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Oliver looks up from his script pages. Ryan’s in his side of the trailer, which isn’t anything new. Sometimes, some months, it feels like they share one trailer and not two halves of one. Some years it feels like he’s alone. Oliver didn’t hear him come in, but he’s had his headphones in, blasting music while he walks on his treadmill and reads through his lines between set ups. Ryan’s lucky Bear likes him enough to leave him alone.
Oliver pulls one of the headphones out of an ear. “What?”
“You seem off today,” Ryan responds. The door is already closed behind him, locking them away from the outside.
“Okay.” Oliver keeps walking. The whir of the motor seems especially loud.
Ryan crosses the small space – made smaller by Oliver’s treadmill and the dog bed – and sets something down on the little table next to the door leading to the bathroom. It looks like a dopp kit.
“Something wrong with your bathroom?” Oliver asks, curious despite himself.
Ryan shakes his head. “Nope.”
He’s half in costume, wearing the familiar dark blue tactical pants and black boots of their uniform, but just the black muscle tank top he often wears underneath the button-down shirt. It’s another hot day and they’re all sweating. Ryan’s the first of them to strip down when he can and Oliver has to catch himself from staring too long, too obviously, at the damp that gathers at the small of Ryan’s back, under his arms, and the collar of his shirt, the way his whole face glistens before someone from hair and makeup can rush in to blot him dry.
It’s easier when Oliver has his camera and can use the lens as a buffer.
There's no buffer in the intimate quarters of the trailer. It’s a tight fit, room enough for a couch and kitchenette and Oliver’s treadmill. Room enough for one tall man and a semi-trained dog. Less than enough space for the two of them and everything that stretches thick between them.
Oliver watches Ryan opens the little bag he brought with him and pull out an electric razor. Something twists in his stomach.
“You break your mirror?”
“Nope. This is for you.” Ryan glances over. His eyes are very dark, and hair falls across his forehead.
Oliver slows the treadmill and then comes to a stop. The trailer is suddenly echoingly quiet. Oliver can feel his heartbeat in his ears.
“Seemed like you were focused earlier,” Ryan says. “On Kenny and Angela.”
Oliver would deny it, but he can’t. He’d had his camera with him, finger on the shutter button, but he’d been staring more than anything as his castmates messed around with an electric razor between takes, to the delight of everyone watching.
Days and nights on set. Living in each other’s pockets for 16 hours at a time for years on end. Going home only to sleep and shower and pretend to be normal people before coming back to these uncanny, half-built worlds. Fake injuries that look real and scripted arguments that leave him feeling shaky on adrenaline and ill-defined boundaries. It all breeds connections that run deeper and weirder than Oliver could ever have imagined. Maybe more than he can handle long term.
Watching his friends enact a closeness that most co-workers would never have – could never imagine having – made him unimaginably happy. And had made something peculiar wriggle in his belly that he hadn’t been able to shake.
It’s why he’s been walking it out on the treadmill for the last 45 minutes, pretending to work on his lines while he tries to burn the extra, jittery energy out of his system.
“Get over here,” Ryan commands and Oliver goes. What’s the use in not?
Oliver ends up perched on the little table that’s not meant to take his weight, Ryan standing between his legs. This isn’t new but it’s not wholly familiar either. Ryan’s bulk and heat between his thighs, filling the space, making him spread his knees a little wider.
“What are we doing?” Oliver asks.
Ryan picks up the electric razor. It’s a nice one, expensive. Oliver’s seen it on the bathroom counter on Ryan’s side of the trailer before.
“Don’t have anyone at home taking care of you.” It’s a statement, not a question. Something dangerous sparks at the base of Oliver’s spine.
Oliver swallows. “I can shave myself. Been doing it a while now.”
Ryan makes a displeased sound low in his throat while he adjusts the settings on the razor.
“You know I can’t dry shave often,” Oliver adds, watching Ryan’s big hands work.
“I know. Pasty skin like yours.”
Ryan takes Oliver’s chin in his right hand, the razor in his left, and turns Oliver’s face to the side. He’s taped up pictures of the cast on the wall and finds himself staring at Ryan all over again.
“What about continuity?”
Ryan’s fingers are so warm on his skin, holding him with intention. Oliver knows he’s capable of bruising, when he wants.
“Yeah, that's what we’re known for.”
The razor clicks on.
The hum of the machine is familiar, an electric buzz Oliver’s been hearing for years now, but always with the accompanying tingle of a machine in his palm. Oliver braces against a jerk of surprise when the metal first touches his cheek, cool and dry on his skin. He can’t see it coming, face turned away, can only see the shape of Ryan out of the corner of his eye, looming over him for once.
He’d shaved that morning, barely awake in his bathroom, blinking blearily into the mirror with only a few lights on. This is not the same.
Oliver can feel the tiny oscillations of the blades, somewhere between tingling and tickling as they catch on his stubble with every pass that Ryan makes. Oliver doesn’t know where Ryan’s going to take the razor next, but he can guess. Up and down his cheeks in smooth motions, following the grain of his stubble, careful over his deeper acne scars. The warmer touch of Ryan’s fingers holding his chin is a tantalizing counterpoint to the cool metal, and when Ryan rubs his thumb against the soft flesh under Oliver’s chin for no reason other than to do it, Oliver shudders.
An inconvenient erection is nothing new to Oliver; he’s taken to wearing compression underwear on set for added support and modesty when he knows he’s going to be around Ryan. It should be embarrassing, and sometimes it is — being in his mid-30s with a body that reacts to his co-worker like a teenager with a crush. But it is what it is. Oliver’s getting used to being the person he is around Ryan.
Ryan’s close enough Oliver feels the heat of his body through his clothes, soaking into his skin, his muscles. Ryan runs so warm that sometimes it’s a problem, the way he sweats through his undershirts and ruins his hairstyle by the third set up of the day. Oliver can smell it on him – that dried sweat picking up his body chemistry. Bright cologne from the early morning. The cedar and orange of the pomade in his hair.
Oliver looked it up, once. Why some people smell good to him, smell enticing, and others don’t. The different types of sweat glands. The genetic code that helps build someone’s unique scent and someone else’s preference for that singular, particular smell. Sometimes he thinks about his DNA and Ryan’s and how they shouldn’t know each other at all.
Oliver shifts, squeezing his thighs tighter against Ryan’s hips.
“Don’t make me lose concentration,” Ryan warns. There’s a depth to his voice, burnished copper; Oliver’s heard it before, and it makes his hips move mindlessly.
“You can’t cut me with that,” Oliver counters.
Ryan hums thoughtfully and turns Oliver’s face to the other side. For just a moment, Oliver catches Ryan’s eyes. They’re dark, pupils wide. His lower lip is damp, reddened, like he’s been chewing on it. He’s not exactly smiling, but there’s something quiet in his face that Oliver wants to study. And then Ryan turns his head the rest of the way and the connection is broken and Oliver exhales.
The inside of the trailer feels as warm as the outside. Close and humid.
In the part of his brain that’s still thinking logically, Oliver knows this isn’t taking very long. He’s got a bit of stubble that’s come in since the morning, and the electric razor is making quick work of it. But the rest of his brain – the deeper parts that run on touch and taste and burning want – feel every aching second like hours.
Ryan’s body between his thighs. The veins in his forearms and the damp hair under his arms. His fingers on Oliver’s face – gentle, capable. How close his mouth is.
“Up,” Ryan murmurs and Oliver lets his head be tilted back, baring his throat to Ryan. Blades catch over the vulnerable hill of his Adam’s apple and Oliver shivers at the slight sandpaper drag of it. He wants to swallow and doesn’t.
“I’m not getting off before going back to set,” Oliver tells Ryan and himself.
Ryan snorts softly. “Didn’t say you were.”
He could. He could grab Ryan’s hips, his ass, pull him in even closer, get him to grind in tight and wicked right where he needs it. It probably wouldn’t take long – he’s getting hard, and he can tell Ryan is too. They’ve gotten off quick and dirty in tight quarters before, and they’ll probably do it again. But he’s wearing a costume that belongs to the network and he’s not going to leave bodily fluids in it. Not again.
The razor clicks off. Oliver takes a shivering breath.
“Thinking about something?” Ryan asks, the teasing is clear in his voice.
Oliver can feel the heat burning in his face. Looking at Ryan, he’s blushing too, high in the apples of his cheeks.
“Obviously,” Oliver admits because there’s no one else around to hear it.
Ryan makes a little noise in his throat while he puts the razor away in the bag. When he turns back to Oliver, he has something else in his hands: a square bottle of his own aftershave.
Oliver wants to protest, that he can’t spend the rest of the day smelling like Ryan’s fucking aftershave. That someone, Aisha probably, is going to take one long look at him and fucking know he’s back at it. But Ryan’s already putting a few dabs into his palms, rubbing his hands together, and slowly, gently rubbing the light lotion into Oliver’s now smooth cheeks.
Oliver closes his eyes; he can’t help it. Citrus and sandalwood fill his nose. Ryan massages the bolts of his jaw with strong, careful fingers, unlocking tension Oliver didn’t know he was carrying. Oliver wants to let his mouth drop open but doesn’t.
“I could come by later tonight,” Ryan comments, blinking slowly. His fingers are light running down Oliver’s throat; it feels like touch for touch’s sake. “If we don’t go too late.”
Oliver nods. Ryan’s hand drops to his collarbone and then falls to his side.
“Sure,” Oliver agrees because the thought of someone else – of Ryan – warm in his bed sounds nice. Ryan wasn’t wrong that there wasn’t anyone at home waiting for him.
“Sure,” Ryan parrots, grinning a little.
It might happen. It might not. It might happen a month from now or sooner.
Before he can pull back, Oliver grabs him – one hand stretching around a bicep and tangling his other fingers in Ryan’s belt loops – to tug him down for quick, nearly chaste kiss. There isn’t time for more, he can’t go back to set with swollen lips and messy hair. It’s bad enough he’s going back clean-shaven and smelling like Ryan. But he can have this – this one imperfect kiss that isn’t long enough to taste of anything.
“Go on,” Oliver says, finally pushing Ryan back and out from the chamber of his legs.
Ryan grins, toothy and too pretty for his own good. For Oliver’s good. “See you back out there.”
He’s out the door and Oliver sits on the countertop for a moment longer, one hand pressed to his smooth cheek, waiting for his heart rate to finally calm.