Fic: Daring Adventures for Boys (skating, Ben/Jeremy)
In which I finally come through with some kink_bingo. Posting this is my prize for figuring out how we ended up with two more writers than recipients for femslash08, and then fixing the problem. (Short answer: I fail at C&P.)
Title: Daring Adventures for Boys
Fandom: figure skating RPS
Pairing: Ben Agosto/Jeremy Abbott
Rating: NC-17 for porn.
Continuity: Summer of 2008, no real spoilers.
Summary: The Colorado backwoods abound with bears, elk, mountain lions, and men's singles skaters. Use caution and stay on the trail.
Word Count: About 2,000.
Disclaimers: This is a work of fiction. The characters herein are based on real people, but the words and events are completely made up. They are not intended to be mistaken for fact, and no libel is intended. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed. No, dear. That's a frog. Bears wear hats.
Notes: Written for kink_bingo, for the prompt "outdoor sex." I am grateful to the Colorado State Parks system for their informative website. And even more grateful to callmesandy for the beta!
*
The whole point of the trip to Colorado was supposed to have been to fix things with Merrie. Ben made all the arrangements before he told her. She used to love those grand romantic gestures, how he would whisk her away for adventures. For the weekend before Champs Camp, he booked a campsite near Pike's Peak and a day of hiking at the Fossil National Monument. Mountains, bears, dinosaur bones: the things they both loved.
When Ben had told her he was moving to Philly to work with Natalia Linichuk, he'd expected Merrie to throw her excited arms around him and dive giddily into house hunting. Instead, she'd said, "Why don't you see how that works out and I'll join you after you're settled?" He'd moved out by himself, quick as a ninja, grateful for the excuse to get away.
Away from her, he remembered only the good things. He had a hard time imagining her as anything but the love of his life. Alone, he was competent and functional: the laundry got done, the bills got paid, the dog ate square meals. But he'd been with Merrie since he was seventeen; she was like a phantom limb. He'd go to the grocery store and realize what he'd grabbed out of habit: grapefruit juice, plain yogurt, tampons.
He arranged the trip knowing it would reattach them and make them whole. But when he called to tell Merrie, she explained that the break they were taking was a good thing for both of them. She was doing a lot of thinking, and she didn't want to interrupt her train of thought by spending so much time with him. Ben wondered if she was already seeing someone else, or if she'd just fallen out of love with him.
He thought of canceling the campsite reservation, but maybe someone else would enjoy it. He called Ryan in Colorado and said, "Do you know anyone who needs a romantic weekend at Pike's Peak?" Ryan had a few ideas.
Ben got a call two days later from Jeremy Abbott, a men's skater he didn't know well. Did Ben still have those campsite reservations? "Okay," Jeremy said, "then, um, maybe you could go with me?"
"Who says I want to go?" Ben said.
"The dinosaur bones are really cool, and the backwoods trails at the state park are gorgeous and, like, some of them are actually a challenge, which, you know, you don't always get, and I'm babbling sort of stupidly but if you're a hiking-climbing-bear-watching kind of person you'll have a good time. So if you wanted to go with someone else, take one of your friends or something, that would actually make more sense. Than going with me. But you should go."
"No, you should come with me," Ben said. "You obviously want to go, and unlike most of my friends, you know how to not get us eaten by bears."
"Yeah, well, my dinosaur survival skills are iffy," Jeremy said.
*
Ben flew to Colorado with all his camping gear and all his skating gear, practically daring the NSA to confiscate his luggage. Miraculously, it all arrived unharmed if rifled-through, and Jeremy was there to pick him up. They ran back to Jeremy's house to drop off Ben's skating stuff and pick up the tent and the groceries, and then they were off to the mountains. Jeremy's musical taste ran to '80s dance pop, and Ben worried this might be a rough journey. They made polite small talk.
They were the only people on the dinosaur tour not accompanied by an extremely excited eight-year-old boy. This freed them to be shamelessly dorky about the fossils, which as promised went beyond cool and well into breathtaking. In a world so ancient, what were nine years? They were only a fraction of his life. He felt light. "Were you into dinosaurs as a kid?" he asked Jeremy.
"I had this, this stuffed dinosaur," Jeremy said. "It was blue, and its name was Tiny, Tiny the T-Rex. And I had this whole set of dinosaur action figures, and I used to make Tiny stomp all the action figures."
"The T-rex was always my favorite, too," Ben said.
"Well, razor-sharp teeth," Jeremy said. "What red-blooded American boy doesn't love razor-sharp teeth?"
After another hour of dinosaur bones, they drove down the road to the state park to set up camp and make dinner. Trees ringed their campsite, giving the illusion of privacy but not drowning out the excited shrieks of little kids set loose in nature. Ben noticed kids a lot lately, waved at random babies, wondered if their parents were younger than him. Merrie had sulked when he'd done that and denied she was doing anything. It had driven him crazy that she wouldn't tell him what bothered her. If she'd told him, he would have known that she didn't see a future with him, that she tried to imagine their kids and couldn't. Or something worse. Whatever she hadn't been able to tell him, it was something he wouldn't want to know.
Ben and Jeremy pitched the tent, an easy dome, big enough that things wouldn't get awkward. Jeremy kept apologizing for it anyway, until Ben said, "I think I've skated in smaller rinks." There were unnecessary apologies for the food, too: turkey brats and low-carb buns, the inevitable bag of salad mix, and homemade iced tea. Jeremy had a portable electric grill that he'd planned to run on the Jeep's battery, but the site had an electrical hookup. They finished off the entire package of brats and all the salad: they'd hike it off. Dessert was slightly underripe nectarines, which they threw on the grill. Shyly, Jeremy watched Ben suck the hot, sweet pulp from his fingers. Ben kept his eyes on the ground, not wanting to offer Jeremy false hope.
They cleaned up the campsite and changed their clothes so bears wouldn't attack them in the night. Ben in the tent and Jeremy in the Jeep, an unnecessary precaution. "What do you want to do?" Jeremy said.
"I don't know," Ben said. "I guess we could build the fire."
"We could," Jeremy said. "I mean, I brought lighter fluid, it'll take two minutes, but if you want."
"What did you have in mind?" Ben said.
"Well, we -- I mean, I don't know if this would be weird? But we get really good sunsets here. We could do one of the short walks out to one of the lookouts," Jeremy said. He made a face, screwing up his mouth into a figure eight. "Would that be weird? That would be weird."
"Not really," Ben said. "Let me just go throw some stuff in my backpack."
"It's, like, three quarters of a mile," Jeremy said.
"And I am like a girl with a purse," Ben said.
The trail winded a little and sloped gently uphill. It was one of the family trails, although they didn't pass many families along the way. Beginning hikers were discouraged from exploring the woods after the daylight started to fade. Jeremy accidentally brushed Ben's hand with his and jerked away, but Ben rapped their knuckles together playfully. He didn't mind being liked. He didn't always know whether he was likeable.
The clouds became swirls of gold and orange over the sharp blue mountains. "Sometimes in winter, I pull the car over after practice so I can watch this," Jeremy said. "It's like -- it's like a promise."
"Yeah," Ben said. "That makes sense." He folded his arms on the safety railing and rested his chin on his arms, extending his feet back without thinking, standing on his toes and stretching his arches. Jeremy mimicked his pose, maybe unconsciously. There was no question that they looked like a couple. It wasn't an unreasonable assumption. Jeremy would have made a great girlfriend if only he weren't a boy.
Was that really a problem? Ben had been devotedly Merrie-sexual for so long that he wasn't sure.
Their only company was a couple totally lost in their own dusk-light make-out session. The proximity of other people kissing might have influenced Ben, or the aphrodisiac nectarines. But mostly it was the sweet mountain air and the shadowy golden light that persuaded Ben to sweep Jeremy into a dance hold and kiss him.
Jeremy made that perturbed, twisty face again, although this time it looked like he was trying to regain control of his lips. He stepped back and shook himself out. Then, resolutely, he leaned forward into Ben's arms and kissed back, longer. A promise.
The couple, the other couple, was looking at them. Ben braced himself for self-defense. Instead, he got a smile and a thumbs-up from the guy. They were both going to have good nights.
The sun was melting behind the mountains. They walked back, slipping on the downhill grade. "That," Jeremy said. "I, I wasn't trying to get you to do that. Or anything."
"I know," Ben said.
"I mean, I had a crush," Jeremy said. "But, like, I figured that out on the fossil tour, so, like -- I really wasn't going to try anything."
"I know. I started it. Relax."
"I... don't actually ever relax," Jeremy said.
"I'm getting that," Ben said. He stopped, making a wall of his body so Jeremy stumbled into him and could be kissed.
"Please don't," Jeremy said. "Or we'll get all turned around."
"And the bears will eat us," Ben said. Casually, he let his hands sink to Jeremy's butt. Jeremy gave in and kissed Ben, and this time there was tongue, and hair-tugging, and the balance-shifting strength of Jeremy's upper body. They tumbled to their knees, groping under layers of fleece, skinning themselves on the gravel. Ben felt Jeremy up, admiring his hard pecs, his tight little nipples and sharp ribs. In the dark, all bodies were sexy. And Jeremy's more than most.
"I have condoms in my first aid kit," Ben said.
Jeremy snorted.
"I forgot to take them out," Ben said. "I... have a history of liking the woods."
Ben could literally hear crickets. Crickets, and possibly tiny frogs. "I... I'm not this kind of person," Jeremy said. "The kind of person who does this."
"Me neither," Ben said. "I mean, not with someone I barely know."
"We don't have to," Jeremy said. "I mean, we can go back, and we can go in the tent, and we can -- or we can not at all --"
"Fine with me," Ben said. "If you'd rather."
"I'd, I'd rather -- I'd rather be the kind of person who does this," Jeremy said.
Ben found his first aid kit, and Jeremy took a pair of gloves out of his vest pocket. "Got any knee pads?" Ben said.
They picked up where they left off, exposed no more skin than necessary, kept their eyes open. Ben felt for Jeremy's dick, and when he found it, proved that Jeremy knew how to relax. To let Ben into him. Jeremy was an eager lover, yielding, curving his body up under Ben's. He came into Ben's hand a little fast, a little ashamed, but Ben kissed his neck and told him it wasn't a contest, and then hurried the hell up. Ben took in the smells of things blooming, and of other things turning back into earth, and of one person sweating and sated under him. He drew them deep into his body and loved them. He whispered, "I'm close, I'm there," and he felt Jeremy steel himself, and he came, breathing all that beauty back into the air.
They zipped themselves back up and got out their flashlights. "Did you see the bear?" Jeremy said.
"What bear?" Ben said.
"The bear that was watching us the entire time," Jeremy said.
"There was a bear?" Ben said. "I missed the bear?"
"Yeah," Jeremy said. "He was standing right next to the T-Rex."
They followed the trail downhill to the campgrounds and found the Jeep locked up safe, their tent where they'd left it. Semi-competent in the dark and grateful for the lighter fluid, they got a fire going. They sat in its glow for a long time, talking mostly but kissing plenty, huddling together and laughing when the wind gusted.
They had a fifteen-mile hike-climb planned for the morning, taking the difficult trails into isolated back country. Ben wondered whether the gift shop at the visitors' center sold condoms. Or knee pads.
They put out the fire and got ready for bed, not so modest this time. In his shy, circular way, Jeremy asked Ben if they should zip their sleeping bags together. Ben was learning that the more Jeremy wanted something, the more he pretended it wasn't any trouble. They snuggled up together. There was enough room left over in their tent for a couple of bears and a T-Rex. But being alone together, safe and private in the vague sheen of starlight, was exhilarating too.
Title: Daring Adventures for Boys
Fandom: figure skating RPS
Pairing: Ben Agosto/Jeremy Abbott
Rating: NC-17 for porn.
Continuity: Summer of 2008, no real spoilers.
Summary: The Colorado backwoods abound with bears, elk, mountain lions, and men's singles skaters. Use caution and stay on the trail.
Word Count: About 2,000.
Disclaimers: This is a work of fiction. The characters herein are based on real people, but the words and events are completely made up. They are not intended to be mistaken for fact, and no libel is intended. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed. No, dear. That's a frog. Bears wear hats.
Notes: Written for kink_bingo, for the prompt "outdoor sex." I am grateful to the Colorado State Parks system for their informative website. And even more grateful to callmesandy for the beta!
*
The whole point of the trip to Colorado was supposed to have been to fix things with Merrie. Ben made all the arrangements before he told her. She used to love those grand romantic gestures, how he would whisk her away for adventures. For the weekend before Champs Camp, he booked a campsite near Pike's Peak and a day of hiking at the Fossil National Monument. Mountains, bears, dinosaur bones: the things they both loved.
When Ben had told her he was moving to Philly to work with Natalia Linichuk, he'd expected Merrie to throw her excited arms around him and dive giddily into house hunting. Instead, she'd said, "Why don't you see how that works out and I'll join you after you're settled?" He'd moved out by himself, quick as a ninja, grateful for the excuse to get away.
Away from her, he remembered only the good things. He had a hard time imagining her as anything but the love of his life. Alone, he was competent and functional: the laundry got done, the bills got paid, the dog ate square meals. But he'd been with Merrie since he was seventeen; she was like a phantom limb. He'd go to the grocery store and realize what he'd grabbed out of habit: grapefruit juice, plain yogurt, tampons.
He arranged the trip knowing it would reattach them and make them whole. But when he called to tell Merrie, she explained that the break they were taking was a good thing for both of them. She was doing a lot of thinking, and she didn't want to interrupt her train of thought by spending so much time with him. Ben wondered if she was already seeing someone else, or if she'd just fallen out of love with him.
He thought of canceling the campsite reservation, but maybe someone else would enjoy it. He called Ryan in Colorado and said, "Do you know anyone who needs a romantic weekend at Pike's Peak?" Ryan had a few ideas.
Ben got a call two days later from Jeremy Abbott, a men's skater he didn't know well. Did Ben still have those campsite reservations? "Okay," Jeremy said, "then, um, maybe you could go with me?"
"Who says I want to go?" Ben said.
"The dinosaur bones are really cool, and the backwoods trails at the state park are gorgeous and, like, some of them are actually a challenge, which, you know, you don't always get, and I'm babbling sort of stupidly but if you're a hiking-climbing-bear-watching kind of person you'll have a good time. So if you wanted to go with someone else, take one of your friends or something, that would actually make more sense. Than going with me. But you should go."
"No, you should come with me," Ben said. "You obviously want to go, and unlike most of my friends, you know how to not get us eaten by bears."
"Yeah, well, my dinosaur survival skills are iffy," Jeremy said.
*
Ben flew to Colorado with all his camping gear and all his skating gear, practically daring the NSA to confiscate his luggage. Miraculously, it all arrived unharmed if rifled-through, and Jeremy was there to pick him up. They ran back to Jeremy's house to drop off Ben's skating stuff and pick up the tent and the groceries, and then they were off to the mountains. Jeremy's musical taste ran to '80s dance pop, and Ben worried this might be a rough journey. They made polite small talk.
They were the only people on the dinosaur tour not accompanied by an extremely excited eight-year-old boy. This freed them to be shamelessly dorky about the fossils, which as promised went beyond cool and well into breathtaking. In a world so ancient, what were nine years? They were only a fraction of his life. He felt light. "Were you into dinosaurs as a kid?" he asked Jeremy.
"I had this, this stuffed dinosaur," Jeremy said. "It was blue, and its name was Tiny, Tiny the T-Rex. And I had this whole set of dinosaur action figures, and I used to make Tiny stomp all the action figures."
"The T-rex was always my favorite, too," Ben said.
"Well, razor-sharp teeth," Jeremy said. "What red-blooded American boy doesn't love razor-sharp teeth?"
After another hour of dinosaur bones, they drove down the road to the state park to set up camp and make dinner. Trees ringed their campsite, giving the illusion of privacy but not drowning out the excited shrieks of little kids set loose in nature. Ben noticed kids a lot lately, waved at random babies, wondered if their parents were younger than him. Merrie had sulked when he'd done that and denied she was doing anything. It had driven him crazy that she wouldn't tell him what bothered her. If she'd told him, he would have known that she didn't see a future with him, that she tried to imagine their kids and couldn't. Or something worse. Whatever she hadn't been able to tell him, it was something he wouldn't want to know.
Ben and Jeremy pitched the tent, an easy dome, big enough that things wouldn't get awkward. Jeremy kept apologizing for it anyway, until Ben said, "I think I've skated in smaller rinks." There were unnecessary apologies for the food, too: turkey brats and low-carb buns, the inevitable bag of salad mix, and homemade iced tea. Jeremy had a portable electric grill that he'd planned to run on the Jeep's battery, but the site had an electrical hookup. They finished off the entire package of brats and all the salad: they'd hike it off. Dessert was slightly underripe nectarines, which they threw on the grill. Shyly, Jeremy watched Ben suck the hot, sweet pulp from his fingers. Ben kept his eyes on the ground, not wanting to offer Jeremy false hope.
They cleaned up the campsite and changed their clothes so bears wouldn't attack them in the night. Ben in the tent and Jeremy in the Jeep, an unnecessary precaution. "What do you want to do?" Jeremy said.
"I don't know," Ben said. "I guess we could build the fire."
"We could," Jeremy said. "I mean, I brought lighter fluid, it'll take two minutes, but if you want."
"What did you have in mind?" Ben said.
"Well, we -- I mean, I don't know if this would be weird? But we get really good sunsets here. We could do one of the short walks out to one of the lookouts," Jeremy said. He made a face, screwing up his mouth into a figure eight. "Would that be weird? That would be weird."
"Not really," Ben said. "Let me just go throw some stuff in my backpack."
"It's, like, three quarters of a mile," Jeremy said.
"And I am like a girl with a purse," Ben said.
The trail winded a little and sloped gently uphill. It was one of the family trails, although they didn't pass many families along the way. Beginning hikers were discouraged from exploring the woods after the daylight started to fade. Jeremy accidentally brushed Ben's hand with his and jerked away, but Ben rapped their knuckles together playfully. He didn't mind being liked. He didn't always know whether he was likeable.
The clouds became swirls of gold and orange over the sharp blue mountains. "Sometimes in winter, I pull the car over after practice so I can watch this," Jeremy said. "It's like -- it's like a promise."
"Yeah," Ben said. "That makes sense." He folded his arms on the safety railing and rested his chin on his arms, extending his feet back without thinking, standing on his toes and stretching his arches. Jeremy mimicked his pose, maybe unconsciously. There was no question that they looked like a couple. It wasn't an unreasonable assumption. Jeremy would have made a great girlfriend if only he weren't a boy.
Was that really a problem? Ben had been devotedly Merrie-sexual for so long that he wasn't sure.
Their only company was a couple totally lost in their own dusk-light make-out session. The proximity of other people kissing might have influenced Ben, or the aphrodisiac nectarines. But mostly it was the sweet mountain air and the shadowy golden light that persuaded Ben to sweep Jeremy into a dance hold and kiss him.
Jeremy made that perturbed, twisty face again, although this time it looked like he was trying to regain control of his lips. He stepped back and shook himself out. Then, resolutely, he leaned forward into Ben's arms and kissed back, longer. A promise.
The couple, the other couple, was looking at them. Ben braced himself for self-defense. Instead, he got a smile and a thumbs-up from the guy. They were both going to have good nights.
The sun was melting behind the mountains. They walked back, slipping on the downhill grade. "That," Jeremy said. "I, I wasn't trying to get you to do that. Or anything."
"I know," Ben said.
"I mean, I had a crush," Jeremy said. "But, like, I figured that out on the fossil tour, so, like -- I really wasn't going to try anything."
"I know. I started it. Relax."
"I... don't actually ever relax," Jeremy said.
"I'm getting that," Ben said. He stopped, making a wall of his body so Jeremy stumbled into him and could be kissed.
"Please don't," Jeremy said. "Or we'll get all turned around."
"And the bears will eat us," Ben said. Casually, he let his hands sink to Jeremy's butt. Jeremy gave in and kissed Ben, and this time there was tongue, and hair-tugging, and the balance-shifting strength of Jeremy's upper body. They tumbled to their knees, groping under layers of fleece, skinning themselves on the gravel. Ben felt Jeremy up, admiring his hard pecs, his tight little nipples and sharp ribs. In the dark, all bodies were sexy. And Jeremy's more than most.
"I have condoms in my first aid kit," Ben said.
Jeremy snorted.
"I forgot to take them out," Ben said. "I... have a history of liking the woods."
Ben could literally hear crickets. Crickets, and possibly tiny frogs. "I... I'm not this kind of person," Jeremy said. "The kind of person who does this."
"Me neither," Ben said. "I mean, not with someone I barely know."
"We don't have to," Jeremy said. "I mean, we can go back, and we can go in the tent, and we can -- or we can not at all --"
"Fine with me," Ben said. "If you'd rather."
"I'd, I'd rather -- I'd rather be the kind of person who does this," Jeremy said.
Ben found his first aid kit, and Jeremy took a pair of gloves out of his vest pocket. "Got any knee pads?" Ben said.
They picked up where they left off, exposed no more skin than necessary, kept their eyes open. Ben felt for Jeremy's dick, and when he found it, proved that Jeremy knew how to relax. To let Ben into him. Jeremy was an eager lover, yielding, curving his body up under Ben's. He came into Ben's hand a little fast, a little ashamed, but Ben kissed his neck and told him it wasn't a contest, and then hurried the hell up. Ben took in the smells of things blooming, and of other things turning back into earth, and of one person sweating and sated under him. He drew them deep into his body and loved them. He whispered, "I'm close, I'm there," and he felt Jeremy steel himself, and he came, breathing all that beauty back into the air.
They zipped themselves back up and got out their flashlights. "Did you see the bear?" Jeremy said.
"What bear?" Ben said.
"The bear that was watching us the entire time," Jeremy said.
"There was a bear?" Ben said. "I missed the bear?"
"Yeah," Jeremy said. "He was standing right next to the T-Rex."
They followed the trail downhill to the campgrounds and found the Jeep locked up safe, their tent where they'd left it. Semi-competent in the dark and grateful for the lighter fluid, they got a fire going. They sat in its glow for a long time, talking mostly but kissing plenty, huddling together and laughing when the wind gusted.
They had a fifteen-mile hike-climb planned for the morning, taking the difficult trails into isolated back country. Ben wondered whether the gift shop at the visitors' center sold condoms. Or knee pads.
They put out the fire and got ready for bed, not so modest this time. In his shy, circular way, Jeremy asked Ben if they should zip their sleeping bags together. Ben was learning that the more Jeremy wanted something, the more he pretended it wasn't any trouble. They snuggled up together. There was enough room left over in their tent for a couple of bears and a T-Rex. But being alone together, safe and private in the vague sheen of starlight, was exhilarating too.