fic: pretty much a sex god
Title Pretty Much A Sex God
Author adellyna
Pairing Jon/Spencer
Rating PG-13
Summary Wedding Planner AU prequel (Original Story Here), Jon and Spencer's first date zomg.
Word Count Around 4000.
Disclaimer Please with the not suing, thanks.
Author's Note This is for shanalle, who demanded it. I cannot resist her dulcet tones. My undying and eternal devotion to airgiodslv and maleyka for their fine beta work and hand holding. Any existing grammatical errors can be blamed totally on them.
Spencer Smith is enjoying a quiet lunch with one of the nurses, Molly, when a crazy man in flip-flops and ridiculously unkempt hair accosts him.
Well, it’s less of accosting, and more of shuffling up with a sleepy smile and these liquid, chocolatey eyes, but the ensuing dialogue is odd enough to qualify for accostment.
“Hi,” the man says. “I was sitting over there,” he turns to point at the ledge of a fountain about twenty feet away, as though his precise previous location will provide some valuable insight as to why he is no longer sitting over there, but rather is standing here casting a shadow over Spencer’s potato salad, “and I know this sounds creepy, but I saw you smile and I kind of had to take your picture.”
He lifts a camera, like its presence is going to make this interlude less insane. For the record, it doesn’t.
“And,” he continues. “I don’t want to be some freak with a dozen long-distance shots of some strange guy in a courtyard, so I’m here to, uh, meet you. I’m Jon.”
Spencer blinks silently.
“I’m a photographer,” Jon adds. This revelation doesn’t lend itself to not calling the cops. Spencer’s hand is actually already on his cell phone. “Here,” Jon digs in his pocket. It‘s not really threatening, but Spencer prepares to duck behind Molly anyway, just in case Jon pulls a knife or something. Molly will be fine, Spencer reasons. His gaydar is pinging off the charts with this guy.
Instead, he emerges with a slightly bent business card. Jon Walker, it says. Photographer. Weekend Getawayer Magazine.
“Getawayer?” Spencer asks, eyebrow cocked.
Jon has the good grace to look sheepish. “Yeah, it’s lame.”
It is. It’s really lame. Also, it’s not a major publication, so it’s not particularly reassuring either. Not that any moron with a printer couldn’t come up with New York Times business cards, but still. “This is creepy,” Spencer says.
“Yeah,” Jon agrees. “I’m sorry. I could have spilled my coffee on you and then copped a feel while I helped clean you up? This just seemed more honest.”
He crouches, his knee jutting into Spencer’s personal space. His flip-flops are a quarter inch from Spencer’s food, and… there is just so much to disapprove of here. Molly titters next to him, because Jon’s plucked the card away from Spencer and is scribbling more numbers on the back of it. “This is my home number,” he says, “and this is my cell. And my personal email address. Use any and all of them, any time you want.” He hands it back over and his knuckles graze Spencer’s leg.
“Hi,” Jon says again. “I’m Jon Walker.”
“Spencer,” Spencer says. “Smith. Spencer Smith.”
Jon smirks, and even though he looks like he hasn’t seen the business end of a razor or the inside of a barber shop recently, it’s kind of an extremely charming look on him. Spencer, for one, is charmed, and that‘s no mean feat. “Is that a fake name?” Jon asks.
“What?” Jon’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles widely. Spencer finds himself even more charmed. “Oh, no. It’s a family name. Spencer James Smith. The fifth.”
Molly titters again. Spencer makes a note to stop taking lunch with Molly.
“Hey,” Jon says, then stops, rocking back and forth a little on his heels. It makes his floppy hair swing around his ears. The curve of his jaw is kind of fascinating; Spencer is pretty sure that overly forward psychopaths should not be allowed to be this attractive, really, it’s not fair. When Jon talks again, he says: “This isn’t going to sound any less creepy, but I have to drive out to the lake Saturday and take some photographs for a spread the magazine is doing. It’s a four hour drive, and I won’t leave there until at least sunset, so, like, don’t ask your mom for advice on this one, but you could come with me. You should come with me.”
“You know,” Spencer says, and he’s clamping down on the urge to smile so hard it actually hurts. “I could be an axe-murderer, just sitting around in courtyards, luring victims to me with my evil, malicious, minding-my-own-business ways.”
Jon (“Spencer’s new boyfriend,” Molly giggles when they get back to the office) laughs, and ok, that should really be illegal. Spencer considers calling the cops again.
“I’ll take my chances,” Jon says. His thumb brushes against Spencer’s knuckle when he finally lets go of his end of the business card. It’s the weirdest pick up Spencer has ever heard of, much less participated in.
***
There is absolutely no way Spencer is going to call Jon Walker and agree to get in a car and drive four hours from safety with him a mere three days after they ‘meet’. No way.
He just sticks the business card to his fridge for laughs. And when he scans the courtyard at lunch every day, it’s to make sure his meal remains uninterrupted. Not because he’s looking for Jon Walker and his messy hair, excruciatingly plain flip flops, and wry, sideways smile.
“You should go with him,” Molly says. Really, he’s got to stop taking meals with her.
“Molly,” Spencer says, in his best impersonation of patience, “seriously, I know it’s a cliché, but he could seriously be a murderer.”
Molly has cold fried chicken. Its skin lies in a crumpled, delicious little heap on her plate; she shuns it in favor of peeling off strips of meat and chewing them slowly. Her latest diet craze: eat whatever you want, just eat it at a fucking snail’s pace.
Spencer steals the crispy skin.
“I don’t know,” Molly muses, “he seemed to really like you. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to rape you and then feed you to bears for his own amusement. Oooh, or sexual excitement. I was watching this movie last night where-”
“Molly!” Honestly. There’s a lovely, enchantingly quiet nurse named Cara who works down the hall, Spencer should probably eat with her from now on. “This is not helping. Anyway, it’s Friday. I’d have to call him, like, tonight.”
“You should,” she says, in what appears to be her best impersonation of wisdom. “He was really hot. Did you see his ass?”
Spencer did see his ass, yes. And Molly’s right, it is pretty sensational. “If I get so much as a splinter,” he sighs, “I am blaming you.”
***
The phone conversation goes a lot like this:
“Jon Walker.”
“You seriously answer your phone like that, with your whole name?”
“That’s not my whole name. If it was my whole name, I’d say Jon Jacob Walker. And then, maybe, throw in something else. Like, Jon Jacob Walker, how may I be of assistance.”
“Huh.”
“Why, how do you answer the phone?”
“I say hello.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Who is this?”
***
Jon picks him up on Saturday morning at the crack of dawn. An argument could be made that nine o’clock isn’t quite the crack of dawn, but Spencer isn’t fond of argumentative people, so.
“I’m going to haunt you,” he says into the phone, “I swear. If I die, I’m going to haunt you forever.”
“Whatever.” Molly’s voice is groggy, he had to wake her up for this heaping of last-minute guilt. “If you get laid, you should buy me flowers.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Jon says. He’s shaved sometime during the week; you can tell because his stubble isn’t quite as pronounced. Also, he’s standing a little too close to Spencer while he locks his front door and he smells like cucumbers. It’s crisp and clean and not at all the scent someone would choose for a bloodletting, so Spencer’s feeling pretty reassured.
Molly chimes in from the other end of the phone, loudly, “Ask if he’s going to rim you!” Spencer makes two notes: the first, to contract and pass on to Molly a severe case of laryngitis, the second, to forbid her from researching his ‘alternative lifestyle’ on the internet.
“Don’t answer that,” he says to Jon, brandishing his key. “I will go right back inside this house if you answer that, and I will take my entire bag of delicious snack foods with me.”
Jon’s answering smile is warm and slow. Spencer’s toes curl up in his shoes, and he actually stumbles a bit on the first step. Even worse, Jon’s hand is there immediately, steadying his elbow. The smile isn’t any less promising, but it turns up at the corner and is a little mocking. That’s fine. Mocking works for Spencer.
“There’s a joke there about putting things in my mouth,” Jon says, “but I’m not going to make it.” They’re halfway to the car before he turns and smiles again, a squinty grin that puts Spencer in the mind of rolling over and going back to sleep, which is crazy since he’s been out of bed for two hours and approximately twenty-seven outfits. “At least, not until we’re on the road.”
***
Jon Walker has the following, listed in order of how unbearably adorable they are to Spencer Smith:
1. A lisp.
“You have a lisp,” Spencer says about fifteen minutes into the car ride, “just a little one.” He stares at Jon’s mouth, fascinated. It helps that Jon’s biting his lower lip and flushing a little; if by ‘help’ you mean ‘is excruciatingly hot.’
“I know,” Jon says, and there’s no s in it, so the words come out slow and smooth. Spencer tries not to be disappointed. “I’m sorry?”
Oooh, there it is. It‘s probably a sick fetish, getting all staticky between the ears because some guy‘s tongue presses to the back of his teeth a certain way. Oh god. Spencer forbids himself to think about Jon‘s tongue and grins instead, settling happily into his seat. “Hey, no. It’s really cute. Like, really cute.”
“Well,” Jon says, “that’s good. I mean, that you like it. Otherwise your name, Spencer James Smith, might be kind of a problem.”
Spencer is in heaven.
2. A cat named Dylan.
“No kids,” Jon says. “And I could kill silk flowers, but I do have a cat. His name is Dylan.”
“You’re deadly to fake plants, but you can keep a real cat alive?” Jon’s cd case is black, leather and battered. At least half of the discs are missing entirely, a good third of the remaining ones are battered and scratched, spotted from too much time on the dash in the sun, or scribbled with notes. this whole cd is the longest song ever, it says on the Dave Matthews Band disc, and that’s including Queen.
The music comes from Jon’s iPod anyway. Spencer’s brought his too, just in case Jon’s taste tends to the… well, to the bad, but so far it’s all good. Things he would choose, not so indie as to be pretentious, not so commercial as to make Spencer’s ears bleed.
“Well,” Jon says. His hands are moving on the steering wheel, smooth, flat strokes along the curve of it. Spencer’s fairly sure he’s unconsciously petting it like his cat. “Fake plants just sit there and suffer,” Jon explains, “if I forget to feed Dylan, I’ll wake up bleeding, with a face full of pissed off feline.”
3. One pinky nail painted shell pink.
The early morning light slants just right across Jon’s hand when he reaches for the thermostat and Spencer notices, for the first time, that Jon’s pinky is varnished a weak, pastel pink. “Oh my god,” Spencer says, grabbing Jon’s hand with both of his and tugging it toward him. “You know usually when guys paint their nails it’s black. Or, like, blue. Green, sometimes. Pink is a new- wow.”
“That is totally not my fault,” Jon says. He doesn’t move his hand. His wrist is very, very still. “I have a neighbor. She’s an eight year old girl. Well, I mean, her mom is there too, it’s not just the eight year old, but sometimes I help her with her math and then she helps me with my looks.”
Spencer turns Jon’s hand over, smiling down at the wide palm. “You don’t need any help with your looks,” he says. It’s really quiet; he’s not sure if Jon will be able to hear him over the music. Actually, he’s not sure if he wants Jon to hear him.
“I thought I got it all off,” Jon says mournfully, like he didn’t hear, but his fingers bend down and wrap around Spencer’s, and when Spencer settles their hands on his thigh and asks about the song that‘s playing, his knuckles are curled into Jon’s palm.
4. A blatant disregard for turn signals
“That was someone’s grandmother back there.” It turns out that Jon Walker drives kind of like a lunatic. It’s so incongruous with the grimy flip flops and the ready smile, so unexpected. Also, it gives Spencer an easy excuse for why his stomach took up yoga about an hour and a half ago.
Jon angles his car back into their lane and smiles earnestly, “You don’t know that. She may have never married. Or maybe she married but they couldn’t have kids. You shouldn’t mock her tragedy, Spencer.”
“She was old,” Spencer says flatly, but the tone fails somewhere around the o and he has to screw up the right side of his mouth in an attempt to look stern. “You should respect your elders.”
“She was slow,” Jon counters. There’s a farm truck ahead of them, the back full of shuffling sheep and one teenage boy wearing a black shirt and a pained expression. Jon whips smoothly out of their lane and coasts around the truck without ever signaling his intentions. He grins over at Spencer once they’ve passed, just a brief flicker of his eyes from the asphalt, “She should respect the speed limits.”
Someone, save him from the most adorable guy on the face of the planet, please. Or, you know, not. “Turn signals-” Spencer starts evenly, but Jon interrupts with an earnest nod and a swipe of his thumb across Spencer’s palm.
“-are for people who slow down, I know,” Jon finishes. That… is definitely not what Spencer was going to say.
5. An assortment of guitar picks in his ashtray
There’s a dozen or more of them, in assorted colors and inscribed with various brand names. Three of them are dark blue and have a weird bat thing etched on them. “You play guitar?” Spencer asks.
“Yeah. I’m pretty much a sex god. You should just give in now.” Jon’s bangs fell down over his eyes about half an hour ago; he still hasn’t let go of Spencer’s hand long enough to push them back. It does something funny to Spencer’s heart rate when Jon’s sideways smile peeks out from under the sweep of dark hair, his eyes looking lighter, more like amber, in contrast.
Silently - and pointedly - Spencer presses his thumb to Jon’s pink fingernail.
“I’m good with kids,” Jon says quickly, “confident in my masculinity. I love animals. I send my mom flowers. I bake. I will remember your middle name for the rest of my life. I play the guitar, Spencer. Guitar. Just admit it, you want me bad.”
Spencer smiles at the scenery whizzing by, but doesn’t say anything.
6. Socks in his glove compartment
“Um,” Jon says when Spencer pops open his glove compartment, “am I that boring?”
“No,” Spencer replies cheerfully. He starts picking through things with his free hand. The glove box is actually pretty crammed: more cd liners, half of a paperback novel, an envelope full of car-related receipts. “But we’re not in your apartment,” he continues, “so I can’t lock myself in your bathroom and go through your medicine cabinet.”
“You can come to my apartment,” Jon interjects. His fingers squeeze Spencer’s for emphasis, “Seriously, you can come to my apartment right now. I can turn this car around.”
They’re less than twenty minutes from the lake. Spencer smirks and keeps picking; there’s an abandoned key chain (a small, stuffed penguin), a bottle of ibuprofen, a packet of tissues, and pair of socks, folded up and sealed in a zip lock bag.
“Um,” Spencer says, ‘you have socks in your glove compartment.”
“You can never have too many socks,” Jon says reasonably. He shrugs, and it sends his hair bouncing further over his eyes. “Even,” he says, pausing to pout his lip to the side and blow at his bangs, “even Dumbledore knows that.”
Falling in love on the first date is probably a pretty big no-no. Dammit.
Spencer finally gives in to the urge to lean over and sweep Jon’s hair out of his face.
***
It’s afternoon by the time they get to the lake, and the sun is high. Spencer’s hot the minute he steps out of the car; though, weirdly, his left hand feels cool without Jon’s palm pressed against it.
He can’t get his hoodie off fast enough, it’s a white crumple on the passenger seat before Jon can even come around the car and smirk at Spencer’s t-shirt.
“What?” Spencer loves this t-shirt. It’s the exact right shade of pink, the shade that makes you squint a little to figure out if it actually is pink. And it has a whole gang (flock, crew, gaggle, herd, pack, whatever) of ladybugs. Maybe a marching band of ladybugs, since they’re gathered into a shape of a heart. One of them has broken ranks and is wandering off toward Spencer’s hip, its renegade path traced by a looping, dotted line. It leaves a gap in the heart, a pretentious sort of thing that’s cutesy all at the same time.
It’s entirely possible that he bought this shirt at Claire’s Boutique, but there is no way anyone can get him to admit to that.
“Nothing. I like your shirt.”
Jon sets his camera bag on the roof of the car, leaning in past Spencer to do it. His breath fans across Spencer’s ear, warm, sweet, with traces of the Twizzlers they made short work of on the trip. Jon will taste like licorice, Spencer realizes, if he kisses him right now. Their shoulders brush. Spencer dies a little.
“I like this shirt,” he says stupidly.
The sun is unbearably bright. The sweat trickling down the back of his neck is unbearably slow. Jon’s fingers, tracing the ladybug’s path, are unbearably gentle. “Does this one have a name?” His voice is soft, his touch even softer on Spencer’s hip.
“What?” God. He can count all of Jon’s eyelashes. He can see the places where the color fades from chocolate to gold. There’s a little freckle at the corner of Jon’s left eye.
Jon’s thumb presses against the ladybug, somewhere in the suddenly unbearably erogenous hollow under Spencer’s hip bone, and his fingers curve around Spencer’s hip, stretching toward his back pocket. “The one that got away,” he says, his thumb moving in slow, evil circles, “did you name it?” Their lips are maybe, maybe an inch apart. Spencer can taste the words before he hears them.
“Um.” Names. He needs a name. Quick, any name. Other than Jon. “Cher,” he says breathlessly.
“Cher,” Jon repeats. His thumb stills and he smiles. Up this close, it’s kind of blinding. “I like it.” Jon steps away before Spencer has any idea what’s happening. He gets his camera out of its bag and jogs backward a few steps, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “You ready to take some pictures?”
Spencer needs an ambulance.
***
Jon has this seriously sexy ‘I mean business’ face. Spencer sees it for about an hour, while Jon wanders around getting daylight shots of things that seem really unremarkable: a trail of little bird footprints pressed into damp sand, water lapping up to some rocks, a thick canopy of trees. Spencer starts to feel like he’s fucking up Jon’s light or concentration or something, so he finds a hammock someone has strung up between two trees; it’s a little green, but it feels dry, and there’s a fresh breeze blowing in from the lake, so.
It’s perfectly slung, just high enough that he can fold one leg over the side and kick off with his toes, rocking gently back and forth. Thin slices of sunlight warm his cheek, neck, forearm on every upswing. It’s kind of the most relaxed he’s been in months. Except for the fact that he totally wants to jump the guy whose wandering circles tighten until every time Spencer opens his eyes he can see him, moving slowly from tree to tree. He maybe opens his eyes a lot, snatching fleeting glimpses of Jon, shadowed by his lashes.
“What are you doing?” he asks, when the sound of Jon’s shoes crunching on leaves and pebbles stops. It’s more a sixth sense than anything, but he opens his eyes again to the sight of Jon, crouched down nearby with his camera to his eye. To his eye and pointed at Spencer. “You’re just using me for photography,” Spencer complains. He’d much rather Jon used him for something else.
“You’d rather I used you for something else?”
Huh. Freaky. But promising.
Spencer struggles to climb up onto his elbows. The rope digs in, etching the diamond pattern into his skin, but this gives him a better angle to make eyes at Jon, so it’s worth it. “Maybe,” he says. Eyes. He makes eyes like his life depends on it, big Bambi eyes, trying to channel both the cartoon deer and the disturbingly named erotic dancer varieties. “You should come find out.”
“You’re in a hammock,” Jon points out, his voice laughing.
The hammock is still swaying gently, prodded by Spencer’s foot, but he stops it, toes pressed hard into the ground. “It’s a big hammock.”
It’s actually not all that big. It is definitely not a two person hammock, but Jon has apparently gotten with the program, because he’s tucking his camera back into its case and bending. His hands curl around the rope on either side of Spencer’s head and he grins, saying sheepishly, “I have no idea how to get in this thing without dumping you out.”
Spencer has an idea.
“I have an idea,” he says, fisting his hands in Jon’s shirt and pulling slowly down, “it involves you shutting up and kissing me, and if we have to do that on the ground under this hammock, then that is just what has to happen.”
Jon presses his knee into the bend of the rope and climbs gingerly in. The whole thing wobbles violently, threatening to dump them out; Spencer’s foot braced against the ground is just enough - barely - to keep it steady. “Your shirt would get dirty,” Jon observes, but he’s settling down, hips to Spencer’s. The hammock rolls them sideways, Spencer’s foot lifts off the ground, and he finds himself tangled up with Jon, pressed full length.
Fucking finally.
“I don’t care,” he says stubbornly, but it’s a moot point now anyway. He nudges his knee between Jon’s and squirms until his arms are free and his hands can slide up Jon’s sleeves. “It’s worth it. Kissing now, please.”
Jon’s hand finds Spencer’s hip again. Spencer kind of wants to kill that fucking ladybug, but then Jon’s fingers stroke and Spencer makes a really undignified noise and wiggles closer.
“You want me bad,” Jon mumbles into the corner of Spencer’s mouth. His lips are parted, they slide across Spencer’s; it’s fucking agonizingly slow, and yet it’s the sexiest thing that has ever happened to him in his life. Hands down. Full stop.
He catches Jon’s lip between his teeth and nibbles, traces the curve of it with his tongue. “I do.”
Jon almost forgets to photograph the sunset.
Author adellyna
Pairing Jon/Spencer
Rating PG-13
Summary Wedding Planner AU prequel (Original Story Here), Jon and Spencer's first date zomg.
Word Count Around 4000.
Disclaimer Please with the not suing, thanks.
Author's Note This is for shanalle, who demanded it. I cannot resist her dulcet tones. My undying and eternal devotion to airgiodslv and maleyka for their fine beta work and hand holding. Any existing grammatical errors can be blamed totally on them.
Spencer Smith is enjoying a quiet lunch with one of the nurses, Molly, when a crazy man in flip-flops and ridiculously unkempt hair accosts him.
Well, it’s less of accosting, and more of shuffling up with a sleepy smile and these liquid, chocolatey eyes, but the ensuing dialogue is odd enough to qualify for accostment.
“Hi,” the man says. “I was sitting over there,” he turns to point at the ledge of a fountain about twenty feet away, as though his precise previous location will provide some valuable insight as to why he is no longer sitting over there, but rather is standing here casting a shadow over Spencer’s potato salad, “and I know this sounds creepy, but I saw you smile and I kind of had to take your picture.”
He lifts a camera, like its presence is going to make this interlude less insane. For the record, it doesn’t.
“And,” he continues. “I don’t want to be some freak with a dozen long-distance shots of some strange guy in a courtyard, so I’m here to, uh, meet you. I’m Jon.”
Spencer blinks silently.
“I’m a photographer,” Jon adds. This revelation doesn’t lend itself to not calling the cops. Spencer’s hand is actually already on his cell phone. “Here,” Jon digs in his pocket. It‘s not really threatening, but Spencer prepares to duck behind Molly anyway, just in case Jon pulls a knife or something. Molly will be fine, Spencer reasons. His gaydar is pinging off the charts with this guy.
Instead, he emerges with a slightly bent business card. Jon Walker, it says. Photographer. Weekend Getawayer Magazine.
“Getawayer?” Spencer asks, eyebrow cocked.
Jon has the good grace to look sheepish. “Yeah, it’s lame.”
It is. It’s really lame. Also, it’s not a major publication, so it’s not particularly reassuring either. Not that any moron with a printer couldn’t come up with New York Times business cards, but still. “This is creepy,” Spencer says.
“Yeah,” Jon agrees. “I’m sorry. I could have spilled my coffee on you and then copped a feel while I helped clean you up? This just seemed more honest.”
He crouches, his knee jutting into Spencer’s personal space. His flip-flops are a quarter inch from Spencer’s food, and… there is just so much to disapprove of here. Molly titters next to him, because Jon’s plucked the card away from Spencer and is scribbling more numbers on the back of it. “This is my home number,” he says, “and this is my cell. And my personal email address. Use any and all of them, any time you want.” He hands it back over and his knuckles graze Spencer’s leg.
“Hi,” Jon says again. “I’m Jon Walker.”
“Spencer,” Spencer says. “Smith. Spencer Smith.”
Jon smirks, and even though he looks like he hasn’t seen the business end of a razor or the inside of a barber shop recently, it’s kind of an extremely charming look on him. Spencer, for one, is charmed, and that‘s no mean feat. “Is that a fake name?” Jon asks.
“What?” Jon’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles widely. Spencer finds himself even more charmed. “Oh, no. It’s a family name. Spencer James Smith. The fifth.”
Molly titters again. Spencer makes a note to stop taking lunch with Molly.
“Hey,” Jon says, then stops, rocking back and forth a little on his heels. It makes his floppy hair swing around his ears. The curve of his jaw is kind of fascinating; Spencer is pretty sure that overly forward psychopaths should not be allowed to be this attractive, really, it’s not fair. When Jon talks again, he says: “This isn’t going to sound any less creepy, but I have to drive out to the lake Saturday and take some photographs for a spread the magazine is doing. It’s a four hour drive, and I won’t leave there until at least sunset, so, like, don’t ask your mom for advice on this one, but you could come with me. You should come with me.”
“You know,” Spencer says, and he’s clamping down on the urge to smile so hard it actually hurts. “I could be an axe-murderer, just sitting around in courtyards, luring victims to me with my evil, malicious, minding-my-own-business ways.”
Jon (“Spencer’s new boyfriend,” Molly giggles when they get back to the office) laughs, and ok, that should really be illegal. Spencer considers calling the cops again.
“I’ll take my chances,” Jon says. His thumb brushes against Spencer’s knuckle when he finally lets go of his end of the business card. It’s the weirdest pick up Spencer has ever heard of, much less participated in.
***
There is absolutely no way Spencer is going to call Jon Walker and agree to get in a car and drive four hours from safety with him a mere three days after they ‘meet’. No way.
He just sticks the business card to his fridge for laughs. And when he scans the courtyard at lunch every day, it’s to make sure his meal remains uninterrupted. Not because he’s looking for Jon Walker and his messy hair, excruciatingly plain flip flops, and wry, sideways smile.
“You should go with him,” Molly says. Really, he’s got to stop taking meals with her.
“Molly,” Spencer says, in his best impersonation of patience, “seriously, I know it’s a cliché, but he could seriously be a murderer.”
Molly has cold fried chicken. Its skin lies in a crumpled, delicious little heap on her plate; she shuns it in favor of peeling off strips of meat and chewing them slowly. Her latest diet craze: eat whatever you want, just eat it at a fucking snail’s pace.
Spencer steals the crispy skin.
“I don’t know,” Molly muses, “he seemed to really like you. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to rape you and then feed you to bears for his own amusement. Oooh, or sexual excitement. I was watching this movie last night where-”
“Molly!” Honestly. There’s a lovely, enchantingly quiet nurse named Cara who works down the hall, Spencer should probably eat with her from now on. “This is not helping. Anyway, it’s Friday. I’d have to call him, like, tonight.”
“You should,” she says, in what appears to be her best impersonation of wisdom. “He was really hot. Did you see his ass?”
Spencer did see his ass, yes. And Molly’s right, it is pretty sensational. “If I get so much as a splinter,” he sighs, “I am blaming you.”
***
The phone conversation goes a lot like this:
“Jon Walker.”
“You seriously answer your phone like that, with your whole name?”
“That’s not my whole name. If it was my whole name, I’d say Jon Jacob Walker. And then, maybe, throw in something else. Like, Jon Jacob Walker, how may I be of assistance.”
“Huh.”
“Why, how do you answer the phone?”
“I say hello.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Who is this?”
***
Jon picks him up on Saturday morning at the crack of dawn. An argument could be made that nine o’clock isn’t quite the crack of dawn, but Spencer isn’t fond of argumentative people, so.
“I’m going to haunt you,” he says into the phone, “I swear. If I die, I’m going to haunt you forever.”
“Whatever.” Molly’s voice is groggy, he had to wake her up for this heaping of last-minute guilt. “If you get laid, you should buy me flowers.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” Jon says. He’s shaved sometime during the week; you can tell because his stubble isn’t quite as pronounced. Also, he’s standing a little too close to Spencer while he locks his front door and he smells like cucumbers. It’s crisp and clean and not at all the scent someone would choose for a bloodletting, so Spencer’s feeling pretty reassured.
Molly chimes in from the other end of the phone, loudly, “Ask if he’s going to rim you!” Spencer makes two notes: the first, to contract and pass on to Molly a severe case of laryngitis, the second, to forbid her from researching his ‘alternative lifestyle’ on the internet.
“Don’t answer that,” he says to Jon, brandishing his key. “I will go right back inside this house if you answer that, and I will take my entire bag of delicious snack foods with me.”
Jon’s answering smile is warm and slow. Spencer’s toes curl up in his shoes, and he actually stumbles a bit on the first step. Even worse, Jon’s hand is there immediately, steadying his elbow. The smile isn’t any less promising, but it turns up at the corner and is a little mocking. That’s fine. Mocking works for Spencer.
“There’s a joke there about putting things in my mouth,” Jon says, “but I’m not going to make it.” They’re halfway to the car before he turns and smiles again, a squinty grin that puts Spencer in the mind of rolling over and going back to sleep, which is crazy since he’s been out of bed for two hours and approximately twenty-seven outfits. “At least, not until we’re on the road.”
***
Jon Walker has the following, listed in order of how unbearably adorable they are to Spencer Smith:
1. A lisp.
“You have a lisp,” Spencer says about fifteen minutes into the car ride, “just a little one.” He stares at Jon’s mouth, fascinated. It helps that Jon’s biting his lower lip and flushing a little; if by ‘help’ you mean ‘is excruciatingly hot.’
“I know,” Jon says, and there’s no s in it, so the words come out slow and smooth. Spencer tries not to be disappointed. “I’m sorry?”
Oooh, there it is. It‘s probably a sick fetish, getting all staticky between the ears because some guy‘s tongue presses to the back of his teeth a certain way. Oh god. Spencer forbids himself to think about Jon‘s tongue and grins instead, settling happily into his seat. “Hey, no. It’s really cute. Like, really cute.”
“Well,” Jon says, “that’s good. I mean, that you like it. Otherwise your name, Spencer James Smith, might be kind of a problem.”
Spencer is in heaven.
2. A cat named Dylan.
“No kids,” Jon says. “And I could kill silk flowers, but I do have a cat. His name is Dylan.”
“You’re deadly to fake plants, but you can keep a real cat alive?” Jon’s cd case is black, leather and battered. At least half of the discs are missing entirely, a good third of the remaining ones are battered and scratched, spotted from too much time on the dash in the sun, or scribbled with notes. this whole cd is the longest song ever, it says on the Dave Matthews Band disc, and that’s including Queen.
The music comes from Jon’s iPod anyway. Spencer’s brought his too, just in case Jon’s taste tends to the… well, to the bad, but so far it’s all good. Things he would choose, not so indie as to be pretentious, not so commercial as to make Spencer’s ears bleed.
“Well,” Jon says. His hands are moving on the steering wheel, smooth, flat strokes along the curve of it. Spencer’s fairly sure he’s unconsciously petting it like his cat. “Fake plants just sit there and suffer,” Jon explains, “if I forget to feed Dylan, I’ll wake up bleeding, with a face full of pissed off feline.”
3. One pinky nail painted shell pink.
The early morning light slants just right across Jon’s hand when he reaches for the thermostat and Spencer notices, for the first time, that Jon’s pinky is varnished a weak, pastel pink. “Oh my god,” Spencer says, grabbing Jon’s hand with both of his and tugging it toward him. “You know usually when guys paint their nails it’s black. Or, like, blue. Green, sometimes. Pink is a new- wow.”
“That is totally not my fault,” Jon says. He doesn’t move his hand. His wrist is very, very still. “I have a neighbor. She’s an eight year old girl. Well, I mean, her mom is there too, it’s not just the eight year old, but sometimes I help her with her math and then she helps me with my looks.”
Spencer turns Jon’s hand over, smiling down at the wide palm. “You don’t need any help with your looks,” he says. It’s really quiet; he’s not sure if Jon will be able to hear him over the music. Actually, he’s not sure if he wants Jon to hear him.
“I thought I got it all off,” Jon says mournfully, like he didn’t hear, but his fingers bend down and wrap around Spencer’s, and when Spencer settles their hands on his thigh and asks about the song that‘s playing, his knuckles are curled into Jon’s palm.
4. A blatant disregard for turn signals
“That was someone’s grandmother back there.” It turns out that Jon Walker drives kind of like a lunatic. It’s so incongruous with the grimy flip flops and the ready smile, so unexpected. Also, it gives Spencer an easy excuse for why his stomach took up yoga about an hour and a half ago.
Jon angles his car back into their lane and smiles earnestly, “You don’t know that. She may have never married. Or maybe she married but they couldn’t have kids. You shouldn’t mock her tragedy, Spencer.”
“She was old,” Spencer says flatly, but the tone fails somewhere around the o and he has to screw up the right side of his mouth in an attempt to look stern. “You should respect your elders.”
“She was slow,” Jon counters. There’s a farm truck ahead of them, the back full of shuffling sheep and one teenage boy wearing a black shirt and a pained expression. Jon whips smoothly out of their lane and coasts around the truck without ever signaling his intentions. He grins over at Spencer once they’ve passed, just a brief flicker of his eyes from the asphalt, “She should respect the speed limits.”
Someone, save him from the most adorable guy on the face of the planet, please. Or, you know, not. “Turn signals-” Spencer starts evenly, but Jon interrupts with an earnest nod and a swipe of his thumb across Spencer’s palm.
“-are for people who slow down, I know,” Jon finishes. That… is definitely not what Spencer was going to say.
5. An assortment of guitar picks in his ashtray
There’s a dozen or more of them, in assorted colors and inscribed with various brand names. Three of them are dark blue and have a weird bat thing etched on them. “You play guitar?” Spencer asks.
“Yeah. I’m pretty much a sex god. You should just give in now.” Jon’s bangs fell down over his eyes about half an hour ago; he still hasn’t let go of Spencer’s hand long enough to push them back. It does something funny to Spencer’s heart rate when Jon’s sideways smile peeks out from under the sweep of dark hair, his eyes looking lighter, more like amber, in contrast.
Silently - and pointedly - Spencer presses his thumb to Jon’s pink fingernail.
“I’m good with kids,” Jon says quickly, “confident in my masculinity. I love animals. I send my mom flowers. I bake. I will remember your middle name for the rest of my life. I play the guitar, Spencer. Guitar. Just admit it, you want me bad.”
Spencer smiles at the scenery whizzing by, but doesn’t say anything.
6. Socks in his glove compartment
“Um,” Jon says when Spencer pops open his glove compartment, “am I that boring?”
“No,” Spencer replies cheerfully. He starts picking through things with his free hand. The glove box is actually pretty crammed: more cd liners, half of a paperback novel, an envelope full of car-related receipts. “But we’re not in your apartment,” he continues, “so I can’t lock myself in your bathroom and go through your medicine cabinet.”
“You can come to my apartment,” Jon interjects. His fingers squeeze Spencer’s for emphasis, “Seriously, you can come to my apartment right now. I can turn this car around.”
They’re less than twenty minutes from the lake. Spencer smirks and keeps picking; there’s an abandoned key chain (a small, stuffed penguin), a bottle of ibuprofen, a packet of tissues, and pair of socks, folded up and sealed in a zip lock bag.
“Um,” Spencer says, ‘you have socks in your glove compartment.”
“You can never have too many socks,” Jon says reasonably. He shrugs, and it sends his hair bouncing further over his eyes. “Even,” he says, pausing to pout his lip to the side and blow at his bangs, “even Dumbledore knows that.”
Falling in love on the first date is probably a pretty big no-no. Dammit.
Spencer finally gives in to the urge to lean over and sweep Jon’s hair out of his face.
***
It’s afternoon by the time they get to the lake, and the sun is high. Spencer’s hot the minute he steps out of the car; though, weirdly, his left hand feels cool without Jon’s palm pressed against it.
He can’t get his hoodie off fast enough, it’s a white crumple on the passenger seat before Jon can even come around the car and smirk at Spencer’s t-shirt.
“What?” Spencer loves this t-shirt. It’s the exact right shade of pink, the shade that makes you squint a little to figure out if it actually is pink. And it has a whole gang (flock, crew, gaggle, herd, pack, whatever) of ladybugs. Maybe a marching band of ladybugs, since they’re gathered into a shape of a heart. One of them has broken ranks and is wandering off toward Spencer’s hip, its renegade path traced by a looping, dotted line. It leaves a gap in the heart, a pretentious sort of thing that’s cutesy all at the same time.
It’s entirely possible that he bought this shirt at Claire’s Boutique, but there is no way anyone can get him to admit to that.
“Nothing. I like your shirt.”
Jon sets his camera bag on the roof of the car, leaning in past Spencer to do it. His breath fans across Spencer’s ear, warm, sweet, with traces of the Twizzlers they made short work of on the trip. Jon will taste like licorice, Spencer realizes, if he kisses him right now. Their shoulders brush. Spencer dies a little.
“I like this shirt,” he says stupidly.
The sun is unbearably bright. The sweat trickling down the back of his neck is unbearably slow. Jon’s fingers, tracing the ladybug’s path, are unbearably gentle. “Does this one have a name?” His voice is soft, his touch even softer on Spencer’s hip.
“What?” God. He can count all of Jon’s eyelashes. He can see the places where the color fades from chocolate to gold. There’s a little freckle at the corner of Jon’s left eye.
Jon’s thumb presses against the ladybug, somewhere in the suddenly unbearably erogenous hollow under Spencer’s hip bone, and his fingers curve around Spencer’s hip, stretching toward his back pocket. “The one that got away,” he says, his thumb moving in slow, evil circles, “did you name it?” Their lips are maybe, maybe an inch apart. Spencer can taste the words before he hears them.
“Um.” Names. He needs a name. Quick, any name. Other than Jon. “Cher,” he says breathlessly.
“Cher,” Jon repeats. His thumb stills and he smiles. Up this close, it’s kind of blinding. “I like it.” Jon steps away before Spencer has any idea what’s happening. He gets his camera out of its bag and jogs backward a few steps, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “You ready to take some pictures?”
Spencer needs an ambulance.
***
Jon has this seriously sexy ‘I mean business’ face. Spencer sees it for about an hour, while Jon wanders around getting daylight shots of things that seem really unremarkable: a trail of little bird footprints pressed into damp sand, water lapping up to some rocks, a thick canopy of trees. Spencer starts to feel like he’s fucking up Jon’s light or concentration or something, so he finds a hammock someone has strung up between two trees; it’s a little green, but it feels dry, and there’s a fresh breeze blowing in from the lake, so.
It’s perfectly slung, just high enough that he can fold one leg over the side and kick off with his toes, rocking gently back and forth. Thin slices of sunlight warm his cheek, neck, forearm on every upswing. It’s kind of the most relaxed he’s been in months. Except for the fact that he totally wants to jump the guy whose wandering circles tighten until every time Spencer opens his eyes he can see him, moving slowly from tree to tree. He maybe opens his eyes a lot, snatching fleeting glimpses of Jon, shadowed by his lashes.
“What are you doing?” he asks, when the sound of Jon’s shoes crunching on leaves and pebbles stops. It’s more a sixth sense than anything, but he opens his eyes again to the sight of Jon, crouched down nearby with his camera to his eye. To his eye and pointed at Spencer. “You’re just using me for photography,” Spencer complains. He’d much rather Jon used him for something else.
“You’d rather I used you for something else?”
Huh. Freaky. But promising.
Spencer struggles to climb up onto his elbows. The rope digs in, etching the diamond pattern into his skin, but this gives him a better angle to make eyes at Jon, so it’s worth it. “Maybe,” he says. Eyes. He makes eyes like his life depends on it, big Bambi eyes, trying to channel both the cartoon deer and the disturbingly named erotic dancer varieties. “You should come find out.”
“You’re in a hammock,” Jon points out, his voice laughing.
The hammock is still swaying gently, prodded by Spencer’s foot, but he stops it, toes pressed hard into the ground. “It’s a big hammock.”
It’s actually not all that big. It is definitely not a two person hammock, but Jon has apparently gotten with the program, because he’s tucking his camera back into its case and bending. His hands curl around the rope on either side of Spencer’s head and he grins, saying sheepishly, “I have no idea how to get in this thing without dumping you out.”
Spencer has an idea.
“I have an idea,” he says, fisting his hands in Jon’s shirt and pulling slowly down, “it involves you shutting up and kissing me, and if we have to do that on the ground under this hammock, then that is just what has to happen.”
Jon presses his knee into the bend of the rope and climbs gingerly in. The whole thing wobbles violently, threatening to dump them out; Spencer’s foot braced against the ground is just enough - barely - to keep it steady. “Your shirt would get dirty,” Jon observes, but he’s settling down, hips to Spencer’s. The hammock rolls them sideways, Spencer’s foot lifts off the ground, and he finds himself tangled up with Jon, pressed full length.
Fucking finally.
“I don’t care,” he says stubbornly, but it’s a moot point now anyway. He nudges his knee between Jon’s and squirms until his arms are free and his hands can slide up Jon’s sleeves. “It’s worth it. Kissing now, please.”
Jon’s hand finds Spencer’s hip again. Spencer kind of wants to kill that fucking ladybug, but then Jon’s fingers stroke and Spencer makes a really undignified noise and wiggles closer.
“You want me bad,” Jon mumbles into the corner of Spencer’s mouth. His lips are parted, they slide across Spencer’s; it’s fucking agonizingly slow, and yet it’s the sexiest thing that has ever happened to him in his life. Hands down. Full stop.
He catches Jon’s lip between his teeth and nibbles, traces the curve of it with his tongue. “I do.”
Jon almost forgets to photograph the sunset.