Work Text:
Golden Boy
hey, are u free rn?
...?
why?
i really need to go out
at midnight???
yeah.
like now.
u alright?
fine.
kind of.
I'll pick you up at Pete's?
okay
ill be there
Cole tapped his foot impatiently on the pavement, watching through the windows of Pete's Parlor for movement. It had closed a few hours ago, but usually Pete or Olly would be wandering the floors, cleaning. Cole reached for his phone to call when-
"Cole!"
Cole startled, turning his head down the street to see Olly running up to him, out of breath.
"I thought you were working tonight?" Cole asked.
Olly opened his mouth, shrugging. "Well, I meant- uh- Not at Pete's. Remember how I said I have a kind of internship with the city...?"
Cole felt like bashing his head into the handles of his motorcycle. "Oh god... I shouldn't be bothering you, then. I'll give you a ride back."
Olly shook his head quickly, breathing heavily. "No, no. I'm done now. We just went late today. I'm free now."
Cole wiped his hands over his face. "No, this- ugh- God, this was stupid."
"Cole-"
"No, I'm sorry, I just-" Cole laughed slightly. "I'm just going a little crazy over here."
Olly smiled, nudging him gently. "C'mon, crazy man. I have time. What did you have in mind?"
Cole stood, nodding at the bike. "Getting out of here."
Olly hopped on without question, grinning like a child. Cole handed him a helmet before pulling on the other.
"Scoot back, I'm driving," Cole ordered.
He could sense Olly's frown even behind his visor. "One day, Owens, you will see how awesome and trustworthy I am."
"Do you even have a graduated license?" Cole scoffed, seating himself in the space between Olly and the controls.
"Never stopped me before," Olly smiled, letting his hands fall easily on Cole's hips.
Cole forced his mind back to the road as he pulled back onto the street, weaving between vehicles and taking them away from Downtown.
Olly pulled himself against Cole's back, knocking their helmets together before shouting, "Where are we going?"
"No idea," Cole responded. "Anywhere we want."
"... I've never been out of the city," Olly confessed.
Cole smiled over his shoulder, slowing into a turn for the highway's on ramp.
Cole's route took them across the river, letting Olly cheer as the city's glowing skyline shrunk slowly into the distance. He turned off shortly after, following a winding highway into a patch of densely wooded hills.
Cole knew this place from his singular experience camping. He was hardly old enough to remember, but the boys and their father spent nearly a full week roasting marshmallows and scrounging for interesting finds in the trees. Jeremy had found a fireants' nest which was distinctly displeased with his presence, forcing them to pack up and leave before Cole could suffer the same fate.
They passed several unlit campsites on their way to their desination, each of which Olly pointed out with a silent, wildly waving hand. Cole just smiled to himself and remained silent until they pulled up to their destination: Lyfford Park's East Playground Site.
Cole killed the engine after they were safely parked, but Olly had already ditched his helmet and was running towards the jungle gym.
"Don't hurt yourself!" Cole mocked, leaving his helmet on the handlebars.
Olly jumped wistfully onto a trail of spinning discs, barely wobbling as he darted to the climbing wall. He scaled it after only a few seconds, moving to the main platform before skipping to the monkey bars. Cole watched on in a satisfied silence as Olly clamboured over the entire surface like an excited puppy before calling to Cole from the top of the tower.
"I am so jealous of the kids who got to use this!"
"You did use it."
"I'm an adult!"
"You're seventeen."
Olly slid down the firepole, grinning. "And you drove thirty minutes to play on a playground."
Cole looked up. "I drove thirty minutes so that the city lights wouldn't get in the way of the stars."
Olly followed his gaze up, gaping at the sudden vibrancy of the sky. In the city, the lights drowned out all but the brightest of stars, but miles away, where you couldn't even see a reflection of the city's light, the sky turned into a tapestry of diamonds. It was filled with scattered sparkles, twinkling and blinking and taking his breath away. Olly kept looking up, and up, and up, but there just kept being more to see.
"Light pollution is less, out here," Cole commented, watching alongside him.
Olly was busy staring at the sky, grinning. "No city lights, so the stars get brighter... The light just evens out, I guess."
"If you keep looking up like that, you'll break your neck. C'mon." Cole pulled Olly away from the pits of sand beneath the jungle gym, leading him up a gently sloping hill.
Together, they laid in the grass, side to side, looking up.
They were silent for a time before Cole spoke again. "How have you never been out of the city before?"
Olly shrugged slowly. "My parents were pretty strict."
"Pretty strict?"
"And they're too busy to be taking me on trips all the time."
"What about Pete? I'm sure he'd have gladly-"
Olly shook his head quickly. "They'd never let me."
Cole scoffed. "Dude. Your parents suck."
Olly breathed slowly. "...yeah, maybe a little."
"A lot." Cole sat up to make sure Olly saw his judgemental stare.
Olly chewed his lip before agreeing, "A lot."
Cole laid back down next to him. "They're gonna kick my ass for kidnapping you."
Olly smiled. "Nah, they don't care that much."
"They'll just never do anything themselves?" Cole jabbed.
Olly shrugged again, even more slowly. "They don't have the time. I can manage on my own, now. I'm seventeen."
Cole hummed doubtfully. "Well, good thing I'm here to be a bad influence."
"You aren't a bad influence. I'm the one who got you to sneak out to your first highschool party, remember?"
"Against my will."
Olly shoved him playfully. "You had fun."
Cole shoved him back, failing to tame his smile. "I had alcohol. There's a difference."
"Just admit that I was right, Owens. I am always right and you just can't admit it because your sarcasm doesn't come with an off switch."
Cole rolled his eyes, only proving Olly's point as they turned their gazes back to the sky. Together, they would point out constellations and argue over their names, eventually agreeing that they were likely both wrong, then moving to another.
Their voices got softer and softer under the spring breeze, lulling Cole into a state of half sleep.
Cole woke again a short time after, hearing Olly still quietly mumbling about stars, but more to himself than his companion. Cole let himself watch Olly's eyes scan the sky, back and forth, until they caught on something worth paying attention to. Olly's lips never stopped moving, keeping that murmur steady, but Cole found that he could no longer make out the words.
Olly glanced over at him softly, as easily as he would scan the stars, but stuttered as he saw Cole's eyes staring back at him.
"...you awake now?"
Cole hummed in agreement.
Olly turned his face back to the sky, breathing softly and silently, finally silent. Cole tried glancing up along with him, but his eyes kept being drawn back to the shaded silhouette of Olly's face.
"So..." Olly said, after a while in silence. "What's making you go crazy? Why'd you have to get out of the house so bad?"
Cole pulled his shoulders up in a shrug. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" Olly repeated.
Cole shook his head softly. "Stress. School. I'm probably fine now. The drive helped a lot. And the nap. Fresh air and whatever."
Olly turned back to him, smiling. "You sure you weren't just going crazy because you had gone so long without seeing me?"
Cole scoffed, turning back towards the stars. "You are an asshole."
"And yet you wanted to see me."
"At least I didn't say you were a dick."
"Welcome back, Owens."
Cole sat up, finally stretching before rising to his feet. "Let's not pull an all nighter."
Olly smiled as Cole offered a hand, pulling him to his feet and letting them make their way to their bikes. "It's the break. Not a big deal."
"It'll be a big deal if you have to deal with Sleep Deprived Cole. Not a fun time, trust me." He swung a leg over his motorcycle, then paused. He glanced at his bike. "...you wanna try taking it for a spin?"
Olly blinked in shock. "You want... me... to drive?"
Cole nodded. "I'm a little..." he waved his hands around vaguely. "So... You've been begging me to give it a try, haven't you?"
Olly inclined his head carefully. "You're sure?"
Cole nodded, sliding back in his seat.
Olly grinned. "You've brought this on yourself."
Cole cheered loudly, throwing his hands up as they raced down the highway.
Olly laughed. "Don't let go, you freak!"
Cole grinned, wrapping one arm around Olly's middle as the other was outstretched in the air. "I've survived Jeremy's driving. You couldn't do much worse than him!"
"If you don't put your hands back on me right now, I am pulling over!"
Cole cackled, sliding his arms over Olly's chest. "Yes sir," Cole snarked. "If you wanted me to touch you, you just had to ask..."
Olly's mind went blank as he felt Cole's hands clinging to the fabric at his collar, pressing into the planes of his chest, brushing over the curves of his muscle- he refocused in time to jerk the handlebars back away from the bushes they were headed for.
Cole clung tighter. "Olly! Jesus! Be more careful, would you?"
Olly laughed awkwardly. "Yep! Got it! I'm just gonna slow down! The speed limit is- uh- fun!"
"Whatever you say, Calimore," Cole nodded to himself, readjusting his hands to Olly's stomach. Not that it had actually been his hands distracting Olly. That would be ridiculous. It was just safer this way.
Yeah.
Cole breathed a sigh of relief as they finally, slowly, pulled up to Pete's.
Olly hopped off fluidly, handing Cole back his helmet.
"You okay to drive?" Olly asked softly.
Cole nodded. "Yeah, I should be alright..." his eyes drifted over the dark doors of the parlor, seeing the reflection of the two and the empty street behind them.
"You don't have to go, you know," Olly offered. "I can find some extra blankets. There's a couch in my room. You could sleep on the floor, too."
Cole looked at him strangely, eyeing the way his cheeks reddened from the cold.
"Your aunt shouldn't mind, right?"
Slowly, Cole shook his head. "No. She should be alright with it..." But was Cole...? "Yeah, okay. I'll sleep over."
Olly smiled, helping Cole stash his bike in the garage at the back, then rushing up the stairs to their small apartment. Cole followed carefully, laughing to himself as Olly darted between doors, gathering a collection of blankets for the night.
Once they were in his room, Olly spread the thick comforter over the couch, piled on some pillows, and topped it with a weighted blanket.
"You okay with the couch?"
Cole smiled, shrugging. "Should be fine."
Olly nodded, grabbing clothes from his drawers. "I'm going to change into some PJs. Feel free to borrow some."
Cole nodded the affirmative before watching Olly disappear into the ensuite.
The first time he'd seen Olly's room was when they were working together on a English project. It had been messier than he'd expected. Trinkets scattered on the floor, the walls filled with papers and tacks, the shelves of books and toys from a much younger age. It didn't seem like he knew how to put anything away.
Cole picked up a rubix cube, which he was pretty sure Olly knew how to solve, but was left scrambled anyway. He knew now that Olly just liked a bit of chaos. He wasn't always the pristine, put-together, in-the-running-for-valedictorian golden boy that most people knew him as. In fact, he rarely was.
Sometimes Cole could feel Olly putting on a face. Making himself more presentable, more friendly, more likable. He would exhude confidence and dazzle people with his smile, but it was all a performance. For who, Cole didn't know.
Olly came out of the bathroom, hair shaggy, pajamas loose. "Ready for bed?"
Cole put the cube down, sliding his jacket off and throwing it over the back of the couch. "Yeah. T-shirt and jeans is fine."
Olly flopped into his bed as Cole sat on the couch, pulling off his socks and rolling the cuffs of his jeans.
"Cole?"
"Yeah?"
"Did... did you mean it that I just had to ask?"
Cole shot Olly a strange look, rolling up his other pant leg. "About what?"
"The- uhm..." Olly ran his hands through his hair. "When I said you should stop flailing and stuff, you put your hands on me and said, like... I just had to ask."
Cole shifted awkwardly. "No, Olly, that was a joke. Like, haha, you told me to keep a hold of you, so like, I kind of turned it into flirting, joke."
"So you weren't actually flirting?"
Cole's face reddened. "No, Olly, I'm awful at flirting. I can't flirt with anyone for the life of me."
"You flirted with me."
"Well... yeah, but not actually."
Olly hummed in consideration. "Do like guys?"
Cole laid down so he could stop himself from watching Olly lay back in his bed. "Kinda..." Cole said slowly. "I dunno."
Olly laughed a little. "You don't know?"
Cole scoffed. "What about you? Who do you like? Guys or girls?"
Cole could hear Olly shrug against the sheets. "It's not really... a gender thing, I think."
Cole furrowed his brow. "What does that mean?"
Olly shrugged again. "If I like them, I like them. If I don't, I don't. It doesn't matter if it's guys or girls."
Cole hummed. He didn't know what to do with that.
"I've only ever really liked one person, though," Olly continued. "At least, I think I do."
Cole hummed again. Where was he going with this?
"We just hung out a lot, and talked a lot, and I just really wanted to be around them."
For some reason, Cole's hands were getting sweaty. "That seems more like a friend than a crush... Do you want to kiss them?"
Olly shrugged, much more slowly. "I don't know. I wouldn't be... mad about it. I just... I'm not sure if they like me."
Cole wiped his hands on the blankets. "Have they given you any hints?"
"Well... I told him to hold onto me and he put his hands on my chest."
Cole's heart was suddenly thumping against his ribcage. He hummed, but it broke off in the middle. He swallowed.
Olly sat up, watching Cole remain frozen stiff on the couch. "But he said it didn't mean anything, so... That's that."
Cole swallowed again, sitting up slowly, keeping his eyes on the opposite wall. "Yeah. Maybe."
Olly tilted his head. Cole could see it in his shadow. "...Maybe?"
Cole turned again, finally facing Olly in the alclove where his bed lay. "Maybe you just need to see if they meant it."
Olly's eyes were locked onto Cole's but Cole couldn't face him. He kept his eyes on the ground, on the walls, anywhere but Olly, feeling his face flush red. Olly patted the bed next to him, sending Cole's body into a slow, mechanized walk, and his mind into a whirlwind.
What what what what what what what-
Cole slowly lowered himself into the mattress next to Olly, feeling the soft brush of their sleeves together.
"So," Olly said. "How do I go about figuring that out?"
Cole was fidgeting beyond belief. He didn't know what to do with his hands. Or his eyes. Or the rest of himself. He felt like he was going to fall apart if so much as the wind blew him over.
Instead, Olly took one of his hands, and Cole melted. The cool skin let Cole's overheating body fall back to a normal temperature, and the small, simple contact let Cole focus on something other than what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.
"Cole?" Olly whispered, lacing their fingers together and squeezing.
"Hm," Cole replied, squeezing his hand back. "I'm here."
Olly nudged him with his shoulder, drawing Cole's eyes back up to his face. "I think I like you."
Cole hummed, squeezing his hand again. "Think?"
Olly smiled, shrugging. "I don't quite know yet. I didn't think I could have a crush."
Cole stared at him oddly. "You had a crush on me?"
Olly's smile widened. "Yes, Cole. I have a crush on you. I ran across the city so we could go for a midnight date in a park. The hints were there."
Cole blushed, eyes darting rapidly around the room. "That- we- I wasn't trying to ask you- like- I didn't know you weren't working, I just..." Cole bit his lip quickly, before the nonsense in his head could spill out. "I didn't know if... I guess... It was a date?"
Olly shrugged. "No, not really. But it felt like one, so I kind of... imagined it as one."
"You pretended we were dating?"
It was Olly's turn to blush. "It didn't really change things until you were trying to feel me up."
Cole scoffed, shoving his shoulder. "It was supposed to be a joke."
Olly smiled, raising a brow, before sliding his hands around Cole's waist and pulling him closer, which was consequently into his lap. Cole's spine went rigid for only a moment before Olly spread his hands across Cole's back, smoothing away the tension.
"...this jokey enough for you?" Olly whispered.
Cole's ears were pink as slowly, he slid his arms between them, laying his hands on the same spaces on Olly's chest. He could feel the hitch in Olly's breath as his fingertips brushed against the skin there.
"...No," Cole whispered back, suddenly pressing closer and sliding his hands up and over Olly's shoulders.
Olly shivered at the contact as one of Cole's hands slid down his back, and the other into his hair, holding his face at just the right tilt so that-
"Is it okay if I kiss you?" Cole asked, breath landing on his lips.
Olly traced the features of Cole's face with a thumb, brushing along his soft cheekbones and the corner of his thin mouth.
"Yeah," Olly hummed.
Cole pressed their lips together softly, locking the puzzle pieces of their mouths together, finding the answer to an unasked question. Cole pulled back for a moment, for a breath, for a second to make sure Olly really wanted this. Then he kissed him again, deeper, further, all consuming.
Olly's lips were soft, and so was his breath, and so was his hair. Cole pulled himself further into Olly, trying to press them completely together from stomach to shoulder. Olly helped by pulling Cole in by the hips, hugging his arms around Cole's back, and tangling his hands in his hair. Olly anchored him against his body, keeping them solidly together even as they wound together like waves.
Cole slid his hand down to Olly's side, gripping the fabric of his shirt and holding on. He let his hand clench, then flatten, then press against the firm shape of Olly's ribs. They gasped against each other's mouths and hardly breathed any air as their hands learned to recognize by touch, and their mouths by taste.
Cole pulled back for another breath, but Olly wasn't done. He latched on to the stretch of Cole's neck that had been exposed with a tilt of his head, and Cole may have stopped breathing entirely.
Cole pushed Olly back down into the sheets, pulling away his neck with a pop, and staring down at the once pristine shadow of someone on honour roll. Olly was breathing heavily. Cole could feel it through the deep rise and lowering of the body beneath him.
"We probably shouldn't keep going," Cole tried. "It's... it's already late and I don't know if-"
Olly cut him off with a quick kiss to the lips. His hands remained on Cole's waist, kneading his hips. He hummed.
Cole sighed, kissing him again before sitting up. "I know. Later."
Olly smiled lopsidedly. "...I think he likes me."
Cole rolled his eyes with a smile. "What gave you that idea?"
Olly pulled him down into the sheets next to him, holding Cole by the chin as he kissed him again, gently. "Just a hunch."
Cole wrapped his limbs around Olly slowly. "I'd say it's a safe bet."
Olly smiled, and it was so close. It was in his face and against his cheek and pressing into his hair.
Cole pulled Olly back down to his mouth. "Okay, just a few more minutes."
Olly wasn't one to question Cole's plans.