Work Text:
It wasn’t always like this. So easy, like they’d known each other their whole lives, like they’d been best friends for years.
There was a time when Gavin even thought Michael legitimately hated him. He very specifically recalls a quiet moment when he’d pulled Geoff aside, asked if it’d be too much trouble to move his seat from next to Michael’s.
(Geoff had told him yes, of fucking course it was too much trouble, but he’d said it while giving him this odd look that Gavin eventually came to recognize as slight concern.)
It wasn’t easy, not like people might think; it took weeks, months maybe, to figure out how to fit around each other, all sharp elbows and mismatched awkward smiles from across a small room.
It’d taken at least a hundred secretive smiles caught out of the corner of his eye when Michael thought he wasn’t looking, a million tiny little laughs.
The point was, it was different now, seeing Michael all easy smiles, subdued tones, arms resting on the edge of the pool, a beer in one hand. They’re in Geoff’s backyard, the sun isn’t as bright as it was before, and Gavin’s had one drink too many to stifle the niggling little thoughts at the back of his mind.
Geoff and Griffon had been outside too for a while, but Millie had gotten tired, and Geoff wanted stronger drinks, so the family had left earlier, leaving Gavin and Michael alone together.
“You’re going to burn,” Michael said, sufficiently snapping Gavin out of his unusually quiet reverie.
“What?”
“You’re going to get burned, if you don’t put on more sunblock, numbnuts,” he repeated and Gavin nodded sort of absently, pulled himself out of the water to get the bottle Griffon had left behind (she was all warm smiles and motherly affection sometimes, behind her raspy laugh and sailor’s mouth.)
While he sits in one of the pool chairs running his white palms across his arms, Gavin can’t help but notice the way the sun brings out Michael’s freckles, stark against his pale skin. He squints in the sunlight, partly because of the brightness, mostly because of the fact he’s at least half blind without his glasses.
It takes a lot longer than it should probably, putting the lotion all across his face and his chest, and he knows he burns easily, and he knows he’ll bitch and moan for a week if he lets himself burn, but he wants to get in the water again, wants to play stupid pool games with Michael, wants his attention, really, if he’s being honest. So he’ll blame the alcohol if anybody asks where he got the nerve to call out a “Michael, I need help.”
He’s met with the obligatory eye roll and a mumbled “fucking asshole,” as Michael lifts himself out of the pool. He snatches the bottle from Gavin’s hands and Gavin grins up at him with happy, albeit a bit smug, satisfaction.
It doesn’t take long for Gavin to melt into Michael’s touch, he’s like a damn puppy with his dumb pitiful looks and constant need for attention. He hums when Michael digs his fingers into his lower back, and squeaks indignantly when he pinches him roughly on the side.
He’s absolutely not holding his towel strategically over his crotch, no, it just happened to fall that way; the little, occasional grunts of assessment from Michael are not making his cheeks flush, no, that’s only from the sun.
Michael’s hands are cold, they always are, and it occurs to Gavin that it’s not the physicality that strikes him oddly about Michael; he’d just as easily hold Ray’s hand during a scary movie, let Geoff into his personal space like it was nothing because it was nothing, it was family and he loved the way no one in their tiny office knew how to respect personal boundaries.
It was the ease of it, the way he could tell Gavin to go fuck himself a million different ways one second, and yet he'd still be able to trust that Michael would be there if he ever needed anything from him in the next.
Michael shoves him into the pool without warning once he’s done with him, towel and all, and Gavin comes up spluttering and cursing, his train of thought a wreck, laughing through half-assed, laughably false threats.
Michael jumps in after him, and Gavin doesn’t miss his chance, splashes awkwardly forward and wraps his thin arms around Michael’s neck, drags him under the water with him.
“You fucking dumbass,” he coughs out, spitting water into Gavin’s face, but Gavin’s already choking on his own laughs, and Michael doesn’t even bother to hold up his scowl as he dunks him again.
They wrestle for a few minutes, grappling pointlessly for the upper hand in a stupid fight, and eventually Gavin calls mercy, if only for his sanity’s sake, this much bare skin against his own is overruling his better judgment, and Michael just looks so pretty when he smiles.
“Fucking thought so,” he says when Gavin lets go, but he still has Gavin’s wrists pinned between the fingers of one of his hands.
“Come on Michael,” he whines, the last syllable of his name like a soft miserable 'oh'. Michael doesn’t let go though, and Gavin has to swallow hard, because the lousy beer has left his chest warm and his limbs just a bit too loose for everyone’s safety.
When he looks up again, Michael is right there, close enough for Gavin to count the individual drops of water caught between his eyelashes, and his breath is warm on his mouth, and he wants. It burns through him like the harsh sunlight on his bare skin and he swallows again on nothing.
“Michael,” he says again, because he isn’t moving, and he needs to, because the sun is too hot and the beer isn’t cold enough and Geoff is just behind the sliding glass door and he’ll never live it down if Michael were to notice, if he only just shifted an inch—
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Michael mumbles, and then his mouth is pressing soft against Gavin's own.
Michael's lips are dry and he tastes vaguely of chlorine. Gavin momentarily becomes startlingly aware of the placement of each of his fingers resting where Michael is still holding them tightly to his own chest. His eyes go wide and then snap shut, and by the time he's figured out he should be moving his lips too, probably, Michael is pulling away and Gavin absolutely does not let out a tiny cry of protest at the brief loss.
But it's only a second's worth of weightlessness, Michael pulling away with his eyes closed and then diving back in, kissing harder, like he wants to devour him, and Gavin is keening into his open mouth.
His wrists are released and before he can tell his hands to stop shaking so damn much, they're sliding up into Michael's hair, which is wiry where it looks soft, familiar to the touch, but not, in the way that Gavin is tugging at it, his tongue in Michael's mouth and Michael's hands on his arse.
Michael tugs Gavin's lower lip out with his teeth and he moans, doesn't have the willpower to surpress it even slightly, and when Michael moves his thigh up and left two inches, they both gasp in mutual want.
Gavin tries fruitlessly to regulate his heartbeat and thinks about how he wouldn't trade all the sex in the world for the way Michael's tongue feels against the back of his teeth.
It's a good five minutes (ten minutes, half hour, time can go sod itself, for all Gavin cares) of harsh breaths and Michael trailing kisses down his jaw and over his throat and leaving bruises the size of fingertips and teethmarks everywhere they can reach before they're quite rudely interrupted by a loud, pointed cough.
They turn up and away from each other so quickly both of their necks pop loudly in protest, but Geoff only wears the expression of the mildly annoyed and approximately disgusted. Gavin blinks water and sunlight out of his eyes and tries not to look too much like a child with their hand caught in the cookie jar, thanks God it wasn't Millie that found them first.
"Hey Geoff," Michael says weakly from somewhere near Gavin's right ear. Geoff rolls his eyes and is already turning away from their shoddy appearances when he mutters a quiet, "At least you assholes finally fucking figured it out," and closes the glass door behind himself.
Gavin turns back away, toward Michael, and notices abruptly that Michael's hands are bracketing his hips in such a possessive way that it makes Gavin giggle stupidly to himself. Michael lets his head drop onto Gavin's shoulder, both nearly weak with relief, and some lingering bits of disbelief, too.
"Hey dickwads, mind not getting jizz in my pool? We just had to clean it for that last week," Geoff calls out again after another moment, and then slams the door shut again.
"Well that was a close one," Gavin breathes quietly, inanely, and Michael snorts, air hot against Gavin's chest.
Michael's head is still firmly pressed to Gavin's shoulder when the penny drops, and they both suddenly shake with suppressed laughter, boiled over nervousness and basic incredulity at the ridiculousness of it all.
They manage to pull apart after a few more moments of anxious giggling, hands grasped onto each other for slippery balance. By the time they find their towels (Gavin realizing with dismay his is sunk to the bottom of the pool), the sun is setting, and Griffon comes out to tell them it's getting a bit late for swimming.
Michael, after a violent outburst of, "Well maybe freezing to fucking death will teach you not to demand services without expecting some sort of payment, jackass," which admittedly lacks any sort of actual heat to it, is generous enough to wrap half of his towel around Gavin's shoulders before they head inside.
Gavin stops Michael short outside the hallway to his bedroom, both of them still shivering slightly and dressed in old t shirts.
"DId you-- Did you want to stay," Gavin asks, only it comes out like a statement, and Michael doesn't look him straight in the eye or make some smart remark like he normally would. "The night, I mean. Here. With me."
Michael does respond then, a small snort because of course Gavin would be an idiot now of all times.
"It's just," and Gavin knows he should be shutting up already, but the words sort of gush forward like bile in his throat, "It's just I fancy you, and I have for a while, and it's stupid, of course it's bloody stupid, but I don't--"
Michael shuts him up with a harsh kiss, lips nearly bruising, and when they pull apart they're both breathing roughly in the darkened hallway, mouths open from the force of it.
"Yeah, yeah of course I'll spend the night, stupid. Gavin." Gavin looks up at his name, and Michael's smiling down at him when he does. "I fancy you too, you fucking moron."
And they're kissing again, but it only sort of works, because they're still grinning like fools while they do.
Neither of them can completely pretend to ignore the wink Griffon gives them when Michael makes some flimsy excuse about staying to help with a game setup, and they both know Geoff won't let them get away as easy tomorrow morning, but.
Michael has his fingers twined with his as Gavin lies in bed hours later, both of their clothes scattered across the already littered floor, and there's a tight feeling in Gavin's chest, like there is too much room and yet not any at all save for the places reserved for the crinkles by Michael's eyes when he genuinely laughs, and the way his t shirts never fit exactly right because he never looks at the tags before he buys them.
Michael sighs in his sleep, turns toward him, and Gavin could count the sum of his freckles a million times over before he could fall asleep, but it's with something dangerously near contentment that he curls into his side, shuts his eyes, and waits for morning.