FIC : Tie My Hands (2) : Swim Slash : NC17 (Phelps/Lochte)
Title: Tie My Hands (2/?)
Pair: Phelps/Lochte
Rating: NC17
Summary: Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte? They were the best worst-kept secret of the swimming world. And Michael didn't like it.
A/N: My dragon, my leidy--as I like to say she's the Papa of this here fic, from conception to labor pains. For the good, thank her. For the bad, mea culpa.
THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
Tie My Hands, Part 1: When Hilary Wants To Throw the Calender Away.
Tie My Hands, Part 2: When Michael Starts Running.
Michael's cheek bumped the wall.
He took his hands from the high plane of Ryan's hips and spread fingers forward, across cool green paint of the bedroom wall; sweat made them slip and he pushed his body back, toes digging into the carpet to stop the inexorable forward momentum of each rough thrust.
"Come on," Ryan mumbled against Michael's shoulder; he just couldn't shut up during sex. "Fuck, yeah-come on, Mike, come on..." The rise and fall of the words took on the broken shape of Ryan's breathing and made the hair on the back of Michael's neck stand up.
Each breath that he pulled in smelled like Ryan against the back of his throat; it was cologne and sweat and hair gel, a sharp sort of buzz that he wouldn't be able to clear out of his nose for days. It used to be a smell that Michael had pushed his face into his pillows to find.
Ryan's fingers wrapped around his dick and squeezed, redirecting thought. A noise cracked its way up Michael's throat, something he'd rather not admit, but Ryan must have heard it because his hand twisted accordingly to draw out another, thumb pushing up almost too hard against the sensitive fork of flesh under the head of his dick. Michael's hips jumped and the movement brought them together with enough force for the resulting stretch to burn.
It was too easy, the way Ryan could bring him off. Like he knew all the places to touch to make Michael forget his own name, forget the pool, forget that what they were doing couldn't be everything.
Michael's fingernails bit white crescents into green paint when he came, arching back against the solid bulk of Ryan. His knee smacked the wall but the sensation was far away, buried under a flush of heat and trembling muscles. Ryan was still thrusting, nearly lifting Michael to his toes. His fingers smeared cooling jizz across Michael's stomach to grab a hip and pulled him back, held him down.
By the time Ryan finished-releasing him from a careless hand that would leave bruises where Coach Gregg would no doubt see them in the pool-Michael was slumping, using the wall to support himself. Ryan licked sweat out of the crook of Michael's neck and bit his earlobe with a rumbling laugh. "Nice."
Michael felt him pull out and shouldered Ryan's face away with an automatic reaction; he knew exactly where Ryan liked to settle his chin after he'd been on top for sex. Every time. Like it was tattooed onto his skin, X marks the spot.
Behind him was the snap of latex and the springs of the bed giving way under the weight of a body as he turned to use the bathroom. The sleepy mutter, "Don't know why we even bother using condoms," followed him. "Not like we're fucking anybody else." Michael pretended not to hear it.
Ten months had passed since Beijing, ten months gone since Michael Phelps had become a household name.
He'd been determined to change the sport. He wanted to make it popular, wanted to get kids into swimming and give them the outlet it had been for him, before that outlet became everyday morning training and socially crippling. He knew that aside from all of that it was a sport of focus and intensity and having been a kid who couldn't focus on anything, he got it. Wanted to pass on what it had done for him.
Turned out that 'passing it on' was a series of donations and clinics; so many clinics that he could honestly say that he never wanted to see another kid again. Finding out fast that most of it was bureaucratic bullshit or groups of girls who wanted to giggle and try and touch him under the water instead of learn to swim took the edge off his philanthropic fever.
The books and red tape were passed to Bob along with Meadowbrook within the first three months. He stayed involved, just not neck-deep.
The rest of his self-imposed vacation had passed in a haze of interviews and late nights, airplane seats and tiny bottles of alcohol. It hadn't been, maybe, what it should have been. But he'd dedicated twelve years-sacrificed having a life-to be able to do just what he'd done in Beijing. So he'd let himself celebrate.
There were infinite parties to go to, infinite girls more than willing to slip into a bathroom with an Olympic champion. The hell of it was, he hadn't wanted any of that then. Sure, he'd copped a feel or two, but he didn't want a sloppy blow job over a dirty toilet seat. Or a girl who might or might not have spread her legs for the last asshole with a few medals to walk through the door.
And there was Ryan.
Ryan with his gravity-defying hair and the way he'd try to sneak on a grill before giving a blow job.
Ryan with his c u soon, nigga! an hour before a flight, like he couldn't stand the time between.
Ryan with his eyes the color of still, shallow water on a sunny day. It bothered Michael that he'd thought to make the analogy but once it was there it wouldn't go away. From then on he'd look at Ryan and think of hot days after a rain and the pool in the middle of summer before dawn, when the water was so clear it felt like you could reach in and touch the bottom.
Michael turned on the faucet and stuck his hands into the flow. Drops splattered onto his chest and dribbled tracks through the white smears across his stomach. They were brushed away with an impatient flick of his wrist, washed down the drain.
Boxers were picked up off the floor on the way back into the bedroom; Ryan was face-down on the right side of the bed, bare ass only half covered by navy-blue sheets. Michael watched the rise and fall of his tanned back as he climbed into his underwear. He knew that the left side was for him but he couldn't make himself lay down.
He told himself that he wasn't tired but the truth was that climbing into the big bed next to Ryan was just like sex anymore, too easy. Michael knew that the center of the pillow on the left side was a little flat and that Ryan had a habit of throwing elbows in his sleep.
The clock on the wall said that it was after midnight. Michael rubbed a hand over his face and wondered what was going on in Baltimore. In Ryan's house it was only the vague sounds of Kyle snoring down the hall that broke the silence.
Michael thought of his own condo, probably collecting dust bunnies the size of kickboards. He hadn't even really unpacked completely or been there enough to think of it as his place; his mom's townhouse, with its non-HD TVs and faux-wood paneling still held the heavyweight title of Home.
Michael grabbed a tshirt from off a speaker near the door. The collar was frayed at the back and soft against his neck. Black letters told the dark house that he would rather be surfing.
Leaving the TV off, he laid down on the sofa and pressed his face against the cool, smooth leather. It smelled like Ryan.
Michael shifted onto his back and slung an arm over his eyes. Sleep was elusive.
The morning announced itself with a smack to the ass that shocked Michael awake from a solid dream about the beach; he hit the floor with his elbows before he even realized that he wouldn't land on sand.
"Rise and shine!" Ryan called over his shoulder as he retreated toward the kitchen, barefoot, hair an insane halo around his head. Michael dropped to his back and stared at the ceiling, waiting for both the lingering sound of the ocean and his heart to quiet. His elbows throbbed in time to both.
"Get up!" Even filtered around corners the yell was clear enough. There was no reason for Ryan to be so goddamn cheerful in the morning. Michael thought that he hated it. He stuck his fingers into the corners of his eyes and dug out sleep while pushing Carter away from his face; the doberman tended to assume anything on the floor was fair game.
"Thanks, mom." His back protested the night on the couch as he climbed to his feet. The clink of spoon against bowl pulled him toward the kitchen; Ryan was at the table with Count Chocula, reading the back of the box with an intent he usually reserved for racing and hurting himself. If he even noticed that Michael had spent the night on the couch instead of in the bed, there was nothing that said so.
It annoyed Michael. Like an itch between his shoulderblades that he couldn't reach. His fingers slid around cardboard and he pulled the box from table to counter so that he could pour his own bowl. He left it there out of Ryan's reach but it didn't matter: Ryan's focus shifted like water finding the lowest ground.
"I'm taking Carter to the vet today. Boy hasn't been right since he ate that speedo."
"My speedo," Michael felt the need to point out, stressing the word with a milky spoon.
Ryan gave a sloppy shrug of shoulders and filled his mouth with chocolate. "Like you don't have enough of them." Milk dribbled out of the corner of his lips and was backhanded away.
Michael hooked an ankle over the rung of his chair. "Not here." The weeks that he spent in Florida were accompanied by, normally, a single suitcase. Maybe a duffel. Over the last few months the need to bring anything more had diminished as flip-flops got left under Ryan's bed and tshirts never made it out of the laundry. Michael's condo wasn't different; he'd find Ryan's goggles hanging on his closet knob or Herman would pull underwear that were not his (Michael would die before buying hot pink boxers, whatever the label) from under the sofa.
Blue eyes moved from the horizon to Michael. A smile that looked close to being a laugh turned up one corner of Ryan's mouth. "What?" he asked. "Your cock too big to fit in my speedos?"
On anyone else it would have worn as bitchy, but Ryan's delivery was just too slow. It made Michael sound like the one being the bitch. And ten months ago he would have flung a spoonful of cereal across the table for the comment, maybe started a fight that would have ended with one of them in the pool. Or face-down on the bed, moans quieted with a hot palm.
The cereal stayed in his bowl. "I'm going back to Baltimore today." There wasn't thought behind it. Or there was too much thought behind it.
The only thing that shifted in Ryan, the only thing that let Michael know he even cared, was the way his eyebrows bumped up toward his bangs. Michael dropped his eyes to his cereal, drowning the chocolate vampires in his milk one by one. "You know Nationals are less than a week away, right? Bob wants me back." And he probably did. But Michael hadn't talked to Bob in three days and there had been no plans to even come back to Maryland before the early-July meet.
Ryan sat back against his chair and scratched behind Carter's ears when the dog rested sloppy jowls on his thigh. "Dude, it's taper." For Ryan, tapering was a like a mission from God. It was a holiday; he actually drew little happy Ryan-faces on his calendar on Taper Days.
"It's Bob," Michael pointed out. "Besides, it's stuff for Meadowbrook, too. I'm still the owner."
Ryan stood up and put his bowl in the sink. "He better not put you in the pool, dude. That's all I'm saying." He smiled, turning just enough so that Michael could see it. It made Michael feel guilty for lying and he wanted to yell at Ryan suddenly, to ask him why the fuck he didn't get it.
It wasn't Nationals. It wasn't Meadowbrook, or Bob. It was Florida, it was the humidity and it was sharing a bed. Michael stood and walked over to dump most of his brown milk down the drain.
"This cereal's disgusting." That was what he said. So Ryan was dense. But maybe he was a fucking coward.
Ryan shrugged. "It's Kyle's."
"Wow. I wish you hadn't told me that." Michael had been around enough to watch Kyle drink spoiled milk without flinching.
Fingers hooked into the waistband of his boxers, warm against his stomach. Ryan's smile was deviant. "Bee-jay for the road?"
"Kyle's upstairs."
Teeth found his collarbone through cotton. "So don't scream out my name."
And Michael couldn't say no. Because if he did then something would be wrong, something would shift into the red. He would have to admit that they had gone farther than he had ever thought they would in order to admit that he was not okay with it.
He was not okay with half his wardrobe vacationing in Florida.
He was not okay with having a toothbrush in the yellow mug on Ryan's sink.
He was not okay with not using condoms.
Michael blamed his shortness of breath on Ryan's fingers. He leaned back against the kitchen counter and wrapped his hands around the edge until they hurt. His head tilted back to rest on a cabinet and eyes closed when his boxers hit the floor along with Ryan's knees
"You look like shit. I thought you were supposed to be relaxing in Florida."
Bob's office at the North Baltimore Aquatics Club was a testament to how Michael learned to swim. Everything had its place; phone in the right corner of the desk, computer in the left, in/out tray between. There was a calendar on the top covered in blue and red and green ink and behind his head a whole league of white boards declared training schedules in army-regiment lines.
Michael slouched into a chair across the desk from his coach. "I was." The look he received for the less-than-explanatory answer pricked his temper. "I just wanted to be in my pool."
"So that's why you're home. Your pool." It sounded like a question within a question and Michael just set his jaw and nodded.
"And the taper-"
"Fuck the taper." Michael stood up again. After a few hours spent in cabs and terminals and airplanes it was hard to sit. He had come straight there from BWI; his duffel was thrown haphazardly into Bob's corner near a potted tree. "I just want to stretch; I'm not going to blow myself out."
Leaning back against his chair, Bob folded his arms across his red polo. "You look like you're ready to hit something. I don't want you in the pool."
"Like I've never swam with a temper," Michael snapped. But Bob was right, with the observation and the advice, and it just pissed him off more. Because when Michael was mad, he pushed himself harder. They both knew it; it was why Bob taped trash-talk in his locker. Michael actually stopped pacing and took a deep breath.
A really deep breath.
Bob sighed. "Go ask John. I'm sure that senior water aerobics can make do with two lanes instead of three."
"You're hysterical."
Bob uncrossed his arms and leaned forward; his shifting attention was a physical thing. "Not joking. This is an aquatics center, Mike. And you're not on the schedule for today. Don't punch any old women." Paper shuffled and Michael heard a dismissal.
He took the steps down from the offices two at a time and thought about just going home. His duffel scraped against the wall. It was after lunch and all he'd eaten all day was half a bowl of cereal and the protein drink he'd grabbed at the airport.
If he went home he knew exactly what would happen: he'd sit on his mom's couch (because Herman was there) and flip through the TV until his eyes glazed over. And about once an hour he was bound to get a stupid text message making fun of Bob for breaking taper rules.
His phone was left in a locker at the bottom of his duffel. He put it on silent so that it didn't annoy anyone else, either.
The renovations had changed a lot about Meadowbrook but the deck still felt familiar under Michael's bare feet and the air still had that thick, chlorinated smell that was cultivated specifically by indoor pools everywhere.
"Mike."
John was in the deck office; the door open and the long window able to keep an eye on things in the pool, though watching paint dry had to be more interesting than the current toddler/senior swim schedule. The doorframe was cool when Michael leaned against it. "Hey, man. How've ya been?"
The other coach smiled and shrugged. "Hanging in there. Holding heads under water."
Michael laughed, breathed in and out the chlorine, and began to finally relax. "That bad, huh?" John coached the minis and advanced minis. Most of them were just old enough to give flack.
"Yeah, well I wonder who taught them to play tag instead of lapping."
Michael shrugged. "Whoever it is you should really see about giving him or her a talking to. Swimming's a serious sport."
John had a good laugh. It was low enough that it seemed to roll. He stood up and came over to shake Michael's hand. "Guess you want to swim."
"Nah. I wear my jammers out. I just swung by after going grocery shopping."
"Always a smartass," John sighed, patting Michael's shoulder as he walked by and out onto the deck. Michael followed, standing back and trying not to meet the eyes of the old ladies who looked his way when John caught their instructor's ear. He toed the edge of the risers and hooked the waist of his jammers up a little higher on his hips to try and cover the light bruises left by Ryan's fingers.
Ryan would be making lewd comments about the seniors. He could almost hear him, something about how head was best without any teeth.
Michael scraped fingernails over his scalp and blew out a breath. He was relieved when John waved him over to help with dragging out a new lane line; Michael nodded at the ladies, pulled his goggles on and up onto his forehead, and then dropped into the shallow end of the pool. He hooked a finger into the metal snap and side-stroked toward the other end.
The water was a little too warm, but he didn't care. He didn't need to go fast, or even precisely practice. Screw dolphin kicks and lung capacity-Michael just needed the release. He wanted the itch worked out of his muscles and Ryan worked out of his head.
The hook sank through the catch on the other end of the pool and Michael stood on the shelf to give John a wave before pulling his goggles down. Plastic pushed over and nearly behind the top of his cheekbone, a little harder than necessary for the suction to take hold.
The older ladies were blocked out. The moms with splashing toddlers were blocked out.
Before him there was a long stretch of water; that was all that mattered.
The cell phone in his duffel, probably blinking with a building inbox (stay away frm the pool, bobs a slv drvr), was blocked out.
Michael took a long breath, deep enough to make his lungs burn, and then let it out. He closed his eyes.
(u should b here suckin my dick) Blocked out.
He pushed off the wall, limbs stretching out into a slow free stroke. Breath was taken as needed. Sometimes swimming was a little like flying; all that blue to either side seemed to stretch into forever. The loneliest sport in the world-all that with him at the middle, racing against himself.
(the g-spot dosnt <3 u no more)
Michael counted strokes without thinking about it; he knew, in every dimension, how he fit into this pool. It was just a shame that the rest of his life wasn't that easy. He didn't think he was a complicated guy, hadn't ever tried to be.
The flip-kick nearly brushed his shoulders against the bottom of the shallow end as he turned.
Not using condoms. Just because they weren't fucking anyone else right then didn't mean that they wouldn't in the future. At least, it didn't mean Michael wouldn't. Because Ryan was just... Ryan. And that was all.
He met the wall again, toes spreading and legs burning with the force of the push.
Back when Michael was swimming at Michigan, Ryan was only the guy on the phone. He was the guy who lived a thousand plus miles away and would show up to meets and then laugh when he didn't get the time or the medal he had wanted. He'd laugh.
And then there was Michael, chucking his goggles and cap when he didn't perform the way he'd expected. It's a wonder that Ryan had ever started talking to him at all.
Twenty-three strokes, turn.
At Michigan it had been Vendt. Ryan was black text on a screen, a voice without a face, an accident report on Swimroom.com. Erik was the one with him, hanging over his shoulder when Michael read about Ryan falling out of the tree; he was the one laughing and going smooth move.
Michael remembered thinking how silent his phone had been for about two days after that. He remembered keeping occupied by pushing Erik's face into his pillow and listening to the way the bedframe smacked the wall over and over.
The sound of his text-mail had been like the bell after a boxing match. (U will never bliev wtf happened.)
One breath every five strokes, his body did it without thought.
Erik and Ryan were different like fire and water were different. Erik would go to parties and grope the sorority girls with a smile and then disappear without a word. He'd say he was coming over and then forget, but he'd never miss practice.
Ryan skateboarded before meets. He'd ditch practice if it was a nice day outside. But when he said he'd call at nine he called at nine without fail and when he walked into a party with Michael he'd leave with Michael. It was the kind of consistency Michael had grown up into. Ryan might have been an airhead but he thought about his friends first.
Lunches grabbed with Erik turned into phone calls with Ryan, Michael's back against the cold brick of the Wolverines athletic center, his breath frosting over the top of his zipped-up collar and his toes freezing in his flip-flops. When his time was up he'd go inside and his whole body felt like it was burning.
One-two-three-four-five-breathe.
Whatever they were doing together withstanding, Michael and Erik had rules. Shaving did not mean sex. Do Not Disturb on shared hotel doors at meets allowed an hour max, and there was no bringing girls back while they were there.
Michael had been asleep when Erik broke the third rule. He hadn't cared that he'd been woken up by drunken stumbling and moaning. And it wasn’t that Erik was fucking some random girl, either (he didn't care, honestly)-just that he was doing it in a bed hardly ten feet away.
He had pulled the starchy blanket up over his head and tried to go back to sleep, but he was angry and the girl was loud. So Michael had stuck an arm out from under the warm bubble of his comforter and slid his cell phone off his nightstand.
"Yo."
"You're not asleep?" Michael's voice was just a murmur.
"Can you sleep-talk?" Ryan mused on the other end. "I mean. You can drive heavy machinery in your sleep, right? Can you talk while you do it?" Michael snorted quietly. The light on his cell phone went off and left him in the darkness of his makeshift cave. "So I was pretty sure you were asleep at nine, dude. It's late for little boys with crazy-ass coaches like Bob."
Michael shifted onto his back and breathed out. "Erik's fucking some chick across the room."
There was a beat of silence. "Mikey, are you jealous?"
"No, asshole. I'm tired."
Another silence, but they weren't uncommon with Ryan. Michael didn't really think he was thinking during them; he just took things at a slower pace than most humans. "I bet a good blow job would put you to sleep."
Michael hadn't told Ryan about the extra-circular activities that he and Erik participated in. It was kept out of the pool and off the record and both of them liked it that way. It was a stress-valve; if they went at girls the way they went at each other best case scenerio would have been a smack, worst would have been pressing charges.
He opened his mouth to tell Ryan thanks but no thanks I really just need my asshole roommate to take it somewhere else when Ryan went on. Looking back at it, Michael felt a little duped. Everything was so easy for Ryan. If it wasn't, he didn't bother.
"You know," Ryan had said. "Nice and sloppy and fuckin slow. When they sorta crawl all over you with their mouths first? Neck. Hips. Shoulders-you know what gets me? Underarms, man. Light teeth and tongue right up under there. Tug on some hair, it's okay."
Michael's skin had crawled with goosebumps even in the heat under his comforter. He dropped a hand and grabbed himself through the loose basketball shorts he was wearing to sleep, pushing his filling dick down with a thumb at the base. He made an indiscriminate noise of agreement in the back of his throat.
"It's like they pay attention to everything but your dick first. Ever had somebody lick the back of your knee?" Michael's legs jerked, slipped open across warm sheets. Ryan laughed and went on. "Magic. And you're so fuckin hard you could hammer nails into concrete but they don't even try to go after the prize, just, like, take their time with the appetizers. Nipples. Belly-button. Until you think you're gonna go crazy, part of you wants to hold their head down and part of you wants to fist your fuckin self and part just wants to go cry in a corner."
Against his skin, Michael's fingers were cold and he hissed as he wrapped them around his dick. Ryan either didn't notice or didn't care.
"Then they go for the balls." Michael's hips rose an inch off the bed; the first two fingers of his hand stretched down and pressed against the tightening skin of his sack. "One at a time. Nuzzling and licking and then sucking lightly. I love it when there's a little teeth, just a little. Just enough to add pressure, right? And that slow suck makes em crawl up and you think you'll go insane because you'll never come with just their mouth on your balls."
He was trying to be quiet. Ryan's drawling voice was in one ear and muted through the blanket were Erik and Miss Tuesday. Michael was trying the hell out of keeping absolutely silent for those two very good reasons-if he could hear them then they could hear him. He bit his lip and dropped the bottom of the phone under his chin while his hand was pushing it hard enough against his ear to hurt and he was fisting himself like he was trying to break his dick.
"When they finally get to your dick you're already so worked up that you're no better then a teenager, I mean, ready to blow your load with the first touch. You can hardly get yourself against the back of their throat before shooting and if you're lucky they swallow and there's that little flutter of muscles that makes you feel like you've died and gone FedEx to heaven."
Michael's breath caught, his whole body froze and toes curled down, grabbing sheets as he came in silence and made a mess of his shorts.
"Anyway," Ryan was saying into his ear as Michael tried to breathe without gasping, "Mike?"
"Yeah." It was a rasp.
"Be good, playa. I'm going to bed."
"Yeah," Michael had repeated, managing to shut the phone before it had slid off his pillow and onto the bed near his shoulder.
He touched the wall and pulled his arms up onto the deck, crossing them and putting his forehead down. His breath came in long, deep draws, chest expanding enough to brush the tiles with each inhale.
Michael had never asked Ryan if he had known exactly what he'd been doing with that phone call. Never occurred to him to ask, since the next time they'd seen each other in person had been the meet in Minnesota where they'd gotten drunk enough to pile all the lounge chairs from the hotel pool into the sauna in the middle of the night. Ryan had then pushed Michael into the hot tub, shoved his tongue down his throat, and ridden him until they both came in their trunks-after which Michael had leaned over the side and thrown up all over the steps.
No, it hadn't been romantic. Why the fuck should it have been? It just worked. With Ryan things just fit together.
Michael blew water off of his lips and rubbed a hand over his face. The toddlers were gone and the seniors were standing near the bleachers, talking and collecting their stuff. His muscles ached with a quiet sort of burn that was its own high, and for a minute he just hung on the side of the pool and enjoyed it.
There were three text messages from Ryan waiting on his phone. Michael clicked through them with one hand while he dried off with the other. Out of habit his thumb went to REPLY after the last one and Michael stared at the blank screen and the waiting cursor. His mouth was suddenly dry.
He hit END.
Michael had taken a cab back to his condo, but he hadn't even gone inside. He thew his duffel in the back of his car and climbed into the driver's seat with a release of breath. It still smelled new, and he'd had it for almost a full year.
Above him his own space was waiting-and it was empty. Herman was at his mom's. Ryan was in Florida. Those were the two bodies that he tended to fill spaces with. Michael drummed fingers on his steering wheel and jammed his iPod into the dock.
Ryan had become a force of gravity in Michael's life, and Michael didn't like it.
His life was supposed to revolve around the pool-and himself-until the 2012 games; after that it was all future static but it was the plan that counted. And the plan felt like it unraveled the more time he spent in Florida.
And he knew exactly what Ryan would say about that. He could hear the easy, So what? as clearly as if Ryan were sitting next to him.
Michael spun up G-Unit and started his car. He refused to think about the empty condo upstairs, or why he didn't want to be in it. He was just going to pick up his dog. And see his mom.
After being in Florida-where every car ride turned into a death-match against Ryan's distractibility-the twenty minutes from downtown to Rodger's Forge was uneventful. His mind wandered even though the music was loud enough that he could feel the bass in his seat like an erratic heartbeat.
Indianapolis was five days away. Michael had pushed Bob to let him drop the 200 IM and Fly and focus on sprinting, but his coach had vetoed the idea with only six months of training between getting back in the pool and Nationals.
"After Worlds," Bob had said, "we'll see about sprinting."
Michael wanted something different. It might sound conceited, but he'd pretty much trumphed middle-distance in the world of swimming. He wanted something new, needed to push himself.
"It is totally conceited, you're right. And I'm sick of hearing you whine about it," Ryan laughed, strong-arming a santa chew toy away from Herman and lobbing it across the room and down the hall toward the kitchen. He sat next to Michael on the couch in the Fells Point condo. The patio outside was covered in a blanket of white.
"I want to do sprints."
"I heard. I think you just want to be in the water with me more. You're so obvious." Ryan had been working on his sprint times.
"Why can't I? Six months. I can do it." Michael was unused to being told that he couldn't.
Santa squeaked as Ryan pried him out of Herman's jaws, and then squeaked again as he smacked against Michael's cheek.
Michael back-handed bulldog slobber from his face and looked at Ryan-who was doing a bad job of not grinning. His ears were red, and he looked a little like he was going to stroke out before bursting into laughter. Michael lunged but Ryan was rolling off the couch laughing out loud and gone, Herman barking and chasing.
Ryan was caught against the wide sliding glass door. The plate had rattled with the force of their impact.
Sitting in his car half a year later Michael could perfectly recall the breathy way Ryan had laughed and how it felt against his cheek. He rememebered how hot Ryan felt against his body compared to the shocking cold of the glass against his palms.
"Never said you couldn't sprint," Ryan had said, teeth showing in his grin and leg pressing up between Michael's, "in fact, it's probably a good idea. Get you some silver to go with your gold. Round out your collection."
Michael had kissed Ryan until he felt stupid from the lack of air and then fucked him right there against the window, his knees banging the cold glass and one of Ryan's hands grabbing his ear.
If Ryan's words had sounded like a challenge, that was because they were. But Ryan's opinion didn't mean much to Bob and Michael would be forced to run the 200m's for Nationals and Worlds one more time when he wanted to be setting down new numbers instead. It wasn't that he didn't understand the reasons; he was just impatient with them.
Doing shorter races meant going up against Ryan in Ryan's strongest area. Of course the bottom line there was that it shouldn't matter to Michael-had never mattered to Ryan, not in any meet, not in Beijing.
But Ryan's challenge had hung with Michael. Get you some silver to go with your gold. And Ryan's swimming was going nowhere but up, both in and out of sprints; if Gregg or Steve or Bob didn't stop them, it became a race at their shared practices. And Ryan was winning almost as much as he lost when they got away with it.
Michael always had Ryan on the turns, but without them to compensate? Ryan was close. He was more than close.
It wasn't that Michael needed to win. He just really hated losing.
That it was against Ryan didn't figure into it. He swore to himself that it didn't, after all, the pool had always been neutral ground between them. They were friends before and after the races only.
It had always worked. It had always led their relationship; pool first.
Pool first.
In Beijing Ryan had gotten sick because he'd thought that it was only Mexico that had bad water. Michael had kept clear of the room-a pure and selfish act of self-preservation-that he was sure Ryan understood. None of the other guys they were sharing with left, and Michael thought he saw Cullen give him a look when he packed some things, but no one said anything. Ryan didn't say anything, just showed up on deck two days later smiling and telling anyone who'd listen how he'd slept on the bathroom floor for training purposes and that they should all try it, too.
Vanderkaay had wrapped Ryan up in a bulky, smothering hug and Michael was surprised to find himself jealous, listening to Ryan's laughter muffled by big arms and a bare chest. He'd stuck his earphones in to drown it out.
The thing was that in Beijing Ryan had been fighting an uphill battle. Not that Michael hadn't been with the schedule he'd chosen to take on-something he'd never repeat-but the fact of the matter was that his body wasn't compromised like Ryan's. And despite it Ryan had picked up an induvidual gold twenty-three minutes before getting in the pool for their shared 200 IM and had then taken bronze with his fingers one one-thousanth of a second away from touching silver instead.
Michael thought about those numbers with a recall he was learning to hate, thought about them more often as both of them got back to fighting weight and had started staring down the 2009 Nationals. He thought about standing on the wall after the 400 IM-Ryan's head leaning on his shoulder, still sick, still hurting, and still with a three next to his name on the scoreboard.
And late at night, right before he fell asleep, Michael was nervous.
He was nervous that Ryan would win.
He was nervous that he would lose.
And he was nervous that he wouldn't care, because Ryan had become the person he counted on to fill his empty spaces.
"Michael?" It was muffled. There was a knock on the driver's window.
He'd been sitting in the driveway, engine idling, staring at the trunk of his mother's Mercedes without even realizing it. Michael turned the key and the rumble died, the iPod with it. He opened his door to his mother's face. "What are you doing sitting out here?" she asked, and he could hear a buried note of worry in her voice. His mother was versed at worry.
"Just thinking." He stepped out of the car and closed the door while pocketing the keys. His mother reached up and he ducked down for the waiting hug and kiss to the cheek. She'd been wearing the same perfume for as long as he could remember, and it smelled like home. His shoulders dropped. "I'm okay," he murmured as he pulled away.
The way she looked at him seemed to say, I know when you're bullshitting, mister, but she didn't call him on it. "Go see your dog. And if he pees on my rug it's your cleaning bill." She closed the back door after he pulled his duffel out.
There was no you've got your own house, now, nothing at all said about the pretty obvious intent to crash. Michael kissed the top of his mother's head and started up the stairs. Herman was waiting at the door and, for a little while, Michael forgot about Ryan.
Pair: Phelps/Lochte
Rating: NC17
Summary: Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte? They were the best worst-kept secret of the swimming world. And Michael didn't like it.
A/N: My dragon, my leidy--as I like to say she's the Papa of this here fic, from conception to labor pains. For the good, thank her. For the bad, mea culpa.
THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
Tie My Hands, Part 1: When Hilary Wants To Throw the Calender Away.
Tie My Hands, Part 2: When Michael Starts Running.
Michael's cheek bumped the wall.
He took his hands from the high plane of Ryan's hips and spread fingers forward, across cool green paint of the bedroom wall; sweat made them slip and he pushed his body back, toes digging into the carpet to stop the inexorable forward momentum of each rough thrust.
"Come on," Ryan mumbled against Michael's shoulder; he just couldn't shut up during sex. "Fuck, yeah-come on, Mike, come on..." The rise and fall of the words took on the broken shape of Ryan's breathing and made the hair on the back of Michael's neck stand up.
Each breath that he pulled in smelled like Ryan against the back of his throat; it was cologne and sweat and hair gel, a sharp sort of buzz that he wouldn't be able to clear out of his nose for days. It used to be a smell that Michael had pushed his face into his pillows to find.
Ryan's fingers wrapped around his dick and squeezed, redirecting thought. A noise cracked its way up Michael's throat, something he'd rather not admit, but Ryan must have heard it because his hand twisted accordingly to draw out another, thumb pushing up almost too hard against the sensitive fork of flesh under the head of his dick. Michael's hips jumped and the movement brought them together with enough force for the resulting stretch to burn.
It was too easy, the way Ryan could bring him off. Like he knew all the places to touch to make Michael forget his own name, forget the pool, forget that what they were doing couldn't be everything.
Michael's fingernails bit white crescents into green paint when he came, arching back against the solid bulk of Ryan. His knee smacked the wall but the sensation was far away, buried under a flush of heat and trembling muscles. Ryan was still thrusting, nearly lifting Michael to his toes. His fingers smeared cooling jizz across Michael's stomach to grab a hip and pulled him back, held him down.
By the time Ryan finished-releasing him from a careless hand that would leave bruises where Coach Gregg would no doubt see them in the pool-Michael was slumping, using the wall to support himself. Ryan licked sweat out of the crook of Michael's neck and bit his earlobe with a rumbling laugh. "Nice."
Michael felt him pull out and shouldered Ryan's face away with an automatic reaction; he knew exactly where Ryan liked to settle his chin after he'd been on top for sex. Every time. Like it was tattooed onto his skin, X marks the spot.
Behind him was the snap of latex and the springs of the bed giving way under the weight of a body as he turned to use the bathroom. The sleepy mutter, "Don't know why we even bother using condoms," followed him. "Not like we're fucking anybody else." Michael pretended not to hear it.
Ten months had passed since Beijing, ten months gone since Michael Phelps had become a household name.
He'd been determined to change the sport. He wanted to make it popular, wanted to get kids into swimming and give them the outlet it had been for him, before that outlet became everyday morning training and socially crippling. He knew that aside from all of that it was a sport of focus and intensity and having been a kid who couldn't focus on anything, he got it. Wanted to pass on what it had done for him.
Turned out that 'passing it on' was a series of donations and clinics; so many clinics that he could honestly say that he never wanted to see another kid again. Finding out fast that most of it was bureaucratic bullshit or groups of girls who wanted to giggle and try and touch him under the water instead of learn to swim took the edge off his philanthropic fever.
The books and red tape were passed to Bob along with Meadowbrook within the first three months. He stayed involved, just not neck-deep.
The rest of his self-imposed vacation had passed in a haze of interviews and late nights, airplane seats and tiny bottles of alcohol. It hadn't been, maybe, what it should have been. But he'd dedicated twelve years-sacrificed having a life-to be able to do just what he'd done in Beijing. So he'd let himself celebrate.
There were infinite parties to go to, infinite girls more than willing to slip into a bathroom with an Olympic champion. The hell of it was, he hadn't wanted any of that then. Sure, he'd copped a feel or two, but he didn't want a sloppy blow job over a dirty toilet seat. Or a girl who might or might not have spread her legs for the last asshole with a few medals to walk through the door.
And there was Ryan.
Ryan with his gravity-defying hair and the way he'd try to sneak on a grill before giving a blow job.
Ryan with his c u soon, nigga! an hour before a flight, like he couldn't stand the time between.
Ryan with his eyes the color of still, shallow water on a sunny day. It bothered Michael that he'd thought to make the analogy but once it was there it wouldn't go away. From then on he'd look at Ryan and think of hot days after a rain and the pool in the middle of summer before dawn, when the water was so clear it felt like you could reach in and touch the bottom.
Michael turned on the faucet and stuck his hands into the flow. Drops splattered onto his chest and dribbled tracks through the white smears across his stomach. They were brushed away with an impatient flick of his wrist, washed down the drain.
Boxers were picked up off the floor on the way back into the bedroom; Ryan was face-down on the right side of the bed, bare ass only half covered by navy-blue sheets. Michael watched the rise and fall of his tanned back as he climbed into his underwear. He knew that the left side was for him but he couldn't make himself lay down.
He told himself that he wasn't tired but the truth was that climbing into the big bed next to Ryan was just like sex anymore, too easy. Michael knew that the center of the pillow on the left side was a little flat and that Ryan had a habit of throwing elbows in his sleep.
The clock on the wall said that it was after midnight. Michael rubbed a hand over his face and wondered what was going on in Baltimore. In Ryan's house it was only the vague sounds of Kyle snoring down the hall that broke the silence.
Michael thought of his own condo, probably collecting dust bunnies the size of kickboards. He hadn't even really unpacked completely or been there enough to think of it as his place; his mom's townhouse, with its non-HD TVs and faux-wood paneling still held the heavyweight title of Home.
Michael grabbed a tshirt from off a speaker near the door. The collar was frayed at the back and soft against his neck. Black letters told the dark house that he would rather be surfing.
Leaving the TV off, he laid down on the sofa and pressed his face against the cool, smooth leather. It smelled like Ryan.
Michael shifted onto his back and slung an arm over his eyes. Sleep was elusive.
The morning announced itself with a smack to the ass that shocked Michael awake from a solid dream about the beach; he hit the floor with his elbows before he even realized that he wouldn't land on sand.
"Rise and shine!" Ryan called over his shoulder as he retreated toward the kitchen, barefoot, hair an insane halo around his head. Michael dropped to his back and stared at the ceiling, waiting for both the lingering sound of the ocean and his heart to quiet. His elbows throbbed in time to both.
"Get up!" Even filtered around corners the yell was clear enough. There was no reason for Ryan to be so goddamn cheerful in the morning. Michael thought that he hated it. He stuck his fingers into the corners of his eyes and dug out sleep while pushing Carter away from his face; the doberman tended to assume anything on the floor was fair game.
"Thanks, mom." His back protested the night on the couch as he climbed to his feet. The clink of spoon against bowl pulled him toward the kitchen; Ryan was at the table with Count Chocula, reading the back of the box with an intent he usually reserved for racing and hurting himself. If he even noticed that Michael had spent the night on the couch instead of in the bed, there was nothing that said so.
It annoyed Michael. Like an itch between his shoulderblades that he couldn't reach. His fingers slid around cardboard and he pulled the box from table to counter so that he could pour his own bowl. He left it there out of Ryan's reach but it didn't matter: Ryan's focus shifted like water finding the lowest ground.
"I'm taking Carter to the vet today. Boy hasn't been right since he ate that speedo."
"My speedo," Michael felt the need to point out, stressing the word with a milky spoon.
Ryan gave a sloppy shrug of shoulders and filled his mouth with chocolate. "Like you don't have enough of them." Milk dribbled out of the corner of his lips and was backhanded away.
Michael hooked an ankle over the rung of his chair. "Not here." The weeks that he spent in Florida were accompanied by, normally, a single suitcase. Maybe a duffel. Over the last few months the need to bring anything more had diminished as flip-flops got left under Ryan's bed and tshirts never made it out of the laundry. Michael's condo wasn't different; he'd find Ryan's goggles hanging on his closet knob or Herman would pull underwear that were not his (Michael would die before buying hot pink boxers, whatever the label) from under the sofa.
Blue eyes moved from the horizon to Michael. A smile that looked close to being a laugh turned up one corner of Ryan's mouth. "What?" he asked. "Your cock too big to fit in my speedos?"
On anyone else it would have worn as bitchy, but Ryan's delivery was just too slow. It made Michael sound like the one being the bitch. And ten months ago he would have flung a spoonful of cereal across the table for the comment, maybe started a fight that would have ended with one of them in the pool. Or face-down on the bed, moans quieted with a hot palm.
The cereal stayed in his bowl. "I'm going back to Baltimore today." There wasn't thought behind it. Or there was too much thought behind it.
The only thing that shifted in Ryan, the only thing that let Michael know he even cared, was the way his eyebrows bumped up toward his bangs. Michael dropped his eyes to his cereal, drowning the chocolate vampires in his milk one by one. "You know Nationals are less than a week away, right? Bob wants me back." And he probably did. But Michael hadn't talked to Bob in three days and there had been no plans to even come back to Maryland before the early-July meet.
Ryan sat back against his chair and scratched behind Carter's ears when the dog rested sloppy jowls on his thigh. "Dude, it's taper." For Ryan, tapering was a like a mission from God. It was a holiday; he actually drew little happy Ryan-faces on his calendar on Taper Days.
"It's Bob," Michael pointed out. "Besides, it's stuff for Meadowbrook, too. I'm still the owner."
Ryan stood up and put his bowl in the sink. "He better not put you in the pool, dude. That's all I'm saying." He smiled, turning just enough so that Michael could see it. It made Michael feel guilty for lying and he wanted to yell at Ryan suddenly, to ask him why the fuck he didn't get it.
It wasn't Nationals. It wasn't Meadowbrook, or Bob. It was Florida, it was the humidity and it was sharing a bed. Michael stood and walked over to dump most of his brown milk down the drain.
"This cereal's disgusting." That was what he said. So Ryan was dense. But maybe he was a fucking coward.
Ryan shrugged. "It's Kyle's."
"Wow. I wish you hadn't told me that." Michael had been around enough to watch Kyle drink spoiled milk without flinching.
Fingers hooked into the waistband of his boxers, warm against his stomach. Ryan's smile was deviant. "Bee-jay for the road?"
"Kyle's upstairs."
Teeth found his collarbone through cotton. "So don't scream out my name."
And Michael couldn't say no. Because if he did then something would be wrong, something would shift into the red. He would have to admit that they had gone farther than he had ever thought they would in order to admit that he was not okay with it.
He was not okay with half his wardrobe vacationing in Florida.
He was not okay with having a toothbrush in the yellow mug on Ryan's sink.
He was not okay with not using condoms.
Michael blamed his shortness of breath on Ryan's fingers. He leaned back against the kitchen counter and wrapped his hands around the edge until they hurt. His head tilted back to rest on a cabinet and eyes closed when his boxers hit the floor along with Ryan's knees
"You look like shit. I thought you were supposed to be relaxing in Florida."
Bob's office at the North Baltimore Aquatics Club was a testament to how Michael learned to swim. Everything had its place; phone in the right corner of the desk, computer in the left, in/out tray between. There was a calendar on the top covered in blue and red and green ink and behind his head a whole league of white boards declared training schedules in army-regiment lines.
Michael slouched into a chair across the desk from his coach. "I was." The look he received for the less-than-explanatory answer pricked his temper. "I just wanted to be in my pool."
"So that's why you're home. Your pool." It sounded like a question within a question and Michael just set his jaw and nodded.
"And the taper-"
"Fuck the taper." Michael stood up again. After a few hours spent in cabs and terminals and airplanes it was hard to sit. He had come straight there from BWI; his duffel was thrown haphazardly into Bob's corner near a potted tree. "I just want to stretch; I'm not going to blow myself out."
Leaning back against his chair, Bob folded his arms across his red polo. "You look like you're ready to hit something. I don't want you in the pool."
"Like I've never swam with a temper," Michael snapped. But Bob was right, with the observation and the advice, and it just pissed him off more. Because when Michael was mad, he pushed himself harder. They both knew it; it was why Bob taped trash-talk in his locker. Michael actually stopped pacing and took a deep breath.
A really deep breath.
Bob sighed. "Go ask John. I'm sure that senior water aerobics can make do with two lanes instead of three."
"You're hysterical."
Bob uncrossed his arms and leaned forward; his shifting attention was a physical thing. "Not joking. This is an aquatics center, Mike. And you're not on the schedule for today. Don't punch any old women." Paper shuffled and Michael heard a dismissal.
He took the steps down from the offices two at a time and thought about just going home. His duffel scraped against the wall. It was after lunch and all he'd eaten all day was half a bowl of cereal and the protein drink he'd grabbed at the airport.
If he went home he knew exactly what would happen: he'd sit on his mom's couch (because Herman was there) and flip through the TV until his eyes glazed over. And about once an hour he was bound to get a stupid text message making fun of Bob for breaking taper rules.
His phone was left in a locker at the bottom of his duffel. He put it on silent so that it didn't annoy anyone else, either.
The renovations had changed a lot about Meadowbrook but the deck still felt familiar under Michael's bare feet and the air still had that thick, chlorinated smell that was cultivated specifically by indoor pools everywhere.
"Mike."
John was in the deck office; the door open and the long window able to keep an eye on things in the pool, though watching paint dry had to be more interesting than the current toddler/senior swim schedule. The doorframe was cool when Michael leaned against it. "Hey, man. How've ya been?"
The other coach smiled and shrugged. "Hanging in there. Holding heads under water."
Michael laughed, breathed in and out the chlorine, and began to finally relax. "That bad, huh?" John coached the minis and advanced minis. Most of them were just old enough to give flack.
"Yeah, well I wonder who taught them to play tag instead of lapping."
Michael shrugged. "Whoever it is you should really see about giving him or her a talking to. Swimming's a serious sport."
John had a good laugh. It was low enough that it seemed to roll. He stood up and came over to shake Michael's hand. "Guess you want to swim."
"Nah. I wear my jammers out. I just swung by after going grocery shopping."
"Always a smartass," John sighed, patting Michael's shoulder as he walked by and out onto the deck. Michael followed, standing back and trying not to meet the eyes of the old ladies who looked his way when John caught their instructor's ear. He toed the edge of the risers and hooked the waist of his jammers up a little higher on his hips to try and cover the light bruises left by Ryan's fingers.
Ryan would be making lewd comments about the seniors. He could almost hear him, something about how head was best without any teeth.
Michael scraped fingernails over his scalp and blew out a breath. He was relieved when John waved him over to help with dragging out a new lane line; Michael nodded at the ladies, pulled his goggles on and up onto his forehead, and then dropped into the shallow end of the pool. He hooked a finger into the metal snap and side-stroked toward the other end.
The water was a little too warm, but he didn't care. He didn't need to go fast, or even precisely practice. Screw dolphin kicks and lung capacity-Michael just needed the release. He wanted the itch worked out of his muscles and Ryan worked out of his head.
The hook sank through the catch on the other end of the pool and Michael stood on the shelf to give John a wave before pulling his goggles down. Plastic pushed over and nearly behind the top of his cheekbone, a little harder than necessary for the suction to take hold.
The older ladies were blocked out. The moms with splashing toddlers were blocked out.
Before him there was a long stretch of water; that was all that mattered.
The cell phone in his duffel, probably blinking with a building inbox (stay away frm the pool, bobs a slv drvr), was blocked out.
Michael took a long breath, deep enough to make his lungs burn, and then let it out. He closed his eyes.
(u should b here suckin my dick) Blocked out.
He pushed off the wall, limbs stretching out into a slow free stroke. Breath was taken as needed. Sometimes swimming was a little like flying; all that blue to either side seemed to stretch into forever. The loneliest sport in the world-all that with him at the middle, racing against himself.
(the g-spot dosnt <3 u no more)
Michael counted strokes without thinking about it; he knew, in every dimension, how he fit into this pool. It was just a shame that the rest of his life wasn't that easy. He didn't think he was a complicated guy, hadn't ever tried to be.
The flip-kick nearly brushed his shoulders against the bottom of the shallow end as he turned.
Not using condoms. Just because they weren't fucking anyone else right then didn't mean that they wouldn't in the future. At least, it didn't mean Michael wouldn't. Because Ryan was just... Ryan. And that was all.
He met the wall again, toes spreading and legs burning with the force of the push.
Back when Michael was swimming at Michigan, Ryan was only the guy on the phone. He was the guy who lived a thousand plus miles away and would show up to meets and then laugh when he didn't get the time or the medal he had wanted. He'd laugh.
And then there was Michael, chucking his goggles and cap when he didn't perform the way he'd expected. It's a wonder that Ryan had ever started talking to him at all.
Twenty-three strokes, turn.
At Michigan it had been Vendt. Ryan was black text on a screen, a voice without a face, an accident report on Swimroom.com. Erik was the one with him, hanging over his shoulder when Michael read about Ryan falling out of the tree; he was the one laughing and going smooth move.
Michael remembered thinking how silent his phone had been for about two days after that. He remembered keeping occupied by pushing Erik's face into his pillow and listening to the way the bedframe smacked the wall over and over.
The sound of his text-mail had been like the bell after a boxing match. (U will never bliev wtf happened.)
One breath every five strokes, his body did it without thought.
Erik and Ryan were different like fire and water were different. Erik would go to parties and grope the sorority girls with a smile and then disappear without a word. He'd say he was coming over and then forget, but he'd never miss practice.
Ryan skateboarded before meets. He'd ditch practice if it was a nice day outside. But when he said he'd call at nine he called at nine without fail and when he walked into a party with Michael he'd leave with Michael. It was the kind of consistency Michael had grown up into. Ryan might have been an airhead but he thought about his friends first.
Lunches grabbed with Erik turned into phone calls with Ryan, Michael's back against the cold brick of the Wolverines athletic center, his breath frosting over the top of his zipped-up collar and his toes freezing in his flip-flops. When his time was up he'd go inside and his whole body felt like it was burning.
One-two-three-four-five-breathe.
Whatever they were doing together withstanding, Michael and Erik had rules. Shaving did not mean sex. Do Not Disturb on shared hotel doors at meets allowed an hour max, and there was no bringing girls back while they were there.
Michael had been asleep when Erik broke the third rule. He hadn't cared that he'd been woken up by drunken stumbling and moaning. And it wasn’t that Erik was fucking some random girl, either (he didn't care, honestly)-just that he was doing it in a bed hardly ten feet away.
He had pulled the starchy blanket up over his head and tried to go back to sleep, but he was angry and the girl was loud. So Michael had stuck an arm out from under the warm bubble of his comforter and slid his cell phone off his nightstand.
"Yo."
"You're not asleep?" Michael's voice was just a murmur.
"Can you sleep-talk?" Ryan mused on the other end. "I mean. You can drive heavy machinery in your sleep, right? Can you talk while you do it?" Michael snorted quietly. The light on his cell phone went off and left him in the darkness of his makeshift cave. "So I was pretty sure you were asleep at nine, dude. It's late for little boys with crazy-ass coaches like Bob."
Michael shifted onto his back and breathed out. "Erik's fucking some chick across the room."
There was a beat of silence. "Mikey, are you jealous?"
"No, asshole. I'm tired."
Another silence, but they weren't uncommon with Ryan. Michael didn't really think he was thinking during them; he just took things at a slower pace than most humans. "I bet a good blow job would put you to sleep."
Michael hadn't told Ryan about the extra-circular activities that he and Erik participated in. It was kept out of the pool and off the record and both of them liked it that way. It was a stress-valve; if they went at girls the way they went at each other best case scenerio would have been a smack, worst would have been pressing charges.
He opened his mouth to tell Ryan thanks but no thanks I really just need my asshole roommate to take it somewhere else when Ryan went on. Looking back at it, Michael felt a little duped. Everything was so easy for Ryan. If it wasn't, he didn't bother.
"You know," Ryan had said. "Nice and sloppy and fuckin slow. When they sorta crawl all over you with their mouths first? Neck. Hips. Shoulders-you know what gets me? Underarms, man. Light teeth and tongue right up under there. Tug on some hair, it's okay."
Michael's skin had crawled with goosebumps even in the heat under his comforter. He dropped a hand and grabbed himself through the loose basketball shorts he was wearing to sleep, pushing his filling dick down with a thumb at the base. He made an indiscriminate noise of agreement in the back of his throat.
"It's like they pay attention to everything but your dick first. Ever had somebody lick the back of your knee?" Michael's legs jerked, slipped open across warm sheets. Ryan laughed and went on. "Magic. And you're so fuckin hard you could hammer nails into concrete but they don't even try to go after the prize, just, like, take their time with the appetizers. Nipples. Belly-button. Until you think you're gonna go crazy, part of you wants to hold their head down and part of you wants to fist your fuckin self and part just wants to go cry in a corner."
Against his skin, Michael's fingers were cold and he hissed as he wrapped them around his dick. Ryan either didn't notice or didn't care.
"Then they go for the balls." Michael's hips rose an inch off the bed; the first two fingers of his hand stretched down and pressed against the tightening skin of his sack. "One at a time. Nuzzling and licking and then sucking lightly. I love it when there's a little teeth, just a little. Just enough to add pressure, right? And that slow suck makes em crawl up and you think you'll go insane because you'll never come with just their mouth on your balls."
He was trying to be quiet. Ryan's drawling voice was in one ear and muted through the blanket were Erik and Miss Tuesday. Michael was trying the hell out of keeping absolutely silent for those two very good reasons-if he could hear them then they could hear him. He bit his lip and dropped the bottom of the phone under his chin while his hand was pushing it hard enough against his ear to hurt and he was fisting himself like he was trying to break his dick.
"When they finally get to your dick you're already so worked up that you're no better then a teenager, I mean, ready to blow your load with the first touch. You can hardly get yourself against the back of their throat before shooting and if you're lucky they swallow and there's that little flutter of muscles that makes you feel like you've died and gone FedEx to heaven."
Michael's breath caught, his whole body froze and toes curled down, grabbing sheets as he came in silence and made a mess of his shorts.
"Anyway," Ryan was saying into his ear as Michael tried to breathe without gasping, "Mike?"
"Yeah." It was a rasp.
"Be good, playa. I'm going to bed."
"Yeah," Michael had repeated, managing to shut the phone before it had slid off his pillow and onto the bed near his shoulder.
He touched the wall and pulled his arms up onto the deck, crossing them and putting his forehead down. His breath came in long, deep draws, chest expanding enough to brush the tiles with each inhale.
Michael had never asked Ryan if he had known exactly what he'd been doing with that phone call. Never occurred to him to ask, since the next time they'd seen each other in person had been the meet in Minnesota where they'd gotten drunk enough to pile all the lounge chairs from the hotel pool into the sauna in the middle of the night. Ryan had then pushed Michael into the hot tub, shoved his tongue down his throat, and ridden him until they both came in their trunks-after which Michael had leaned over the side and thrown up all over the steps.
No, it hadn't been romantic. Why the fuck should it have been? It just worked. With Ryan things just fit together.
Michael blew water off of his lips and rubbed a hand over his face. The toddlers were gone and the seniors were standing near the bleachers, talking and collecting their stuff. His muscles ached with a quiet sort of burn that was its own high, and for a minute he just hung on the side of the pool and enjoyed it.
There were three text messages from Ryan waiting on his phone. Michael clicked through them with one hand while he dried off with the other. Out of habit his thumb went to REPLY after the last one and Michael stared at the blank screen and the waiting cursor. His mouth was suddenly dry.
He hit END.
Michael had taken a cab back to his condo, but he hadn't even gone inside. He thew his duffel in the back of his car and climbed into the driver's seat with a release of breath. It still smelled new, and he'd had it for almost a full year.
Above him his own space was waiting-and it was empty. Herman was at his mom's. Ryan was in Florida. Those were the two bodies that he tended to fill spaces with. Michael drummed fingers on his steering wheel and jammed his iPod into the dock.
Ryan had become a force of gravity in Michael's life, and Michael didn't like it.
His life was supposed to revolve around the pool-and himself-until the 2012 games; after that it was all future static but it was the plan that counted. And the plan felt like it unraveled the more time he spent in Florida.
And he knew exactly what Ryan would say about that. He could hear the easy, So what? as clearly as if Ryan were sitting next to him.
Michael spun up G-Unit and started his car. He refused to think about the empty condo upstairs, or why he didn't want to be in it. He was just going to pick up his dog. And see his mom.
After being in Florida-where every car ride turned into a death-match against Ryan's distractibility-the twenty minutes from downtown to Rodger's Forge was uneventful. His mind wandered even though the music was loud enough that he could feel the bass in his seat like an erratic heartbeat.
Indianapolis was five days away. Michael had pushed Bob to let him drop the 200 IM and Fly and focus on sprinting, but his coach had vetoed the idea with only six months of training between getting back in the pool and Nationals.
"After Worlds," Bob had said, "we'll see about sprinting."
Michael wanted something different. It might sound conceited, but he'd pretty much trumphed middle-distance in the world of swimming. He wanted something new, needed to push himself.
"It is totally conceited, you're right. And I'm sick of hearing you whine about it," Ryan laughed, strong-arming a santa chew toy away from Herman and lobbing it across the room and down the hall toward the kitchen. He sat next to Michael on the couch in the Fells Point condo. The patio outside was covered in a blanket of white.
"I want to do sprints."
"I heard. I think you just want to be in the water with me more. You're so obvious." Ryan had been working on his sprint times.
"Why can't I? Six months. I can do it." Michael was unused to being told that he couldn't.
Santa squeaked as Ryan pried him out of Herman's jaws, and then squeaked again as he smacked against Michael's cheek.
Michael back-handed bulldog slobber from his face and looked at Ryan-who was doing a bad job of not grinning. His ears were red, and he looked a little like he was going to stroke out before bursting into laughter. Michael lunged but Ryan was rolling off the couch laughing out loud and gone, Herman barking and chasing.
Ryan was caught against the wide sliding glass door. The plate had rattled with the force of their impact.
Sitting in his car half a year later Michael could perfectly recall the breathy way Ryan had laughed and how it felt against his cheek. He rememebered how hot Ryan felt against his body compared to the shocking cold of the glass against his palms.
"Never said you couldn't sprint," Ryan had said, teeth showing in his grin and leg pressing up between Michael's, "in fact, it's probably a good idea. Get you some silver to go with your gold. Round out your collection."
Michael had kissed Ryan until he felt stupid from the lack of air and then fucked him right there against the window, his knees banging the cold glass and one of Ryan's hands grabbing his ear.
If Ryan's words had sounded like a challenge, that was because they were. But Ryan's opinion didn't mean much to Bob and Michael would be forced to run the 200m's for Nationals and Worlds one more time when he wanted to be setting down new numbers instead. It wasn't that he didn't understand the reasons; he was just impatient with them.
Doing shorter races meant going up against Ryan in Ryan's strongest area. Of course the bottom line there was that it shouldn't matter to Michael-had never mattered to Ryan, not in any meet, not in Beijing.
But Ryan's challenge had hung with Michael. Get you some silver to go with your gold. And Ryan's swimming was going nowhere but up, both in and out of sprints; if Gregg or Steve or Bob didn't stop them, it became a race at their shared practices. And Ryan was winning almost as much as he lost when they got away with it.
Michael always had Ryan on the turns, but without them to compensate? Ryan was close. He was more than close.
It wasn't that Michael needed to win. He just really hated losing.
That it was against Ryan didn't figure into it. He swore to himself that it didn't, after all, the pool had always been neutral ground between them. They were friends before and after the races only.
It had always worked. It had always led their relationship; pool first.
Pool first.
In Beijing Ryan had gotten sick because he'd thought that it was only Mexico that had bad water. Michael had kept clear of the room-a pure and selfish act of self-preservation-that he was sure Ryan understood. None of the other guys they were sharing with left, and Michael thought he saw Cullen give him a look when he packed some things, but no one said anything. Ryan didn't say anything, just showed up on deck two days later smiling and telling anyone who'd listen how he'd slept on the bathroom floor for training purposes and that they should all try it, too.
Vanderkaay had wrapped Ryan up in a bulky, smothering hug and Michael was surprised to find himself jealous, listening to Ryan's laughter muffled by big arms and a bare chest. He'd stuck his earphones in to drown it out.
The thing was that in Beijing Ryan had been fighting an uphill battle. Not that Michael hadn't been with the schedule he'd chosen to take on-something he'd never repeat-but the fact of the matter was that his body wasn't compromised like Ryan's. And despite it Ryan had picked up an induvidual gold twenty-three minutes before getting in the pool for their shared 200 IM and had then taken bronze with his fingers one one-thousanth of a second away from touching silver instead.
Michael thought about those numbers with a recall he was learning to hate, thought about them more often as both of them got back to fighting weight and had started staring down the 2009 Nationals. He thought about standing on the wall after the 400 IM-Ryan's head leaning on his shoulder, still sick, still hurting, and still with a three next to his name on the scoreboard.
And late at night, right before he fell asleep, Michael was nervous.
He was nervous that Ryan would win.
He was nervous that he would lose.
And he was nervous that he wouldn't care, because Ryan had become the person he counted on to fill his empty spaces.
"Michael?" It was muffled. There was a knock on the driver's window.
He'd been sitting in the driveway, engine idling, staring at the trunk of his mother's Mercedes without even realizing it. Michael turned the key and the rumble died, the iPod with it. He opened his door to his mother's face. "What are you doing sitting out here?" she asked, and he could hear a buried note of worry in her voice. His mother was versed at worry.
"Just thinking." He stepped out of the car and closed the door while pocketing the keys. His mother reached up and he ducked down for the waiting hug and kiss to the cheek. She'd been wearing the same perfume for as long as he could remember, and it smelled like home. His shoulders dropped. "I'm okay," he murmured as he pulled away.
The way she looked at him seemed to say, I know when you're bullshitting, mister, but she didn't call him on it. "Go see your dog. And if he pees on my rug it's your cleaning bill." She closed the back door after he pulled his duffel out.
There was no you've got your own house, now, nothing at all said about the pretty obvious intent to crash. Michael kissed the top of his mother's head and started up the stairs. Herman was waiting at the door and, for a little while, Michael forgot about Ryan.