnny’s gravitational field.

Within arm’s reach, he paused, treading water. “You c’mere.”

There was pool water caught in Johnny’s lashes as he blinked back at Ben. “Yeah?” he murmured, but he didn’t move, and he looked abruptly, strangely vulnerable.

Ben wasn’t a nervous teenager anymore. Ambiguity be damned. “Yeah,” he said confidently, meeting Johnny’s eyes. “You invited me here, and I came. But I don’t wanna spend my time reminiscing. Do you?”

Johnny shook his head slowly. “Nah,” he said, and then, “I like you better now, anyway.”

God. Impossibly, disarmingly charming. Ben couldn’t let himself get distracted. “Then c’mere. Maybe I can help you figure that shit of yours out.”

Bicurious experimentation wasn’t really his thing, but Johnny’d been under his skin since tenth grade, and Ben was going to take what he could fucking get –

What he got was Johnny swimming up into his personal space, close enough for Ben to feel his body heat and his breath on his skin. One of Johnny’s wet hands slid up and along Ben’s hairline with infinite gentleness, fingertips coasting down his jawline until his finger was at the corner of Ben’s mouth. He paused there, eyes flicking to Ben’s, so Ben stuck out his tongue to deliberately lick his fingertip and, when Johnny’s eyes went gratifyingly wide, took it in his mouth.

“Oh fuck,” Johnny said faintly, and Ben rewarded him by gripping his wrist and sucking two fingers deep in his mouth, tongue fluttering over them, tasting chlorine and sunscreen. Johnny swore again, drawn out and breathless this time, and Ben glanced up at him from under his lashes, and let Johnny see his cheeks hollow and mouth form an O around the width of his thick fingers.

“Fucking fuck –”

Maybe it was the rush of blood to their dicks, or maybe it was the pot making them lightheaded, but in the next moment, both of them lost their rhythm trying to tread water, and Ben had to let go of Johnny’s fingers while they both flailed to stay above the surface.

Johnny laughed, a surprised, bright sound, and Ben found himself grinning back at him.

“Oh my god,” Johnny said, still smiling. He got a grip on Ben’s arm and started swimming backwards toward the pool’s edge, towing Ben with him. “There you go again. Whip it out. Straight to blowjobs again.”

Flushing, Ben said, “I wasn’t the one who –”

“Oh, I wasn’t complaining,” Johnny said, and used his bulk to crowd Ben against the pool’s edge, bare chest pressing distractingly against Ben’s. “But I do wanna kiss you.”

“Okay, then,” Ben said breathlessly, and tilted his head up in invitation.

Their last kiss had been living large in his memory, including on lonely late nights, over the last few months. This was on another level, open-mouthed and eager, hands gripping each other, slick bodies pressed tight against one another, sparks catching to a flame in a matter of moments. Hazily, Ben realized he was pinned up against the pool wall, and his dick was hard against Johnny’s muscled thigh. He shuddered helplessly in Johnny’s arms, and curled his leg around his hip, sparing a grateful thought for the buoyancy of the water.

“I jerk off so much thinking about you,” Johnny muttered, mouth on Ben’s throat.

The admission flushed through Ben like wildfire, and he dug his fingers into Johnny’s shoulder. “Fuck,” he managed. “That’s so hot, you’re so hot –”

Johnny shoved his thigh even harder against Ben’s dick, and Ben let out an embarrassingly loud moan.

The sound echoed humiliatingly loudly across the pool. He was abruptly aware of how public the pool was, surrounded by the balconies of hundreds of Johnny’s neighbors, and how much sound carried over water.

“Oh my god,” he said. “Your neighbors will hear us.”

Johnny grunted into his neck and slid his wide palm down Ben’s ribs. “God. I can’t tell you how little I care about my neighbors right now.”

Ben found himself laughing. “Yeah?” he said. “Well, while fucking you in a pool has been a long, long, long time fantasy of mine, I’d rather not be interrupted by judgemental middle schoolers.” He tugged Johnny’s face up to press a heated kiss against his mouth. “But if you take me to your apartment right now, I’ll show you how fast I can make you come when I suck your dick.”

“Fuck,” Johnny said feelingly. “Fuck, yes. Let’s go.”

~~~

In the morning, after exchanging indulgently sleepy handjobs, Ben yawned and said lazily, “So how’s working your shit out going?”

Johnny’s grin was so bright, it was outshining the west coast sunshine. “Ask me later,” he said, eyes crinkling, and there was no more ambiguity, that was one hundred percent flirtatious. “When we meet up again. How’s Wednesday?”

“Wide open,” Ben said, and grinned helplessly back.