Work Text:
It’s been one week since they made physical contact. Not a hug. Not a kiss. Not a high-six, a pat on the shoulder, nor even an accidental brushing of their hands. A day, an hour, without some kind of touch was extremely uncommon for the Pines twins of Glass Shard Beach. There was always something to bring them together, until finally their intimate closeness came to a fiery head on top of Stan’s mattress at the bottom of their bunk bed; and all too soon, a spell of rain came to wash away the flames, like a typhoon stalled after landfall.
At first Ford thought nothing of it: that very night he laid his head comfortably in the crook of Stan’s shoulder, hair disheveled and glasses flung off the side of the bed. The sound of his brother’s heartbeat lulled him to the best night’s sleep of his life. Since, the steady rhythm pulses between his ears each night like the golden pendulum of a grandfather clock. It thumps with each word he reads off his homework, with each careful stroke of his pencil in his notebook, with every turn of the page in his textbooks. He’s snapping the tip of his pencil more often as he catches himself breathing in his brother’s time, matching each soft inhale with every coarse exhale.
Stanley, with every blink fading his vision into brief darkness, is met with the visage of his twin’s artfully sculpted face contorted in a knot of unfettered lust and scalding heat. His name, Ford’s blissful moan calling out, rings through him whenever the silence of nighttime falls, and any moment he’s left alone with his thoughts. He tosses and turns, his nose catching the lingering scent of his brother’s ecstasy in his sheets, on his pillow, and through the mattress perched above. “Fordsy, my sweet love…” he whispers to himself, longing for even a feeling of breath on his bare chest.
The real trouble came when even their classmates began to take note of their changing behavior. Rumors are commonplace within the walls of GSBHS, but even so, most of the gossip pertaining to them usually revolved around one twin at a time.
“What happened between them?
Did they have a falling out?
Is something going on at home?
They must be…”
Nobody went there quite yet, but Stan and Ford couldn’t help that lone thought in the back of their minds. Surely, no one could’ve figured it out, right?
“Stanford?” His advanced chemistry teacher pulled him aside after class, ”you were exceptionally quiet during the lab today. You didn’t ask for assistance once. Is everything okay at home?”
That’s Ford’s last stand. He’s become accustomed to the taunting he receives on a near-daily basis from his peers, but the moment it reaches the faculty, he decides he’s putting an end to this nonsense. After school, that’s when he’ll see his brother next, and he’ll strike up the conversation on the walk home…or drive home; he recalls Stan having driven them to school this morning. That won’t leave him much time to fully articulate his feelings, so perhaps it’s best to wait until they arrive home, are they even going home? There was somewhere Stan mentioned last week he wanted to go…some sort of new attraction near the boardwalk. What was it…miniaturized-golf, was that the correct terminology?
“Sixer!” Stan plants a gentle hand on the elder twin’s shoulder.
Startled, Ford smacks the crown of his head on the top of his locker, “Stanley, how many times have I…?”
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Stan extends his hand in basic instinct.
Ford takes it.
Their hands meld, clinging onto one another long after Ford has risen to his feet.
Ford’s the first to pull away, almost regretfully. “We should head to sixth period, huh…?” His eyebrows furl, “Isn’t your math class at the other end of the campus? On the first floor? What on Earth are you doing over here?”
Stan rolls his eyes, “Oh my, how careless of me…I’ll never recover from being five minutes late to remedial algebra! Now I’ll never know what ‘x’ is less-than or equal-to!”
“Are you sure this can’t wait until the final bell?” Ford’s arm brushes lightly against his brother’s as he begins the short trek to Calc A/B.
“That’s just it,” Stan shuffles alongside, “I have detention this after—”
“Of course you do, Stanley. Why am I not surprised?” Ford reaches for the handle of Mr. Waterman’s door, but his wrist is gently subdued by a sweaty five-fingered hand.
“I promise, I won’t keep you for another minute, just…” Stan moves them off to the side, away from the window which peers into the classroom. “I’ll make it up to you this evening. You make yourself look pretty, I’ll pull up ‘round back of pa’s shop, and it’ll just be you and me.”
The bell rings from directly above.
Ford sighs, “Fine, I’ll hold you to it.”
“Heh, you won’t regret a thing, Sixer.” Stan places his palm against the small of his brother’s back, “Now get in there before you end up joining me after school.”
* * *
“If I angle the putt just off the corner, given that it’s anywhere between 60-75º, and maintain a steady force of—”
“C’mon Sixer, we don’t have all night…” Stan crosses his legs on the short wooden bench parallel to the fairway, “I mean it, the place closes up in about half an hour.”
Ford comes out of his angular putting stance, concentration broken into bits, “We would have had more time if you didn’t spend all evening in front of the bathroom mirror combing through each individual strand of hair on your head.” His voice trembles slightly towards the end, thinking about running his hands through his brother’s thick brown locks firmly quaffed in a perfect slicked-back style.
“We should at least let the party behind us play through, then we’ll be the last ones on the course.” Stan shifts over, making room for the elder twin to join him.
The family of five step up to the black rubber strip at the top of the green, a young boy placing his ball on the left indentation. The twins sift through the different members of their party, watching each of them and taking notes of their putts to conclude the shortest route to the hole. “Oh, so close, Jimmy!” The father pats his eldest son on the shoulder after narrowly spinning the ball around the lip of the hole.
Once the party wraps up the last of their putts, they continue on down the pathway to the second hole. The twins rise simultaneously, catching a quick glance at each other through peripheral vision. Ford once again places his ball dead center, returning to his stance, calculating thirty variables per second in his head.
“May I offer some gentle advice?” Stan steps behind his putting partner, resting his club on the bench.
“If it’s about the velocity of my stroke…” Ford tightly shuts his left eye, tilting his head as he determines the angle off the wall, “…I already figured out how hard to hit the ball.”
Stan wraps his arms around Ford’s torso, his forearms enveloping the elder twin’s as he snakes his hands on top of the six-fingered pair grasping the rubber grip. “You don’t have to tell me about how hard you stroke it, Sixer, but just listen to me for one second. Can you do that?”
“Alright…”
“You can do all the dumb math stuff you want, but if you stay stiff as a board, you won’t have any control over where your ball goes.” Stan massages his fingers atop Ford’s, “First, you need to relax your grip…take in a deep breath…and on your exhale, is when you make contact.”
Glaring down the length of his club, Ford releases the tension in his fingers; one at a time, he feels closer to feeling the putter float from his hands. He closes his eyes, inhales…the arms swing back…exhales…
*smack*
The ball travels down the fairway and bounces sharply off the wall, over-shooting the hole by roughly five feet.
“That was pretty good for your first time, but one more thing…” Stan pulls in his brother for a tight embrace, roving his hands down Ford’s waist and gripping around his thighs. He turns outward, guiding his twin to follow through on his stroke, “It’s all in the hips.”
Ford didn’t hear a single word uttered from Stan’s chapped lips, he can only focus on the growing pain in his briefs as he feels himself stiffen against the zipper of his corduroy pants. “Can…can you show me how you do it…?”
After scanning the scene for any prying eyes, Stan places a soft smooch just above the temple of Ford’s glasses. “Let’s switch positions, that way you can feel how I do it.” He digs into his pocket and retrieves his ball.
“I don’t think that’s…” Ford turns away from his brother, adjusting himself accordingly, “…how about I just watch?”
“Nonsense, I say. What's better than the old-fashioned, hands-on approach?” Stan places his ball on the right imprint, sensually wriggling his hips as he stands upright. “Just…reach around, put your hands atop mine…”
Ford leans over, hoping to maintain a safe distance as his hands slide down his brother’s hairy forearms. “Is this okay?”
“Don’t you remember what I said earlier?”
“…Something about stroking?” Ford coughs out, a bead of sweat dripping off the tip of his nose.
Stan reaches behind and brings his twin against him, their bodies conjoined at the hip once more. His eyebrows perk, feeling something of Ford’s perking between his cheeks. “It’s all in the hips…” he bends his knees and gets in his stance. “Are you feeling it now, Sixer?”
“I’m…certainly feeling…something, Stanley.” Ford’s vision blurs, as the shape of his brother melts with the artificially green carpet.
“It’s gotta be one, smooth, continuous motion. Like this…” Stan inhales, twisting his waist back, exhaling as he shifts his weight forward, making contact with the ball, and following through until his arms reach forty-five degrees. His eyes follow his putt strike the wall, across the fairway, and ride the lip of the hole before it clunks down into the plastic cup below ground.
Ford squeezes his brother with all his might, inhaling his nose into the crook of the younger twin’s neck. “Oh, Stanley…” he whispers.
“Heh, thanks…” Stan remains standing in place, content in the warm embrace.
“Final call! Let’s get these games wrapped up, folks!” a voice calls out from the small shack behind them at the course’s gate.
Ford opens his eyes, reality sinking in, feeling the breeze off the ocean wisp as night begins to fall. “Perhaps we should play on?”
“We can always pick up where we left off when we get home.”
A weight is lifted from Stan as Ford unwraps himself. They stroll down the fairway to the lone ball left on the putting green, soon to join its twin at the bottom of the hole.