I fell into a burning ring of fire
Just as I finish this swimslash monkey, there's another one due next week. And then, on to writing Advent Children clone gangbangs.
Title: Johnny Cash in the Desert
Summary: The trials and tribulations of falling in love (or possibly just lust) on a roadtrip.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fantasy. None of the actions portrayed by the people herein are reflective of real life.
Notes: Written for alldoubtaboutit, who requested lighthearted Michael Phelps/Ian Crocker with Disneyland.
Michael falls in love or possibly lust with Ian Crocker in the fourth round of the twenty-seventh consecutive game of Texas Hold 'Em, somewhere on an interstate in the middle of Georgia.
This is probably not the best time to fall in love (or lust) because he's down to his last six M&M's and he really needs to concentrate and figure out if Lenny's bluffing or not. And that's hard to do when he's looking at the little smears of candy-color on Ian's fingertips, red, green, yellow, and blue where the M&M's bled against damp skin, and wanting to lick them.
"See your two blues and raise you five yellows," says Lenny.
Michael stares at his cards without seeing them while he goes about considering his options in what he tries to think is a very professional and methodical way. Love, lust, or possibly just hunger. He puts a hand on his stomach and remembers when they ate last; it was about an hour ago at a pizza place. Not Ledos, but some other place where the pizza was served up in long rectangles instead of round, and it could have only been an hour, an hour and a half tops, but that's never a sure guarantee. All three of them are always ready to eat.
Michael looks at Ian's fingers and thinks about how they would taste if he lapped his tongue over them just a little, salty and sweet at the same time.
If it were just hunger, he'd probably just be thinking about the taste. But when he imagines picking up Ian's hand and sucking on his fingers, it's not just the taste that comes to mind; he thinks about it would feel. Like, the smooth surface of Ian's fingernails and the different smoothness of the pads of his fingers, how it would feel to swirl his tongue around so he could feel both textures, but carefully because Ian's fingernails are ragged on the edges from being chewed on. And if he licked Ian's fingers it doesn't seem at all unlikely that he'd lick Ian's wrist, and then he'd lick up to the crook of his elbow, and the curves of his biceps, and then it's not too far to Ian's shoulders which are really pretty nice and offer a wide plane of skin to go all out on.
Maybe he just has a thing about licking, Michael thinks. But it's not just that; there's a spot on Ian's shoulders just waiting for a chin to be rested on. He likes Ian's shoulders on their own, with or without licking. And he's got a broad chest, and there's the way Michael's noticed how much better longer hair suits Ian, and how Ian's smile and eyebrows never match each other since his mouth gets all soft and sweet but at the same time there's this sardonic lift to the way he arches just one brow. And, just. Stuff.
There's a whole lot of other things involved, things that aren't just Ian as a physical presence across from Michael, but right now Ian's right there, just right fucking there, and asking if Michael's going to fold or if he's in or what, man.
"Um." He looks at his own hand blankly. There are hearts. The universe is conspiring against him.
Lenny kicks him under the table. "Come now, Michael. If you paid half as much attention to the candy as you did to the rapper..." He raises his eyebrows suggestively.
"Screw you," Michael says automatically, and grins. He's working his way back up to real profanity. It's both weird and cool, having the freedom to curse without looking around to see if his mother or a reporter has noticed, but then he immediately wonders if Ian's got a thing against cursing. Maybe he shouldn't have said that.
Ian's actually gone to church while on the tour, just gotten up and attended these unknown congregations. He could just ask Ian point blank if it bothered him because Ian probably would tell him, and with a simple yes or no answer like that, Ian would be honest because there would be no faking involved. There's a difference between lying and faking. Michael considers himself a pretty good liar, but his faking skills need a lot of work. Ian on the other hand, can fake his way through just about anything, but he's a terrible liar.
Lenny is horrifyingly good at both lying and faking. He would own most of Ian and Michael several times over if they were playing for real, which is why they're playing for candy. It was Skittles five games ago, and Smarties before that. It'll probably be Reese's Pieces in the next game.
"So?" Ian asks.
"Uh, call." Michael pushes the rest of his M&M's in, looks at his hand, and winces before he spreads them face up on the table; this is probably going to cost him. "Three of a kind."
Lenny and Ian drop their cards at the same time. "Straight," Ian grins.
"Flush!" Lenny says triumphantly.
How apt, Michael thinks, Ian's probable sexuality and what will happen to Michael should he intrude on it.
"Sucks," he says out loud, and refuses to think any further about that word.
"Michael's going to starve," Lenny teases, and Michael can't help but grin back. Lenny's smiles are just ridiculously infectious that way. Even when he's being a selfish bastard and eating all of Michael's hard-gained candy right in front of him, by the handful.
"Lenny," he whines and tries to grab, "Lenny, come on, that's not fair. Lenny, Lenny, no, I saved those blues up for, like, forever! Lenny!"
"Poor Michael," Lenny says with a mouthful of chocolate and no discernible change in cheer. He swats Michael's hand away. "Bet big, lose big. It is a valuable lesson."
"I hope you drown in Atlanta," Michael says mournfully, and drops his chin on his hands. He sighs. He's lost for the fifth straight time, and Lenny has all his M&M's and he's probably in love with Ian. Fan-fucking-tastic.
"Aww, no. I can't watch. Here, Michael." Ian shakes his head, and pushes over half his M&M's. Michael looks up in surprise. "It's like kicking a puppy."
"You mean it?" Michael asks, even as he picks them up as quickly as he can and gets them out of Lenny's reach.
"Just don't expect me to bail you out of Vegas any time soon," Ian says, and smiles right at him before looking down to his own stash again. Michael's stomach drops and a shiver goes all through him and terminates somewhere near the center of the earth.
"Yeah, yeah. Thanks, man," he says, and tosses a few in his mouth. The chocolate is sweet and melts all over his tongue; there's the satisfying crunch of the candy shell between his teeth and the goosh of the mostly melted chocolate inside. But he watches Ian methodically sort his candy into color-grouped piles, pick each one up carefully between thumb and forefinger before eating it, and he thinks about how he still really wants to lick Ian's fingers.
Then, he excuses himself from the table before he can accidentally fuck up his worldviews on M&M's, Ian Crocker, and sexuality any further than he already has.
***
There are three rules that are not up for any negotiation: Don't fuck with the stereo when it's not your turn. What you do in your bunk is your own business but if you have to jerk off, keep it down. And no matter how the tour goes, they're still all going to be friends at the end of it.
They're running out of room in their bunks because people keep giving them so much free stuff-- promotional crap, souvenirs, clothing, and that's just the sponsors. The fans give them stuff too, souvenirs and stuffed animals and clothes, but these are usually flung from the stands instead of neatly handed over in a box. Sometimes the clothes-- well, the underwear-- have obviously been worn, which is kind of weird, and he's pretty sure that at least one of the videotapes is some sort of homemade porn, which is both really unnerving and really intriguing. But he hasn't managed to find privacy or to work his nerve up enough to check.
Crowded as it is, it's kind of cool to look at all this free stuff just heaped around, sort of like lying on top of a treasure pile. Getting to his bunk is like an obstacle course, as he steps carefully over a two-foot-high stuffed bear wearing a speedo and swimcap (why the fuck would a bear wear a speedo, he thinks every time he sees it, but someone went to the trouble to cut out little ear holes in the cap and he's got to appreciate effort, even it's weird effort), skirts his gear bag, and collapses into his bunk.
It doesn't make sense.
Bears in speedos and crushing on blond teammates who have stupid taste in music and really nice arms. If he had any sense at all, he would have fallen in love with another blond like Aaron Peirsol or Ian Thorpe or anyone who isn't as emphatically not-going-to-happen as Ian Crocker is. Ian has a girlfriend. They have cats together. Also, he always prays before dinner, which Michael finds admirable but aggravating, as it means whenever they all eat together he has to stare at his own food until Ian's done and then start eating, as it just seems rude otherwise. And they're always eating.
Ian has a guitar, and Michael can hear him playing it, faintly but distinctly. It's hard not to hear everything that happens on the bus, hence the first and second rules not up for negotiation.
It doesn't make sense and it's probably the worst idea ever to fall in love with Ian, because they're going to be living in each other's faces for the next month and the media can't decide if they should be friends or rivals and they're total opposites. And besides, Ian's taste in music. It is inescapable.
The song coming from the main recreation area of the bus doesn't sound that bad, actually. Michael's never going to warm up to the Russian stuff that Lenny plays, and he fusses about Bob Dylan on principle, but they've managed to avoid conflict so far. They have an unofficial game going where they inflict music on each other and keep a point system based on if they can get an admission that a song from the other's musical tastes is enjoyable. Five points can be traded in for an extra hour of stereo time, and there's an honor system on lying about not liking a song.
Ian isn't singing, just playing. Michael listens harder and he can actually recognize the song now. After Barcelona, he went through a few months that Bob refers to only half-jokingly as his stalker period, when he obsessively and rather happily read just about everything related to Ian. It eventually cooled, except for the poster, which he really never should have mentioned to anyone at all considering how many people ask him about it. In retrospect, he wonders why he waited until now to figure out falling in love with Ian Crocker. It probably had to do with having another Ian to worry about. Bob knows better than to even bring up that period.
At any rate, somewhere along the long trail of media comparisons and idle google searches, Michael had downloaded Ian's recorded song, listened to it, deleted it a month later when he didn't recognize the file name, and then had to download it all over again. He'd wondered why he'd bothered; it wasn't the sort of thing he usually liked at all. He couldn't decide what it was supposed to mean.
And really, now that he's almost sure he's in love with Ian, even if it doesn't make sense, and now that Ian's out there in the recreation area and available for asking, he should go find out. Michael gets up off his bed and picks his way across the bunk area all over again.
Ian's sitting on the floor. He looks up when he comes into the room and nods his head, hands busy on the guitar strings. Michael jerks his head back in reply and flops down on the couch. "Hey," he says. "That's your song, right? 'Come On'?" He pronounces it carefully, separately. In the song, Ian makes it sound more like one word.
Ian looks sort of surprised. "Yeah. How'd you know?"
Michael shrugs. "I heard it somewhere," he says evasively. "How come it's a sad song?"
"You think it's sad?" Ian asks, smiling a little. "How come?"
"Because it is," Michael says, a little annoyed. "Isn't it?" he asks, and feels stupid. It's Ian's song, not his. Maybe it isn't sad at all.
"Some songs are like that," Ian says, and strums another chord, then stops.
"You don’t have to stop," Michael says, and is glad his face is mostly pressed against the couch and out of sight. "It's-- never mind. I like it. It's cool."
"Do I get a point for it?"
"It shouldn't count. You were playing it, it wasn't on a CD." Michael relents; after all, Ian did spot him the M&M's. "Okay, fine. Point."
"That makes eight. I think I'm gonna save mine up and make you guys listen to all three of Dylan's Greatest Hits albums." Ian leans back against the couch. "Okay, what do you want to hear?"
"Do something happier," Michael mumbles, mostly into the couch, and wonders how many asses have been where his face is now. It's not something he really wants to consider in depth. "No Dylan."
"You're a philistine, Michael." Ian starts playing the guitar again, a little faster, a little more energy. It's catchy, almost familiar. He just plays at first, but after a minute or two he puts words to it. "Love is a burnin' thing," Ian sings softly, "and it makes a fiery ring."
"What's that?" Michael asks, turning to face Ian. He kind of does like it.
Ian gives him a mildly incredulous look as he plays. "This is the Man in Black, Michael. Johnny Cash. Show some respect."
"I know who Johnny Cash is, dude," Michael says. "Did you know he also did a voice cameo on the Simpsons? He was the space coyote."
Ian chooses to ignore Michael's trivia. "This is one of his most famous songs. Haven't you ever heard 'Ring of Fire'?"
"Maybe," Michael says. He raises up on one elbow and squints at Ian. "No Dylan?"
"Bob Dylan did a cover of 'Ring of Fire' on his 'Feeling Minnesota' album," Ian says solemnly, and then smiles. "Also, he and Cash covered it together in the Nashville Sessions. They have a lot of history together. It's cool, you should check it out."
"I knew it. You wouldn't be able to leave him out." Which isn't entirely fair or accurate, Michael knows. Half the time, it's because Michael brings it up in the first place. He collapses onto the couch.
"You like it?" Ian asks without missing a beat.
"Maybe."
"Hang on." Ian puts his guitar down and rummages near the stereo. "I got the CD. You need to hear it with the horns."
He does like it. It makes him want to tap his foot along with the beat. Ian sings along, just a little. "I fell into a burning ring of fire, went down, down, down, but the flames went higher. And it burns, burns, burns, that ring of fire, that ring of fire."
When the song's over, Ian looks at him expectantly. Michael frowns. "Wasn't that about drugs too?"
Ian gives him a look that's half pleased, half impressed, and it makes Michael ridiculously sort of happy to have provoked it. "Yeah. And love. His wife wrote it about him. She wasn't his wife at the time, though. She said it was about falling in love with someone she wasn't supposed to."
"Oh." Michael stares down at his hands, trying to figure out how to articulate what's in his mind. "It's happy and it's sad, too. Kinda like your song."
"You should only listen to Johnny Cash in the desert," Ian remarks absently.
"What's that mean?" Michael asks.
"Nothing," Ian says. "Just. Yeah. You'd understand, if you did it."
"Yeah, okay. Whatever." Michael stretches. "You got nine points now. I'm gonna nap, dude."
"Right here?" Ian picks up the guitar. "I can go play in my bunk if you're gonna sleep here."
"Nah, s'okay." He rolls over, curling so his back is to Ian. "You can play. Just, you know, whatever you want."
Michael lies there and listens to Ian playing. It's nice to drift off like this. His thoughts are drifting too, disconnected. He thinks about Johnny Cash's song, and wonders why the hell you would need to be in the desert to listen to it. He wonders if he'll ever be able to think of it without the desert now. It was a love song.
He thinks about Ian's song. He thinks maybe it might be a love song too.
***
Having decided he was almost certain (but not entirely) about being in love with Ian, Michael goes about plotting to make Ian fall in love with him in a way what he hopes is professional, but which even he admits to himself could use some direction. So he calls in the big guns.
"Hey. Um. Lenny?" They're the first ones awake, he and Lenny. Michael's up because he has to do an interview in twenty minutes, and Lenny because he always is. It's like a law of nature or something. Lenny is doing something on his laptop while eating breakfast, and Michael is fidgeting and building a tower with a bunch of little travel-sized cereal packages they swiped from the last hotel, the ones that no one ate but didn't want to leave behind because they were free.
Lenny looks up. "Yes?"
"I have a. Um. Well. How did you know?" he asks Lenny. "You and your fiancée, I mean. When. How did you know you were--"
Lenny either has enough scary intuition to know exactly what Michael's driving at, or rooming together for more than a month has given him enough exposure to properly translate. And fortunately, he's a nice enough person not to make Michael stutter too long over it or to beat around the bush. "I just knew. We both did. When you love someone, you enjoy being with them, you bring out the best in each other. I knew I wanted to because even when things are bad, when you fight, you both want to make it better. I think you always know."
Michael puts the Special K box on top of the Raisin Bran. "When you first met Irina, though. Was it, you know, all clear? Did everything just. Um. Make sense?"
The Frosted Mini-Wheats fall off the Crispix and almost hit Lenny's keyboard. Lenny flicks it aside and looks thoughtful. "No," he says. "No, I do not think so. It took time. All relationships do."
The tower isn't too stable, so Michael makes it a pyramid. He gets it six layers high before it gets wobbly and endangers Lenny's breakfast again, so he gives in and starts trying to find something in the cabinets for his own pre-breakfast breakfast. He distinctly remembers hiding a box of strawberry frosted poptarts inside the instant oatmeal packet box, but when he checks they're more than half gone, with no telling by whom. He liberates what's left of them for his own use, and eats them cold because he's too hungry to wait.
At the table, Lenny continues to type. The silence between them is getting meaningful and that is no good at all.
"Whatcha doing?" he finally says, and keeps his eyes on the tabletop.
"Following stocks," Lenny says amiably, "I wanted to check on an investment. It is something I have been watching for a long time. I was not sure how it was going to turn out or work at first, but I took a risk and it looks like it will be paying off."
Was that a metaphor? He hopes not. "I don't know how any of that works," Michael says. "It's all, just. Stuff. Numbers. I feel stupid when I try to figure it out. I had this friend, he used to say that the stock market doesn't really exist, it's just Wall Street dicking everyone around. Like a huge conspiracy, you know?"
Lenny smiles, but doesn't look up. "I hope not. We are all in trouble, if that's so."
"Yeah." He squirms a little. "Do you think that it's possible for something to just happen and to sit back and let it happen? Like, relationships, even? Letting life happen? Being yourself?"
Lenny sits quietly for a moment, fingers ticking over the keys, and Michael is just beginning to consider putting himself out of his misery with his own cereal spoon. "No," Lenny says finally. "I think all things, even relationships, require effort to see where they are going. Especially life. Especially relationships. And being oneself. One must do something about it all."
"Oh," Michael mutters, and puts his head down on his arms. He is, as he suspected, a freak. "Okay. Thanks."
There's a click as Lenny closes his laptop and leans across the table. He pats Michael on the hand, then squeezes Michael's wrist. "Sometimes, I think it is all right to feel overwhelmed," he says. "You will be fine."
"Everything right now is really great," he says miserably. "I'm having a great time. Lenny, I don't do anything on my own. I don't know what to do."
Everyone has always told him what to do his entire life. There probably is some sort of weird irony in asking Lenny, who had the same kind of thing happen to him, to tell him what to do.
"It's very early in the morning," Lenny reassures him. He doesn't let go of Michael's wrist. It's kind of comforting, actually. "Eat something. You will feel better soon. Morning is a bad time for these thoughts."
"I don't know what to do," Michael mutters again, and takes another bite of poptart. He can feel his blood sugar spiking and he feels slightly better in spite of himself. "Seriously, I don't."
"Have you tried just being Michael Phelps?" Lenny asks him.
The idea is surprisingly sensible, if complicated.
***
"Dude, you're gonna hurt yourself. That shit's not gonna come off if you do it that way."
Ian's just come back from some sort of sitting interview. All the publicity's great, but it means that they can barely make a move without having five cameras immediately zero in on them, and Michael's mildly terrified that he's going to forget and someone's gonna snap a shot of him doing something like adjusting his balls. The fact that their schedule is so damn tight doesn't help at all; he feels like he has to schedule two weeks in advance just to take a piss, let alone plot about seducing Ian. Hell, the bathroom's one of the few places he can retreat to where he can think and can be sure no one's taking a picture.
The point is, Michael walks into Ian's hotel room to hear uncharacteristic profanity and some muffled clattering. Ian's leaning over the sink while scrubbing futilely at his face with a damp washcloth, fighting a battle against the makeup he wears from being on camera. The makeup appears to be winning.
Ian squints owlishly at him when he hears Michael's voice. His skin is fairer than both Michael's and Lenny's, but the redness on his cheeks this time looks like it came from the washcloth instead of the sun. "You got any other suggestions?" he asks.
"Yeah, move over." Michael scrabbles around the tiny bottles of complimentary hotel stuff that are clustered around the sink, finally coming up with a bottle of lotion. "Here, you gotta use this."
Ian stares dubiously at it. "Like, with the washcloth? Or just rub it in?"
"No, with-- here, just let me do it." Michael grabs a handful of toilet paper-- no, tissues would be better, and he grabs those instead. He wads them up, and shakes out a small blob of lotion onto the tissue. Ian sits down on the toilet seat. "Close your eyes, okay? You don’t wanna get it in there. Stings like hell."
"I'm never gonna get used to eyeliner," Ian says, with his eyes closed and his face tilted up trustingly. He holds still as Michael dabs and swipes across the top of his lash line. "It's weird. And there's all this other crap on my face."
Michael nods, understanding. "Yeah, it sucks. You get used to it after a while, though." He traces under Ian's lashes more carefully; the bottom part of the eye is the worst part. "It's supposed to make you look better on camera," he offers, once he can stop concentrating on not accidentally blinding Ian.
"It makes me look orange," Ian mumbles. "Get the rest off, okay?"
"Yeah, just hang on."
The tissue wad is rapidly turning a tannish-orange color and disintegrating into little damp shreds. He discards it for another handful of tissues, although he tries to fold these up a little more carefully. It's oddly satisfying to see the swatches of fake color come off Ian's skin and onto the tissue.
"How'd you know how to do this?" Ian asks, his eyes still closed even though Michael's nowhere near them.
"My sister showed me," Michael replies, absorbed in getting the last of it under Ian's jawline. "With her regular makeup, you know? And she did interviews and shit too, so she showed me how to get it off when I was doing the same thing you were. She used cotton balls, though."
"Oh," Ian says. "Yeah. Makes sense."
Michael finishes up, grabs the damp washcloth off the sink, and runs it under water before tossing it to Ian. "There. You can wipe the rest of your face off, if you want."
"Thanks," Ian says, blindly groping for the washcloth. "You want to catch a movie? Terminator's on at nine. Lenny doesn't want to, he's talking to Irina on the phone."
"The first one? Dude, yeah, let me just grab a shower."
"Cool. Just come on over when you're ready. See if you can get something to eat," Ian says, standing up and waving casually at his room. "I think I'm gonna shower too."
Five minutes later in his own bathroom, it occurs to Michael that what just happened was probably the best moment he was going to get to propose shared showering for water conservation purposes, segueing nicely into confessing his sudden attraction to Ian, and he totally missed it. And really he should get back out of there and go, except he just lathered up his hair and he hasn't even unwrapped the complimentary soap yet and he ought to shave because his chin has stubble on it and he needs to brush his teeth because without fresh breath how can he seduce Ian into doing anything let alone making out?
Shampoo lather drips into his eyes. It stings, and for a few seconds Michael is blessed with Ian-free thoughts as he focuses totally on rubbing his eyes as hard as he can and trying not to slip and fall down in the shower.
But as soon as he's soap free, it all comes back. Ian, shower, movie, seduction. He should do something about this now, Michael thinks, and strides out of the bathroom, into the main bedroom, and towards the connecting door to Ian's room. He stops short of opening it, looks down at himself and blinks in surprise. Sometimes he forgets that not everyone is used to being naked or close to it in public, and in fact, there are totally, like, rules about it. It's all that time in the pool.
So: brush his teeth, raid some drinks and snacks from either the vending machines or the gift basket they got on entry, find a way to get both he and Ian on one bed to watch the movie, and then seduce or otherwise convince Ian that they should totally make out. On the list of things he wants to accomplish sometime in his life, it probably isn't the hardest, but it's definitely up there.
But first he needs a towel. And pants.
Ten minutes later, Michael is mostly dried, mostly dressed, not at all shaved, and Crest-fresh. He also has a can of every drink from the vending machine since he had forgotten to ask Ian what he wanted, and a sample of every snack from the E row of the vending machine, except the Hostess fruit pie, because you never knew how long those things had been there. He also has at least three foolproof arguments for why he and Ian should proceed directly from movie watching into oral foreplay. He takes a deep breath and goes into Ian's room.
However, all plans fly out of his head when Ian comes over to help relieve Michael of the spoils from his vending machine raid because Ian smiles in delight and says, "Hey, they had Snickers?" And that's somehow the signal for Michael to lean forward and kiss Ian squarely on the lips. He doesn't think, he just does. He does notice that Ian's lips are warm and dry and slightly chapped. And more than a little open in what he can only assume is flabbergasted astonishment.
Then, Michael bolts back into his room, tries to lock the adjoining door, panics when he can't lock the adjoining door, drags the armchair in front of the door to block it, and spends the rest of the night in alternate misery and humiliation, ignoring the knocking on his door. Finally, it goes away.
***
Another clinic in another city. It's been a while since they started the tour, and some of the locations are beginning to blur. After a while it's just another crowded building smelling of chlorine, another array of questions that range from generic to unnervingly intimate, another color of floor tile in a locker room, another day of watching the road go by through the bus windows.
Another successful day of hiding from Ian.
Or at least, it would be if Michael's main buffer against being alone with Ian would get his ass the fuck out of Michael's main place to hide, Michael thinks irritably, as he raps on the locked bathroom door again. There aren't too many places to use on a bus, and having the bathroom occupied is really taxing Michael's resources.
"Lenny!" he hisses as loud as he dares, "I don't care what the hell you're doing, just get the fuck out here so I can take a leak and we can have the meeting about the next clinic."
Lenny just laughs. He's evil like that. "Language, Michael. You start without me."
"I can't, you have to be there, come on, please?"
Nothing doing though, as Lenny seems there for the long haul. It sounds like he's got a book in there; Michael can hear pages rustling. Michael throws an obscene gesture at the door, and then tiptoes back to hide in his bunk for another fifteen minutes. He pulls the curtain shut, which is their universally-agreed upon gesture for privacy. It's surprisingly easy, on a bus that has people constantly coming on and off it, to be left alone with the one person he doesn't want to be alone with.
He's managed to avoid being totally alone with Ian for almost three days now, keeping Lenny, bodyguards, and various PR people around as obstacles between Ian and himself. Not that Ian seems to be banging down Michael's door to talk to him either. Banging down his curtain. Whatever. After the first night, Ian's thrown a few unreadable looks towards Michael, and there was a close ten minutes yesterday when Lenny tried to get Ian to take over his controller during Madden versus Michael. But other than that, Michael is having no luck at all reading Ian's reaction or lack thereof.
It isn't exactly that Michael's afraid Ian's going to try and crucify him or anything. He just doesn't want to lose his friend so quickly after really finding him.
When he hears footsteps, he puts his headphones on his ears-- Ian's song is the one playing, because the entire universe is against Michael and really he should just delete it again-- and his pillow over his face, and feigns deep and instant sleep. The footsteps approach, pause, and then retreat. After a while, the coast seems clear enough for him to cautiously stick his head out of his bunk and make another furtive trip to the bathroom.
"Lenny?" he mutters.
No answer.
"Lenny?" he tries again, and then pushes at the doorknob and sticks his head in. There's no one inside. "Lenny?"
"Hi," Ian says from right behind him. Michael narrowly avoids shrieking girlishly, and instead thinks dark thoughts about Lenny being a stupid-ass narc who sold him out, gold medals and sage advice notwithstanding.
Ian has a McDonald's milkshake in each hand, and he hands one to Michael. Michael takes it because there's really nothing else he can do, backed up into the bathroom like this. Ian follows him in. He wonders if Lenny is eavesdropping, somewhere. "I got you this," Ian says, "and I'm sorry, you know, about the whole thing we aren't talking about or even acknowledging."
This, Michael thinks wildly, is exactly why it is a terrible idea to fall in love with Ian, let alone lust. Ian's just too damn nice. There's no way he could ever measure up, and besides, there is the worrying possibility that Aaron and Brendan will try to beat the everliving shit out of him if he and Ian break up. Of course, that would involve getting together in the first place, and that would involve at least talking to Ian about clumsy homosexual seduction and/or assault attempts, and it would be much easier to just drink the damn milkshake already so Ian will stop waiting expectantly.
He does. It's chocolate.
"Um," Michael says. "Thanks. It's-- good. Um."
"It's sort of melted," Ian says. "I couldn't find you right away. Did you really stay in the bathroom for four hours yesterday?"
"Well. I brought a book," Michael says, and stares at his feet. "And a deck of cards. Yeah."
"Huh." Ian looks around. "There is, like, no space in here," he remarks.
"Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty cramped."
There is an awkward few seconds between them, a space where Michael thinks they both realize that the whole topic is moving rapidly into the never-talk-about-it-again zone and neither of them know what they're going to talk about next and they really should talk about it before it gets to that space.
"I just wanted--" he says desperately.
While at the same time, Ian says, "Hey, well, I was--"
They stop and stare at each other again.
Michael is hyper-aware of everything, from the fact that someone needs to change the empty toilet paper roll on the dispenser to the cold beads of condensation sliding down the waxy milkshake cup and wetting his hand. He's hungry-- hiding from people is hard work-- and he takes another sip automatically. The chocolate taste spreads in his mouth; the straw makes a thick slurping noise and that's somehow okay because Ian smiles a little, and Michael smiles a little back from around the straw.
Ian visibly comes to a mental decision, and very gingerly leans over to Michael and gives him a hug. It still seems like a straight guy hug and there is no contact of the junk, but the carefulness of Ian's motions is due more to the cramped space than reluctance on Ian's part, and it's a proper hug that doesn't let go right after two seconds. It's nothing special, but Michael knows about hugs, having given and received them in various forms, clothed and unclothed, wet and dry, reluctant and willing, and there's nothing being held back or stingy about this one.
And being jammed up in a tiny bus bathroom with Ian Crocker and a McDonald's milkshake and visible homoerotic tension clogging the air probably is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to him, but Michael's only nineteen and that means the law of averages is on his side that someday, something weirder is going to happen.
So that means he can get through this.
"We're still okay," Ian says to him.
And Michael nods. "Yeah, we're okay."
Lenny joins them later, maybe expecting to peel them off each other-- fighting or embracing, Michael isn't sure. Lenny probably did not join this promotional tour to play gay yenta to sexually confused Olympic rivals. Probably. By the time Lenny joins them, Ian and Michael are playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and getting along.
"I don't understand why you like this game so much," Lenny says sadly, standing behind them with his hands in his pockets. "You seem like such nice boys."
Onscreen, Michael's thug gangster has rammed into three cop cars and left five pedestrians as smears on the sidewalk. When he tries to flee, he is immediately gunned down by a SWAT team.
"Because. It's fun. Triangle, triangle, ah, shit!" Michael says without taking his eyes off the screen. "And the music. The music is cool. Triangle!"
Lenny looks at Ian. Ian shrugs. "I just like all the different kinds of vehicles," he says.
"I will never drive with either of you in real life," Lenny declares. "Young people, these days."
"Young?" Ian says, and laughs disbelievingly. "Sit down, Lenny, before you break a hip."
"Young people," Lenny repeats. "So foolish. So undeveloped. Needing the wise advice of their elders who have been to more Olympic games and given more interviews."
"Hey," Michael says, stung, "I was totally on the Today show! And Time magazine!"
"I was on Hollywood Squares," Lenny says smugly.
Michael exchanges a look with Ian. And it's somehow perfect the way they have the exact same thought as they rise like choreography, one of those things you just can't plan, ever. Michael gets his arms and Ian gets his legs and they drag Lenny back to the bathroom with Lenny resisting and laughing and shouting accomplishments all the way. "I won thirty two thousand dollars on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire! I judged for the Miss America Pageant!"
Maneuvering is difficult, but they're nothing if determined and they work together enough to throw him in the tiny shower with his clothes on.
"Do you think," Michael asks Ian as they lean against the door, holding it shut. "Like. I mean, do you think that. Maybe. If you want."
"Yes," Ian says.
And Michael isn't quite sure what he asked or what Ian answered, but that's all right. Things are all right right now. He doesn’t know if they're going to be all right later, but for now he's living in the moment. He can just feel it, and it's one of the best things in the world, pure uncomplicated relief.
"I was named in People Magazine's Fifty Most Beautiful!" Lenny yells through the bathroom door, but he's laughing almost too hard for them to make it out. Michael looks at Ian and Ian looks at Michael, and they laugh too. Just like friends do.
And it's… nice.
***
Continue to part two.
Title: Johnny Cash in the Desert
Summary: The trials and tribulations of falling in love (or possibly just lust) on a roadtrip.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fantasy. None of the actions portrayed by the people herein are reflective of real life.
Notes: Written for alldoubtaboutit, who requested lighthearted Michael Phelps/Ian Crocker with Disneyland.
Michael falls in love or possibly lust with Ian Crocker in the fourth round of the twenty-seventh consecutive game of Texas Hold 'Em, somewhere on an interstate in the middle of Georgia.
This is probably not the best time to fall in love (or lust) because he's down to his last six M&M's and he really needs to concentrate and figure out if Lenny's bluffing or not. And that's hard to do when he's looking at the little smears of candy-color on Ian's fingertips, red, green, yellow, and blue where the M&M's bled against damp skin, and wanting to lick them.
"See your two blues and raise you five yellows," says Lenny.
Michael stares at his cards without seeing them while he goes about considering his options in what he tries to think is a very professional and methodical way. Love, lust, or possibly just hunger. He puts a hand on his stomach and remembers when they ate last; it was about an hour ago at a pizza place. Not Ledos, but some other place where the pizza was served up in long rectangles instead of round, and it could have only been an hour, an hour and a half tops, but that's never a sure guarantee. All three of them are always ready to eat.
Michael looks at Ian's fingers and thinks about how they would taste if he lapped his tongue over them just a little, salty and sweet at the same time.
If it were just hunger, he'd probably just be thinking about the taste. But when he imagines picking up Ian's hand and sucking on his fingers, it's not just the taste that comes to mind; he thinks about it would feel. Like, the smooth surface of Ian's fingernails and the different smoothness of the pads of his fingers, how it would feel to swirl his tongue around so he could feel both textures, but carefully because Ian's fingernails are ragged on the edges from being chewed on. And if he licked Ian's fingers it doesn't seem at all unlikely that he'd lick Ian's wrist, and then he'd lick up to the crook of his elbow, and the curves of his biceps, and then it's not too far to Ian's shoulders which are really pretty nice and offer a wide plane of skin to go all out on.
Maybe he just has a thing about licking, Michael thinks. But it's not just that; there's a spot on Ian's shoulders just waiting for a chin to be rested on. He likes Ian's shoulders on their own, with or without licking. And he's got a broad chest, and there's the way Michael's noticed how much better longer hair suits Ian, and how Ian's smile and eyebrows never match each other since his mouth gets all soft and sweet but at the same time there's this sardonic lift to the way he arches just one brow. And, just. Stuff.
There's a whole lot of other things involved, things that aren't just Ian as a physical presence across from Michael, but right now Ian's right there, just right fucking there, and asking if Michael's going to fold or if he's in or what, man.
"Um." He looks at his own hand blankly. There are hearts. The universe is conspiring against him.
Lenny kicks him under the table. "Come now, Michael. If you paid half as much attention to the candy as you did to the rapper..." He raises his eyebrows suggestively.
"Screw you," Michael says automatically, and grins. He's working his way back up to real profanity. It's both weird and cool, having the freedom to curse without looking around to see if his mother or a reporter has noticed, but then he immediately wonders if Ian's got a thing against cursing. Maybe he shouldn't have said that.
Ian's actually gone to church while on the tour, just gotten up and attended these unknown congregations. He could just ask Ian point blank if it bothered him because Ian probably would tell him, and with a simple yes or no answer like that, Ian would be honest because there would be no faking involved. There's a difference between lying and faking. Michael considers himself a pretty good liar, but his faking skills need a lot of work. Ian on the other hand, can fake his way through just about anything, but he's a terrible liar.
Lenny is horrifyingly good at both lying and faking. He would own most of Ian and Michael several times over if they were playing for real, which is why they're playing for candy. It was Skittles five games ago, and Smarties before that. It'll probably be Reese's Pieces in the next game.
"So?" Ian asks.
"Uh, call." Michael pushes the rest of his M&M's in, looks at his hand, and winces before he spreads them face up on the table; this is probably going to cost him. "Three of a kind."
Lenny and Ian drop their cards at the same time. "Straight," Ian grins.
"Flush!" Lenny says triumphantly.
How apt, Michael thinks, Ian's probable sexuality and what will happen to Michael should he intrude on it.
"Sucks," he says out loud, and refuses to think any further about that word.
"Michael's going to starve," Lenny teases, and Michael can't help but grin back. Lenny's smiles are just ridiculously infectious that way. Even when he's being a selfish bastard and eating all of Michael's hard-gained candy right in front of him, by the handful.
"Lenny," he whines and tries to grab, "Lenny, come on, that's not fair. Lenny, Lenny, no, I saved those blues up for, like, forever! Lenny!"
"Poor Michael," Lenny says with a mouthful of chocolate and no discernible change in cheer. He swats Michael's hand away. "Bet big, lose big. It is a valuable lesson."
"I hope you drown in Atlanta," Michael says mournfully, and drops his chin on his hands. He sighs. He's lost for the fifth straight time, and Lenny has all his M&M's and he's probably in love with Ian. Fan-fucking-tastic.
"Aww, no. I can't watch. Here, Michael." Ian shakes his head, and pushes over half his M&M's. Michael looks up in surprise. "It's like kicking a puppy."
"You mean it?" Michael asks, even as he picks them up as quickly as he can and gets them out of Lenny's reach.
"Just don't expect me to bail you out of Vegas any time soon," Ian says, and smiles right at him before looking down to his own stash again. Michael's stomach drops and a shiver goes all through him and terminates somewhere near the center of the earth.
"Yeah, yeah. Thanks, man," he says, and tosses a few in his mouth. The chocolate is sweet and melts all over his tongue; there's the satisfying crunch of the candy shell between his teeth and the goosh of the mostly melted chocolate inside. But he watches Ian methodically sort his candy into color-grouped piles, pick each one up carefully between thumb and forefinger before eating it, and he thinks about how he still really wants to lick Ian's fingers.
Then, he excuses himself from the table before he can accidentally fuck up his worldviews on M&M's, Ian Crocker, and sexuality any further than he already has.
***
There are three rules that are not up for any negotiation: Don't fuck with the stereo when it's not your turn. What you do in your bunk is your own business but if you have to jerk off, keep it down. And no matter how the tour goes, they're still all going to be friends at the end of it.
They're running out of room in their bunks because people keep giving them so much free stuff-- promotional crap, souvenirs, clothing, and that's just the sponsors. The fans give them stuff too, souvenirs and stuffed animals and clothes, but these are usually flung from the stands instead of neatly handed over in a box. Sometimes the clothes-- well, the underwear-- have obviously been worn, which is kind of weird, and he's pretty sure that at least one of the videotapes is some sort of homemade porn, which is both really unnerving and really intriguing. But he hasn't managed to find privacy or to work his nerve up enough to check.
Crowded as it is, it's kind of cool to look at all this free stuff just heaped around, sort of like lying on top of a treasure pile. Getting to his bunk is like an obstacle course, as he steps carefully over a two-foot-high stuffed bear wearing a speedo and swimcap (why the fuck would a bear wear a speedo, he thinks every time he sees it, but someone went to the trouble to cut out little ear holes in the cap and he's got to appreciate effort, even it's weird effort), skirts his gear bag, and collapses into his bunk.
It doesn't make sense.
Bears in speedos and crushing on blond teammates who have stupid taste in music and really nice arms. If he had any sense at all, he would have fallen in love with another blond like Aaron Peirsol or Ian Thorpe or anyone who isn't as emphatically not-going-to-happen as Ian Crocker is. Ian has a girlfriend. They have cats together. Also, he always prays before dinner, which Michael finds admirable but aggravating, as it means whenever they all eat together he has to stare at his own food until Ian's done and then start eating, as it just seems rude otherwise. And they're always eating.
Ian has a guitar, and Michael can hear him playing it, faintly but distinctly. It's hard not to hear everything that happens on the bus, hence the first and second rules not up for negotiation.
It doesn't make sense and it's probably the worst idea ever to fall in love with Ian, because they're going to be living in each other's faces for the next month and the media can't decide if they should be friends or rivals and they're total opposites. And besides, Ian's taste in music. It is inescapable.
The song coming from the main recreation area of the bus doesn't sound that bad, actually. Michael's never going to warm up to the Russian stuff that Lenny plays, and he fusses about Bob Dylan on principle, but they've managed to avoid conflict so far. They have an unofficial game going where they inflict music on each other and keep a point system based on if they can get an admission that a song from the other's musical tastes is enjoyable. Five points can be traded in for an extra hour of stereo time, and there's an honor system on lying about not liking a song.
Ian isn't singing, just playing. Michael listens harder and he can actually recognize the song now. After Barcelona, he went through a few months that Bob refers to only half-jokingly as his stalker period, when he obsessively and rather happily read just about everything related to Ian. It eventually cooled, except for the poster, which he really never should have mentioned to anyone at all considering how many people ask him about it. In retrospect, he wonders why he waited until now to figure out falling in love with Ian Crocker. It probably had to do with having another Ian to worry about. Bob knows better than to even bring up that period.
At any rate, somewhere along the long trail of media comparisons and idle google searches, Michael had downloaded Ian's recorded song, listened to it, deleted it a month later when he didn't recognize the file name, and then had to download it all over again. He'd wondered why he'd bothered; it wasn't the sort of thing he usually liked at all. He couldn't decide what it was supposed to mean.
And really, now that he's almost sure he's in love with Ian, even if it doesn't make sense, and now that Ian's out there in the recreation area and available for asking, he should go find out. Michael gets up off his bed and picks his way across the bunk area all over again.
Ian's sitting on the floor. He looks up when he comes into the room and nods his head, hands busy on the guitar strings. Michael jerks his head back in reply and flops down on the couch. "Hey," he says. "That's your song, right? 'Come On'?" He pronounces it carefully, separately. In the song, Ian makes it sound more like one word.
Ian looks sort of surprised. "Yeah. How'd you know?"
Michael shrugs. "I heard it somewhere," he says evasively. "How come it's a sad song?"
"You think it's sad?" Ian asks, smiling a little. "How come?"
"Because it is," Michael says, a little annoyed. "Isn't it?" he asks, and feels stupid. It's Ian's song, not his. Maybe it isn't sad at all.
"Some songs are like that," Ian says, and strums another chord, then stops.
"You don’t have to stop," Michael says, and is glad his face is mostly pressed against the couch and out of sight. "It's-- never mind. I like it. It's cool."
"Do I get a point for it?"
"It shouldn't count. You were playing it, it wasn't on a CD." Michael relents; after all, Ian did spot him the M&M's. "Okay, fine. Point."
"That makes eight. I think I'm gonna save mine up and make you guys listen to all three of Dylan's Greatest Hits albums." Ian leans back against the couch. "Okay, what do you want to hear?"
"Do something happier," Michael mumbles, mostly into the couch, and wonders how many asses have been where his face is now. It's not something he really wants to consider in depth. "No Dylan."
"You're a philistine, Michael." Ian starts playing the guitar again, a little faster, a little more energy. It's catchy, almost familiar. He just plays at first, but after a minute or two he puts words to it. "Love is a burnin' thing," Ian sings softly, "and it makes a fiery ring."
"What's that?" Michael asks, turning to face Ian. He kind of does like it.
Ian gives him a mildly incredulous look as he plays. "This is the Man in Black, Michael. Johnny Cash. Show some respect."
"I know who Johnny Cash is, dude," Michael says. "Did you know he also did a voice cameo on the Simpsons? He was the space coyote."
Ian chooses to ignore Michael's trivia. "This is one of his most famous songs. Haven't you ever heard 'Ring of Fire'?"
"Maybe," Michael says. He raises up on one elbow and squints at Ian. "No Dylan?"
"Bob Dylan did a cover of 'Ring of Fire' on his 'Feeling Minnesota' album," Ian says solemnly, and then smiles. "Also, he and Cash covered it together in the Nashville Sessions. They have a lot of history together. It's cool, you should check it out."
"I knew it. You wouldn't be able to leave him out." Which isn't entirely fair or accurate, Michael knows. Half the time, it's because Michael brings it up in the first place. He collapses onto the couch.
"You like it?" Ian asks without missing a beat.
"Maybe."
"Hang on." Ian puts his guitar down and rummages near the stereo. "I got the CD. You need to hear it with the horns."
He does like it. It makes him want to tap his foot along with the beat. Ian sings along, just a little. "I fell into a burning ring of fire, went down, down, down, but the flames went higher. And it burns, burns, burns, that ring of fire, that ring of fire."
When the song's over, Ian looks at him expectantly. Michael frowns. "Wasn't that about drugs too?"
Ian gives him a look that's half pleased, half impressed, and it makes Michael ridiculously sort of happy to have provoked it. "Yeah. And love. His wife wrote it about him. She wasn't his wife at the time, though. She said it was about falling in love with someone she wasn't supposed to."
"Oh." Michael stares down at his hands, trying to figure out how to articulate what's in his mind. "It's happy and it's sad, too. Kinda like your song."
"You should only listen to Johnny Cash in the desert," Ian remarks absently.
"What's that mean?" Michael asks.
"Nothing," Ian says. "Just. Yeah. You'd understand, if you did it."
"Yeah, okay. Whatever." Michael stretches. "You got nine points now. I'm gonna nap, dude."
"Right here?" Ian picks up the guitar. "I can go play in my bunk if you're gonna sleep here."
"Nah, s'okay." He rolls over, curling so his back is to Ian. "You can play. Just, you know, whatever you want."
Michael lies there and listens to Ian playing. It's nice to drift off like this. His thoughts are drifting too, disconnected. He thinks about Johnny Cash's song, and wonders why the hell you would need to be in the desert to listen to it. He wonders if he'll ever be able to think of it without the desert now. It was a love song.
He thinks about Ian's song. He thinks maybe it might be a love song too.
***
Having decided he was almost certain (but not entirely) about being in love with Ian, Michael goes about plotting to make Ian fall in love with him in a way what he hopes is professional, but which even he admits to himself could use some direction. So he calls in the big guns.
"Hey. Um. Lenny?" They're the first ones awake, he and Lenny. Michael's up because he has to do an interview in twenty minutes, and Lenny because he always is. It's like a law of nature or something. Lenny is doing something on his laptop while eating breakfast, and Michael is fidgeting and building a tower with a bunch of little travel-sized cereal packages they swiped from the last hotel, the ones that no one ate but didn't want to leave behind because they were free.
Lenny looks up. "Yes?"
"I have a. Um. Well. How did you know?" he asks Lenny. "You and your fiancée, I mean. When. How did you know you were--"
Lenny either has enough scary intuition to know exactly what Michael's driving at, or rooming together for more than a month has given him enough exposure to properly translate. And fortunately, he's a nice enough person not to make Michael stutter too long over it or to beat around the bush. "I just knew. We both did. When you love someone, you enjoy being with them, you bring out the best in each other. I knew I wanted to because even when things are bad, when you fight, you both want to make it better. I think you always know."
Michael puts the Special K box on top of the Raisin Bran. "When you first met Irina, though. Was it, you know, all clear? Did everything just. Um. Make sense?"
The Frosted Mini-Wheats fall off the Crispix and almost hit Lenny's keyboard. Lenny flicks it aside and looks thoughtful. "No," he says. "No, I do not think so. It took time. All relationships do."
The tower isn't too stable, so Michael makes it a pyramid. He gets it six layers high before it gets wobbly and endangers Lenny's breakfast again, so he gives in and starts trying to find something in the cabinets for his own pre-breakfast breakfast. He distinctly remembers hiding a box of strawberry frosted poptarts inside the instant oatmeal packet box, but when he checks they're more than half gone, with no telling by whom. He liberates what's left of them for his own use, and eats them cold because he's too hungry to wait.
At the table, Lenny continues to type. The silence between them is getting meaningful and that is no good at all.
"Whatcha doing?" he finally says, and keeps his eyes on the tabletop.
"Following stocks," Lenny says amiably, "I wanted to check on an investment. It is something I have been watching for a long time. I was not sure how it was going to turn out or work at first, but I took a risk and it looks like it will be paying off."
Was that a metaphor? He hopes not. "I don't know how any of that works," Michael says. "It's all, just. Stuff. Numbers. I feel stupid when I try to figure it out. I had this friend, he used to say that the stock market doesn't really exist, it's just Wall Street dicking everyone around. Like a huge conspiracy, you know?"
Lenny smiles, but doesn't look up. "I hope not. We are all in trouble, if that's so."
"Yeah." He squirms a little. "Do you think that it's possible for something to just happen and to sit back and let it happen? Like, relationships, even? Letting life happen? Being yourself?"
Lenny sits quietly for a moment, fingers ticking over the keys, and Michael is just beginning to consider putting himself out of his misery with his own cereal spoon. "No," Lenny says finally. "I think all things, even relationships, require effort to see where they are going. Especially life. Especially relationships. And being oneself. One must do something about it all."
"Oh," Michael mutters, and puts his head down on his arms. He is, as he suspected, a freak. "Okay. Thanks."
There's a click as Lenny closes his laptop and leans across the table. He pats Michael on the hand, then squeezes Michael's wrist. "Sometimes, I think it is all right to feel overwhelmed," he says. "You will be fine."
"Everything right now is really great," he says miserably. "I'm having a great time. Lenny, I don't do anything on my own. I don't know what to do."
Everyone has always told him what to do his entire life. There probably is some sort of weird irony in asking Lenny, who had the same kind of thing happen to him, to tell him what to do.
"It's very early in the morning," Lenny reassures him. He doesn't let go of Michael's wrist. It's kind of comforting, actually. "Eat something. You will feel better soon. Morning is a bad time for these thoughts."
"I don't know what to do," Michael mutters again, and takes another bite of poptart. He can feel his blood sugar spiking and he feels slightly better in spite of himself. "Seriously, I don't."
"Have you tried just being Michael Phelps?" Lenny asks him.
The idea is surprisingly sensible, if complicated.
***
"Dude, you're gonna hurt yourself. That shit's not gonna come off if you do it that way."
Ian's just come back from some sort of sitting interview. All the publicity's great, but it means that they can barely make a move without having five cameras immediately zero in on them, and Michael's mildly terrified that he's going to forget and someone's gonna snap a shot of him doing something like adjusting his balls. The fact that their schedule is so damn tight doesn't help at all; he feels like he has to schedule two weeks in advance just to take a piss, let alone plot about seducing Ian. Hell, the bathroom's one of the few places he can retreat to where he can think and can be sure no one's taking a picture.
The point is, Michael walks into Ian's hotel room to hear uncharacteristic profanity and some muffled clattering. Ian's leaning over the sink while scrubbing futilely at his face with a damp washcloth, fighting a battle against the makeup he wears from being on camera. The makeup appears to be winning.
Ian squints owlishly at him when he hears Michael's voice. His skin is fairer than both Michael's and Lenny's, but the redness on his cheeks this time looks like it came from the washcloth instead of the sun. "You got any other suggestions?" he asks.
"Yeah, move over." Michael scrabbles around the tiny bottles of complimentary hotel stuff that are clustered around the sink, finally coming up with a bottle of lotion. "Here, you gotta use this."
Ian stares dubiously at it. "Like, with the washcloth? Or just rub it in?"
"No, with-- here, just let me do it." Michael grabs a handful of toilet paper-- no, tissues would be better, and he grabs those instead. He wads them up, and shakes out a small blob of lotion onto the tissue. Ian sits down on the toilet seat. "Close your eyes, okay? You don’t wanna get it in there. Stings like hell."
"I'm never gonna get used to eyeliner," Ian says, with his eyes closed and his face tilted up trustingly. He holds still as Michael dabs and swipes across the top of his lash line. "It's weird. And there's all this other crap on my face."
Michael nods, understanding. "Yeah, it sucks. You get used to it after a while, though." He traces under Ian's lashes more carefully; the bottom part of the eye is the worst part. "It's supposed to make you look better on camera," he offers, once he can stop concentrating on not accidentally blinding Ian.
"It makes me look orange," Ian mumbles. "Get the rest off, okay?"
"Yeah, just hang on."
The tissue wad is rapidly turning a tannish-orange color and disintegrating into little damp shreds. He discards it for another handful of tissues, although he tries to fold these up a little more carefully. It's oddly satisfying to see the swatches of fake color come off Ian's skin and onto the tissue.
"How'd you know how to do this?" Ian asks, his eyes still closed even though Michael's nowhere near them.
"My sister showed me," Michael replies, absorbed in getting the last of it under Ian's jawline. "With her regular makeup, you know? And she did interviews and shit too, so she showed me how to get it off when I was doing the same thing you were. She used cotton balls, though."
"Oh," Ian says. "Yeah. Makes sense."
Michael finishes up, grabs the damp washcloth off the sink, and runs it under water before tossing it to Ian. "There. You can wipe the rest of your face off, if you want."
"Thanks," Ian says, blindly groping for the washcloth. "You want to catch a movie? Terminator's on at nine. Lenny doesn't want to, he's talking to Irina on the phone."
"The first one? Dude, yeah, let me just grab a shower."
"Cool. Just come on over when you're ready. See if you can get something to eat," Ian says, standing up and waving casually at his room. "I think I'm gonna shower too."
Five minutes later in his own bathroom, it occurs to Michael that what just happened was probably the best moment he was going to get to propose shared showering for water conservation purposes, segueing nicely into confessing his sudden attraction to Ian, and he totally missed it. And really he should get back out of there and go, except he just lathered up his hair and he hasn't even unwrapped the complimentary soap yet and he ought to shave because his chin has stubble on it and he needs to brush his teeth because without fresh breath how can he seduce Ian into doing anything let alone making out?
Shampoo lather drips into his eyes. It stings, and for a few seconds Michael is blessed with Ian-free thoughts as he focuses totally on rubbing his eyes as hard as he can and trying not to slip and fall down in the shower.
But as soon as he's soap free, it all comes back. Ian, shower, movie, seduction. He should do something about this now, Michael thinks, and strides out of the bathroom, into the main bedroom, and towards the connecting door to Ian's room. He stops short of opening it, looks down at himself and blinks in surprise. Sometimes he forgets that not everyone is used to being naked or close to it in public, and in fact, there are totally, like, rules about it. It's all that time in the pool.
So: brush his teeth, raid some drinks and snacks from either the vending machines or the gift basket they got on entry, find a way to get both he and Ian on one bed to watch the movie, and then seduce or otherwise convince Ian that they should totally make out. On the list of things he wants to accomplish sometime in his life, it probably isn't the hardest, but it's definitely up there.
But first he needs a towel. And pants.
Ten minutes later, Michael is mostly dried, mostly dressed, not at all shaved, and Crest-fresh. He also has a can of every drink from the vending machine since he had forgotten to ask Ian what he wanted, and a sample of every snack from the E row of the vending machine, except the Hostess fruit pie, because you never knew how long those things had been there. He also has at least three foolproof arguments for why he and Ian should proceed directly from movie watching into oral foreplay. He takes a deep breath and goes into Ian's room.
However, all plans fly out of his head when Ian comes over to help relieve Michael of the spoils from his vending machine raid because Ian smiles in delight and says, "Hey, they had Snickers?" And that's somehow the signal for Michael to lean forward and kiss Ian squarely on the lips. He doesn't think, he just does. He does notice that Ian's lips are warm and dry and slightly chapped. And more than a little open in what he can only assume is flabbergasted astonishment.
Then, Michael bolts back into his room, tries to lock the adjoining door, panics when he can't lock the adjoining door, drags the armchair in front of the door to block it, and spends the rest of the night in alternate misery and humiliation, ignoring the knocking on his door. Finally, it goes away.
***
Another clinic in another city. It's been a while since they started the tour, and some of the locations are beginning to blur. After a while it's just another crowded building smelling of chlorine, another array of questions that range from generic to unnervingly intimate, another color of floor tile in a locker room, another day of watching the road go by through the bus windows.
Another successful day of hiding from Ian.
Or at least, it would be if Michael's main buffer against being alone with Ian would get his ass the fuck out of Michael's main place to hide, Michael thinks irritably, as he raps on the locked bathroom door again. There aren't too many places to use on a bus, and having the bathroom occupied is really taxing Michael's resources.
"Lenny!" he hisses as loud as he dares, "I don't care what the hell you're doing, just get the fuck out here so I can take a leak and we can have the meeting about the next clinic."
Lenny just laughs. He's evil like that. "Language, Michael. You start without me."
"I can't, you have to be there, come on, please?"
Nothing doing though, as Lenny seems there for the long haul. It sounds like he's got a book in there; Michael can hear pages rustling. Michael throws an obscene gesture at the door, and then tiptoes back to hide in his bunk for another fifteen minutes. He pulls the curtain shut, which is their universally-agreed upon gesture for privacy. It's surprisingly easy, on a bus that has people constantly coming on and off it, to be left alone with the one person he doesn't want to be alone with.
He's managed to avoid being totally alone with Ian for almost three days now, keeping Lenny, bodyguards, and various PR people around as obstacles between Ian and himself. Not that Ian seems to be banging down Michael's door to talk to him either. Banging down his curtain. Whatever. After the first night, Ian's thrown a few unreadable looks towards Michael, and there was a close ten minutes yesterday when Lenny tried to get Ian to take over his controller during Madden versus Michael. But other than that, Michael is having no luck at all reading Ian's reaction or lack thereof.
It isn't exactly that Michael's afraid Ian's going to try and crucify him or anything. He just doesn't want to lose his friend so quickly after really finding him.
When he hears footsteps, he puts his headphones on his ears-- Ian's song is the one playing, because the entire universe is against Michael and really he should just delete it again-- and his pillow over his face, and feigns deep and instant sleep. The footsteps approach, pause, and then retreat. After a while, the coast seems clear enough for him to cautiously stick his head out of his bunk and make another furtive trip to the bathroom.
"Lenny?" he mutters.
No answer.
"Lenny?" he tries again, and then pushes at the doorknob and sticks his head in. There's no one inside. "Lenny?"
"Hi," Ian says from right behind him. Michael narrowly avoids shrieking girlishly, and instead thinks dark thoughts about Lenny being a stupid-ass narc who sold him out, gold medals and sage advice notwithstanding.
Ian has a McDonald's milkshake in each hand, and he hands one to Michael. Michael takes it because there's really nothing else he can do, backed up into the bathroom like this. Ian follows him in. He wonders if Lenny is eavesdropping, somewhere. "I got you this," Ian says, "and I'm sorry, you know, about the whole thing we aren't talking about or even acknowledging."
This, Michael thinks wildly, is exactly why it is a terrible idea to fall in love with Ian, let alone lust. Ian's just too damn nice. There's no way he could ever measure up, and besides, there is the worrying possibility that Aaron and Brendan will try to beat the everliving shit out of him if he and Ian break up. Of course, that would involve getting together in the first place, and that would involve at least talking to Ian about clumsy homosexual seduction and/or assault attempts, and it would be much easier to just drink the damn milkshake already so Ian will stop waiting expectantly.
He does. It's chocolate.
"Um," Michael says. "Thanks. It's-- good. Um."
"It's sort of melted," Ian says. "I couldn't find you right away. Did you really stay in the bathroom for four hours yesterday?"
"Well. I brought a book," Michael says, and stares at his feet. "And a deck of cards. Yeah."
"Huh." Ian looks around. "There is, like, no space in here," he remarks.
"Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty cramped."
There is an awkward few seconds between them, a space where Michael thinks they both realize that the whole topic is moving rapidly into the never-talk-about-it-again zone and neither of them know what they're going to talk about next and they really should talk about it before it gets to that space.
"I just wanted--" he says desperately.
While at the same time, Ian says, "Hey, well, I was--"
They stop and stare at each other again.
Michael is hyper-aware of everything, from the fact that someone needs to change the empty toilet paper roll on the dispenser to the cold beads of condensation sliding down the waxy milkshake cup and wetting his hand. He's hungry-- hiding from people is hard work-- and he takes another sip automatically. The chocolate taste spreads in his mouth; the straw makes a thick slurping noise and that's somehow okay because Ian smiles a little, and Michael smiles a little back from around the straw.
Ian visibly comes to a mental decision, and very gingerly leans over to Michael and gives him a hug. It still seems like a straight guy hug and there is no contact of the junk, but the carefulness of Ian's motions is due more to the cramped space than reluctance on Ian's part, and it's a proper hug that doesn't let go right after two seconds. It's nothing special, but Michael knows about hugs, having given and received them in various forms, clothed and unclothed, wet and dry, reluctant and willing, and there's nothing being held back or stingy about this one.
And being jammed up in a tiny bus bathroom with Ian Crocker and a McDonald's milkshake and visible homoerotic tension clogging the air probably is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to him, but Michael's only nineteen and that means the law of averages is on his side that someday, something weirder is going to happen.
So that means he can get through this.
"We're still okay," Ian says to him.
And Michael nods. "Yeah, we're okay."
Lenny joins them later, maybe expecting to peel them off each other-- fighting or embracing, Michael isn't sure. Lenny probably did not join this promotional tour to play gay yenta to sexually confused Olympic rivals. Probably. By the time Lenny joins them, Ian and Michael are playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and getting along.
"I don't understand why you like this game so much," Lenny says sadly, standing behind them with his hands in his pockets. "You seem like such nice boys."
Onscreen, Michael's thug gangster has rammed into three cop cars and left five pedestrians as smears on the sidewalk. When he tries to flee, he is immediately gunned down by a SWAT team.
"Because. It's fun. Triangle, triangle, ah, shit!" Michael says without taking his eyes off the screen. "And the music. The music is cool. Triangle!"
Lenny looks at Ian. Ian shrugs. "I just like all the different kinds of vehicles," he says.
"I will never drive with either of you in real life," Lenny declares. "Young people, these days."
"Young?" Ian says, and laughs disbelievingly. "Sit down, Lenny, before you break a hip."
"Young people," Lenny repeats. "So foolish. So undeveloped. Needing the wise advice of their elders who have been to more Olympic games and given more interviews."
"Hey," Michael says, stung, "I was totally on the Today show! And Time magazine!"
"I was on Hollywood Squares," Lenny says smugly.
Michael exchanges a look with Ian. And it's somehow perfect the way they have the exact same thought as they rise like choreography, one of those things you just can't plan, ever. Michael gets his arms and Ian gets his legs and they drag Lenny back to the bathroom with Lenny resisting and laughing and shouting accomplishments all the way. "I won thirty two thousand dollars on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire! I judged for the Miss America Pageant!"
Maneuvering is difficult, but they're nothing if determined and they work together enough to throw him in the tiny shower with his clothes on.
"Do you think," Michael asks Ian as they lean against the door, holding it shut. "Like. I mean, do you think that. Maybe. If you want."
"Yes," Ian says.
And Michael isn't quite sure what he asked or what Ian answered, but that's all right. Things are all right right now. He doesn’t know if they're going to be all right later, but for now he's living in the moment. He can just feel it, and it's one of the best things in the world, pure uncomplicated relief.
"I was named in People Magazine's Fifty Most Beautiful!" Lenny yells through the bathroom door, but he's laughing almost too hard for them to make it out. Michael looks at Ian and Ian looks at Michael, and they laugh too. Just like friends do.
And it's… nice.
***
Continue to part two.