templemarker

Control of the Switch
by templemarker

Notes: For the “mirrors/doubles” square of my 2011 kink_bingo card. Thank you to samjohnsson for ninja-like editing skills and shoshannagold for thoughtful encouragement and the whole idea in the first place. John Cooper/Other, NC17.

***

Despite his seniority, both from many long years of service and the semi-promotion that came from being a boot shiner, John still got shit days in the vacation lottery.

Other assholes played the game more intensely than he did, cozying up to Armie in HR, taking the night shift before the lottery to get in line first. John just didn’t care that much. Even when he wasn’t single, Caesar always worked his vacation time around John’s–it was set up a year in advance, and almost impossible to re-arrange. They got used to taking mid-week trips to New Mexico or Nevada, somewhere close enough that they didn’t burn time travelling to get there but far enough away that they could lose the artifice.

But now that he was single, vacation days mattered even less to him. He hadn’t even realized he’d had a long weekend until Armie had called him to make sure he didn’t want to give up the days. Fuck that. Weekends, actually Saturday-Sunday weekends, were worth more than OT pay and the promise of his pick of days later in the year.

He decided to take the train up to San Francisco–easier on his back if he could move around during the trip–and catch up with a couple of buddies, grab a beer and a game, maybe get laid, if he could find the right guy. He was tense–hell, he was always tense–and needed to get the fuck away from Sherman for a little while. Sherman, who’d been his boot for months now and showed no sign of turning off the regard he seemed to hold John in. John was no one’s hero, had never wanted to be. He was just a trainer–his job was to make sure the newbies didn’t jam their thumbs up their asses too hard, maybe start to make them into decent officers. He wasn’t a fucking role model, and no matter how closely Ben studied him that wasn’t going to change.

Sherman. Not Ben. Coop shook his head violently; he was in the bar of the cafeteria car, working his way through overpriced Heineken and flipping through the sports section of the LA Times. And that–that too-familiar slip of the mind–was exactly why he’d booked it out of there this morning without telling Sherman where he was going.

The train arrived on time, and his friend Cartier met him in the lobby. She was 6’8″ of tottering, heel-wearing queen, and embraced him with the effusiveness of a long-lost child, which just made him laugh and roll his eyes. John stayed in Cartier’s guest room when he was in the city, when he was by himself, and it made it easier to take on San Francisco when he only came here once a year. They caught up on the cab ride, Cartier talking about her dog costume business online and John giving some sketchy details on his life; the last time he saw her, he was still with Caesar, and he figured the grilling would come around sooner or later. Might as well be later.

She brought out the tequila about ten minutes after they got to her place, and by nine the world was a welcome blur. He was laughing, smiling; Cartier could always get him in a better mood, even when things were shit. Especially when things were shit. He didn’t protest when she insisted that they go out, head out to Marbled, some club that he wouldn’t feel remotely comfortable in if he wasn’t carefully putting one foot in front of the other.

The club was hot and loud and dark with bright shocks of light pulsing out from different corners, seemingly at random. It was dizzying, and for half a minute he was frozen in cop-mode. No matter how drunk he was, some things were ingrained too deep: being crushed by bodies in a room with no visible entrance set off every alarm in his head, but he pushed it down, tipping back the shot Cartier put in his hands to clear away the last traces of that instinct. She wanted to dance, so they danced; John couldn’t bring himself to care how they looked, him barely able to shuffle side to side and Cartier half a head taller than him in a silver glitter dress and stacked heels. He just smiled, laughed. It was fucking vacation.

When the sweat started to make his t-shirt chafe, he motioned towards the bar and pushed his way through the bodies to get there. It was the only place with decent light in the club, and he slotted neatly into a space that opened near the mats before any waif-like twink could get there first. He got two bottles of water, and stood there packing the first one away before paying and taking the second with him. He headed back towards the toilets, where of course there was a line. Half the line was making out, and John suppressed a sigh. He fucking missed kissing the most of all, and was suddenly glad he’d forgotten his cell phone back at Cartier’s apartment. No drunken midnight phone calls to Caesar, no matter how forgiving he’d be the next day.

John closed his eyes for a minute, the bottle of water sweating in his hand, until he was jostled out of it. He opened his eyes and his mouth, intending to make a smart-ass remark that would go unheard in the noise of the club, but his words dried up in his throat.

How the fuck had Ben Sherman followed him all the way up to some random-ass gay bar in the Castro?

Ben waved at him, apologetic, and headed in the opposite direction. John muttered a curse under his breath and followed; this could not be happening. It was his fucking vacation.

He pushed through the bodies, watching the dirty blond back of Ben’s head bob through the crowd. It was longer than he’d remembered–maybe he just hadn’t been paying attention. John blinked, hand clutching his water bottle like a lifeline, and followed Ben out of the bar. Ben was only a short distance ahead of him, and John couldn’t help shouting his name in the cool autumn night.

Ben turned around, looking confused, and then John was confused, because it obviously wasn’t Ben. He was too pretty. His hair was too long, and he was wearing a skinny tie and a button-down over slim dark jeans and chucks. A pair of sunglasses were hooked into the pocket of his shirt, ones that weren’t the aviators Ben had been issued.

“Did–were you calling me Ben?” the guy asked, confused, and John wanted to scrub a hand over his face. Fuck, he shouldn’t have come out here.

“Sorry,” he offered lamely. “You look like someone else.”

The guy smiled, just a small quirk of his lips, nothing like Ben’s smile or his wide, raunchy grin around the lunch table telling dirty jokes Dewey accused him of looking up on the internet. John’s heart was beating fast. He was fucking worse off than he thought, and too drunk to be smart about it.

“You know, no one’s tried that one on me before,” he said, some thread of subdued humor behind his words. John strained to hear him as bodies poured out of the club, and he took a step forward without really thinking.

“I–well. I’m not much for lines,” John said, his brain catching up with his mouth. This was what always happened when he drank too much, when he felt safe enough to drink too much. His dick jumped ahead of his sense.

The guy stepped forward too, eyes quickly flicking up and down John, and John adjusted his stance minutely, adjusted his plans for how this might go. “I must have been worth following out here, though,” the guy said, something that would have been flirtatious on anyone else but on him just came off as intriguing.

“I’m John,” Coop said. Fuck it. This was his vacation, he was in San Francisco, and he wanted to get laid. He might as well get laid by a Ben Sherman double. Maybe he’d get it out of his system.

“Ryan,” the guy said. “Do you–do you want to get out of here? My place isn’t far away.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

They managed to get a cab pretty quickly, and it was mostly silent on the way to Ryan’s place apart from The Smiths coming from the front of the cab. It always weirded John out to be in the backseat of any vehicle, and he tried not to fidget. Ryan’s hand fell gently over his thigh, and he looked down at it and then up to meet Ryan’s eyes. Ryan had one eyebrow cocked, a silent question, and John adjusted so that his knee knocked against Ryan’s. That got him that quiet little smile again, and for the second time John put away his concerns. Vacation. Getting laid.

Ryan lived in a third-floor walk-up in a decent neighborhood, and the alcohol was still in John’s system enough that he didn’t feel the stairs too badly as he followed Ryan up. He let himself look at Ryan from behind on the way: different build from Ben, slimmer all around. Not lean, still muscled in all the right places, but it was gym muscle, not working muscle. He carried himself easier, none of that acquired toughness Ben put on to slot into the Force.

At the door, Ryan dug out his keys and let them in. It was a small apartment, bed visible from the entrance, leather couch that looked more expensive than the place itself was, framed pictures on the walls. John couldn’t help from cataloging.

He put his hands in his pockets–he’d lost the water bottle somewhere along the way–and leaned against the breakfast bar, blinking a little at the bright kitchen light. Ryan got him a glass of water, which he knocked back quickly, and when he put it down Ryan was looking at him seriously.

“I’d like you to fuck me,” he said. “Would that be okay?”

John blinked, trying to push away the fuzz in his brain. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m good for that.”

There was another one of those little smiles, some Mona Lisa deal that seemed to hide all kinds of things behind it. But John wasn’t here to ask questions–except maybe one. “Do you kiss?” he asked. Somehow it felt like a blunter question than Ryan’s, but god, he wanted to kiss someone so badly.

Ryan nodded, stepping around the island and putting his own glass down. “I’d like that,” he said quietly.

They kissed, carefully at first, learning each other a little bit. Ryan came up a little to meet him, which was nice because the faint demon of his back was starting to remind Coop of its existence. It only took a moment before the kiss deepened, and John let out some breathy release he’d been holding back for wanting this so much. Not Ryan, not even Ben–the feeling of kissing another person, the intimacy as fleeting as it was. Cooper had never been great at relationships, from his wife to his lovers, but he’d always thought that at heart he was a one-man guy: one person to kiss for the rest of his life. If he could just find that person.

And now he was at the introspective part of drunk, so he pushed those thoughts from his head and reached a hand down to feel at Ryan’s cock. It was a hard line through his jeans, and Ryan punched out a noise at the touch that made John want to get him off in his pants. He pulled his hand back and said, “Bed? It’s gonna take me a minute to get undressed.”

Ryan nodded, lips looking well-kissed and some flush high on his cheeks. He pointed back to where his bed was, and John tugged off his t-shirt, damp with sweat, as he went.

He’d worn laceless shoes for ease, and stood in Ryan’s bedroom, idly doing inventory as he unbuckled his belt and pushed down his jeans as far as he could before working them down his legs with his heels. There were more pictures on the walls here, but art instead of photos. A wide dresser took up much of one wall, and the bed was at least a queen. Still smaller than John would sleep comfortably in, but he wasn’t planning on sleeping.

He sat down on the bed, kicking off his jeans, and grabbing them off his left foot to hang them over the edge of the bed. He looked up when Ryan entered, naked except for black shorts, the light from the front room limning him in the doorway. He looked good. He looked like Ben.

“I have a shitty back,” he said, not bothering to apologise. “Can you ride me? Or we could fuck standing, I guess, but you might enjoy it more if you were on top.” John hadn’t been able to fuck in any kind of crouching position for years, and he was mostly okay with lying down or standing with one hand braced against the wall. He missed that first hot fuck into someone’s body, though, that sweet jerk and flood of tension that came from being in control of your body. From being in a body without pain.

Ryan licked his lips and moved forward. “I’m good with being on top,” he said, bending down to kiss John again and pushing him down to the bed.

John put one hand in Ryan’s hair and the other on his ass, bringing their cocks together in a grind, pushing his tongue into Ryan’s mouth because he wanted to. Ryan panted out between kisses, and John carefully moved back to lie fully on the bed. “Get me hard,” he said, the low rumble of his voice filling the room. “Get me hard to fuck you.”

Ryan’s breath tripped and stuttered as he sat back on his heels, moving to straddle over Cooper. He pulled John’s cock out, and jacked it a few times to John’s approving grunt. John watched, eyes hooded, and Ryan licked his hand and jacked him again, thumbing the head, making John jerk a little.

“Condom?” John asked. He had one on him, but he didn’t want to get up to get it. Ryan reached over to the bedside table and pulled one out, ripping the foil and rolling it down John’s cock. He reached again and grabbed a tube of lube, pouring some in his hand and spreading it around, palming John’s cock briefly before reaching his hand back. John watched Ryan’s face as he took his own fingers, reaching one hand up to jack Ryan a little through it.

John frowned a little as Ryan pulled the fingers from his body and moved up John. “Don’t you wanna–get yourself ready, there’s no rush here,” he said, grasping Ryan’s hip to still him.

Ryan shook his head. “I, uh, when I get off–I do this by myself,” he said, some of the flush returning to his skin. “I’m pretty good, if you–”

“Yeah, okay,” John said, heart tripping. Fuck, Ben with his fingers in his ass, Ben getting off by himself, thinking of Cooper, of the place John would fit. He closed his eyes for a long moment, pushing the question of what Ben was doing tonight out of his head, and tightened his hands on Ryan’s hip. “Go for it,” he said, opening his eyes again.

Ryan worked himself down on John’s cock slowly, and it was the best kind of torture. John eyed the smooth taper of Ryan’s chest, the line of his profile in the half-light. He fought to keep his eyes open, watching Ryan sink down until he was flush, starting to work himself back and forth on John’s cock.

“That’s good,” he breathed out, toes curling a little. Ryan’s smile returned, and he planted his hands on Cooper’s chest to help him balance.

They fucked like that for awhile, just the easy push of bodies against each other. It was good; it was needed. Cooper missed fucking, too.

Ryan put his hand on his own dick and started to work himself faster, Cooper’s hands still on his hips, working himself up when he could manage it. Ryan clenched down on him, too, and Cooper was determined to hang on until Ryan had gotten his no matter how hot and tight his ass was. Cooper brought him down hard, once, twice, and grazed his prostate from the look on Ryan’s face. That was all he wrote: Ryan came in his hand and a little on Cooper’s chest, bucking on Cooper’s cock as he worked it out.

Cooper let him, just rubbed his thumbs along the divots of his hips, until Ryan looked blearily at him through the pleasure. He started grinding down, tightening around Cooper and planting a hand on the bed to really work down into it, and in a hot moment John saw Ben’s face instead of Ryan’s and came with a curse and a jerk.

A long moment later, Ryan carefully pulled himself up and off Cooper, and took care of the condom where John had pinched it to keep from leaking. That was nice of him; John wasn’t sure he could readily move. He looked at the clock: two in the morning.

“You can stay the night if you want,” Ryan said. He was pulling on his shorts, the curve of his spine a shadowed arch. “I need to be at brunch by 9:30, but if you don’t mind getting up before then–”

“Thanks,” Cooper said, twisting a little to grab his underwear and sliding them on while still lying mostly prone. He thought about the percs in his wallet and closed his eyes for a long moment. The alcohol was still keeping the edge off, enough that he could probably get to sleep. He’d save them for tomorrow morning when he’d really need them.

He felt Ryan get into the bed next to him, and the sense of a warm body was at once alien and familiar. John wondered what it would feel like to have Ben there beside him, and fell asleep before finding an answer.