“Right,” Ken agreed, and together, in companionable silence, they walked into the building together. Gone were Ken’s thoughts about how crappy the workout space was. And for once, Ken found himself content, for a while, at least, to just walk side by side and not have to fill up the space between them with words.
Whatever this was, it was important. Ken was coming to sense that, because it seemed like Justin, enigmatic and serious and intense, didn’t do anything by half measures. This friendship was new and tenuous, but it already felt like something serious to Ken, and he wasn’t used to that feeling.
To his surprise, he didn’t exactly hate it, either.
* * *
There were more surprises in store, too. Justin tended to dress the same, no matter the weather, in loose sweats and big t-shirts. Ken had made some assumptions about what the other man would look like in less clothing, and those assumptions were all proven wrong.
Justin was short, a good couple of inches, nearly half a foot, shorter than Ken was. Ken would have thought that Justin would be small all over, slender and almost delicate, but as it turned out nothing could be further from the truth. Small Justin might be, but delicate wasn’t the word for those shoulders, or the chest, which was revealed by the tank top which Justin changed into to work out.
Ken found himself a little bit too inclined to stare. Justin was ripped. No tiny waif, his shoulders and chest were broad, and more than that, covered in tattoos that Ken also wouldn’t have expected.
Since when was Justin, quiet Justin, Justin who was always just there in the background helping to make the band work, a hot, vital, gorgeous man? It almost wasn’t fair that Ken had to force himself to look away as Justin changed.
Instead of reaching over to trace the shapes and colors on Justin’s skin, he dabbed chocolate ice cream from his own. He hadn’t brought another shirt, so he’d be working out topless.
A thought, sudden and not entirely unwelcome, popped into his head. Was Justin looking at him, too? Though he didn’t even know if the guy was gay or bisexual or into men at all, there had been moments between them which could definitely make Ken wonder.
As they stepped into the weight room, Ken forced his mind away from all of these ridiculous thoughts. When he looked at Justin, he tried to make himself see him as he always had, but found it more difficult than he would have thought. It seemed that some paths, once you started going down them, were pretty hard to turn back from.
“Okay, so this song.” They were here for business, and Ken, for once, let him take refuge in his work. It wasn’t a date, not really. This was just the only time that Justin would see Ken, so he was taking advantage, that was all.
“Yeah.” Justin settled down on a machine, and the muscles of his arms bunched and flexed under smooth skin which soon had a sheen of sweat on it. Quickly, Ken sat down, too, putting his feet on the plate of the leg press, focusing on adjusting the weights instead of on Justin. It seemed safer, somehow. “Did you have any thoughts about that?”
Ken considered and then smiled a little bit. If he did want to use this song as a way to get to Aaron, then yeah, he definitely had some thoughts on the matter. And thinking about his growing feelings for Aaron could be exactly what the doctor ordered when it came to taking his mind off of Justin.
“Yeah. I did. I’m thinking that it should be about being in love with a friend.” Ken focused briefly on his legs, making sure that his form was proper, that he wouldn’t hurt his knees, as he started to press the weight.
“In love with a friend.” Justin’s voice was odd and blank as a sheet of white paper, and Ken turned to look at him, suddenly cautious. It was far too easy to remember how Justin had reacted when Ken had told him about Aaron. Something dawned on him, something dark and terrible, which shook Ken deep into places that he hadn’t even known that he had.
“Do you want Aaron for yourself or something?” Ken demanded, trying to make his voice come out lighter than it wanted to. Less intense and forceful, less like he was angry, even though he was. And the really weird thing was that, if he let himself be completely honest, it wasn’t Aaron that really bugged him about that.
Justin turned to shoot a look at him that made Ken bristle. It was so amused, like Ken was just a child throwing a temper tantrum. It was a look that Ken was pretty familiar with since he’d seen it tossed his way before with varying levels of annoyance and amusement.
Somehow, though, he didn’t like to see it from Justin, even more than he didn’t want to see it from anyone. Ken turned his attention back to his own legs, and he didn’t try to take back the question, but he didn’t exactly expect an answer, either.
“No,” Justin finally said, and Ken was pretty sure that that tone of voice spoke of a sort of mocking amusement. “I don’t exactly getI’m availablevibes from Aaron at all, but even if I did, I’m not interested.”
In an odd twist, Ken found himself a bit protective of the older man. He turned to look at Justin again, only maybe that wasn’t the best idea because it meant that he was once more looking at a man who was far too sexy, now covered in sweat, muscles strained and bunched with the effort.
“Right. Okay.” Ken paused and then continued on. “So yeah. That’s what I want to do with the song.”
He slid off of the machine and moved on to another, and Justin followed him. It was a little bit surprising to Ken, how this community center gym could actually be so well equipped. Oh, the machines were definitely older than at his own expensive gym, but they had been maintained well, and there really wasn’t that much of a difference.
Still, wasn’t Justin supposed to be some big deal in the songwriting world? He was certainly in great demand, so why would he choose to keep on going to a place like this? Just one more thing on the growing list of why Justin was a mystery and Ken wasn’t quite sure what to make of him.
“I could get into the whole unrequited love thing,” Justin said suddenly, settling down onto another machine which had him reaching up over his head to grip a bar and pull it down behind him. Seeing Justin all stretched out like that, body sweating and working, it was a little bit too easy to imagine other situations where he would be stretched out, grunting softly with effort, with Ken on top of him …
Whoa. He had to stop that. Justin would laugh at him if he knew that Ken was having dirty little fantasies, but they kept coming up in his head, which was going to lead to other things coming up if he wasn’t careful, and Ken knew that his shorts didn’t exactly hide a lot.
“Yeah?” Ken asked, smiling a little bit as he watched Justin’s profile, as his eyes traced over his nose, his long, dark eyelashes, almost too pretty for a man, and especially the full, classic shape of his lips. What would it be like to press his own lips against Justin’s, to feel them yielding under his? Or would Justin tense up and push him away?
“Yeah.” Justin shot him a smirk, and for a moment, Ken wondered if Justin had picked up on Ken’s growing attraction to him. “Let’s do it.”
That smirk, and the slight hint of something or other that Ken couldn’t quite define but which shimmered in the depths of Justin’s eyes, it made him wonder a bit. Was Justin doing it on purpose? Because honestly, Ken was finding that he didn’t mind the idea at all. Let’s do it.
Did Justin have any idea how in Ken would be? But there was no way in hell someone like Justin would even be into Ken at all, even just sexually. Only sometimes, Ken found himself wondering.
