FIC: Long Strange Trip - Ian/Michael
Title: Long Strange Trip
Author: shimmer
Rating: NC-17 (oh yes, the smut)
Pairing: Ian/Michael
Disclaimer: The people may be real but this is fiction and I make no profit from writing it.
Warning: Drugs, smut, language, minor violence and one squicky reference.
Thanks: To sodiumlight for the beta. Also, this was horizon_greene's original Christmas present. Hope you like it, dear!
Summary: The walls were closing in and he wanted to run. He'd taken this as far as he wanted to - and in the dark, with the shadows writhing around him, Michael looked like a monster. Which, now that Ian's subconscious was stripped bare, didn't surprise him. He could see that he'd always been a little afraid of Michael. He was younger, harder and more driven than Ian was. Michael was like a shark, a dark shape lurking beneath Ian. And now, he smelled blood in the water.
crossposted to olympic_slash and thorpedo_speedo
Long Strange Trip
Ian’s fingers were sticky. So were his lips.
And he could feel the cab driver’s eyes on him as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tried to surreptitiously clean his fingers on the cracked vinyl of the seats.
Fuck it, he thought, and pulled another candy cane out of his pocket. Being sticky and peppermint scented was better than a lot of things. And he liked the way the candy slid around his mouth, anyway. It distracted him, kept him occupied. He’d never been a smoker, but in the past months he’d begun to understand the smokers’ need to have something in their hands, and something in their mouths all the time. It was soothing.
*
Spontaneity sounded good in theory, and Ian supposed that it worked in small doses. For instance, suddenly wanting Thai for dinner when you had planned on pasta, or even dropping everything and going for a weekend at the beach when you had a meet coming up. That was healthy spontaneity.
His flight to America, all those long, long hours (and numerous candy canes), had given him plenty of time to consider what was healthy in the realm of spontaneity and what wasn’t. Taking off for America, that mythical Land of the Lost, in order to what? Find himself? Lose himself further? Wasn’t, in retrospect, the healthiest - or perhaps the sanest thing that he’d ever done.
*
It was too cold to be playing basketball, Ian thought when he stumbled out of the cab onto an icy sidewalk. Michael seemed oblivious, however, as he made a free throw from the corner of his driveway.
Ian pulled his coat tighter around him and wondered how Michael could stay warm in a jersey and jeans. He was caught completely unaware, and got the breath knocked out of him, when Michael tossed him the ball and it him in the chest.
“Jesus,” he said, rubbing his ribs. “Watch it, mate.”
Michael grabbed his Gatorade from off of the dead grass and eyed Ian from behind the bottle, giving Ian the feeling that he’d just failed some kind of test.
“I was on my way to the gym when you called,” Michael said, screwing the cap back on the bottle and walking up the drive way. “Wanna come?”
Wait, Ian thought. No ‘what the hell are you doing in America, Thorpe’? No, ‘what the hell are you doing in Baltimore’? Apparently not, because Michael had accepted Ian’s appearance - the appearance of his arch-rival (which sounded to Ian’s jet-lagged brain rather comic-bookish and amusing) and a virtual stranger on his doorstep - with no more than a raised brow. But then Michael had always been cold - winning and losing races with the same look of indifference, or perhaps resignation on his face, only celebrating on rare occasions. And that had always bothered Ian; Ian being the kind of guy who broke down and sobbed on international television.
But Michael had already moved on, so Ian shrugged and followed him as he keyed in the code to the garage door and fished a keychain out of his pocket. “I have some extra clothes that you can wear,” he said, unlocking the doors to the infamous Escalade and waiting for Ian to climb in.
Curiouser and curiouser. Of all the things that Ian had thought that Michael might say or do when he found Ian wandering around in front of his house, an invitation to borrow some clothes and work out together had been one of the furthest from Ian’s mind. But then he didn’t know Michael at all; he didn’t know anything about him except for what he’d read in the papers and seen on TV. And of course, that he could swim. Or, rather, that he used to be able to swim.
As Michael backed out of the driveway, too fast, Ian clutched at the dash and muttered, “Are you even supposed to be driving?” Which provoked a bitter laugh from Michael as he floored the big SUV down the street.
“No,” he said. “Not after what I did. I was a real - what’s the word? Idiot?” He turned to Ian and Ian knew that Michael was purposefully not watching the road. “Isn’t that what you called me?”
“Look,” Ian said, keeping his own eyes on Michael’s. “I’m sorry about that, mate.”
“Whatever,” Michael said as he reached for the stereo. “You’ve got your own problems now, don’t you?”
Ian looked at himself in the side mirror and didn’t answer.
“I mean,” Michael went on, reaching over, touching a strand of Ian’s hair and still not watching where he was driving, “what’s with this, anyway? Trying to hide? From something? Someone?” He put his hands back on the wheel and glanced at the road. “ ‘Cause you’re doing a good job. As if anyone was gonna to recognize you here anyway.”
And of course, that was the point. Ian didn’t want to be recognized or criticized. He had come to America to fit in for once rather than stand out. And come to Baltimore and to Michael to what? Remind himself what he could become if he pushed too hard and cared too little?
Yes, Ian thought, I came to look in the mirror. To see what might could WILL happen if I can’t get a handle on myself. I came to see Michael and to see what happens to heroes when they fail.
He brushed Michael’s hand away and just shrugged, thinking about the contracts and sponsorships that Michael had lost in the past month, and the way his pride was being bent to point of breaking every time he was forced to sit in front of a class of school children and tell them that he was sorry and he was a bad person.
*
“Spot me?”
Ian left off stretching to stand near Michael’s head at the bench. After a moment, he got the distinct impression that Michael was looking up his shorts, but he didn’t move, he just watched Michael strain under the weight, admiring the way his muscles slid and bunched under his skin.
It was too bad that Michael had let his tan fade, though. It had made him look healthier, Ian thought.
*
The locker room smelled of sweat and Irish Spring. It wasn’t displeasing to Ian; he’d grown up in locker rooms and he felt at home in them wherever he was in the world.
What was strange was sharing a locker with Michael and feeling him lurking around behind him, seemingly in no hurry to dress or leave the warm, steamy heat of the gym.
As Ian slathered deodorant on - Michael’s of course - a very large man tried to squeeze past them, pushing Michael into Ian, and Ian into the cold metal of the locker. When the big guy was gone, Michael stood back, but kept his hand in the small of Ian’s back for a little too long while he looked over Ian’s shoulder into the locker. Then he turned and sniffed. “Dude, it smells different on you,” he said. And then he tugged at Ian’s towel to move him, and grabbed a pile of clothes.
*
When they got back into the car it was dark and Ian was craving something. He was hungry, but not really for American food and so when Michael passed a gas station, Ian asked him to pull over. They wandered together through the isles, both of them ghostly and unattractive under the florescent lights.
Ian bought a bag of tootsie pops and Michael bought condoms. The clerk looked at them like they were from another planet, and Ian felt a little like an alien, a scruffy, dark haired alien buying candy in an American gas-station with a boy he didn’t know who was stocking up on rubbers. And the thought of Michael’s big body pinning down some poor little girl made Ian distinctly uncomfortable. Because he got the impression that Michael, especially this new jaded Michael, had a tendency to take without asking.
Maybe, Ian thought, glaring at Michael and unwrapping a grape sucker, Michael should pick on someone his own size.
*
As they made their way back to Michael’s house, Ian sucked loudly on his tootsie pop and Michael drove like a madman - obviously daring someone to stop him.
At a red light, one of the rare ones that Michael chose to stop for, he turned to look at Ian and laughed out loud. “Your lips are purple,” he said, revving the engine and fiddling with the radio. He found what he was looking for - it sounded like a remix of “Crazy Train" - and shot through the intersection. “I’m going to a party later,” he said over the music. “And they’re gonna have better favors than candy canes and suckers.”
Ian twirled the sucker on his tongue while he considered. He pulled it out of his mouth a second later with a pop and shrugged. “Okay.”
When in Rome . . . he reasoned.
*
They drove from Michael’s to Ian’s hotel room in silence, and Michael watched him impassively as he changed into his own jeans and t-shirt and out of the clothes he’d been traveling in. Michael tossed him back the hoody that he’d borrowed and worn out of the gym. “Keep it.”
He didn’t put any of his own cologne on because he’d found that he kind of liked smelling like Michael and wearing Michael’s clothes. He liked riding in Michael’s car and listening to his music. It was almost like he was Michael. Like he’d already fucked up, already thrown it all away, and the pressure was gone.
*
The warehouse looked a bit ominous to Ian, though. Parties for him had always been a little more high class. Expensive clubs, after-parties. Not usually warehouses full of college kids. This was another world.
Inside the warehouse, it was too hot and the lights pulsed around him in a dizzying array. Everyone was moving to their own rhythm it seemed, and they were all glowing. Really. They were all holding glowsticks, or their bodies were twined with glow-wands.
They weren’t there five minutes before a boy with pink hair and rhinestones glued to his painted cheeks was dancing with Michael. Ian watched from within the throng as the other boy slipped something into Michael’s hand, got a kiss in return and pranced away.
Ian found a half-eaten candy cane in his pocket and slid it into his mouth as Michael fought his way back toward him.
“What is that?” Ian yelled in Michael’s ear, pointing at the little bottle.
Michael blinked and smiled, “Wanna try it?”
Ian had a pretty good idea what it was and he had a good idea that he didn’t want it - that one little drop could end his career forever. He hadn’t really come to America to take risks; he’d come to see first hand the consequence of those risks. To put his life back in perspective maybe. But Michael’s fatalism was attractive to Ian; his new carefree fuck you all life was easy to get tangled up in. Which must have been why he let Michael take his candy cane away with his teeth and why he obeyed when Michael said, “Open your mouth.”
It was more than that, though. Ian thought as he licked his lips. If he were going to be honest with himself, and now was as good a time as any to start with that, he was tired of being good and he was tired of being golden. He didn’t want to shine any more.
And truly? Swimming had stopped getting him high before Athens. He was dead in the water.
But none of that mattered now because Michael was dripping something onto his tongue, something that Ian imagined would open his mind and let him see the future.
Nothing happened for a long minute - nothing happened until Michael took Ian’s candy cane and traced it across Ian’s lips. Then, suddenly his mouth was the absolute center of everything. There was sugar and mint and he could see his breath - like in the commercials, minty fresh - frosting the air in front of him even though it had to be close to ninety degrees or more in the warehouse. And the sugar? He could see glittering particles of white, white sugar sifting through the veins in his hands and it was the most beautiful thing that he’d ever seen.
“Mike,” he yelled into Michael’s ear. “I’m made of sugar. That’s all I am. See?” And he waved his arms, not bothering about the numerous people he knocked into.
Michael laughed and captured one of his hands, “If you get wet, will you melt?” he asked, and Ian had to think very hard about that question.
“I don’t know,” he answered earnestly, watching the warehouse slowly fade into a haze of blue.
“Lemme see,” Michael said, taking Ian’s fingers into his mouth. Ian jumped but didn’t pull away because it seemed entirely natural that Michael would want to taste him. And it felt so goddamn good.
The warehouse was liquefying, tuning to water, and all the pretty children had become fish. The kind that had little spots that glowed on their fins.
But the candy cane was gone, and Ian couldn’t find anything else to put in his mouth. “Wanna ‘nother candy, mate,” Ian told Michael.
Michael shook his head and moved closer to him, “I’ll give you something to suck on.”
That cut through the psychedelic haze because it was a harsh, almost ugly thing to say - but also it felt vaguely inevitable.
*
His skin crawled and jumped where Michael touched him, trying to lead him through the crowds of sparkling mer-children, and Ian wondered why they couldn’t just do it right there. He could breathe underwater, he was sure of it.
The restroom of the warehouse was dimly lit and the walls were too thin to block out the music. Music which Michael was singing along to as he pushed Ian onto the floor and unzipped his pants.
After a moment of disorientation, in which Ian’s brain fought to come to terms with what he was doing, he decided that Michael tasted better than the candy he’d been craving, and that - oddly enough - having Michael’s cock in his mouth was much more satisfying than sucking on peppermint sticks or lolly pops.
People, strangers, were passing in and out of the periphery of Ian’s vision. Some stopped to talk to Michael; some stopped to stroke Ian’s hair. He didn’t mind, because every time he was touched, he disintegrated a little and he could see the molecules of the old Ian floating away.
It was so mesmerizing - the rhythm of his body as he swayed on his knees, the gentle, spreading numbness of his jaw and the patterns of his soul dancing in the air - that he was startled when Michael suddenly jerked his body away and knocked Ian off balance while he came onto the floor.
“Sorry,” he said to Ian, helping him up and looking at him out of neon green eyes. “I don’t know how clean I am.”
Of course not, Ian thought as he tried to catch a dragonfly that was flitting past Michael’s ear. That wouldn’t be any fun.
*
Michael disappeared back onto the dance floor and Ian lost him in Nemo’s Nightmare. Brilliant colored fish turned into people and then into clouds and then back into fish again as he watched. He danced with a bald girl who had one flipper and three feet, and then with an eel who tried to bite him.
By the time Michael was back, Ian had settled into a place where everything was blue and gold and the meaning of life had become crystal fucking clear.
He was trying to explain it to Michael, telling him about fear and failure and expectation and competition and survival of the fittest when he discovered that he was outside and there was snow falling on him.
Every flake was diamond bright and they hurt when they landed on him. He didn’t like it - and he waiting impatiently outside of the Escalade, jiggling the door handle while Michael tried to unlock it.
“Back seat,” Michael yelled to him over the roof of the car and Ian shrugged and climbed awkwardly into the SUVs big backseat with Michael. Someone else was in the front, starting the car.
“Who,” Ian asked squinting and seeing purple, “is that?”
“Just somebody that’s gonna drive us back to your hotel, Ian. Relax.”
Ian slumped back into the seat, surprised to find himself caught against Michael’s chest and pointed back toward the warehouse. “We should go back. It’s warm there.”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed, kissing Ian’s neck. “But you have a bed in your room.”
Not listening, just feeling where Michael’s lips brushed his skin, Ian sang, “It’s always better down where it’s wetter, take it from me . . .”
*
Things were starting to look more normal by the time Ian was laid out on his bed with Michael laying quietly beside him.
“I take it you’re not goin’ home tonight, mate?” Ian asked, careful not to touch Michael because his skin was still too sensitive.
“Not when there’s a chance I could get laid,” Michael murmured.
Ian didn’t have anything to say to that, and he didn’t really try to get away when Michael rolled over on top of him. He just focused on trying to stay calm. The rumors about him, about his sexuality, had some basis in reality. But only so far as his inclinations went. He’d never acted on his desire for other men (beyond some awkward locker-room, hormone and calorie induced encounters with Grant), just like he had never gotten high and never been anything but polite to the photographers who dogged his every movement.
“Jesus, Ian,” Michael said, looking at him through sleepy eyes. “You’re more messed up than I am, aren’t you?” He sat up and tugged his shirt over his head. “I mean, all I did was have a couple of drinks and get in the car. You -“ he pulled at Ian’s hoody, “you freaked out, hopped on a plane and flew half way around the world . . . to do what?”
Ian shrugged and shivered as Michael ran a curious hand down his chest. “To get fucked up? Or to let me fuck you?”
“I don’t know.”
Michael unbuttoned Ian’s pants and Ian lifted his hips and let Michael tug them off.
“That’s a long way for sex with a stranger. But - whatever.”
“No,” Ian said and struggled out from under Michael. He suddenly felt sick and paranoid. The walls were closing in and he wanted to run. He’d taken this as far as he wanted to - and in the dark, with the shadows writhing around him, Michael looked like a monster. Which, now that Ian’s subconscious was stripped bare, didn’t surprise him. He could see that he’d always been a little afraid of Michael. He was younger, harder and more driven than Ian was. Michael was like a shark, a dark shape lurking beneath Ian. And now, he smelled blood in the water.
Michael was faster than Ian though, on land if not in the pool yet. He caught him and slammed him against the wall next to the door and Ian got the impression that this was gonna happen - the hard way, now.
He grunted in pain as Michael twisted his arm up behind his back, and he began to pray that the other man wouldn’t hurt him out of spite.
“Don’t move, Ian. You’ll sprain your shoulder,” Michael said from behind him, and his voice was that empty, tired Michael that Ian was so used to hearing in interviews. Where did the boy go, Ian wondered as he felt Michael digging in his pockets. I’m sure I saw him laughing once.
But his thoughts were cut brutally short when he heard Michael’s zipper and then Michael mumble around something in his mouth. “Don’t freak out.”
Ian knocked his head against the wall in one last half-hearted attempt to get away, before Michael was pushing into him and hurting him more than he thought he could stand.
He growled and tried to bite at Michael’s hand where it was pinning his, the one not behind his back, to the wall.
“Ian . . .” And this time Michael sounded a little younger, like maybe being in Ian tore some of his reserve away. “You have to relax or I’m going to really hurt you.”
Ian shut his eyes and saw red flowers. Roses maybe. “I can’t. I didn’t think that it would be like this. When I finally decided to do it, you know?” He couldn’t believe that he sounded so reasonable.
It worked, though. And Michael stopped moving, resting his head which was damp from sweat on Ian’s shoulder. “I thought - I guess I was sure that you had done this before.” And he let Ian’s arm go and just rested his hand on Ian’s waist.
“Well,” Ian shifted and felt some of his skin stay with the wall, “I guess I thought that you hadn’t.” The pain was lessening, little by little and was being replaced by an odd feeling of fullness.
“It’s fairly easy from this end. And you get fans of all kinds willing to all sorts of things when you’re famous - but you know that.”
I do know, Ian thought, blinking the roses away and seeing, finally, a dark hotel room. “I get watched a lot closer than you,” he said, to explain away his inexperience. And I never take the kind of chances with my body or with my career that you do. Until tonight, at least.
Big hands were rubbing his thighs now, and Ian assumed that Michael was trying to calm him. But he’d lost his patience with the whole night. He was dead tired and every time he blinked the scene in his head changed from underwater cartoons to graveyards full of flowers. It made him wonder if what Michael was doing to him was really happening or not.
The pain was convincing, though; as was the heat of Michael’s breath on his neck and the abrasiveness of the wall against his cheek.
“What are you waiting for, Michael?” he asked. “Finish it.” Finish this. Tear me open. Tear apart the old me, and remake me. Remake me just like you, Michael, Ian thought. And even as high as Ian was, he understood the irony in what he wanted. Michael had looked up to him for a long time. He looked up to him until the Ian that lived in newspapers and magazines and on the Internet couldn’t show him the way anymore. Ian suspected that Michael had learned the nasty truth about his idol sometime before Athens. He was smarter than people gave him the credit for, and he could have easily seen that beneath the glossy pages and the highlighted hair, there wasn’t a whole lot to Ian.
He was generic, boring, and shallow.
And so the tables were turned. Now, Ian wanted to be like Michael. He wanted his intensity, his drive, his pain. He wanted to be able to shake the weight of the world off of his shoulders, take a drink and tell everyone to fuck off. He never wanted to break down and cry again, because Michael never did. Michael’s pain ran deep and Ian wanted to able to hide his that way.
So when Michael still didn’t move, Ian pushed first. “Finish it, goddamn it,” he muttered. “Make it hurt.”
Michael bit gently into the muscles of his shoulder in answer and began to thrust his hips into Ian, rocking him against the wall. “Like that?” Michael asked under his breath.
Ian didn’t say anything, he just slid one arm behind his head to catch Michael by the back of the neck and hold him close. Ian’s knees were weak and he was a little nauseous from the rocking motion of their bodies. But he was hard, and he felt a strange sense of gratitude when Michael finally touched his cock.
Michael was whispering something in his ear about how he’d always wanted to fuck him in the locker room with everyone who mattered to them watching - which struck Ian as a very adolescent way of marking territory - when Michael came. It turned out that Ian wasn’t at all turned off by the idea, feeling his balls tighten as he imagined the look on van den Hoogenband’s face. Perhaps, he considered, flattening his hand against the wall and shoving himself backward onto Michael, I should just let him piss on me. And he came with that thought in mind.
*
When they were back in the bed, Ian indulged himself by laying with his head on Michael’s chest so he could suck and nip at the other man’s nipples to keep himself calm, while Michael ran his fingers through Ian’s tangled hair.
Ian was shaking a little and he wasn’t sure why. A deep feeling of anxiety had set in and his skin was crawling unpleasantly. The functioning part of his brain told him that the emotions would pass, that they were merely drug-induced. But the irrational part of him - the part that didn’t ever think - won out and he began to cling to Michael.
“D’you love me, Mike?” he asked, mumbling through mouthful of Michael’s skin. “ ‘Cause I love you.”
For a moment it seemed that Michael was going to pull away from him, but he didn’t. He pried Ian’s mouth off of him and tilted his face up to that he could look into Ian’s eyes, damp from unshed tears.
“You don’t love me, Ian.” He was silent for minute before pushing himself upright on the bed, pulling Ian with him. “When was the last time you were in the pool?” he asked as he began grabbing clothes.
Ian wrapped his arms around himself and shrugged, ignoring the things moving in the shadowed corners of the room. “ ‘S been a while, why?”
“Because I think you should get your ass back in the water,” Michael answered, helping Ian to dress as if he were a child.
“Goddamnit, Michael. I don’t want to swim anymore.” He pushed Michael away and got unsteadily to his feet, trying to use his height to his advantage. “If I never saw another pool again? If I never swallowed another mouthful of chlorine? If I never had to hurt in every joint and every muscle? If I never had to bear the weight of Australia’s hopes and dreams again? Then, Michael, I could die a happy man.” He clapped a hand over his mouth in surprise. He hadn’t meant to say those things. He hadn’t even known that he was thinking them.
“Yeah, Ian? But what if you never touched the wall first again? What if you never heard the masses screaming your name? What if you never felt the weight of another medal around your neck?” Michael sounded curious more than angry, as he tried to slide a shoe on without untying it.
Sitting back down, Ian shrugged. “Winning is nice, Michael, but it takes too much out me. The expectations are too high and it isn’t worth it anymore. The screaming fans? Y’know? I’ve found that I like silence just as much. It’s more genuine. And as for the weight of the medals, well, mate. They add up, don’t they? They get heavy.” He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on Michael. “But then, you wouldn’t know that, yeah? Because your minders won’t even let you have yours, will they? Hidden them from you or some such.”
“Fuck you, Ian,” Michael said, and walked to the door. “Are you coming with me or not?”
Ian scrambled to get his own shoes on and follow Michael out the door, because he wasn’t about to be left alone in the state he was in.
*
“You still have a key?” Ian asked, as Michael led them into the pool where he had trained for so long as a child and then a young man.
“Umm,” Michael answered as he stood staring at the water. “Get in, Ian.”
“I don’t have a suit . . .” Ian started and then stopped. Michael was stripping back down and in the green light that rippled off of the water Michael looked like beautiful.
“Don’t need one,” Michael said as he slid into the water. He turned and looked up at Ian expectantly. “Coming?”
Maybe later, Ian thought, I’ll get in the pool now, though.
*
They swam an easy couple of laps, matching each other stroke for stroke and breath for breath. And Ian knew that Michael was doing it on purpose, because the way they swam was worlds apart and it had to take an effort on Michael’s part to make sure that they stayed perfectly aligned.
But because he did, and because they had been moving together, next to each other, for several minutes, it just seemed natural when Michael stopped them in the middle of the pool and pulled Ian to him. They floated there, not breathing hard, but breathing in each other, until Ian felt Michael’s hands drift down between his legs. He laughed softly against Ian’s shoulder and muttered, “It’s like a wet dream, y’know? Getting to feel up Ian Thorpe in my own pool.”
Ian laughed with him and they drifted to the side where Ian could hold onto the concrete edge. “Did you ever think about this, mate?” he asked, sucking at Michael’s neck. "Or is this whole thing a phase?”
Michael’s hand found Ian’s cock and began working him gently, as he considered the question. “I thought about it,” he said finally.
And Ian knew that was the only confession regarding Michael’s sexuality that he was ever going to get. He also knew that when he came, in Michael’s pool no less, it was all the apology that he was going to get from Michael for what had happened between them earlier.
It was enough though, because Michael had gotten him into the water again and reminded him why he loved it. Even if he didn’t want to swim anymore, he didn’t have to deny himself the solace and the silence of the water.
*
The sun was rising as they drove back to the hotel and Ian tried not to read too much into the symbolism there. But Michael kept the Escalade under the speed limit and obeyed all traffic stops along the way, and it was harder not to read anything into that, especially not when they were holding hands over the center console like kids on their first date.
Ian gave up completely on trying to figure things out when, instead of just dropping him off, Michael followed him up and climbed back into bed with him.
“Maybe it’s the drugs, Ian. But it feels right . . . laying next you.”
And yeah, Ian admitted. It could have been the drugs that made them both needy and chilled and desperate for any kind of comfort - especially when it came in the form of a body big enough to truly be a comfort. But he liked to think that it might be more than that.
“Does it seem like we’re two halves of the same person, Mike?” Ian asked, thinking, even as he said it, of how drugged out it sounded.
“I can see that, yeah,” Michael agreed.
“Like . . .” Ian said, searching for the right words.
“I’m your dark half?” Michael asked and there was a smile in his voice. “I know. But I can’t be the evil one - the dangerous one or whatever - if you have that god awful hair.” He pulled the blanket up to his chin. “What’s with that anyway? You never told me earlier.”
“I just didn’t want to be me anymore,” Ian said faintly. Wanted to be you. Wanted to fill up the empty space inside and I thought I could do it like you do.
“And now?”
“I’ll fix it. Get back in the pool; play nice with the reporters.”
Michael pressed a tired kiss on Ian’s shoulder. “So you got what you came for then? Found what you were looking for?”
Yeah, Ian thought. I figured out that I can’t be you, Mike. And that I can’t live like you do; drugs and sex and expensive cars won’t make me whole. But the strange thing, the thing that Ian had never expected, was that Michael himself might be what filled that echoing, lonely part of him.
But it wasn’t as if he could say that to Michael. They were strangers, for the most part. Strangers who knew each other better than anyone else ever could, but there was still too much that separated them.
There was a whole world between them that Ian wasn’t ready to trust with the truth about himself. Michael may have been willing to fight that battle. Ian wasn’t.
So Ian settled for, “I found something.” And it seemed to satisfy Michael, who dropped off to sleep minutes later.
*
The flight back to Aus was very different than Ian’s flight away from it had been. This time he slept more, and when he was awake, he ate tootsie pops, not caring if they turned his mouth a variety of different colors.
He’d spent two days with Michael. One of them out of his mind on acid and the other drunk on sex and dreams. But they’d parted at the airport without really saying goodbye, without really saying anything. Michael was worried about his trial and Ian was worried that Michael had led him on a long, strange trip that he didn’t know quite how to come back from.
But maybe, Ian reasoned with himself, being lost isn’t always such a bad thing. As long as there is somebody waiting for you at the end of your journey. And he had a feeling that Michael, as wild as he was and as unpredictable, would be waiting for him when he finally did find his way home.
-end-
Author: shimmer
Rating: NC-17 (oh yes, the smut)
Pairing: Ian/Michael
Disclaimer: The people may be real but this is fiction and I make no profit from writing it.
Warning: Drugs, smut, language, minor violence and one squicky reference.
Thanks: To sodiumlight for the beta. Also, this was horizon_greene's original Christmas present. Hope you like it, dear!
Summary: The walls were closing in and he wanted to run. He'd taken this as far as he wanted to - and in the dark, with the shadows writhing around him, Michael looked like a monster. Which, now that Ian's subconscious was stripped bare, didn't surprise him. He could see that he'd always been a little afraid of Michael. He was younger, harder and more driven than Ian was. Michael was like a shark, a dark shape lurking beneath Ian. And now, he smelled blood in the water.
crossposted to olympic_slash and thorpedo_speedo
Long Strange Trip
Ian’s fingers were sticky. So were his lips.
And he could feel the cab driver’s eyes on him as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tried to surreptitiously clean his fingers on the cracked vinyl of the seats.
Fuck it, he thought, and pulled another candy cane out of his pocket. Being sticky and peppermint scented was better than a lot of things. And he liked the way the candy slid around his mouth, anyway. It distracted him, kept him occupied. He’d never been a smoker, but in the past months he’d begun to understand the smokers’ need to have something in their hands, and something in their mouths all the time. It was soothing.
*
Spontaneity sounded good in theory, and Ian supposed that it worked in small doses. For instance, suddenly wanting Thai for dinner when you had planned on pasta, or even dropping everything and going for a weekend at the beach when you had a meet coming up. That was healthy spontaneity.
His flight to America, all those long, long hours (and numerous candy canes), had given him plenty of time to consider what was healthy in the realm of spontaneity and what wasn’t. Taking off for America, that mythical Land of the Lost, in order to what? Find himself? Lose himself further? Wasn’t, in retrospect, the healthiest - or perhaps the sanest thing that he’d ever done.
*
It was too cold to be playing basketball, Ian thought when he stumbled out of the cab onto an icy sidewalk. Michael seemed oblivious, however, as he made a free throw from the corner of his driveway.
Ian pulled his coat tighter around him and wondered how Michael could stay warm in a jersey and jeans. He was caught completely unaware, and got the breath knocked out of him, when Michael tossed him the ball and it him in the chest.
“Jesus,” he said, rubbing his ribs. “Watch it, mate.”
Michael grabbed his Gatorade from off of the dead grass and eyed Ian from behind the bottle, giving Ian the feeling that he’d just failed some kind of test.
“I was on my way to the gym when you called,” Michael said, screwing the cap back on the bottle and walking up the drive way. “Wanna come?”
Wait, Ian thought. No ‘what the hell are you doing in America, Thorpe’? No, ‘what the hell are you doing in Baltimore’? Apparently not, because Michael had accepted Ian’s appearance - the appearance of his arch-rival (which sounded to Ian’s jet-lagged brain rather comic-bookish and amusing) and a virtual stranger on his doorstep - with no more than a raised brow. But then Michael had always been cold - winning and losing races with the same look of indifference, or perhaps resignation on his face, only celebrating on rare occasions. And that had always bothered Ian; Ian being the kind of guy who broke down and sobbed on international television.
But Michael had already moved on, so Ian shrugged and followed him as he keyed in the code to the garage door and fished a keychain out of his pocket. “I have some extra clothes that you can wear,” he said, unlocking the doors to the infamous Escalade and waiting for Ian to climb in.
Curiouser and curiouser. Of all the things that Ian had thought that Michael might say or do when he found Ian wandering around in front of his house, an invitation to borrow some clothes and work out together had been one of the furthest from Ian’s mind. But then he didn’t know Michael at all; he didn’t know anything about him except for what he’d read in the papers and seen on TV. And of course, that he could swim. Or, rather, that he used to be able to swim.
As Michael backed out of the driveway, too fast, Ian clutched at the dash and muttered, “Are you even supposed to be driving?” Which provoked a bitter laugh from Michael as he floored the big SUV down the street.
“No,” he said. “Not after what I did. I was a real - what’s the word? Idiot?” He turned to Ian and Ian knew that Michael was purposefully not watching the road. “Isn’t that what you called me?”
“Look,” Ian said, keeping his own eyes on Michael’s. “I’m sorry about that, mate.”
“Whatever,” Michael said as he reached for the stereo. “You’ve got your own problems now, don’t you?”
Ian looked at himself in the side mirror and didn’t answer.
“I mean,” Michael went on, reaching over, touching a strand of Ian’s hair and still not watching where he was driving, “what’s with this, anyway? Trying to hide? From something? Someone?” He put his hands back on the wheel and glanced at the road. “ ‘Cause you’re doing a good job. As if anyone was gonna to recognize you here anyway.”
And of course, that was the point. Ian didn’t want to be recognized or criticized. He had come to America to fit in for once rather than stand out. And come to Baltimore and to Michael to what? Remind himself what he could become if he pushed too hard and cared too little?
Yes, Ian thought, I came to look in the mirror. To see what might could WILL happen if I can’t get a handle on myself. I came to see Michael and to see what happens to heroes when they fail.
He brushed Michael’s hand away and just shrugged, thinking about the contracts and sponsorships that Michael had lost in the past month, and the way his pride was being bent to point of breaking every time he was forced to sit in front of a class of school children and tell them that he was sorry and he was a bad person.
*
“Spot me?”
Ian left off stretching to stand near Michael’s head at the bench. After a moment, he got the distinct impression that Michael was looking up his shorts, but he didn’t move, he just watched Michael strain under the weight, admiring the way his muscles slid and bunched under his skin.
It was too bad that Michael had let his tan fade, though. It had made him look healthier, Ian thought.
*
The locker room smelled of sweat and Irish Spring. It wasn’t displeasing to Ian; he’d grown up in locker rooms and he felt at home in them wherever he was in the world.
What was strange was sharing a locker with Michael and feeling him lurking around behind him, seemingly in no hurry to dress or leave the warm, steamy heat of the gym.
As Ian slathered deodorant on - Michael’s of course - a very large man tried to squeeze past them, pushing Michael into Ian, and Ian into the cold metal of the locker. When the big guy was gone, Michael stood back, but kept his hand in the small of Ian’s back for a little too long while he looked over Ian’s shoulder into the locker. Then he turned and sniffed. “Dude, it smells different on you,” he said. And then he tugged at Ian’s towel to move him, and grabbed a pile of clothes.
*
When they got back into the car it was dark and Ian was craving something. He was hungry, but not really for American food and so when Michael passed a gas station, Ian asked him to pull over. They wandered together through the isles, both of them ghostly and unattractive under the florescent lights.
Ian bought a bag of tootsie pops and Michael bought condoms. The clerk looked at them like they were from another planet, and Ian felt a little like an alien, a scruffy, dark haired alien buying candy in an American gas-station with a boy he didn’t know who was stocking up on rubbers. And the thought of Michael’s big body pinning down some poor little girl made Ian distinctly uncomfortable. Because he got the impression that Michael, especially this new jaded Michael, had a tendency to take without asking.
Maybe, Ian thought, glaring at Michael and unwrapping a grape sucker, Michael should pick on someone his own size.
*
As they made their way back to Michael’s house, Ian sucked loudly on his tootsie pop and Michael drove like a madman - obviously daring someone to stop him.
At a red light, one of the rare ones that Michael chose to stop for, he turned to look at Ian and laughed out loud. “Your lips are purple,” he said, revving the engine and fiddling with the radio. He found what he was looking for - it sounded like a remix of “Crazy Train" - and shot through the intersection. “I’m going to a party later,” he said over the music. “And they’re gonna have better favors than candy canes and suckers.”
Ian twirled the sucker on his tongue while he considered. He pulled it out of his mouth a second later with a pop and shrugged. “Okay.”
When in Rome . . . he reasoned.
*
They drove from Michael’s to Ian’s hotel room in silence, and Michael watched him impassively as he changed into his own jeans and t-shirt and out of the clothes he’d been traveling in. Michael tossed him back the hoody that he’d borrowed and worn out of the gym. “Keep it.”
He didn’t put any of his own cologne on because he’d found that he kind of liked smelling like Michael and wearing Michael’s clothes. He liked riding in Michael’s car and listening to his music. It was almost like he was Michael. Like he’d already fucked up, already thrown it all away, and the pressure was gone.
*
The warehouse looked a bit ominous to Ian, though. Parties for him had always been a little more high class. Expensive clubs, after-parties. Not usually warehouses full of college kids. This was another world.
Inside the warehouse, it was too hot and the lights pulsed around him in a dizzying array. Everyone was moving to their own rhythm it seemed, and they were all glowing. Really. They were all holding glowsticks, or their bodies were twined with glow-wands.
They weren’t there five minutes before a boy with pink hair and rhinestones glued to his painted cheeks was dancing with Michael. Ian watched from within the throng as the other boy slipped something into Michael’s hand, got a kiss in return and pranced away.
Ian found a half-eaten candy cane in his pocket and slid it into his mouth as Michael fought his way back toward him.
“What is that?” Ian yelled in Michael’s ear, pointing at the little bottle.
Michael blinked and smiled, “Wanna try it?”
Ian had a pretty good idea what it was and he had a good idea that he didn’t want it - that one little drop could end his career forever. He hadn’t really come to America to take risks; he’d come to see first hand the consequence of those risks. To put his life back in perspective maybe. But Michael’s fatalism was attractive to Ian; his new carefree fuck you all life was easy to get tangled up in. Which must have been why he let Michael take his candy cane away with his teeth and why he obeyed when Michael said, “Open your mouth.”
It was more than that, though. Ian thought as he licked his lips. If he were going to be honest with himself, and now was as good a time as any to start with that, he was tired of being good and he was tired of being golden. He didn’t want to shine any more.
And truly? Swimming had stopped getting him high before Athens. He was dead in the water.
But none of that mattered now because Michael was dripping something onto his tongue, something that Ian imagined would open his mind and let him see the future.
Nothing happened for a long minute - nothing happened until Michael took Ian’s candy cane and traced it across Ian’s lips. Then, suddenly his mouth was the absolute center of everything. There was sugar and mint and he could see his breath - like in the commercials, minty fresh - frosting the air in front of him even though it had to be close to ninety degrees or more in the warehouse. And the sugar? He could see glittering particles of white, white sugar sifting through the veins in his hands and it was the most beautiful thing that he’d ever seen.
“Mike,” he yelled into Michael’s ear. “I’m made of sugar. That’s all I am. See?” And he waved his arms, not bothering about the numerous people he knocked into.
Michael laughed and captured one of his hands, “If you get wet, will you melt?” he asked, and Ian had to think very hard about that question.
“I don’t know,” he answered earnestly, watching the warehouse slowly fade into a haze of blue.
“Lemme see,” Michael said, taking Ian’s fingers into his mouth. Ian jumped but didn’t pull away because it seemed entirely natural that Michael would want to taste him. And it felt so goddamn good.
The warehouse was liquefying, tuning to water, and all the pretty children had become fish. The kind that had little spots that glowed on their fins.
But the candy cane was gone, and Ian couldn’t find anything else to put in his mouth. “Wanna ‘nother candy, mate,” Ian told Michael.
Michael shook his head and moved closer to him, “I’ll give you something to suck on.”
That cut through the psychedelic haze because it was a harsh, almost ugly thing to say - but also it felt vaguely inevitable.
*
His skin crawled and jumped where Michael touched him, trying to lead him through the crowds of sparkling mer-children, and Ian wondered why they couldn’t just do it right there. He could breathe underwater, he was sure of it.
The restroom of the warehouse was dimly lit and the walls were too thin to block out the music. Music which Michael was singing along to as he pushed Ian onto the floor and unzipped his pants.
After a moment of disorientation, in which Ian’s brain fought to come to terms with what he was doing, he decided that Michael tasted better than the candy he’d been craving, and that - oddly enough - having Michael’s cock in his mouth was much more satisfying than sucking on peppermint sticks or lolly pops.
People, strangers, were passing in and out of the periphery of Ian’s vision. Some stopped to talk to Michael; some stopped to stroke Ian’s hair. He didn’t mind, because every time he was touched, he disintegrated a little and he could see the molecules of the old Ian floating away.
It was so mesmerizing - the rhythm of his body as he swayed on his knees, the gentle, spreading numbness of his jaw and the patterns of his soul dancing in the air - that he was startled when Michael suddenly jerked his body away and knocked Ian off balance while he came onto the floor.
“Sorry,” he said to Ian, helping him up and looking at him out of neon green eyes. “I don’t know how clean I am.”
Of course not, Ian thought as he tried to catch a dragonfly that was flitting past Michael’s ear. That wouldn’t be any fun.
*
Michael disappeared back onto the dance floor and Ian lost him in Nemo’s Nightmare. Brilliant colored fish turned into people and then into clouds and then back into fish again as he watched. He danced with a bald girl who had one flipper and three feet, and then with an eel who tried to bite him.
By the time Michael was back, Ian had settled into a place where everything was blue and gold and the meaning of life had become crystal fucking clear.
He was trying to explain it to Michael, telling him about fear and failure and expectation and competition and survival of the fittest when he discovered that he was outside and there was snow falling on him.
Every flake was diamond bright and they hurt when they landed on him. He didn’t like it - and he waiting impatiently outside of the Escalade, jiggling the door handle while Michael tried to unlock it.
“Back seat,” Michael yelled to him over the roof of the car and Ian shrugged and climbed awkwardly into the SUVs big backseat with Michael. Someone else was in the front, starting the car.
“Who,” Ian asked squinting and seeing purple, “is that?”
“Just somebody that’s gonna drive us back to your hotel, Ian. Relax.”
Ian slumped back into the seat, surprised to find himself caught against Michael’s chest and pointed back toward the warehouse. “We should go back. It’s warm there.”
“Yeah,” Michael agreed, kissing Ian’s neck. “But you have a bed in your room.”
Not listening, just feeling where Michael’s lips brushed his skin, Ian sang, “It’s always better down where it’s wetter, take it from me . . .”
*
Things were starting to look more normal by the time Ian was laid out on his bed with Michael laying quietly beside him.
“I take it you’re not goin’ home tonight, mate?” Ian asked, careful not to touch Michael because his skin was still too sensitive.
“Not when there’s a chance I could get laid,” Michael murmured.
Ian didn’t have anything to say to that, and he didn’t really try to get away when Michael rolled over on top of him. He just focused on trying to stay calm. The rumors about him, about his sexuality, had some basis in reality. But only so far as his inclinations went. He’d never acted on his desire for other men (beyond some awkward locker-room, hormone and calorie induced encounters with Grant), just like he had never gotten high and never been anything but polite to the photographers who dogged his every movement.
“Jesus, Ian,” Michael said, looking at him through sleepy eyes. “You’re more messed up than I am, aren’t you?” He sat up and tugged his shirt over his head. “I mean, all I did was have a couple of drinks and get in the car. You -“ he pulled at Ian’s hoody, “you freaked out, hopped on a plane and flew half way around the world . . . to do what?”
Ian shrugged and shivered as Michael ran a curious hand down his chest. “To get fucked up? Or to let me fuck you?”
“I don’t know.”
Michael unbuttoned Ian’s pants and Ian lifted his hips and let Michael tug them off.
“That’s a long way for sex with a stranger. But - whatever.”
“No,” Ian said and struggled out from under Michael. He suddenly felt sick and paranoid. The walls were closing in and he wanted to run. He’d taken this as far as he wanted to - and in the dark, with the shadows writhing around him, Michael looked like a monster. Which, now that Ian’s subconscious was stripped bare, didn’t surprise him. He could see that he’d always been a little afraid of Michael. He was younger, harder and more driven than Ian was. Michael was like a shark, a dark shape lurking beneath Ian. And now, he smelled blood in the water.
Michael was faster than Ian though, on land if not in the pool yet. He caught him and slammed him against the wall next to the door and Ian got the impression that this was gonna happen - the hard way, now.
He grunted in pain as Michael twisted his arm up behind his back, and he began to pray that the other man wouldn’t hurt him out of spite.
“Don’t move, Ian. You’ll sprain your shoulder,” Michael said from behind him, and his voice was that empty, tired Michael that Ian was so used to hearing in interviews. Where did the boy go, Ian wondered as he felt Michael digging in his pockets. I’m sure I saw him laughing once.
But his thoughts were cut brutally short when he heard Michael’s zipper and then Michael mumble around something in his mouth. “Don’t freak out.”
Ian knocked his head against the wall in one last half-hearted attempt to get away, before Michael was pushing into him and hurting him more than he thought he could stand.
He growled and tried to bite at Michael’s hand where it was pinning his, the one not behind his back, to the wall.
“Ian . . .” And this time Michael sounded a little younger, like maybe being in Ian tore some of his reserve away. “You have to relax or I’m going to really hurt you.”
Ian shut his eyes and saw red flowers. Roses maybe. “I can’t. I didn’t think that it would be like this. When I finally decided to do it, you know?” He couldn’t believe that he sounded so reasonable.
It worked, though. And Michael stopped moving, resting his head which was damp from sweat on Ian’s shoulder. “I thought - I guess I was sure that you had done this before.” And he let Ian’s arm go and just rested his hand on Ian’s waist.
“Well,” Ian shifted and felt some of his skin stay with the wall, “I guess I thought that you hadn’t.” The pain was lessening, little by little and was being replaced by an odd feeling of fullness.
“It’s fairly easy from this end. And you get fans of all kinds willing to all sorts of things when you’re famous - but you know that.”
I do know, Ian thought, blinking the roses away and seeing, finally, a dark hotel room. “I get watched a lot closer than you,” he said, to explain away his inexperience. And I never take the kind of chances with my body or with my career that you do. Until tonight, at least.
Big hands were rubbing his thighs now, and Ian assumed that Michael was trying to calm him. But he’d lost his patience with the whole night. He was dead tired and every time he blinked the scene in his head changed from underwater cartoons to graveyards full of flowers. It made him wonder if what Michael was doing to him was really happening or not.
The pain was convincing, though; as was the heat of Michael’s breath on his neck and the abrasiveness of the wall against his cheek.
“What are you waiting for, Michael?” he asked. “Finish it.” Finish this. Tear me open. Tear apart the old me, and remake me. Remake me just like you, Michael, Ian thought. And even as high as Ian was, he understood the irony in what he wanted. Michael had looked up to him for a long time. He looked up to him until the Ian that lived in newspapers and magazines and on the Internet couldn’t show him the way anymore. Ian suspected that Michael had learned the nasty truth about his idol sometime before Athens. He was smarter than people gave him the credit for, and he could have easily seen that beneath the glossy pages and the highlighted hair, there wasn’t a whole lot to Ian.
He was generic, boring, and shallow.
And so the tables were turned. Now, Ian wanted to be like Michael. He wanted his intensity, his drive, his pain. He wanted to be able to shake the weight of the world off of his shoulders, take a drink and tell everyone to fuck off. He never wanted to break down and cry again, because Michael never did. Michael’s pain ran deep and Ian wanted to able to hide his that way.
So when Michael still didn’t move, Ian pushed first. “Finish it, goddamn it,” he muttered. “Make it hurt.”
Michael bit gently into the muscles of his shoulder in answer and began to thrust his hips into Ian, rocking him against the wall. “Like that?” Michael asked under his breath.
Ian didn’t say anything, he just slid one arm behind his head to catch Michael by the back of the neck and hold him close. Ian’s knees were weak and he was a little nauseous from the rocking motion of their bodies. But he was hard, and he felt a strange sense of gratitude when Michael finally touched his cock.
Michael was whispering something in his ear about how he’d always wanted to fuck him in the locker room with everyone who mattered to them watching - which struck Ian as a very adolescent way of marking territory - when Michael came. It turned out that Ian wasn’t at all turned off by the idea, feeling his balls tighten as he imagined the look on van den Hoogenband’s face. Perhaps, he considered, flattening his hand against the wall and shoving himself backward onto Michael, I should just let him piss on me. And he came with that thought in mind.
*
When they were back in the bed, Ian indulged himself by laying with his head on Michael’s chest so he could suck and nip at the other man’s nipples to keep himself calm, while Michael ran his fingers through Ian’s tangled hair.
Ian was shaking a little and he wasn’t sure why. A deep feeling of anxiety had set in and his skin was crawling unpleasantly. The functioning part of his brain told him that the emotions would pass, that they were merely drug-induced. But the irrational part of him - the part that didn’t ever think - won out and he began to cling to Michael.
“D’you love me, Mike?” he asked, mumbling through mouthful of Michael’s skin. “ ‘Cause I love you.”
For a moment it seemed that Michael was going to pull away from him, but he didn’t. He pried Ian’s mouth off of him and tilted his face up to that he could look into Ian’s eyes, damp from unshed tears.
“You don’t love me, Ian.” He was silent for minute before pushing himself upright on the bed, pulling Ian with him. “When was the last time you were in the pool?” he asked as he began grabbing clothes.
Ian wrapped his arms around himself and shrugged, ignoring the things moving in the shadowed corners of the room. “ ‘S been a while, why?”
“Because I think you should get your ass back in the water,” Michael answered, helping Ian to dress as if he were a child.
“Goddamnit, Michael. I don’t want to swim anymore.” He pushed Michael away and got unsteadily to his feet, trying to use his height to his advantage. “If I never saw another pool again? If I never swallowed another mouthful of chlorine? If I never had to hurt in every joint and every muscle? If I never had to bear the weight of Australia’s hopes and dreams again? Then, Michael, I could die a happy man.” He clapped a hand over his mouth in surprise. He hadn’t meant to say those things. He hadn’t even known that he was thinking them.
“Yeah, Ian? But what if you never touched the wall first again? What if you never heard the masses screaming your name? What if you never felt the weight of another medal around your neck?” Michael sounded curious more than angry, as he tried to slide a shoe on without untying it.
Sitting back down, Ian shrugged. “Winning is nice, Michael, but it takes too much out me. The expectations are too high and it isn’t worth it anymore. The screaming fans? Y’know? I’ve found that I like silence just as much. It’s more genuine. And as for the weight of the medals, well, mate. They add up, don’t they? They get heavy.” He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on Michael. “But then, you wouldn’t know that, yeah? Because your minders won’t even let you have yours, will they? Hidden them from you or some such.”
“Fuck you, Ian,” Michael said, and walked to the door. “Are you coming with me or not?”
Ian scrambled to get his own shoes on and follow Michael out the door, because he wasn’t about to be left alone in the state he was in.
*
“You still have a key?” Ian asked, as Michael led them into the pool where he had trained for so long as a child and then a young man.
“Umm,” Michael answered as he stood staring at the water. “Get in, Ian.”
“I don’t have a suit . . .” Ian started and then stopped. Michael was stripping back down and in the green light that rippled off of the water Michael looked like beautiful.
“Don’t need one,” Michael said as he slid into the water. He turned and looked up at Ian expectantly. “Coming?”
Maybe later, Ian thought, I’ll get in the pool now, though.
*
They swam an easy couple of laps, matching each other stroke for stroke and breath for breath. And Ian knew that Michael was doing it on purpose, because the way they swam was worlds apart and it had to take an effort on Michael’s part to make sure that they stayed perfectly aligned.
But because he did, and because they had been moving together, next to each other, for several minutes, it just seemed natural when Michael stopped them in the middle of the pool and pulled Ian to him. They floated there, not breathing hard, but breathing in each other, until Ian felt Michael’s hands drift down between his legs. He laughed softly against Ian’s shoulder and muttered, “It’s like a wet dream, y’know? Getting to feel up Ian Thorpe in my own pool.”
Ian laughed with him and they drifted to the side where Ian could hold onto the concrete edge. “Did you ever think about this, mate?” he asked, sucking at Michael’s neck. "Or is this whole thing a phase?”
Michael’s hand found Ian’s cock and began working him gently, as he considered the question. “I thought about it,” he said finally.
And Ian knew that was the only confession regarding Michael’s sexuality that he was ever going to get. He also knew that when he came, in Michael’s pool no less, it was all the apology that he was going to get from Michael for what had happened between them earlier.
It was enough though, because Michael had gotten him into the water again and reminded him why he loved it. Even if he didn’t want to swim anymore, he didn’t have to deny himself the solace and the silence of the water.
*
The sun was rising as they drove back to the hotel and Ian tried not to read too much into the symbolism there. But Michael kept the Escalade under the speed limit and obeyed all traffic stops along the way, and it was harder not to read anything into that, especially not when they were holding hands over the center console like kids on their first date.
Ian gave up completely on trying to figure things out when, instead of just dropping him off, Michael followed him up and climbed back into bed with him.
“Maybe it’s the drugs, Ian. But it feels right . . . laying next you.”
And yeah, Ian admitted. It could have been the drugs that made them both needy and chilled and desperate for any kind of comfort - especially when it came in the form of a body big enough to truly be a comfort. But he liked to think that it might be more than that.
“Does it seem like we’re two halves of the same person, Mike?” Ian asked, thinking, even as he said it, of how drugged out it sounded.
“I can see that, yeah,” Michael agreed.
“Like . . .” Ian said, searching for the right words.
“I’m your dark half?” Michael asked and there was a smile in his voice. “I know. But I can’t be the evil one - the dangerous one or whatever - if you have that god awful hair.” He pulled the blanket up to his chin. “What’s with that anyway? You never told me earlier.”
“I just didn’t want to be me anymore,” Ian said faintly. Wanted to be you. Wanted to fill up the empty space inside and I thought I could do it like you do.
“And now?”
“I’ll fix it. Get back in the pool; play nice with the reporters.”
Michael pressed a tired kiss on Ian’s shoulder. “So you got what you came for then? Found what you were looking for?”
Yeah, Ian thought. I figured out that I can’t be you, Mike. And that I can’t live like you do; drugs and sex and expensive cars won’t make me whole. But the strange thing, the thing that Ian had never expected, was that Michael himself might be what filled that echoing, lonely part of him.
But it wasn’t as if he could say that to Michael. They were strangers, for the most part. Strangers who knew each other better than anyone else ever could, but there was still too much that separated them.
There was a whole world between them that Ian wasn’t ready to trust with the truth about himself. Michael may have been willing to fight that battle. Ian wasn’t.
So Ian settled for, “I found something.” And it seemed to satisfy Michael, who dropped off to sleep minutes later.
*
The flight back to Aus was very different than Ian’s flight away from it had been. This time he slept more, and when he was awake, he ate tootsie pops, not caring if they turned his mouth a variety of different colors.
He’d spent two days with Michael. One of them out of his mind on acid and the other drunk on sex and dreams. But they’d parted at the airport without really saying goodbye, without really saying anything. Michael was worried about his trial and Ian was worried that Michael had led him on a long, strange trip that he didn’t know quite how to come back from.
But maybe, Ian reasoned with himself, being lost isn’t always such a bad thing. As long as there is somebody waiting for you at the end of your journey. And he had a feeling that Michael, as wild as he was and as unpredictable, would be waiting for him when he finally did find his way home.
-end-