AN: I meant to post this on Valentine's Day and forgot, because I am lame. The unedited version can be found on AFF dot net, as usual!
"Please, Dax?"
"No! Yer out'a yer damn mind if you think I'm doin' that, fake jock!" Daxter pulled a pillow over his face stubbornly. "I am not walkin' halfway across campus right now—it's dark, it's cold, I'm tired, and I know darn well you can find yer way to the rec center by yourself."
The mattress compressed with a squeak as Jak sank down on it, somewhere in the vicinity of the current occupant's knees. "Come on, Dax. I'm really sorry I left your Valentine's present at work. I promise I'll make it up to you. But please come with me? Just this once?"
The redhead groaned unintelligibly. He was beginning to wish the holiday had never been invented.
Of course the pizzeria had been flooded with shy couples on "casual" first dates, and groups of single friends unwilling to spend the evening home alone. The tips that night had been great, but Daxter's prediction had proven true; it was almost midnight and he had just barely gotten back to the dorm, not even out of his uniform yet when he had been ambushed by his very insistent roommate.
"Okay. Look. If I go with you to your work to pick up this thing—"
"Your present."
"—my present, will ya quit lookin' at me like the saddest Golden retriever in Haven?"
Jak perked up instantly. "Definitely."
"Are you sure it's even open this late?"
"Positive. The courts are all closed by now but the weight room and general fitness areas are open until two on weekends. We'll be able to get in, no problem."
With a groan, Dax sat up, casting his pillow shield aside. "Fine. Let's get this quest over with. Gimme a second to change my shoes, though. I dumped Ranch dressing all over 'em earlier."
"Aww, man. Waste of good Ranch." The quarterback cocked an ear. "That sounds really good. You know, we should get hot wings soon."
He couldn't help but laugh as he kicked off his black work sneakers and pulled on the custom pair Jak had given him for Christmas. He hadn't been able to wear them much, unwilling to risk ruining them with snow-slush and sidewalk salt, but the weather had been kind that week and the sidewalks were mostly dry and clear.
"Let's get goin', pal. The sooner we get there, the sooner I can get back and rinse off."
"Rinsing off is good," Jak agreed with a tiny smile.
- / - / - / - / -
The rec center was nearly deserted when they arrived. A few dedicated souls could be seen on treadmills or using the weights, but the basketball courts stood dark. The climbing wall was closed for the night. The dance studios were locked up tight. Once they left the main arteries of the building, only every fourth fluorescent light fixture illuminated their path through the maze of hallways and shortcuts.
They met no one along the way.
"Kinda creepy in here with all the lights out, ain't it?" Daxter said nervously. "Like we could go around a corner an' be ambushed by zombies or somethin'."
"Fitness zombies? Really?"
"Well that's how it always goes in the movies!"
Jak chuckled as they turned a shadowed corner and headed down a vaguely familiar incline. "Horror movies, huh? How about something a little more fitting for the holiday we're on?"
"I'm not watchin' romcoms," Daxter muttered. "Chick flicks is a level I refuse ta stoop to." Then, he stopped. "Did we get turned around? This is the pool locker place. Why are we at the pool?"
Jak passed his roommate with a calm shrug. "I'm pretty sure this is where I left it."
"Sheesh, that's some crazy patrol you do everyday if they've got ya all the way down here. And now I demand ta know what this thing is and why you were carryin' it around while you were on the clock."
"You'll see." Reaching the locker room that the boys had visited on Daxter's first trip to the rec center complex, the quarterback tugged at the door handle. It failed to budge.
"Are you kiddin' me?!" Daxter screeched in disbelief. "We walked all the way down here an' it's locked?"
"Not so loud," Jak shushed. "Give me a second." A ring of keys appeared from his coat pocket. Holding them up for inspection in the dim light, he flipped through them briskly. "Okay, here we go." With a click, the door was open and the redhead was shepherded inside.
His first clue that something wasn't quite right came as Jak casually locked the door behind them. "Uh, Jak? Are we allowed ta be in here right now?"
"Not really, no." Sounding supremely unconcerned, the green-blonde headed deeper into the locker room, flipping on lights as he went.
"Well grab the thing and let's get out'a here!" Daxter whispered, trailing warily behind. The last thing he wanted was for his friend to get written up before his third week on the job.
"Relax, Dax. No one's going to know we're here."
"Yer a lot more optimistic than me right now," he grumbled, hugging his arms as Jak strode over to a bench beside the wall of swim lockers and took off his coat.
A combination lock was spun off one of those lockers in short order. Daxter watched, totally baffled, as Jak pulled the duffel bag he always took to work with him out of the locker, and out of the bag he pulled—a pair of Daxter's boxers?
"Why do you have my underwear?" he asked dumbly.
By now, Jak couldn't hide an epic grin. "Because I couldn't find any trunks and I figured you wouldn't want to swim naked. Come on." Grabbing his stunned roommate by the arm, he led him back through the showers to the roll-top bars blocking access to the pool. "Happy Valentine's Day, Dax." He stretched up to the lock and, with a quick jangle of keys, rolled the bars up with a clatter.
"I… you… what?" Daxter stammered intelligently, mouth hanging open.
Jak stepped back, allowing an unobstructed view of the shadowy pool interior. "Somebody's gift request included a private pool. So I borrowed some keys from Sig's office. Hope you're not too tired to swim a while."
"Borrowed?"
"Yeah, borrowed. It's not stealing unless you don't bring it back. Phoenix helped me."
All at once Daxter felt rather faint. "You're gonna get fired," he whimpered, leaning heavily against the brickwork just inside the doorway. "You're gonna get fired an' Phoenix is gonna get fired an' we're gonna get arrested for trespassing and it's gonna be all my fault 'cause I said somethin' dumb about pools—"
"No one's getting arrested," Jak assured, managing to tone down the smug, jockly smirk in the face of his friend's nerves, "because I work here and we're not technically trespassing. And no one's getting fired. I mean, I'm not ratting Phoenix out as my accomplice, and I'm an MVP. Coach might kick my ass, but I highly doubt I'd get fired. And even if I did," his voice rose over Daxter's weak protest, "it would be worth it if I could give you something you'll really enjoy. You're worth it."
Something inside the redhead crumbled a little.
"Jak… pal, you can't say that. You can't do somethin' like this fer me, when all I got you was—"
He'd thought it would be cute at the time. A small bouquet of lilies like Jak had joked about so many days ago left on his desk that morning, and a piece of construction paper with a bunch of those chalky, heart-shaped candies with words on them glued to it spelling out Best Fake Jock.
"—all I gave you was a second grader's art project and you give me so much stuff—"
Expensive shoes with his namesake on them, and a jacket made for athletic royalty, and friendship and stupid inside jokes and gentle touches and kisses and acceptance and…
I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.
"My presents were great," Jak argued stubbornly, completely oblivious to his roommate's sudden internal clamor. "The flowers remind me of summer and I'm probably going to frame the candy valentine and put it over my desk later. But what would really make today awesome for me would be you enjoying this. So would you come swimming with me?"
Daxter took a deep breath and did his best to calm his heaving tits, as it were. This was only the nicest thing anyone had done for him ever. The least he could do was roll with the punches. He would worry about any ill-timed personal realizations later.
"Okay. Yeah. I'll come swimmin' with you."
- / - / - / - / -
"You sure there's no cameras in here?"
Jak chuckled and stepped out of the locker room onto the tile that surrounded the pool. "I'm sure. The pool was built years before the rec center—they just joined the buildings together later while it was under construction. All the cameras that are actually hooked to monitors and feeds are back in the main complex. Most of the ones in the older areas aren't even wired anymore. They just keep them up to deter people."
"How d'you know all that?" Daxter asked suspiciously. Still, he did seem reassured enough that he deigned to separate himself from the shadows he'd been loitering in and creep out from the locker room doorway.
"I just asked Sig which cameras work and which don't. So I'd be better informed. For security purposes."
The redhead slunk up to his side, a barefoot, silent presence in the dim, cavernous room. "You are a legitimately horrible person. The worst employee of the year."
Grinning, the quarterback balanced on one foot and trailed the other along the very edge of the pool. The cool water was pleasant on his toes in the damp, muggy heat of the room. "I'll buy him a suck up latte."
They couldn't chance turning up the main lights; someone important enough to investigate could see it through the upper windows from the sidewalk outside. Luckily the secondary lighting over the spectator bleachers cast adequate, if shadowy, light to see by. The pool itself was illuminated, submerged lights around the edges in even intervals glowing a calm, ethereal blue. Just the right atmosphere for a relaxing swim.
"What're the odds of someone hearin' a really big splash?"
"Almost nonexistent," Jak answered distractedly. "Even if somebody was around, the walls are solid concrete. They'd have to be in the locker rooms, at least, and those are all locked."
"Good to know." And Daxter shoved him.
He yelped once as he overbalanced, not unlike Croc's barks of shock when he slid through the kitchen and headfirst into the glass sliding door. Then he hit the water.
"That's for sneakin' around, ya huge jerk!" Dax cackled as Jak broke the surface between the shallow and deep ends, hacking and flailing with his hair a bedraggled, dripping curtain over his face.
The green-blonde sputtered, nose burning with unexpected chlorine exposure. "I'm the jerk?"
Daxter backed up a few steps, got a running start, and cannonballed in next to him with a whoop of laughter.
Dipping backwards, Jak trailed his hair through the water until it hung where it was supposed to. "You're going to pay for that, just so you know."
"Oh yeah? What're you gonna do, get me wet?" the redhead taunted, flipping his own sopping hair out of his eyes before disappearing under the water.
Like any sensible competitor, Jak gave chase.
As he should have known, he didn't have a prayer of catching someone whose forte was speed. Daxter cut almost lazy ottery loops through the water while Jak floundered after like a dog chasing driftwood sticks. That didn't make the proceedings any less fun, thankfully.
They goofed around for more than an hour, splashing and playing across the open expanse where the strings of lane-marking buoys usually ran, now coiled unobtrusively near the bleachers. Daxter discovered the diving board, a find that led to an increasingly funny display of one-upmanship as they tried to outdo one another's jumps.
When that got old, Jak hunted down a small bin of weighted diving sticks, apparently left out from the open swim hours earlier that night, and scattered them into the deep end.
The redhead's manic darting was starting to slow down, he noticed, peering through the liquid blue haze at the form of his friend smoothly kicking along the bottom, gathering the sticks he came across.
Jak dove and grabbed the last stick at the same moment. Daxter glanced up in surprise, weightless hair haloed around his face. When their eyes met he gave a bubbly laugh and gestured upwards. They floated up lazily and broke the surface together.
"Okay, time out," Daxter gasped, paddling to the edge. "I gotta take a break." He dumped the dive sticks out onto the tile and turned in the water before hoisting himself up backwards to sit on the ledge that ran around the pool perimeter. His arms were shaking slightly.
"Tired?" Jak asked, floating closer to join him.
"Muscles I forgot I even had have turned to jello," he confirmed cheerfully, paddling his still-submerged legs. He shook his head, water drops scattering as his hair spiked up crazily.
The quarterback chuckled. "Yeah, that can happen." They had settled down closer to the shallow end than the deep, and his feet could comfortably touch bottom with the top of his chest braced on the ledge. Serendipitously, he was at the perfect height to prop his arms across Daxter's knees. "Had fun?"
"Oh, yeah." Slightly pruned fingers began to pet Jak's hair, slicking it back behind his ears. "I forgot how much I missed swimmin' without having ta worry about it. You think someday we could go to a water park? I always wanted ta do that. I bet they'd even let me wear a t-shirt if I say I sunburn real easy."
"We will totally go to a water park," Jak vowed. "You'll love it. There's one on the mainland near our beach house—"
The hands in his hair stilled. "Wait. A. Minute. Back up. Your what house?"
He hid a smile in his crossed arms, happily dripping all over Dax's lap. "Uncle has a beach house down south on the coast. It's on an island; you have to take a ferry to it and everything. Uncle loans it out to friends and colleagues and stuff, but we usually get down there at least twice a year." Well, they had before college became a thing. "You should come with us next time we go."
"I shouldn't be surprised by this by now, but amazingly, somehow I am."
"There are palm trees and waterfalls and iguanas and stuff. I'll teach you how to surf. You'll have fun." The redhead would also probably bake like a little shrimp in the southern sun, but surely they made an SPF high enough to fix that.
Daxter's hands migrated to the bases of his ears, flicking them up and down. "I should hate yer guts fer havin' so much awesome stuff, y'know that?"
"But I share my awesome stuff, so you like me anyway." Jak leaned forward and placed a teasing kiss on his friend's bare stomach.
"If you blow a raspberry on me, I swear ta god," Dax warned.
Jak snickered. "No raspberries, I promise." He wrapped his arms around the smaller guy and slid him back to the edge for a hug. He rested his head contentedly against Daxter's middle as slowly steadying hands found his hair and began to pet again. "Good Valentine's Day, though?"
"Pal, best Valentine's Day ever."
[pool sex, yeah! :D]
- / - / - / - / -
They left the pool just a few minutes later.
Jak packed up the dive sticks, made sure nothing was out of place, and carefully locked down the roll top bars. With any luck their clandestine visit would go entirely undetected.
Back in the locker room, towel tied around his waist, Dax bent almost double to stick his head under the automatic hand dryer. "You ought'a try this, Jakkie-boy. It'll be a cold walk home with all that hair still wet."
The green-blonde chuckled, running a wide toothed comb though his tangles. "Move over and I will."
Obligingly Daxter ran his hands through his own hair a final time and moved out of the way, letting Jak slide in. He couldn't help but notice, as he dropped down on the long bench that ran down the middle of the locker bay, the obvious tent in the front of his jock's towel. The big lug hadn't even let him return the favor in the pool. Or in the showers when they'd rinsed off the chlorine. Something about how it was super late, and Dax had to be tired after being on his feet all day, and he was just happy to have gotten the redhead off so well, really!
And maybe Daxter was honestly pretty damn tired, but he could sleep when he was dead. Sex was obviously far more important. Ha. Sleep is for the weak. Sex is for the now!
Not getting Jak off too wasn't an option, especially now that his chest was doing a fluttery, jumpy tango of affection every time he looked sideways at the jock—a strong echo of those sweet, confusing pangs he'd felt at the start of their friendship all those months ago. Just… different.
He reclined on the bench, propped on his elbows, and watched Jak thoughtfully. Maybe if he waited until they were back at the dorm to pounce, he'd be more receptive?
Jak finished drying his hair, looked up, and froze, wide eyes fixed on the redhead. "Um. I can see up your towel."
Daxter glanced down his body in surprise, then grinned teasingly. "Enjoying the view?"
The quarterback facepalmed. "More than I should be, given that I really don't need to start associating locker rooms with images like that. My athletic career would be over."
"Well, heavens forbid you acquire an unexpected inappropriate erection while surrounded by a crowd of upstanding and successful peers. I shall sit in a more ladylike manner at once!" The middle finger he got in reply made him cackle like a jerk as he rolled off the bench to get dressed.
Yeah, he was totally going to re-tap that when they got home.
- / - / - / - / -
To be continued.
Outtakes:
/
Phoenix: Not to detract from our lovely dinner date, but did you know that Jak's got a hot fling lined up for the night?
Razer: …
Phoenix: I know, right? I was surprised too! Never would have pegged him for the type.
Razer: Do you know who…?
Phoenix: No, but he promised to tell me tomorrow, sly bastard. I'm so proud!
Razer: (pats his hands sadly) We will make Jak and… his date… congratulatory pancakes. And then I will spend the morning consoling you when your brain is broken by the truth, you poor, oblivious thing.
/
Sig: I'm never working this late again my whole life, I swear. Just one last key check… aw, man, where're the pool keys? Don't tell me I left 'em in the swim lockers! *sigh* Better go round 'em up.
(treks through dark rec complex)
Sig: Spare locker room key, spare locker room key… here we go. (steps in) What the hell, I left the lights on in here too?! You're getting forgetful in your old age, man. Now, where are those keys…?
(wanders through the showers)
Sig: Okay, damn it, I know for damn sure I didn't leave those bars upppp—oh. My heavens. Okaaaaay. Whoa. Whooooo. Stuff I never wanted to see my quarterback doing everrrrrrr. Okay. And we're leaving. Yes, leaving. Oh god, thank you for pool filters. I need a scotch.
/
Jak: So, how was it?
Dax: Incredible, big guy. You're so thoughtful and amazing! And awww, you even left me a little love note!
Jak: Uh… no I didn't.
Dax: You didn't? Then who put this piece of paper next to your bag?
Jak: Let me see that. (grabs note) "Chili pepper; a real man is never ashamed to pleasure his partner. So damn proud of you! And also mentally scarred, but proud! Coach. PS: You put those keys back where you got them or your ass is grass."
Dax: …
Jak: Well hey, at least he's not mad! Awesome!
Dax: … brb, just gonna go drown myself in the pool, k thx.
/