fic: bring me some luck little junebug (alex/hank, pg, 1088 words)
fill for a 1stclass_kink prompt. Alex finds Hank lying in a patch of sun, ruminates.
Alex finds Hank outside, beneath a sycamore tree, lying on the damp grass with his face turned towards the sun.
Hank has just finished a run with Charles and his ancient grey sweatshirt, faded from overuse, is stretched out at the collar. His eyes are closed, his head tipped upwards. Hank leans back, resting his weight on his palms, and the surface of his glasses, it catches the light.
Alex doesn’t speak for a minute, wondering if, standing there, behind Hank, his shoes sinking in the mud, his arms sticky with rapidly drying sweat, Hank will take notice of him and leave. Alex doesn’t want to seem like a total asshole, ruining everything for Hank, calling him names, even though, yeah, it’s kind of what he does from time to time. It’s not his fault, though. Hank is a walking target, with his earnest face and his kind mouth. He’s the type of guy Alex would be friends with if he didn’t spend time in solitary confinement, the reliable type who’d help you change the tires of your car even if he didn't know how.
“Hey Bozo,” Alex says.
Hank whips his head around to look at him, his face pinching immediately.
Alex hunkers down next to him on the dewy grass, careful to avoid the wetter patches. He’s dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt whose sleeves he’d sawed off with a box cutter. If he moves just a fraction, the sides of their arms and legs will touch. He can feel Hank’s body heat radiating in waves. Alex can smell him, vaguely, the mineral scent of his skin and the sharp tang of his sweat. It’s nice, comforting. Hank smells like a musty sweatshirt you forget to wash after a few days, the kind you wouldn’t mind wearing repeatedly until the smell faded away.
“What are you doing back here, huh?” Alex asks. Hank, who shrugs and makes a face, leans forward on his knees. Hank is tall, so much taller than Alex, but he doesn’t own up to it, and acts like he wants to disappear completely. He doesn’t have much confidence, Hank, and Alex has seen him dance around his feelings for Raven like a puppy that comes back even after you kick it. Alex doesn’t hate Raven but he doesn’t think she and Hank have much of a future together. People like Hank, who can recite the periodic table backwards and don’t really get out much, shouldn’t be allowed to date total babes like Raven. It can and will only end in tears, Alex thinks.
“Huh,” Alex huffs.
Hank lifts his head and blinks at him. His eyes, behind those clunky rimmed glasses, are bright and startlingly blue. “What?”
“Sitting out here all alone,” Alex says, pretending to sigh. “Were you beating one out?”
Hank blinks, and it’s almost like Alex can see the cogs in his head slowly turning until it hits him like a sledgehammer. “What?” Hank says, then splutters. “What?” He turns red and shakes his head and his hair, where it’s clumped together on one side, sticky with sweat, flies into his face.
“Don’t be disgusting,” he sniffs, rubbing up and down his legs. “I was just thinking.”
“Masturbation is not disgusting,” Alex tells him, bumping his knee against Hank’s. He did a lot of it back in prison, too. He was bored, mostly, and thought about a random assortment of images that seemed sexy at the time. He thought about his life.
“You’re always thinking,” he says. “Don’t you ever do anything else?”
Hank says nothing, which is probably a yes.
“You’ll never get laid,” Alex continues, casting a furtive glance in Hank’s direction. He’s blinded for a second by a flash of white - teeth. Hank is smiling, sheepish, folding in on himself with his knees pushed up to his chin.
There it is again, the shy, jerky movement of his shoulders. Alex turns his face away and stops staring. He feels weird enough as it is, sitting with Hank like this, his body curved towards him. He hears Hank shift next to him on the grass as Hank lies on his back, spread-eagled like a starfish. Hank sighs, his eyelashes fluttering down, his breath whistling in through his teeth.
It’s warm out here, in the courtyard, all trees and sky, and the firefly scent of grass. Alex breathes it in, feeling strangely at peace, smiling with one side of his mouth. He’s used to silences, but not like this, the hum and call of yellowjacket bees heard faintly in the distance. He closes his eyes then cracks one eye open, leaning over Hank, and pinching his glasses off his face.
“Hey, don’t,” Hank says, blindly batting a hand in the air. His eyes are still closed and he’s laughing softly, which, Alex thinks, might be a step in the right direction. He doesn’t hate Hank, completely. He’s just the easiest to pick on because he never retaliates and Sean is just. Too cheeky.
“Whatever,” Alex says, then slips Hank’s glasses on his face. He slides them off his nose a second later and finds Hank staring at him. Alex shrugs and hands his glasses back and they sit in silence for a long awhile, listening to the gentle trill of birds.
The wind touches Alex’s cheek. He wipes his forehead on the hem of shirt and looks down and Hank’s eyes are closed again, his hands folded on his stomach, like he’s sleeping. His shirt hikes up a little, the slice of skin, pale and, Alex imagines, soft to the touch.
Like Hank, lately Alex has been doing a lot of thinking, too.
He remembers two weeks ago, when the four of them played baseball in the courtyard, Raven, her sleeves rolled up to her bare shoulders, running up to Hank and Hank catching her in his arms, looking nervous but pleased. She shrieked then, with happiness and contentment, and the two of them wound up falling in the dirt as Sean cast Alex an exasperated look and shrugged his shoulders. Alex rolled his eyes and went back inside for a drink of soda then sat at the kitchen table, tipping back his chair. He felt stupid then, felt angry, felt like he could burn the whole world down. The feeling went away, eventually, after he had gone out again for a run.
Alex scoots closer to Hank and hunches forward, cradling his knees, glancing at Hank, then away. The sun rises over the trees, casting the two of them in shadow. Hank’s eyelashes, tipped in gold, shiver as he breathes.