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“I mean, come on! What kind of lifeguard wears a shirt?”
“Oh my god. Please stop talking.”
“Lifeguards are supposed to be all tan and buff and practically naked!” Kylo throws his hands up in the air. He hits the towel slung over his shoulder and it flies up, hitting Rey in the face.
He doesn’t apologize.
“What is he even getting paid for?” Kylo growls.
Rey sighs.
“Doing his job, presumably,” she says, under her breath. “Look, If you’re so offended by his clothes, go file a complaint. I’m sure management would love that.”
Management, would not, in fact, love that. They tell Kylo so expressly, ten minutes later, after Kylo has filled out a form in triplicate and ranted for a good five minutes about the importance of aesthetic value. After the all, this is a very fancy country club with a dress code for practically every other area -- you’d think they’d be concerned about the aesthetics of their pool area, too.
And, and -- after Kylo went to all that effort, they just put his name down on a list and asked him to leave the office. He’s not sure for what the list is for, but presumably it’s not good.
He tells Rey this, collapsing down in the pool chair beside where she is sunbathing. There’s already stuff on the chair -- he ignores it.
“I can’t believe you actually lodged a complaint against that poor guy for wearing clothes. Have you seen how pale he is?” Poe asks, from Rey’s other side. He is lounging and also sunbathing, looking bronzed and perfect and all nonchalantly relaxed, like a model. Like always. Kylo hopes he gets a sunglasses tan from wearing his stupid aviators all the time.
Poe nods at the lifeguard in question, who is sitting in his chair at the far end of the pool. He is, indeed, very pale. His swim shorts are red -- like his hair -- and go down to his knees, and he’s wearing a white shirt that says LIFEGUARD in equally red print. It’s the least sexy thing Kylo has ever seen anyone wear to a pool, and this country club is full of old rich people who think they’re hot shit; Kylo’s seen some pretty rough pool-wear in his time. Just last week he saw a gaggle of ancient retirees playing water polo in speedos.
“Rey told me to,” Kylo says.
“Oh, well then,” Poe says with a laugh, like that explains everything.
“I didn’t think you actually would.” Rey says, taking a sip of her water. There’s bits of fruit floating in it -- some citrus and strawberries.
“I mean, my point still stands,” Kylo says, glaring at the lifeguard. “Would it kill him to take off his shirt once in a while and show a little dedication to his job?”
Really, Kylo just wants to see if those freckles that dot the guy’s arms are everywhere, if they dust the slope of his shoulders, the pale skin of his abdomen. He wonders if the guy’s got abs, or if he’s just lightly soft around the middle. He wonders if his nipples are as light pink as Kylo imagines them, perfect and erect and so touchable.
“I don’t think they even make an SPF that high,” Finn says from above him, blocking Kylo’s sun. “You’re on my towel, man.”
Kylo doesn’t care that he’s on Finn’s towel. He lets the guy pull it out from underneath him with a sigh, barely even shifting his weight to let it go without a fight.
“Why don’t you just ask him for tickets to the gun show, hm?” Rey says, sliding too-big sunglasses down her nose to look at Kylo over them. “I’m sure he’d be flattered.”
The lifeguard is decidedly not flattered when Kylo asks him for tickets to the gun show a week later.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe you actually did it,” Finn laughs, when Kylo flops down at the base of Rey’s pool lounger.
“You didn’t even hear the tone,” Poe says with a giggle. “He didn’t ask. He demanded.”
Poe had, unfortunately, been a witness to the whole embarrassing thing. Poe is, also unfortunately, friends with the lifeguard. No one had thought to tell Kylo this, of course.
“I’m not good at tone,” Kylo pouts. “I can’t believe you told me to do it.”
“To my credit, I didn’t think you were stupid enough to do it,” Rey says. “You’ve got it bad, huh?”
“I don’t have it bad,” Kylo says, like denying it out loud, with absolute vehemence in his tone, will make it any more true.
“Uh huh,” Poe says. “Sure you don’t, buddy.”
“If it’s any consolation, he doesn’t look like he’s really got the guns for a gun show,” Finn says. “He’s as skinny as a twig.”
Kylo sighs and flops backward, until he is sprawled nearly most of the way off of Rey’s pool chair. His head rests on the ground. Rey mutters that he looks like a fainting Victorian damsel under her breath; he feels like one, too.
“I just want to see how pale he is,” Kylo says. “It’s not fair that he never goes into the pool. What kind of lifeguard doesn’t get wet?”
“I know, pal,” Poe says, patting him on the thigh. “Life sucks, huh?”
“Kylo just doesn’t want to think about going back to college in the fall,” Rey says.
Maybe it’s a little true. Maybe Kylo would rather spend his summer lounging around at his parents’ country club, soaking up the sun and stalking the lifeguard.
Finn laughs. “Who does?”
--
Kylo doesn’t have any luck that week, or the next.
The lifeguard -- Poe unhelpfully won’t even tell Kylo his name -- isn’t on every shift, but Kylo dutifully shows up to the pool every day, just in case.
“You’ve been putting on sunscreen, right?” Rey asks. Today, she’s managed to corral him under an umbrella, just to get him out of the sun. “You’re getting really tan.”
“Obviously,” Kylo says. “I’m not an idiot.”
Rey doesn’t comment, but Kylo can practically feel the way she rolls her eyes. He doesn’t see it, though -- his eyes are on the pool.
The lifeguard looks bored in his chair, eyes scanning the pool below him from behind Ray Bans. Every once in a while, his head moves a bit, like he’s trying to get a better view. Other than that, he barely ever shifts his weight, like he’s constantly comfortable, even though the way he sits is supremely rigid and stuffy. Kylo’s never seen someone with better posture in his life.
Also frustratingly, the lifeguard always incredibly diligent about his job, never taking his hawklike focus off the water. It makes getting his attention near-impossible, unless he’s about to go on shift, or just coming off it. And even then, even when Kylo tries to corner him, it’s like he looks straight through Kylo, with the most bored expression before he dismisses Kylo entirely.
It’s endlessly frustrating.
“Why won’t someone just drown,” Kylo says with a scowl.
If someone started to drown, the lifeguard would have to get in the pool, then.
Kylo imagines it. Imagines some gormless child running, slipping, and skidding into the pool. And oh, look at that convenient fact: they can’t swim. They splash and flail and cry for help. That’s when the lifeguard springs to life. He gracefully leaps down from his tall tower, grabs his flotation device -- oh, and importantly, strips off his stupid shirt -- and dives into the water. He rescues the child, obviously, and then hauls himself out of the pool, sunlight glistening off his dripping, pale-as-sin skin. And then -- then, he smiles, directly at Kylo.
Rey coughs.
Kylo snaps back to reality. A reality in which the lifeguard sits all the way over there with his shirt on.
“You’re drooling,” she tells him. “You weren’t daydreaming about children drowning, were you?”
“Obviously he would save them,” Kylo says.
But that’s not really the point at all.
--
Kylo is honestly surprised it took him so long to come up with the idea.
He’s a little miffed, too, that no one suggested it to him.
“It’s a bad idea,” Finn says, stealing a sip of Rey’s water. Today, there are oranges and mint floating around in it. Which -- gross, Kylo thinks.
Rey nods. “We didn’t tell you to do it because you always do the stupid things we mention as jokes. This isn’t really something to joke about. He’s just trying to do his job, Kylo.”
“Do it,” Poe says, eyes wide and delighted. “You gotta do it, buddy.”
Finn sighs. “Poe…”
Rey looks disappointed. In Kylo, and in Poe.
“He’s a professional,” Poe says with a wave of his hand. “It’ll be just fine. Trust me.”
--
Kylo can’t even bring himself to wait a whole day once he comes up with the idea. He waits until the afternoon, until he’s practically crawling out of his skin.
The lifeguard has been sitting on his perch for about an hour now. He has dutifully stretched every fifteen minutes, and then returned to sitting ramrod straight and focused in his chair.
God, what Kylo wouldn’t give to see that guy loosen up a bit.
It’s not a very artful plan.
It’s also not a very complicated plan.
It’s not hard to pretend to drown. Anyone could do it. And hey, it just so happens that Kylo falls into that category.
And if Kylo does it, he doesn’t have to hope against hope for some hapless kid to fall into the water -- oh, fucking no, how terrible that would be -- and nearly drown themselves like an idiot. It’s a win-win.
Kylo is a good actor, he thinks. He stages a clumsy stumble, nearly right in front of the lifeguard chair. He shouts, makes a grab for an invisible and non-existant hold, and then pitches himself into the water.
It’s all very dramatic, but in a realistic way. He splashes and flails and coughs and shouts. He pretends, dutifully, that he can’t swim. He barely keeps himself afloat, choking on the water he’s splashing into the air around him.
When Kylo opens his eyes -- while doing a really beautifully terrible job of treading water, thank you -- he sees the lifeguard. He has come down from his throne and is standing at the side of the pool, mere feet from Kylo, with his arms crossed. The look in his eyes speaks to violent exasperation, annoyance, and disdain -- all hidden under a schooled expression with only the smallest hint of a frown at the corner of his lips.
“Are you done?” the lifeguard asks. He has an accent. Kylo doesn’t know if it’s British or Irish, but whatever it is, it’s hot.
Kylo continues ‘drowning’.
“You can stand,” the lifeguard says. “It’s only four feet deep.”
Oh.
Kylo stands.
“Are you finished now?” the lifeguard asks. All of his clothes are still on. He doesn’t even look a bit worried. Fuck.
“I guess,” Kylo says.
The lifeguard settles back in his chair. Kylo slowly walks to the side of the pool and heaves himself out of it, sloshing water all over the deck as he goes. He feels a little stupid and a lot disappointed.
Kylo is only feet away from lifeguard’s chair, meandering his way back to his dry towel when he hears a cough: a throat, being cleared. In the most posh way possible. Red faced and a little embarrassed, Kylo looks up. The lifeguard is looking down at him with a smirk on his stupid, chiseled, beautiful face.
“By the way, I saw you swimming laps last week. I’m aware that you can swim.”
--
Kylo goes back to trying to badly compliment the shirt off the lifeguard’s back. It seems like a much less humiliating course of action.
That doesn’t work either.
Neither does politely asking him for a strip tease.
--
Spilling a blue slushie all over him is a no-go, too. Most of the way-too-expensive slush ends up on the ground, a lot of it ends up on Kylo, and only a few droplets make it onto the lifeguard’s shirt.
The lifeguard doesn’t even say anything when Kylo apologizes. He just turns around and disappears back into the main building of the club.
After, of course, telling Kylo that he’s not allowed to eat on the pool deck. It’s dangerous, the lifeguard says.
When Kylo sees him again, a few minutes later and climbing into the lifeguard chair, he’s got a fresh shirt on -- not even a hint of blue on the perfect, pristine white.
--
“I bet you his name is something stupid,” Kylo says. “Like Stan. Or Doug.”
“It’s not,” Poe says. “It’s even stupider.” He laughs and Kylo thinks it’s dumb that Poe gets to be friends with this guy, somehow, and constantly and consistently be a jackass about it behind his back.
“Almost as stupid as Kylo?” Finn asks.
Rey bats at Finn with a playfully disapproving hand. At least she respects Kylo’s choice in changing his name. Maybe that’s not fair, though -- they all call Kylo by his name. Their teasing is the kind of teasing he’s gotten used to after years of friendship. The kind that comes with family.
He guesses he doesn’t hate it too much.
“Didn’t you have to fill out a form when you submitted the complaint? Wasn’t his name on it?” Rey asks.
“You mean the complaint you told me to file? That I shouldn’t have filed?”
“That’s the one.”
Kylo groans. “They wouldn’t tell me his name.”
“Did you call him the hot redheaded lifeguard who refuses to take off his clothes?” Finn asks.
“...Maybe,” Kylo admits.
“The world’s out to get you, pal,” Poe says.
--
The world is, in fact, out to get Kylo.
It all goes to shit on a sunny, beautiful Tuesday.
Kylo doesn’t have a next step in his plan. He’s shit out of ideas, honesty. He’s got no more pickup lines, no more stupid plans, and no more ego left for the lifeguard’s blatant rejections.
That’s when it happens.
Kylo’s walking fast across the pool deck, skirting close to the pool, trying to step around a bunch of kids who only come up to his knees who are running, running around. Stupid. The lifeguard -- the hot redheaded one, the only important one -- is yelling at them to WALK, DON’T RUN PLEASE and ignoring Kylo as usual. Kylo tries to ignore him, too, but it doesn’t really work. He’s too distracting. Kylo’s crush is way too gargantuan.
The kids are all running around with ice cream. Kylo can see balloons in the distance, proclaiming someone’s birthday.
Ugh. And the lifeguard isn’t even yelling at them to keep their food off the pool deck.
Or maybe he does.
Kylo isn’t really paying attention: someone shouts HEADS UP from off to his left. When Kylo looks, there’s a frisbee hurtling straight toward his face.
Shit, he thinks. This is how I humiliate myself again in front of the lifeguard.
He ducks, trying to jump quickly out of the way, even though he knows the collision is inevitable. Some stupid frisbee is going to brain him straight in the head; that’s just the way that Kylo’s life works.
Except -- the frisbee doesn’t hit him.
Kylo had shoved himself forward fast enough, ducking and missing the frisbee like some sort of pro athlete.
He’s actually proud of himself. Up until he realizes his front foot is sliding forward on something slick and slippery and cold -- a lot like fallen ice cream. He tries to turn sideways, to get away from the slippery ground, but that’s it, there’s no avoiding it. It happens too rapidly to think, to correct.
And then Kylo is falling, falling, propelled by the sheer force of his own momentum. He doesn’t have time to reach out and grab ahold of something, not that there’s anything there. He just goes down like a ton of bricks, heavy and solid and fast.
Unfortunately, he’s too close to the edge of the pool.
He sees blurry flashes: the sky, the pool deck, water, red.
He feels: fear, surprise. Then, pain. And then, after a moment -- nothing.
For one perfect moment, everything is the clearest blue.
Then, it all goes black.
--
Someone is saying his name.
Repeating it, over and over and over until it rings in Kylo’s ears.
Or maybe there are two people saying his name. Maybe, his ears are just ringing.
God, he just wants to sleep. It hurts. It’s nice in the darkness, with his eyes closed.
But then he hears Rey and her stupid concerned voice and he can’t not open his eyes for his cousin.
It’s bright. It’s all a lot. Rey is there, standing tall above Kylo. He blinks and tries to get his eyes to focus, but it’s hard. Everything just wants to be blurry.
But, even out of focus, the person crouching right in front of him is impossible to miss. It’s the lifeguard, the hot one, the perfect one.
“Kylo,” he says, in that stupid accent of his.
Kylo swoons. Or maybe he just has a head-wound. He’s not sure, but he doesn’t think it matters.
“Kylo, please say something,” the lifeguard asks. “I need to know if you’re alright.”
“Ow,” Kylo says.
The lifeguard kind of smiles. It’s a small thing, just a little curl of his lips on the side, but it’s beautiful, even if it is blurry. “Good,” he says.
Kylo blinks again, trying to clear out his vision. After a couple tries, it gets a better. Better enough to get a good look at the lifeguard, anyway. He’s teetering in a crouch right in front of Kylo, a little flushed. His normally perfect hair is messy, too. No -- not just messy: it’s wet, Kylo notices with a spark of glee. And it’s dripping, dripping -- oh -- onto a very dry white shirt. When Kylo looks off to the side, eyes searching frantically around for evidence, his eyes fall on something white and soggy-looking nearby. It’s not a far leap to assume that it’s a soaking-wet lifeguard’s shirt. The red lettering is clearly visible through the near-see-through white cotton.
“Really?” Kylo asks.
Kylo reaches out and touches the white shirt, fingers brushing against dry cloth. “How many shirts do you even have,” he asks, words a little slurred, a little slow.
“Many,” the lifeguard tells him. Kylo thinks he might be laughing a little. He doesn’t actually laugh, but his eyes smile and his tone suggests amusement.
“That’s a crime,” Kylo says.
“Is your vision blurred?” the lifeguard asks him. “You gave yourself quite the knock on the head, Kylo.”
When Kylo looks down, he realizes the severity of the words. There’s blood everywhere on the pool deck. Even more on Kylo himself. It’s dripping from his head onto his torso, and there’s a pile of scrunched up, bloody paper towels next to him. The lifeguard has one clutched in his -- of course, properly first-aid-trained-latex-gloved -- hands. Head wounds bleed a lot; Kylo’s not too concerned. He’s had worse, anyway.
“Not really,” Kylo says. It’s getting better.“What’s your name?” Kylo asks.
He hears Rey laugh, but he’s not looking at her, he’s looking at the lifeguard.
“Really?” the lifeguard asks, like it’s so absurd that Kylo wants to hear his name. Kylo thinks it’s absurd he doesn’t know the lifeguards name already. He’s had a crush on him for so long. It’s difficult to fantasize without a name.
Kylo tells him as much. The lifeguard laughs. Rey groans.
“You are the worst, Kylo,” Rey says. “Thank you,” she says to the lifeguard. “Do you think he’ll need to go to the hospital for stitches?”
The lifeguard shakes his head. “The bleeding is already slowing down. He should be fine. Unless you are concerned?”
“I’m not that concerned,” Rey says.
“Thanks,” Kylo mumbles sarcastically.
The lifeguard dabs at Kylo’s head with some moist gauze, cleaning up the blood from his face, his neck, his chest. Kylo still feels out of it, like the world is just a little bit too far away.
He can’t believe he missed the lifeguard jumping into the pool to rescue Kylo. It was probably all very dramatic, very heroic.
God, he wishes he even could have seen the lifeguard in the wet tee. Life is truly awful. And the world is absolutely out to get Kylo.
“It’s Hux,” the lifeguard says, as he finishes up and strips off his soiled gloves.
“Huh?”
“My name. It’s Hux.”
“Hux? What kind of name is Hux?”
“What kind of name is Kylo?” Hux asks with a sneer. “It sounds like something a twelve year-old picked for themselves in a fit of tremendous self-aggrandizing narcissism.”
And yeah, ok. Maybe Kylo hit his head really hard -- but maybe he’s also a little bit in love, too.