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“Zowee!” Harley says, leaning in close to see the abs shining at her from Bruce’s calendar. “Mr. July, huh? He’s cute! But it’s still June; you know that, right?” Her fingertips poke at the corner of the calendar, as if to turn the page back to Ms. June.
Bruce, always calm and collected, always subtle, slaps a hand over Mr. July’s glistening torso so that he can’t be defiled by Harley’s lustful ogling. “Why are you in my office.”
“I ran out of tongue depressors!”
“That’s because you keep making log cabin collages with them,” he reminds her. His hand remains plastered to his precious Sexy Firefighters of Happy Harbor calendar, though he really wants to remove it before his palm sweat distorts Mr. July’s chiseled body. That would be calamitous. It isn’t like he doesn’t have three backups, but they’re supposed to remain unopened and pristine, or they lose their collector’s value.
“I'm not sure anyone outside this town is interested in those, Bruce,” Zee once told him. Bruce loves her, but she has no idea what she’s talking about.
“Y’know, I heard the firehouse was gonna do a car wash fundraiser next week to support the senior center! You should go! Maybe you’ll get to meet him~” Harley trills. Bruce misses the days she was still single too. At least he could tease her back in kind as they ate lunch together, both terminally unable to keep a good partner. Now she was happily settled down with Pam and all too gleeful about tormenting him about his admiration for Happy Harbor’s most handsome fireman.
“I’m busy next week.”
“You don’t even know what day it is!”
“I’m busy every day. As you should be too! Go back to your own office.”
Bruce grabs his entire container of tongue depressors, deposits them in Harley’s hands, lifts a foot, and pushes her by her swivel chair out his door.
“I’m just saying you might have a chance…” Harley says as she sails away down their short hallway.
Bruce scoffs in her wake. A chance with an angel like Mr. July? Delusional. Bruce has looked him up before. Done his research. It isn’t hard, given the size of Happy Harbor. Mr. July spends his free time volunteering at the animal shelter and facilitating kids’ sports on the weekends at the park. He apparently enjoys writing nature poems and painting the ocean and smiling at people as he jogs. Children and the elderly alike adore him. Bruce is pretty sure he saw a little bird land on Mr. July’s shoulder once and sing a song. (Bruce was watching from the patio of the cafe next to the library across from the firehouse. It was normal. It is always normal to drink coffee at five in the morning fifteen minutes away from one’s workplace.)
Mr. July is disgustingly good. Bruce’s unbridled lust for him is shameful and must remain hidden at all costs. He can only exorcise his desire by staring at his beloved calendar and fantasizing that he’s the rolled-up hose under Mr. July’s arm, held tight to his chest, seconds from touching the stray drop of sweat rolling down the boundless plane of his taut pectorals. An almost perfect state of existence Bruce will never actually achieve.
With this miserable thought in mind, he heaves a sigh and slaps himself briskly on the face to snap himself out of it before his next appointment. Wouldn’t do to see nice Mrs. Hart while his mind is full of impurity.
But the specter of Harley’s suggestion continues to haunt him through the day, and into the evening. That night, Bruce spends an hour tossing and turning in his bed, debating whether to attend the fundraiser. It would be for a good cause…and he does have a car…but Mr. July would be there…and they might not even meet…and the heat will be intense…how to decide…
Bruce’s dreams are tumultuous, full of suds and flaming biceps.
“Thought you were busy,” Pamela says dryly from the driver’s seat of Harley’s outrageously colorful sports car. No matter how many times Bruce rides in the thing, he never gets less self-conscious when stepping out of its pink and blue candy-striped chassis. It’s often the brightest thing in their parking lot.
“Sorry, do I know you?” Bruce asks, before driving past her into the line of cars waiting to be washed. He can see Harley in line at the row of lemonade stands, seemingly buying their entire stock of sour gummy worms. The carwash is set up along the boardwalk, and a good quarter of the town seems to be out today, either playing on the beach, selling something for the fundraiser, or enjoying the sight of the buff firefighters soaping and scrubbing for everyone’s benefit. A snack or drink would help occupy his hands and mouth so he isn’t caught doing something like drooling.
He arrived at a good time, because it takes only a few minutes before he’s able to hand his keys off to the volunteer valet along with his donation. The sun bears down on Bruce in what feels like targeted harassment, because nobody else seems to be suffering the same summer dread that he is. Maybe the cheerful atmosphere of this community-focused event is keeping the heat exhaustion at bay. Bruce has enough time to purchase himself a cup of cold apple juice before his car is up, and he hurries back with Harley behind him, her arms full of candy.
“Is this your car?” a beautiful goddess of a firefighter bounds over to ask Bruce. She’s a few inches taller than him, with thick black waves of hair tied back in a ponytail, and forearms to die for. Ms. January, if Bruce remembers correctly (of course he does).
“Yes, that’s me,” he says, trying not to react to the drip of icy condensation from his juice landing on his sandaled foot as he answers. This is why he never wears open-toed shoes.
“Do you have a specific request?”
“Um,” Bruce says stupidly, looking up at Ms. January’s gorgeous face and finding himself at a loss. A request? Like clearcoat sealant?
He can feel Harley full-body cackling next to him.
Ms. January smiles patiently, and gestures at her colleagues finishing up with one of the cars on the pavement. “Is there a specific firefighter you’d like to have work on your car?”
Bruce makes the mistake of looking over in the direction she’s pointing, and catches sight of Mr. July stretching his back. He’s clad only in a pair of swim shorts and flip-flops, which means all his flawless, golden skin is on display. Soap bubbles cling to his chest, making the most of their short-lived existence before popping away under the rivulets of water trickling down his stone-cut muscles. Those strong arms and thick thighs…Bruce wants to climb that man like a tree and do something that would make this arboreal simile fall apart.
Mr. July turns enough for Bruce to see his handsome profile, and feels his heart leap in his chest. This was a mistake. Abort mission.
With a queasy, apologetic simper, Bruce shakes his head in response to Ms. January. “Ah. No, anyone is—”
“YES, he’d like Mr. July!” Harley hollers, pointing directly at the man in question, and drawing all nearby eyes to her. “Pretty pretty please,” she says, dropping her bags of candy on the ground so her hands are free to make Bruce nod like a dumb bobblehead when Ms. January looks to him for confirmation. Bruce is too shellshocked by horror and heat to stop this train wreck.
“Perfect, I’ll let him know. Clark! You and I are up!”
Clark, what a nice name, is all Bruce’s deteriorating brain absorbs as Mr. July strides over, all sunny smiles despite his drenched hair and water-speckled glasses. From the corner of Bruce’s eye, he can see Ms. January walking a few paces away to begin dunking some sponges in a bucket.
Oh, god, he’s here. Mr. July is close enough to touch. Bruce has no idea where to look that would be not creepy. Probably just his face? That’s good, he’ll just keep staring straight at Mr. July’s glowing, gorgeous face and he will be respectful and not at all weird. His body seems to have frozen anyway, so this is better than being stuck in place looking at the man’s cleavage.
Mr. July— Clark gives him a friendly wave as he approaches. His gaze flits down across Bruce, probably taking in his pasty complexion and bat-themed board shorts, before it returns to his face. “Hi there,” he says warmly, as if Bruce isn’t wearing a weird rictus of a grin, limbs unmoving.
“Hello,” Bruce croaks.
Without breaking eye contact, Clark holds out a hand to shake and accidentally slaps Bruce’s cup of juice straight to the ground. Harley’s little shriek causes them both to jump.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Clark babbles, his ears turning pink. They both look at Bruce’s fallen cup, apple juice glugging out into concrete in an unsalvageable flood.
“That’s fine, I wasn’t thirsty anyway,” Bruce lies, before swallowing dryly. Harley is scuttling around, trying to rescue her worms from the encroaching juice. With mechanical stiffness, Bruce bends down to pick up his now empty cup.
“Alrighty, uh, I’m just going to go take care of your car with Diana, but I swear I’ll buy you another juice after this– don’t leave, okay? Not that you could! Since we have your car, haha. Um, but don’t buy more juice, either! Because I’ll get one for you! Just stay there! Or not, I’m not in charge of you. Yup.”
Clark hits him with double finger guns and then instantly winces and turns them into thumbs-up instead, and does a rather ungraceful spin to jog toward Bruce’s car. As he departs, Bruce can see that the flush has traveled from his ears to his neck. Cute…
“Holy cats– Bruce! He’s so into you!” Harley hisses. Her fingers dig into the meat of his forearm as she rattles him.
“What?” Bruce frowns down at her, wondering if her worms were laced with something.
“He was totally checking you out! That’s why he accidentally whacked your juice! Pow.”
“I think he’s just clumsy.”
“Have you ever heard of a clumsy firefighter? How would that make sense? You think they’d really hire a guy who could drop an old granny down the stairs by accident in the middle of a three alarm fire?”
“That would be a poor decision,” Bruce admits. He tunes into Clark and Diana beginning to soap up his car, their muscles rippling under the sunlight. He’s now almost too busy working through what Harley just said to be lusting after Mr. July.
Is it possible that Clark was looking him over? No, Bruce would have to be riotously conceited to think so. Maybe Clark was distracted by the exciting bat pattern on Bruce’s shorts. He designed it himself. If Clark is interested in commissioning his own swim trunks, Bruce would be happy to work something out with him.
“So, what’re you gonna do?” Harley asks as they watch two marvels of nature spray down his vehicle. Water cascades attractively off them like they’re living in an abstract tropical perfume ad.
“I’ll tell him I can draw all sorts of designs.”
“Bruce, sweetie, I don’t know what the fuck is going through your pretty head but whatever it is, shoo it away and get a game plan in order.”
This is easier said than done. While Bruce is normally a plans guy, the combination of the evil beam of the summer sun and Mr. Clark July’s lustrous body is causing his brain to short-circuit, so he just stands there without a contingency for what to do if Clark talks to him again. Which will surely happen in the next few minutes.
The soap and grime is sluiced away and his car left sparkling. Clark and Diana sparkle just as brightly as they inspect Bruce’s car and find it satisfactory. Bruce’s heartrate spikes because Clark is now jogging over and he can either panic and book it down the length of the beach to escape or manage to dredge up words from somewhere deep in his gullet. Time to try and converse like a normal human being.
“Get it together, Wayne,” Harley hisses before scampering off and leaving Bruce to face his doom alone. Abandoned once more.
This time, Bruce has the good sense to try and appear friendly when Clark runs toward him. His pulse is ten beats above resting rate, so he’s pretty sure he’s going to have a heart attack a few sentences in, but at least Mr. July will be the last thing he sees before he dies.
“Hi again, doc,” Clark says, sticking his hands in his pockets after nixing a second attempt at a handshake.
“You know me?” Bruce isn’t in scrubs or anything. He’s 1000% certain he would know if he treated Clark before.
“Yeah, I’ve seen the ad for your clinic in the community center newsletter. Looks like a great place. I don’t get sick much, but I know where I’ll be going next time!”
“Hopefully not for a long while. Not because I don’t want to see you,” Bruce continues awkwardly. “But because it’s good not to be sick. As you know.”
“Ha, yep.” They just stare at one another’s faces for a long moment before Clark clears his throat. “Your car is all set! It’s very nice. I bet it drives like a dream.”
“Want to see for yourself?” Bruce blurts before something integral like his better judgment can stop him. “I can drive you to the, uh— the parking lot over there. Since I have to move my car anyway.”
They turn to look at the parking lot several yards away. Pam waves her sunhat at them, but it feels like a jeer.
“I appreciate the offer, but I wouldn’t want to get the interior wet,” Clark says, gesturing sheepishly at his soaked body.
You can make my interior wet anytime. Bruce does manage not to vocalize this out loud.
“Right. Another time, maybe.”
“Yeah? I’d like that,” Clark responds, and paired with that beautiful smile, it doesn’t sound like just a perfunctory line. “But I should buy you another drink first. By which I mean juice, not an alcoholic beverage! Not that I wouldn’t buy you a drink drink, but it’d be irresponsible to do that before we go for a drive— I’m going to close my mouth now and start walking toward the lemonade stands. Meet you at the lot?”
Bruce nods quickly and does some motion with his hand meant to indicate both “go ahead” and “see you there,” and powerwalks to his now-clean car. When the valet tosses him his keys he clenches them hard enough for the metal teeth to bite into his palm, but it doesn’t wake him from his delirium. Reality, then.
He glances up at the oppressive presence of the sun for one dizzying second, and decides to commit to his summer-madness. The other option is just driving away, and that would be cowardly.
Clark must be preternaturally fast, because he makes it to the lot at about the same time that Bruce parks his car. He has a new juice in hand.
“For you,” he says, doing a little curtsy as he presents it, and then immediately looks embarrassed by that choice, which just endears him all the more to Bruce.
“Thank you. And thank you for the car wash. I’m not sure what the tip protocol is, but…”
“Straight to the donation pail,” Clark says with a laugh. His foot scuffs back and forth into the pavement as Bruce leans against the side of his car. “Firefighters walking around with bills tucked into their waistbands isn’t really a good look.”
“Good point. So. Firefighting. A very admirable profession.” Bruce takes a sip of his new juice to stop himself from speaking further, since his conversational skills took a catastrophic downturn ever since he set eyes on Clark. At least he isn’t dazzled speechless like he was afraid he might be.
“Says the doctor. But I bet you get sick of people asking you about work, so tell me: what do you do in between saving lives?”
“I’m a GP; it isn’t like I’m pulling people back from the brink of death,” Bruce says dryly, but Clark doesn’t seem to buy it. “I try to stay active. I also sketch and read detective novels.”
“Oh, I dabble in art too!”
Bruce is interrupted by his lurching desire to confess that he knows this already because he’s stalked Clark by the arrival of a handsome, well-built man with dark brown skin and a firefighter helmet under his arm. Mr. April, Bruce remembers with definitive clarity as he takes in the man’s impressive arms and chest. Pretty hard to forget.
“Hey, Clark,” Mr. April says as he trots up, raising a hand toward Bruce in greeting, “Diana says you’re on break until 2; Shayera and I are swapping in.”
“Thanks, John.”
“Use your time wisely,” John says with a grin before jogging away to join a red-haired firefighter lugging two large buckets toward a car.
A silence falls between them in the wake of John’s departure, and Bruce fears that being perceived by his colleagues has brought Clark back to his senses. In a moment he’ll excuse himself, having realized that the glare of the sun bouncing off the polished cars straight into his eyes drove him temporarily insane enough to entertain Bruce’s interest.
“Okay, so my break isn’t that long, but I think we have enough time to check out the craft stands before I have to head back.” Clark says. “And maybe grab a hot dog or three.” He squints at the stands stretching down toward the shoreline, and waves at someone that Bruce isn’t sure can see him, before turning back to Bruce expectantly.
Maybe Clark is always insane. Bruce certainly doesn’t mind.
“That’s a lot of hot dog,” he says, unable to help his smile.
“Before you lecture me, I want it on the record that I’m very good about eating my vegetables and drinking my milk.”
“I believe it.” His eyes flit up and down, head to toe and back again to see Clark consciously straightening up under his once over. His eyes are so bright and blue behind his glasses; Bruce can’t look away. “I could go for a snack,” he says inanely when he realizes he hasn’t agreed yet. Clark’s visible relief makes the tightness of anxiety in Bruce’s own chest relax as well.
“Trust me, it’ll be extra delicious as we look over the specialty jellies and handmade cups with eyeballs.”
“Does processed meat and weird pottery count as ‘using your time wisely’?” Bruce asks, stepping forward, shrinking the space between them enough that the air feels marginally hotter.
“I think so. And if not, well. I guess we can be unwise together,” Clark says, his smile outshining the sun and melting Bruce just as easily.
Summer still isn’t Bruce’s season, but he sees now that it has its charms.