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It’s a warm summer, this one. The sun is beating down in waves, orange and bright as ever, casting a blanket of warmth over the gentle waves in the water and whatever wildlife it is that resides in the dense forest they’re in. Flux has never learnt and never wishes to do so.
Everything is… calm.
It’s so very calm that it’s beginning to feel a little suspicious. Even on the preparation days before the campers arrive, there’s always something happening. Some sort of noise – usually Saps, or the Westhelm counsellors – so Flux figures they must all be insanely busy. Like, incredibly, overwhelmingly busy.
So, he soaks it in. Leans further forward against the wooden railing in front of his cabin with a sigh. Watches the leaves blow with the wind and thinks, gosh, in a perfect world, it’d be like this all the time.
But, this is far from a perfect world, actually, because he’d somehow allowed Thomas to coax him into signing up to be a counsellor at summer camp for the second year in a row.
“Fluuux!”
Oh, Jesus.
The voice is sing-songy and cheery. Flux ignores how his chest warms at the sound of it and instead turns with the most disappointed face he can muster. What a fraud he is, he notes.
Saps is almost-kind-of skipping towards him, suitcase and three separate bags in hand with that bright look on his face. He’s already sporting his green shirt, the Tricolour symbol stuck onto the front shittily, courtesy to that cheap shirt-making company they had to contact last year after the whole water balloon incident.
“Would you look at that. Like, actually everything I prayed for.” Saps is glancing up at the cabin number, then at Flux, looking scarily happy. Flux, on instinct, glances back too. Cabin nine, the number hasn’t changed since he’d last checked what cabin he was in.
He looks back to Saps with narrowed eyes.
“What?”
Saps only smiles.
“Would you move over a little so I can get into my cabin?”
Saps’ side of the cabin is rather full, it seems. He notices this one of the first few days of camp, having just come back from a hiking activity with his campers he’d decided to tag along with. Saps likes nature, sure, but Thomas should well and truly be banned from leading them because that man liked to walk and he liked to do it far.
So, there he was, still catching his breath – even after a shower – and squinting at the clothes thrown hazardously across his bed and the numerous belongings he’d deemed crucial to packing. Stupid things that, if asked about now, he’d probably sheepishly shrug.
Then, the door creaked open, and there Flux was. Wow, yeah, there he was. His hair was all damp and mused atop his head from what Saps assumed was most likely kayaking, and he was blessed with a sheen of tan, replacing the pale skin Saps had only seen a couple days ago and at the beginning of camp last year when he’d first laid eyes on the man.
He didn’t realise he was staring until Flux had cleared his throat, pausing the hand on his head drying his hair with a towel. Saps smiled lazily, moving to slump himself on the edge of his bed, palms splayed behind him.
“You look like you had fun,” Saps hummed, relishing in the way his words bought him the opportunity to stay under Flux’s gaze for a little longer.
“You’re funny,” Flux huffed, with all that (what Saps liked to assume to be) faux annoyance and a squint at the other.
“I try, I really do,” Saps shrugged, that pure joy he was feeling bleeding through his words. “But seriously, they flip your kayak again?”
“Possibly,” Flux mumbled through clenched teeth, head shaking when Saps barked a laugh. He couldn’t help the smile the sound pulled on his lips, could only bow his head to hide it.
Flux tossed his damp towel onto the back of his desk chair with more force than necessary, still muttering something under his breath. Saps watched him with undisguised amusement, tracking the way Flux's shoulders tensed when he bent to rummage through his duffel bag – probably searching for a dry shirt.
The afternoon light filtering through their cabin window caught the droplets still clinging to the back of Flux's neck, and Saps had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from saying something disastrously stupid about it.
"You know," Saps drawled, swinging his legs idly off the bed, "if you stopped threatening to throw the kids into the lake every time they splashed you, maybe they'd go easier on you."
Flux straightened up with a fresh shirt clutched in his fist, glaring at Saps like he'd personally orchestrated the kayak mutiny. “They’re twelve year olds who are just about as smart as you are. I think they hate anyone that tells them what to do.”
Saps pressed a hand to his chest, faux-offence written across his face. "First of all, rude. Second of all—" He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, grinning like he'd just won something. "You're admitting I'm smarter than twelve year olds."
Flux rolled his eyes so hard Saps wondered if it hurt. "Don't push it."
Flux folded out the shirt he’d just been clutching a little too hard and, without looking, grabbed the first pair of sweatpants his fingers brushed against.
Saps' sweatpants, technically, judging by the obnoxiously bright Tricolour-green waistband peeking out from the crumpled fabric. He shrugs because more often than not he’d find Saps sporting one of his hoodies, jackets, sweatpants – jeez, now that he thinks about it, he’s kind of a thief.
The cabin's bathroom door squeaked like a dying animal when Flux shoved it open, another charming feature of the camp's extremely aged accommodations. The mirror above the sink was fogged from Saps' earlier shower, and Flux wiped a hand across it with more force than strictly necessary, revealing his own exasperated reflection staring back at him.
Behind him, still sprawled on his bed like some obnoxiously cheerful starfish, Saps let out a theatrical gasp.
"Flux," he called, voice dripping with mock horror, "are you stealing my clothes?"
Flux glanced down at the sweatpants in his hands. He wonders if this is kind-of like cheating on the whole team-spirit Luminara thing.
He contemplated setting them on fire just to wipe that smirk off Saps' face. Instead, he tossed them onto the sink counter with deliberate indifference. "You left them in my pile."
The bathroom door slammed with yet another creak and Saps was left staring giddily at the wood.
The log smelled like damp earth and old pine resin, which Flux would’ve found mildly pleasant if his entire left leg wasn’t going numb from the awkward angle he’d folded himself into. Hide and seek is a stupid, idiotic game.
From this position, he could just barely see the edge of the Westhelm cabin’s porch – home base – where Schpood was currently sprawled in a plastic chair, lazily supervising the chaos. Flux had been here for seventeen minutes. He was winning.
Then, of course, the universe remembered it hated him. Or maybe loved him, depending on how he liked to look at it.
A twig snapped somewhere to his right, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone trying (and failing) to tiptoe through dry underbrush. Flux didn’t even need to look to know who it was.
Saps' knee connected with a moss covered rock with a wet thud that made Flux wince in sympathy before he reached out and yanked him down by the collar of his stupid green shirt. Their foreheads nearly cracked together as Flux clapped a hand over Saps' mouth, silencing whatever indignant squawk was brewing there. The scent of pine resin and sunscreen clung to Saps' skin, warm and stupidly familiar.
"Shut up," Flux hissed, barely audible, his breath stirring the sweaty fringe sticking to Saps' forehead. Saps' eyes, wide and unfairly golden in the dappled sunlight, flicked between Flux's face and the hand muffling him.
Saps blinked once, twice, slow and deliberate, like he was savouring the moment, then licked Flux's palm.
Flux jerked his hand away with a noise caught somewhere between disgust and disbelief, wiping his damp fingers on Saps' shirt. "You're disgusting," he muttered, but the effect was ruined by the way his voice cracked.
Saps grinned like he'd just discovered the secret to eternal happiness, which – knowing him – probably involved something ridiculous like sticking his tongue where it didn't belong. Again. His whisper barely contained laughter.
"You're blushing."
“I’m just fully not?”
“You totally are. I can see it, look–” Saps’ finger rose to obnoxiously poke at his cheek, probably worsening the flush he stubbornly wouldn’t admit was there.
Flux's entire body temperature spiked approximately ten degrees in half a second. "I'm sunburnt," he snapped in a rather loud whisper, which was objectively untrue. He’d been doing inside activities for the better part of the week, save the kayaking incident.
Saps' grin widened like he'd just been handed a trophy for Most Annoying Human Alive.
"Uh-huh," he murmured, fingers still hovering near Flux's cheek like he was considering another poke. The sunlight filtering through the leaves above them cast shifting patterns across his face, making his stupid golden eyes even more distracting. "Super severe sunburn. Definitely."
Flux opened his mouth to retaliate – probably with something devastatingly clever like 'shut up' – when a sharp whistle cut through the air from the direction of Westhelm's cabin. Both of them froze. Schpood had stood up from his plastic chair, one hand shading his eyes as he scanned the tree line.
"Shit," Flux breathed, instinctively grabbing Saps' wrist and yanking him down further behind the log. Saps went willingly, collapsing against him with very little grace, his shoulder digging into Flux's ribs.
Saps wheezed against Flux’s shoulder, his entire body shaking with suppressed laughter. Flux could feel the vibrations of it through his own ribs, warm and irritatingly contagious. He tightened his grip on Saps’ wrist, partly to keep him from doing something stupid, mostly to remind himself that this was real.
Schpood's whistle faded into the distance, but neither of them moved.
Flux's fingers were still locked around Saps' wrist like a vice, his pulse hammering against Flux's thumb. Saps shifted slightly, his knee bumping against Flux's thigh, and suddenly the log felt approximately three sizes too small.
The air between them crackled with something electric, something stupidly inevitable, like the universe had been nudging them toward this moment since the first time Saps had tripped over his own shoelaces in front of Flux during orientation last summer.
Saps tilted his head back to whisper something – probably another infuriating comment –but the angle was all wrong, or maybe exactly right, because suddenly Flux was staring down at him, and Saps was staring up, and their noses were brushing, and oh.
Oh.
Flux could count the freckles dusted across Saps' cheeks, could see the way his pupils dilated in the dappled light. Saps' breath hitched, warm against Flux's lips, and for once, he was utterly, blessedly silent.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Flux registered that this was objectively a terrible idea. They were crouched behind a rotting log in the middle of a game of hide and seek – one they, truthfully, shouldn’t have even been playing had they both been a little less competitive, for god’s sake – but Saps’ hand was slipping to clutch at the front of Flux’s collar and every rational thought was immediately thrown out the window.
The kiss happened like this;
Saps’ grip tightened in Flux’s shirt, pulling him down just as Flux leaned in, and their mouths collided with the clumsy urgency of two people who had been circling this moment for far too long.
It wasn’t graceful, Flux’s elbow jammed into the damp earth, Saps’ knee dug into his thigh, and somewhere in the distance, Schpood whistled again, oblivious. But none of that mattered, because Saps tasted like the cherry popsicle he’d stolen from the canteen earlier and something indefinably, infuriatingly him, and Flux’s brain short circuited so thoroughly he forgot how breathing worked.
The sound of footsteps crushing dry leaves made them fling apart like they'd been electrocuted.
Thomas rounded the log, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. He looked at them, at the way Saps' hair was mussed like someone had been gripping it, at the way Flux's collar was crumpled where Saps' fingers had been twisted in the fabric, at the two inches of mortified space suddenly between them.
Thomas blinked once. Then twice. A knowing smirk blessed his lips, and Flux immediately knew he’d be copping an earful later.
"You guys won," he said as flatly as he could. "Like, fifteen minutes ago."
Saps opened his mouth, made an indistinguishable sound, then closed it again. Flux elbowed him hard, eyes squeezing closed when he made a pained noise.
Thomas’ smirk deepened into something positively evil as he took in their disheveled appearances. Flux’s grass stained knees, Saps’ suspiciously swollen lower lip, the way neither of them could quite meet his eyes.
He rocked back on his heels, whistling low under his breath. “Wow. Real professional, guys.”