Happy birthday, B!
Note important to reading this story: Alex is Blink and Michael is Mush.
In summer, the song sings itself.
William Carlos Williams
If there is anything better than this moment, Michael doesn't know what it is, or when it is. Everything is stretched out golden under the sun, even the springy, sprinkler-fed grass taking on a yellow sheen, and the natural reds and browns of the clay baseball diamond and the scattered park benches are richly enhanced. Someone has thrown blankets out on the ground and Michael takes advantage of one with a bold checkered pattern and blue fringe, flopping on it with chin in hands; his nose twitches and he sneezes when freshly mown bits of grass are thrown up in the air from his impact, sticking to his arms and the bend of his knees where his skin is moist and sweaty.
The whole park and everything in it is baking in the mid-day sun, including the back of his neck, but he's too comfortable to move into the shade with the adults and some of the smarter kids. The other, less self-preserving kids are enjoying the small jungle gym set up on the other end of the park from the baseball diamond. From the occasional shriek, he guesses that the metal slide is too hot to slide down comfortably but they're trying it anyway.
It isn't unusual for this to happen at the end of the local Little League season: The winners get their trophy and the losers get comforted with popsicles that melt and drip cherry and grape splotches on their uniforms. Then, because they're ten-year-olds, they forget any grudges and run off to play, while the adults set up a picnic for everyone. He has memories of doing this when he was youngerâboth the time his team won and the multiple times they lostâand he figures, when he thinks about the future, that his kids will do the same, but they'll win more often. This year it's his little brother who played, and lost, and is dangling from the monkey bars with purple stains around his mouth.
After the Little League game ended, some of the kids' older brothers and uncles had usurped the field for an impromptu game of their own. This is what Michael's attention is focused on now. The game, if it could be called that, is winding down. Mostly they're just tossing the ball back and forth, or shoving each other whenever they get the chance. He catches a glimpse of a particular set of pale legsâlooks up, up, to the pale sports shorts, white shirt, ruddy face, golden hairâfeels a slow stir, low in his belly, and smiles.
He's contented. The events of the day have settled into his skin, eased into his blood and set it at a low simmer. First there had been sitting in the bleachers, the metal seats hot enough to justify any shifting towards someone that might have been done, any intimate brush of thigh against thigh excusable. Their hands had touched, sweaty palms together, as they stole sips of each other's iced sodas, and no one had cared because everyone else had been doing it. Then there had been watermelon, slurping up the cool juice as it gushed over his chin, watching as Alex watched him. Soon after that, Alex had run onto the field to play.
Alex loves baseball and Michael loves that Alex loves baseball. Michael loves that Alex looks so wonderful and alive when he plays, so happy, grinning the goofy smile that shows his teeth and pushes his cheeks up until his eyes crinkle and his mouth looks bigger than possible. It's fun to play with him and the guys, but it's even more fun to watch. To feel the heat curl through his limbs and know that he can let it tease maddeningly without doing anything to encourage it, or that he can build it higher.
He hasn't decided what he wants to do yet.
Michael is very aware of his body right now; of the way it's pressed against the ground from knees to chest. He gives an experimental wriggle, to feel the blanket chafe against his sensitized skin. The resulting sensation is pleasant, but he settles again, flicks away a bug that has crawled onto the blanket, watches as Alex takes a tumble onto the red clay.
It seems that this is one fall too many for Alex. He picks himself up, makes a half-hearted attempt to dust himself off, then turns toward Michael and waves in his direction. Michael can see the flash of his teeth against his dirt-smudged face. He licks his own teeth and beckons Alex over.
The way Alex moves is all loose-limbed ease and agility. He's comfortable in his skin in a way that most people never achieve except after sex, and he doesn't have a sense of personal boundaries. It works to their advantage, though, because people have come to expect Alex to be all over everybody, indiscriminately. Their physical relationship in public can encompass almost anything, up to kissing, because of this.
Alex saunters over and stands above Michael, the dirty toes of his sneakers on the edge of the blanket. "You rang?" he intones, trying for Lurch from the Adams Family and failing miserably, as usual.
Michael stares at the clean patch of skin on Alex's left ankle, where a sock had protected it from the brunt of the dirt but was now slipping down inside the shoe. Then he cranes his neck back, taking in the curved calf muscles and knobby, scarred knees; the shadowed look up shorts that Alex unintentionally (or intentionally, Michael can never tell) gave him; the way sweat has dampened the sleeveless t-shirt and made it almost transparent in places. Alex puts a hand on his hip, causing the shirt to stretch across his pelvis, and revealing that he's partially aroused. Probably only from the game and the exhilaration of playing, but he's looking down at Michael with a slow smoldering behind his impish grin.
Michael feels his lips pull up in an answering crooked smile.
He pats the blanket beside him. "I did ring. Sit, stay. Good dog."
Shaking himself out in a manner remarkably like an actual puppy worrying at a bone, Alex flops onto the blanket, knees wide, and lets his hands dangle between his thighs.
"So what are you doing over here instead of playing with us? We could have used the extra man." The speculative look in his eye says he knows exactly what Michael was doing, but Michael is used to this game, this play of words between them, and doesn't give in to the obvious bait.
"I was watching you have sex with your baseball bat," he says instead and eases onto his side, to face Alex more directly.
Alex's already flushed face turns pink.
"I was not having sex with it."
"Uh-huh. So you weren't fondling the head? Or choking up on the grip? Or lifting it erect in hopes of hitting the sweet spot and scoringâ"
"Hey!" Alex says indignantly. "I never choke up on the grip. And anyway, I'll have you know that I wasn't having sex with it." He pauses significantly. "We were making love."
Michael laughs at this, aware that the laugh is too loud and that he sounds like a donkey, but unable to care. It's what they do, what their relationship is made of: Laughter and cheesy jokes and the warm feeling in his gut that makes him want sex and hand-holding at the same time. He doesn't reply to the joke, instead enjoying the way Alex is fidgeting across from him, too alive for sitting still, even on a hot summer day that makes Michael feel as slow as the grass growing.
Alex twitches hair away from his forehead and eases a finger under the patch across his eye, wiping sweat away. Michael catches a glimpse of the scar that lost Alex his vision in that eye as a child; he feels a familiar catch in his chest at the sight. Without conscious thought he reaches out to touch and comfort, although the woundâphysical and emotionalâis an old, healed one. His fingers graze the inside of Alex's knee, linger there.
Alex meets his eyes. The patient heat that Michael had been tending flares up behind his cheeks and he realizes that his body has made the decision of what to say for him.
He clears his throat. "So how 'bout a walk?" He nods casually toward the now-abandoned baseball diamond, ringed with stands of bleachers that give it an air of privacy. Not much privacy, but maybe enough, maybe enough to...
A blank look is all he gets from Alex. "A walk? I don't want to walk, I want toâ" his voice trails off as he follows Michael's gaze
"Oh," he says. "A walk."
Michael nods.
"That's wrong on so many levels."
Another nod.
"Could get us in all kinds of trouble if anyone saw us."
Michael just keeps nodding.
The familiar, lopsided grin returns to Alex's face. "You're like a sexy evil genius," he says.
"Yeah, but I don't look good in the white lab coat, so I gave up my chances at a life of crime and villainous debauchery."
Alex rubs his jaw, shrugs his shoulders, then jumps to his feet. "Well, come on then," he says, kicking at the blanket. "If I show you the sweet spot, will you let me score?"
Michael thinks of long, naked legs, a hard cock, calloused hands in his hair, and says: "Yes."
He thinks it's a miracle they make it to the baseball field without attracting notice for the way their hands brush and cling together as they walk. They circle the field casually, looking for the most secluded spot, as red dust puffs up around their shoes.
The best spot, it turns out, is at the far end of the tiny field, behind second base. Two sets of risers meet there, creating a sort of shelter, and the scrubby trees behind them give it the impression of seclusion. The sudden shade makes Michael's heated skin feel tight, and with the pounding of his heart he feels like a drum.
Alex is looking fidgety again. Michael takes a moment to admire the effect of layered shadow across his faceâtree shadow over metal-slat shadowâbefore grabbing his shoulders. "Hey," Michael whispers soothingly. "Hey."
Then there is a tongue in his mouth.
It's enough to make anyone weak in the knees, he reasons, having Alex-tongue in their mouth. So when the tongue strokes along his own then glides along the roof of his mouth, he feels no shame that his toes curl inside his damp socks and sneakers. He opens his mouth wider and tastes salt from the sweat on Alex's upper lip. He closes his mouth and sucks the full lower lip between his teeth. It's a familiar dance between them, but one they don't have much time to indulge in. Sooner or laterâprobably sooner just because of what they're doingâsomeone is going to come looking for them. Through the haze of desire that's clouding his brain, he knows that they have to hurry or risk getting caught.
He can feel the thrust of hips against his own and knows what will speed things up.
Regretfully, he tears his mouth away and takes a shaky breath. Alex breathes hard as well, his warm breath gusting over Michael's lips. Alex shifts a little and the right of his face disappears into shadow.
There's a viscous feel to the air beneath the bleachers, making time seem to slow as he tugs Alex to the ground. Alex is sprawled out on the straggly clumps of grass and dirt, knees spread and shorts around his ankles, with Michael's mouth on the inside of his thigh, before any time seems to pass at all. He inhales deeply and fills his nose with the smell of dirt and sweat and boy-musk. His own cock is a hard ache between his legs. He briefly touches the fly of his shorts with two fingers, teasing, then moves the hand to the base of Alex's cock.
Alex shoves the heel of his hand between his teeth to silence the cry. His hips buck up into the channel Michael makes of his hand, then tense again. Michael observes all this then pushes it out of his mind as he noses into the crease between thigh and groin. He licks there once, then again, pressing his tongue to a point of pulsing heat. Tiny hairs on Alex's thigh chafe against his cheek and ear. There's heat all around him, but especially in front of him, and his mouth is drawn to that.
When Michael wraps his lips around the head of Alex's cock, Alex lets out a low moan from behind his hand. The noise makes Michael frown and draw back. Alex makes a sound like an apology and shuts his lips tighter around the makeshift gag. With a feeling like fondness and lust rushing through his veins, Michael gets down to business. He opens his mouth and throat and swallows Alex down to where his hand still grips the base. Then the only sounds for the next few minutes are a wet sucking and two labored breathing patterns.
He can tell when Alex is close because one hand falls heavily into his hair and the hips beneath him are straining off the ground. Michael takes a deep breath through his nose and swallows against the hardness filling his mouth. Alex seems to still for a long moment, and then his body jumps to life again and he is coming in bitter spurts down Michael's throat and onto the dirt when Michael pulls away to breathe.
Even after orgasm, Alex is full of a certain energy that seems to fill his limbs until it leaves him glowing. Michael is tempted to whisper this against his throat, but is reminded again of the need for silence. Instead, he gently pulls the hand away from his lover's mouth and kisses him.
Alex seems to take this as a hint and rolls him over. Michael's back protests the hard ground, but he finds it difficult to complain when Alex grabs the front of his shorts. He squeezes his eyes shut and white light sparks behind his lids.
Ah, he thinks, and more and love.
Alex's nimble fingers slip the zipper down as Michael gasps against his lips. He quickly frees Michael's aching cock, not even bothering to remove the shorts, but Michael is too preoccupied by warm fingers playing up and down its length to notice. His skin has that drum feeling again, like his pulsing blood is beating a wild rhythm that echoes in his ears.
He scans the face above him, made unfamiliar by shadowed patterns, as Alex's hand draws heat from his limbs to his belly. Stroke after stroke and the patterns keep changing. He reaches, draws his thumb across a streak of dirt, feels like maybe, so close.
His eyes slide shut as he shudders and digs his heels into the ground.
When he opens his eyes again, Alex is draped over his body, grinning sloppily. Michael kisses the dimple in his cheek and guesses, by the sudden, sharp charcoal scent, that someone has started up a grill. Food suddenly sounds good, and maybe crawling under one of the blooming Jacaranda trees and taking a nap. Alex yawns, his head drooping so that his nose presses into the corner of Michael's eye.
As they clean up and dress and try to keep their hands off each other, Michael thinks that he'll stay out of the sun for the rest of the day; he has more than his share of heat.
The Song Sings Itself by Shimmerwings