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.au fic: The Hours of Instruction - D/M (eventual NC17) 6.?
Title: The Hours of Instruction
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: D/M
Rating/Warning: PG/PG13 for now; R/NC17 eventually.
Disclaimers: If the boys were mine, this season would not be happening.
Advertisements: Catholic school AU. For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
wordclaim50 challenge #01 (AU) and philosophy_20 challenge #08 (Faith).
Chapters: 01; 02; 03; 04; 05
Notes: Yes. Next part, at last.
CHAPTER SIX
When he was thirteen, Martin had come to a decision about himself: he was, and would be, perfectly comfortable with being homosexual, so long as absolutely no one knew about it.
As it turned out, two people, other than himself, knew: his Aunt Bonnie, from whom it was impossible for Martin to keep anything, and Sam. She had deserved to know, and had figured it out anyway a few days after they’d ended their strange, half-hearted relationship; he’d been two seconds away from telling her when she’d burst out with “Oh my God, you’re gay!” and he’d felt oddly cheated at her stealing that chance from him. But a heartbeat after that explosion she’d sworn herself to secrecy, and Martin trusted her that much.
The not-to-know list was much more extensive: his parents, his sister, the few friends he’d had at Westmore, his mentor, his teachers, his roommate Alex, his teammates, the boys and young men of Westmore who flickered, bright flames, in the corner of his awareness, more entrancing than the girls.
And Martin had added Danny to that list the second he’d laid eyes on him, added him because he was beautiful and dangerous and not to be trusted. Because he got too close too easily, like now, body pressing Martin hard up against their door and scent filling the air around him, and because Martin knew this was what Danny did – got inside people’s heads and fucked with them, because he could
Which probably, he thought hazily, meant Danny already knew; if he hadn’t caught Martin staring at him when they’d first met, then he’d definitely figured it out when he’d caught Martin spying on him undressing. And that could mean either Danny was fine with Martin, or more than fine, or – more likely, said a small, cynical voice – wasn’t fine but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to torment him.
“So,” he said, amazed at how steady his voice was, “you want to know my life story?”
“Another time,” Danny said, grinning, evil and delighted.
Only one thing to do then and that was to take that opportunity from Danny, take a chance, and Martin’s hands were on Danny’s collar to pull him in.
Not that Danny needed to be pulled, probably, because he was there, coming easy and natural – scary in its own way – mouth settling on Martin’s, sigh like smugness and victory against his lips. And now that Danny was here, kissing him, Martin’s confidence faltered – so far removed from anything else he’d ever done, anything he’d expected, this pressing and insistent warmth, and Danny’s mouth was soft, coaxing Martin out of uncertainty, and his body was hard, demanding.
Feel, not think, his body said, and Martin was happy to comply. Odd-tasting kiss, not that he was going to complain, because Danny against him felt way too good, something he didn’t know he’d missed until he found it. Something unexpected, Danny’s mouth pressing his open, tongue slipping past his teeth, changing the angle to push the kiss deeper, deeper, like drowning and Martin was fine with that.
Like he was fine with Danny pulling his shirt up, fingernails scraping across his abdomen, alternating with light, elusive strokes that had Martin’s entire body vibrating, arching up, his shoulders pressed back against the door. Danny’s tongue, God, Danny’s tongue was in his mouth, way too intimate and overwhelming, shorting out rational thought and everything except Danny’s mouth and tongue, the clever fingers teasing across his ribs. He was hard and Danny had to know it, the way Martin was helplessly pressing up to him, and Danny was hard too and –
Tap tap.
Danny sighed, a dismissive shrug – ignore it – and Martin could go along with that. Hands on Danny’s shoulders and he loved the strength of muscle under Danny’s t-shirt, the fabric rumpling as he flexed his fingers, hard, strong curve down his back, the indentations of his spine, found skin, indescribable that, hot and firm and Danny was whispering approval against his lips. And –
“Danny? Martin?”
Oh, God. Father West. Father West was standing right outside their door, inches away from Martin’s sweaty back. Martin froze, trying not to breathe or even move. Danny’s own breath was hushed, cautious, hot against Martin’s cheek.
“Danny? Martin?” Father West’s light, gentle voice drifted through the door, and the haze of lust wrapped around Martin’s brain. “Come on, you two. It’s past lights-out.”
“Yes, sir,” Danny called, voice remarkably steady. “Martin’s finishing his Chem. homework.” Enough sarcasm left in Danny for him to toss a small, evil wink at Martin.
“Five minutes then,” Father West said. “Good night, boys.”
“Good night, Father West.” Danny remained pressed against Martin, chest to chest, the curve of his neck – he was slightly taller than Martin – warm and moist, vibrant, close enough for Martin to kiss.
He wanted to, wanted to taste salt and sweat, what Danny would taste like under it, but he didn’t, wanted to curse the sudden surge of caution, the return of the rules-following version of himself he hated and was powerless against.
Dimly, he heard Father West’s footsteps, hollow on the marble tile, echo down the hallway, pausing at the room next to them. Distant knock – “Trevor? Seth? Lights out.”
“Dammit,” Danny mumbled, turning the curse into a kiss pressed to the corner of Martin’s mouth. “Where were we?”
“Turning the lights off.” Talking with someone else’s tongue in your mouth? Much harder to do. Martin flailed ineffectually for the light switch, fingers tangling with Danny’s. The light flicked off, then on and off again. “And – ” Danny’s mouth left his to trail down Martin’s neck, making speech easy again. “ – Father West’ll come in, the door – ”He wanted to say that the door didn’t have a lock on it, that Father West was just doors down, and shut up shut up shut the fuck up he told himself, with Danny nipping and licking beneath his jawline, his chin, his lips again.
Danny must have read the confusion in his body, the stiffening that was reluctance and not wanting. He pulled back, eyes wide and dark but catching unexpected light, wry smile softening harder, glassy edges.
“You cool?” he asked, fingers hovering above the pulse of Martin’s neck, oddly gentle, low-key against the shrill clamor of thought and sensation in Martin’s brain.
“Yeah.” Martin stared at the darkness somewhere above Danny’s head. “Yeah, I’m cool.”
“Cool.” Quick, bright kiss, there and gone almost before Martin could respond, and Danny was stepping back, taking all his warmth and danger with him, and Martin wanted to pull him back again.
Pride kept him from it. He straightened shakily and pushed himself away from the door, watching Danny as he pulled his covers down, a hesitation as though he wanted to ask something, but didn’t.
They undressed for bed, the silence between them meditative, like Danny was thinking about this too, and Martin watched him – openly this time – happy to appreciate Danny skinning out of his t-shirt, smooth flex of muscle and bone moving beneath skin Martin ached to touch again. Of course, Danny caught him looking and grinned, pleasure mixed with teasing this time, though Martin couldn’t keep from blushing when he saw that Danny was looking too.
* * *
“O Martine,” Dr. Walker always addressed the students by the Latinate forms of their names if he possibly could, “I know you know what the dative of agent with passive periphrastic is. Could you please, in future, translate it properly, as I know you can?”
“Yes, Dr. Walker,” Martin mumbled, trying to hide behind his edition of the Aeneid.
Yes, it was six days later, Martin found himself – still – hovering between disbelief, euphoria, and hormones.
The result?
Confusion, and enough distraction to send him sleepwalking through the Chemistry quiz, to earn him a lecture from Walker on his Latin and Rose on a fumbled question about Augustinian and Pelagian differences on the concept of free will. The latter was worse, because it meant Preston walked around with a smug, insufferable expression that was nowhere near as sexy as Danny’s.
“At least Rose didn’t make us write another essay after you screwed up,” was Fleming’s consolation, which did actually help.
What it didn’t help, though, was the confusion – over that night, how easy it had been to ignore his own rules, how easily Danny had persuaded him to ignore those rules. The morning after – if you could even call it that – had been.... strange, was one way of putting it, not freaking out over the kiss so much as he was freaking out over not freaking out, if that made any sense at all. Or, actually, freaking out over things only tangentially related to the kiss.
Not only a kiss, come to think of it. Martin rubbed absently at his neck, glancing covertly at the lawn full of boys swirling around him, half-wished Danny had bitten him hard enough to leave a mark – not because he wanted the other boys to tease him, but because he wanted some kind of reminder, something to tell him not all of this was in his head.
After History on Friday afternoon, he went to Raine for extra practice, not that he really needed it – competitions weren’t until the spring, and Dombrowski was happy enough with Martin’s progress – but he needed not to think for a while, to assimilate the past week. Though, as he was undressing and stuffing his gear into his locker, Martin wondered if it was in fact possible to assimilate everything that had happened.
A shiver worked its way down his body, thinking of waking up that next morning, Danny perched on the side of his bed, fingers lacing thoughtfully through Martin’s hair, the gesture so unexpectedly familiar, intimate, and Martin had been too sleepy to make sense of Danny’s expression. Like he was surprised by what had happened between them, as much as Martin was. Surprised, but in a good way, like he honestly hadn’t expected it.
Then Danny had bounced to his feet with the announcement that he’d obviously worn Martin out last night, and they were going to be late for breakfast if Martin didn’t hurry, and it was blueberry muffins today – which were edible – and he wasn’t going to miss them, and he wasn’t going to save Martin any, either, so Martin had better get a move on.
The look had stayed with Martin, though, enough – more than enough – to distract him even now. Irritated with himself, Martin slammed his locker shut and stalked into the pool area to warm up. That, he realized, was the problem. Not the kiss, not Danny knowing, but that the whole thing was unexpected, had just happened, and if there was one thing Martin didn’t really like, it was spontaneity.
It occurred to him that, like most things in the world, their make-out session against the door hadn’t just happened, that they’d been building toward that moment for the past few weeks. Maybe for longer than that, rules and need-to-know lists aside.
He ran through his warm-up routine absentmindedly, trusting his body to loosen up on its own. A few other boys offered their own distracted hellos, which Martin didn’t bother to return. He cut his routine short – probably not smart, but what the hell – and slid into the water, pulling his goggles down as he pushed away from the wall.
Rhythm was slow in coming this time, which annoyed him – maybe he needed Danny in the stands again, he thought sarcastically, seeing as how he seemed to perform better whenever Danny was around, and he was emphatically not going to take that the way he wanted – and when he found it, stroke and breath were forced. Like his body was rejecting them, like his brain was going to defeat the water this time.
Stroke and stroke and str – breathe, because his lungs swore they were running out of air and they weren’t, but his lungs didn’t know that and he breathed in anyway, twisting his head up awkwardly, barely in time to keep from swallowing half the pool. Too much effort already and he didn’t even try a racing turn at the far wall, only touched the side with one hand, pushed off again into futility.
Focus, Martin. He shut his eyes a moment, trying to block out competing thoughts, competing voices – his own, his father’s, Dombrowski’s, Danny’s, the voice of every rule he’d ever read – wanted to listen to nothing except his heart and the water, and it wasn’t fucking happening.
He fumbled the second turn, toes scraping painfully off the concrete and dammit, wasn’t there supposed to be a glow or something? Post almost-sex euphoria? Because the rest of that night had been... Well, frustrating for one, because he knew both he and his body would have liked to have picked up right where they’d been forced to leave off, never mind Father West – the hell, in fact, with Father West and the hell with everybody – and he’d spent the night uncomfortably aroused. Worse than the first night, because now he knew what Danny felt like under those clothes now.
But aside from that one morning, Danny hadn’t tried to kiss or touch him again, hadn’t mentioned what they’d done, had seemed content to let it ride – or let it go. What the hell did that mean? Mid-stroke, Martin fiercely told himself not to look for some huge, grand romance in five minutes of making out.
The next turn wasn’t much better, but at least he didn’t take any more skin off.
Which meant he should ask Danny, talk to him, which freaked the hell right out of Martin. Or maybe he could try kissing Danny again and see what happened.
Good idea. He’d obviously taken Danny off his “don’t ask, don’t tell” list, and he figured he owed Danny an explanation.
Unless, of course, Danny was just doing this to fuck around with him; he really was straight, was just experimenting... But Martin couldn’t make himself believe that. Because Danny fucked around with a lot of people in a lot of different ways, but what had happened hadn’t felt like that. It had felt... good. Really, really good.
Swimming was still more like fighting, like he was somewhere in deep, turbulent water and not the only person in the pool. Fighting his own thoughts, his own doubts, the water, everything, and he should just give up –
Another mistimed breath, and this time he couldn’t catch it, swallowed water – swallowed it the wrong way and he coughed explosively, tried to breathe past the water already in his lungs, swallowed even more, still the wrong way, and he couldn’t remember when he’d forgotten how to breathe. Water in his nose now, because he’d forgotten to put in his nose plugs – of course, said the small, cold detached voice of reason because you were too busy thinking about other things to pay attention.
He reached blindly for one of the lane markers, couldn’t find it, fear and suffocation swamping him, faint awareness that he was probably going to drown. You’re not going to drown, moron and of course he wasn’t; there were other people here, he just couldn’t see them was all.
His lungs were tight, his throat closing up. Panic attack, he told himself. You’re having a panic attack, which is a natural reaction to feeling like you’re going to drown. Move your arms, your legs, move them, damn it, swim, dog-paddle, you need to get back to the wall so you can get out and his arms and legs didn’t seem to cooperate.
Dimly, he felt the water close over his head, the hum and clank of the filters more vibration than sound.
Resurfaced briefly, in time to hear bare feet on the concrete, urgent, anonymous voices, and – yeah, yeah, Danny’s voice too, shouting, thin and weak under the echoing ceiling of the pool, made distant by the water.
-tbc.-
Suspense!
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: D/M
Rating/Warning: PG/PG13 for now; R/NC17 eventually.
Disclaimers: If the boys were mine, this season would not be happening.
Advertisements: Catholic school AU. For
wordclaim50 challenge #01 (AU) and philosophy_20 challenge #08 (Faith).Chapters: 01; 02; 03; 04; 05
Notes: Yes. Next part, at last.
CHAPTER SIX
When he was thirteen, Martin had come to a decision about himself: he was, and would be, perfectly comfortable with being homosexual, so long as absolutely no one knew about it.
As it turned out, two people, other than himself, knew: his Aunt Bonnie, from whom it was impossible for Martin to keep anything, and Sam. She had deserved to know, and had figured it out anyway a few days after they’d ended their strange, half-hearted relationship; he’d been two seconds away from telling her when she’d burst out with “Oh my God, you’re gay!” and he’d felt oddly cheated at her stealing that chance from him. But a heartbeat after that explosion she’d sworn herself to secrecy, and Martin trusted her that much.
The not-to-know list was much more extensive: his parents, his sister, the few friends he’d had at Westmore, his mentor, his teachers, his roommate Alex, his teammates, the boys and young men of Westmore who flickered, bright flames, in the corner of his awareness, more entrancing than the girls.
And Martin had added Danny to that list the second he’d laid eyes on him, added him because he was beautiful and dangerous and not to be trusted. Because he got too close too easily, like now, body pressing Martin hard up against their door and scent filling the air around him, and because Martin knew this was what Danny did – got inside people’s heads and fucked with them, because he could
Which probably, he thought hazily, meant Danny already knew; if he hadn’t caught Martin staring at him when they’d first met, then he’d definitely figured it out when he’d caught Martin spying on him undressing. And that could mean either Danny was fine with Martin, or more than fine, or – more likely, said a small, cynical voice – wasn’t fine but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to torment him.
“So,” he said, amazed at how steady his voice was, “you want to know my life story?”
“Another time,” Danny said, grinning, evil and delighted.
Only one thing to do then and that was to take that opportunity from Danny, take a chance, and Martin’s hands were on Danny’s collar to pull him in.
Not that Danny needed to be pulled, probably, because he was there, coming easy and natural – scary in its own way – mouth settling on Martin’s, sigh like smugness and victory against his lips. And now that Danny was here, kissing him, Martin’s confidence faltered – so far removed from anything else he’d ever done, anything he’d expected, this pressing and insistent warmth, and Danny’s mouth was soft, coaxing Martin out of uncertainty, and his body was hard, demanding.
Feel, not think, his body said, and Martin was happy to comply. Odd-tasting kiss, not that he was going to complain, because Danny against him felt way too good, something he didn’t know he’d missed until he found it. Something unexpected, Danny’s mouth pressing his open, tongue slipping past his teeth, changing the angle to push the kiss deeper, deeper, like drowning and Martin was fine with that.
Like he was fine with Danny pulling his shirt up, fingernails scraping across his abdomen, alternating with light, elusive strokes that had Martin’s entire body vibrating, arching up, his shoulders pressed back against the door. Danny’s tongue, God, Danny’s tongue was in his mouth, way too intimate and overwhelming, shorting out rational thought and everything except Danny’s mouth and tongue, the clever fingers teasing across his ribs. He was hard and Danny had to know it, the way Martin was helplessly pressing up to him, and Danny was hard too and –
Tap tap.
Danny sighed, a dismissive shrug – ignore it – and Martin could go along with that. Hands on Danny’s shoulders and he loved the strength of muscle under Danny’s t-shirt, the fabric rumpling as he flexed his fingers, hard, strong curve down his back, the indentations of his spine, found skin, indescribable that, hot and firm and Danny was whispering approval against his lips. And –
“Danny? Martin?”
Oh, God. Father West. Father West was standing right outside their door, inches away from Martin’s sweaty back. Martin froze, trying not to breathe or even move. Danny’s own breath was hushed, cautious, hot against Martin’s cheek.
“Danny? Martin?” Father West’s light, gentle voice drifted through the door, and the haze of lust wrapped around Martin’s brain. “Come on, you two. It’s past lights-out.”
“Yes, sir,” Danny called, voice remarkably steady. “Martin’s finishing his Chem. homework.” Enough sarcasm left in Danny for him to toss a small, evil wink at Martin.
“Five minutes then,” Father West said. “Good night, boys.”
“Good night, Father West.” Danny remained pressed against Martin, chest to chest, the curve of his neck – he was slightly taller than Martin – warm and moist, vibrant, close enough for Martin to kiss.
He wanted to, wanted to taste salt and sweat, what Danny would taste like under it, but he didn’t, wanted to curse the sudden surge of caution, the return of the rules-following version of himself he hated and was powerless against.
Dimly, he heard Father West’s footsteps, hollow on the marble tile, echo down the hallway, pausing at the room next to them. Distant knock – “Trevor? Seth? Lights out.”
“Dammit,” Danny mumbled, turning the curse into a kiss pressed to the corner of Martin’s mouth. “Where were we?”
“Turning the lights off.” Talking with someone else’s tongue in your mouth? Much harder to do. Martin flailed ineffectually for the light switch, fingers tangling with Danny’s. The light flicked off, then on and off again. “And – ” Danny’s mouth left his to trail down Martin’s neck, making speech easy again. “ – Father West’ll come in, the door – ”He wanted to say that the door didn’t have a lock on it, that Father West was just doors down, and shut up shut up shut the fuck up he told himself, with Danny nipping and licking beneath his jawline, his chin, his lips again.
Danny must have read the confusion in his body, the stiffening that was reluctance and not wanting. He pulled back, eyes wide and dark but catching unexpected light, wry smile softening harder, glassy edges.
“You cool?” he asked, fingers hovering above the pulse of Martin’s neck, oddly gentle, low-key against the shrill clamor of thought and sensation in Martin’s brain.
“Yeah.” Martin stared at the darkness somewhere above Danny’s head. “Yeah, I’m cool.”
“Cool.” Quick, bright kiss, there and gone almost before Martin could respond, and Danny was stepping back, taking all his warmth and danger with him, and Martin wanted to pull him back again.
Pride kept him from it. He straightened shakily and pushed himself away from the door, watching Danny as he pulled his covers down, a hesitation as though he wanted to ask something, but didn’t.
They undressed for bed, the silence between them meditative, like Danny was thinking about this too, and Martin watched him – openly this time – happy to appreciate Danny skinning out of his t-shirt, smooth flex of muscle and bone moving beneath skin Martin ached to touch again. Of course, Danny caught him looking and grinned, pleasure mixed with teasing this time, though Martin couldn’t keep from blushing when he saw that Danny was looking too.
“O Martine,” Dr. Walker always addressed the students by the Latinate forms of their names if he possibly could, “I know you know what the dative of agent with passive periphrastic is. Could you please, in future, translate it properly, as I know you can?”
“Yes, Dr. Walker,” Martin mumbled, trying to hide behind his edition of the Aeneid.
Yes, it was six days later, Martin found himself – still – hovering between disbelief, euphoria, and hormones.
The result?
Confusion, and enough distraction to send him sleepwalking through the Chemistry quiz, to earn him a lecture from Walker on his Latin and Rose on a fumbled question about Augustinian and Pelagian differences on the concept of free will. The latter was worse, because it meant Preston walked around with a smug, insufferable expression that was nowhere near as sexy as Danny’s.
“At least Rose didn’t make us write another essay after you screwed up,” was Fleming’s consolation, which did actually help.
What it didn’t help, though, was the confusion – over that night, how easy it had been to ignore his own rules, how easily Danny had persuaded him to ignore those rules. The morning after – if you could even call it that – had been.... strange, was one way of putting it, not freaking out over the kiss so much as he was freaking out over not freaking out, if that made any sense at all. Or, actually, freaking out over things only tangentially related to the kiss.
Not only a kiss, come to think of it. Martin rubbed absently at his neck, glancing covertly at the lawn full of boys swirling around him, half-wished Danny had bitten him hard enough to leave a mark – not because he wanted the other boys to tease him, but because he wanted some kind of reminder, something to tell him not all of this was in his head.
After History on Friday afternoon, he went to Raine for extra practice, not that he really needed it – competitions weren’t until the spring, and Dombrowski was happy enough with Martin’s progress – but he needed not to think for a while, to assimilate the past week. Though, as he was undressing and stuffing his gear into his locker, Martin wondered if it was in fact possible to assimilate everything that had happened.
A shiver worked its way down his body, thinking of waking up that next morning, Danny perched on the side of his bed, fingers lacing thoughtfully through Martin’s hair, the gesture so unexpectedly familiar, intimate, and Martin had been too sleepy to make sense of Danny’s expression. Like he was surprised by what had happened between them, as much as Martin was. Surprised, but in a good way, like he honestly hadn’t expected it.
Then Danny had bounced to his feet with the announcement that he’d obviously worn Martin out last night, and they were going to be late for breakfast if Martin didn’t hurry, and it was blueberry muffins today – which were edible – and he wasn’t going to miss them, and he wasn’t going to save Martin any, either, so Martin had better get a move on.
The look had stayed with Martin, though, enough – more than enough – to distract him even now. Irritated with himself, Martin slammed his locker shut and stalked into the pool area to warm up. That, he realized, was the problem. Not the kiss, not Danny knowing, but that the whole thing was unexpected, had just happened, and if there was one thing Martin didn’t really like, it was spontaneity.
It occurred to him that, like most things in the world, their make-out session against the door hadn’t just happened, that they’d been building toward that moment for the past few weeks. Maybe for longer than that, rules and need-to-know lists aside.
He ran through his warm-up routine absentmindedly, trusting his body to loosen up on its own. A few other boys offered their own distracted hellos, which Martin didn’t bother to return. He cut his routine short – probably not smart, but what the hell – and slid into the water, pulling his goggles down as he pushed away from the wall.
Rhythm was slow in coming this time, which annoyed him – maybe he needed Danny in the stands again, he thought sarcastically, seeing as how he seemed to perform better whenever Danny was around, and he was emphatically not going to take that the way he wanted – and when he found it, stroke and breath were forced. Like his body was rejecting them, like his brain was going to defeat the water this time.
Stroke and stroke and str – breathe, because his lungs swore they were running out of air and they weren’t, but his lungs didn’t know that and he breathed in anyway, twisting his head up awkwardly, barely in time to keep from swallowing half the pool. Too much effort already and he didn’t even try a racing turn at the far wall, only touched the side with one hand, pushed off again into futility.
Focus, Martin. He shut his eyes a moment, trying to block out competing thoughts, competing voices – his own, his father’s, Dombrowski’s, Danny’s, the voice of every rule he’d ever read – wanted to listen to nothing except his heart and the water, and it wasn’t fucking happening.
He fumbled the second turn, toes scraping painfully off the concrete and dammit, wasn’t there supposed to be a glow or something? Post almost-sex euphoria? Because the rest of that night had been... Well, frustrating for one, because he knew both he and his body would have liked to have picked up right where they’d been forced to leave off, never mind Father West – the hell, in fact, with Father West and the hell with everybody – and he’d spent the night uncomfortably aroused. Worse than the first night, because now he knew what Danny felt like under those clothes now.
But aside from that one morning, Danny hadn’t tried to kiss or touch him again, hadn’t mentioned what they’d done, had seemed content to let it ride – or let it go. What the hell did that mean? Mid-stroke, Martin fiercely told himself not to look for some huge, grand romance in five minutes of making out.
The next turn wasn’t much better, but at least he didn’t take any more skin off.
Which meant he should ask Danny, talk to him, which freaked the hell right out of Martin. Or maybe he could try kissing Danny again and see what happened.
Good idea. He’d obviously taken Danny off his “don’t ask, don’t tell” list, and he figured he owed Danny an explanation.
Unless, of course, Danny was just doing this to fuck around with him; he really was straight, was just experimenting... But Martin couldn’t make himself believe that. Because Danny fucked around with a lot of people in a lot of different ways, but what had happened hadn’t felt like that. It had felt... good. Really, really good.
Swimming was still more like fighting, like he was somewhere in deep, turbulent water and not the only person in the pool. Fighting his own thoughts, his own doubts, the water, everything, and he should just give up –
Another mistimed breath, and this time he couldn’t catch it, swallowed water – swallowed it the wrong way and he coughed explosively, tried to breathe past the water already in his lungs, swallowed even more, still the wrong way, and he couldn’t remember when he’d forgotten how to breathe. Water in his nose now, because he’d forgotten to put in his nose plugs – of course, said the small, cold detached voice of reason because you were too busy thinking about other things to pay attention.
He reached blindly for one of the lane markers, couldn’t find it, fear and suffocation swamping him, faint awareness that he was probably going to drown. You’re not going to drown, moron and of course he wasn’t; there were other people here, he just couldn’t see them was all.
His lungs were tight, his throat closing up. Panic attack, he told himself. You’re having a panic attack, which is a natural reaction to feeling like you’re going to drown. Move your arms, your legs, move them, damn it, swim, dog-paddle, you need to get back to the wall so you can get out and his arms and legs didn’t seem to cooperate.
Dimly, he felt the water close over his head, the hum and clank of the filters more vibration than sound.
Resurfaced briefly, in time to hear bare feet on the concrete, urgent, anonymous voices, and – yeah, yeah, Danny’s voice too, shouting, thin and weak under the echoing ceiling of the pool, made distant by the water.
-tbc.-
Suspense!
no subject
I try my best :)
Also, Danny at his bedside in the morning? Oh, you're evil. *g*
Hee... like I said, I try my best :D