“He’s checking you out,” Hakyeon said nonchalantly, catching the ball Hongbin threw at him with an easy reach of his arm.

“Who is?” Hongbin asked, voice carefully disinterested even though he knew exactly who Hakyeon meant.

“You know who, don’t be an ,” came Hakyeon’s reply together with the ball, and Hongbin rolled his eyes.

“You mean the part-time lifeguard, full-time fashion disaster wearing the neon ‘sun’s out guns out’ singlet that doesn’t really do its job of covering any part of his body?”

“You noticed,” Hakyeon grinned, pushing his shades down his nose to wink at Hongbin. There was really nothing for Hongbin to do but roll his eyes again and flop back down on their blanket spread out on the sand, reaching for his bottle of water.

It was summer. Glorious summer had finally come and Hongbin was trying to look less like a pasty plucked chicken courtesy of the long winter and spring months and more like a bronzed god, but Hakyeon seemed to have sewn up that position already. He would have to settle for lightly fried chicken instead, kind of red in some places because Hakyeon was at applying sunscreen. The beach was infested with kids and their parents but they still came every single day and used exactly this spot – this spot that was halfway between the showers and the row of umbrella’d deck chairs they retreated to when it got too hot, and directly in front of the lifeguard’s station. Which happened to have the same lifeguard on duty every single day, too.

“He’s got tattoos, you like tattoos,” Hakyeon said after they had lounged in comfortable silence on their blanket a while, as if continuing a conversation they had been having all along.

“I also like oreos but that doesn’t mean I would like him if he were covered in them,” Hongbin sniped back, aware that on the grand scale of comebacks that was rather weak. “Plus, his tattoos are the stupidest tattoos I have ever seen in my life. ‘YOLO’ and ‘forever young’? Give me a break.”

“You noticed,” Hakyeon’s grin was practically splitting his face in half. “Just admit you’ve been checking him out too, his body is amazi-”

Something neon and blowing a shrill whistle rushed past them, spraying Hongbin with sand and making him squawk in indignance.

“Stop!” the lifeguard shouted at a group of teenagers in shallow water doing flips off one another’s shoulders. “Do that in deeper water if you have to. You’re just going to get hurt doing that there.”

“Enthusiastic,” Hakyeon murmured to Hongbin who was trying to brush off sand sticking to his sunscreen-ed skin and glaring daggers.

The kids moved off into deeper water and the lifeguard shook his head as he turned around, slowing down once he saw who he’d passed on his mission of public safety. Hongbin was still glaring, especially now he’d realized he had sand on his face too. The lifeguard took in the death stare and as if thinking better of it, sped up again back to his post.

“It’s just sand,” Hakyeon scolded, but Hongbin refused to lighten up.

“Did he have to shout like that? Huh? Think of all the little kids around here that must have had a shock, with a voice that deep,” Hongbin the #1 champion of children’s rights grumbled.

“Oh, you noticed,” Hakyeon smiled, adjusted his shades and went to sleep.

*

“You sure about this? Is this just a ploy to actually get in trouble and have your lifeguard lover boy rescue you?”

“Shut up,” Hongbin pushed his inner tube into the water and stepped into the donut hole in the middle, walking with it further out into the sea away from the surf. “You just have to tow me back later. I’m not going to fall out and drown.”

“This isn’t a swimming pool, Binnie. What if you get washed away from me?”

“Then you can call my lifeguard lover boy and have him rescue me,” Hongbin shot back sarcastically over his shoulder, internally whooping at finally getting one over Hakyeon, still holding his own inner tube and giving him an unimpressed face. “Come on. I can’t swim but I can float. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Forty minutes later and Hongbin was being carried out of the sea by the lifeguard [a.k.a. Lover Boy] and laid gently on the sand, Hakyeon stumbling out of the water a few beats behind and fluttering around them anxiously while Hongbin coughed out half the contents of the ocean.

“You have to look out for the waves, sometimes an unexpectedly big one comes along and washes you under,” the lifeguard was telling Hongbin, dripping water down on him. “Are you okay? You shouldn’t have gone out if you can’t swim.”

“Quit nagging me,” Hongbin managed to say in between wracking coughs, earning him a slap upside the head from Hakyeon.

“He just saved you,” Hakyeon hissed. “Be nice, for ’s sake.”

The lifeguard laughed, a really nice pleasant laugh that for some reason had Hongbin coughing even harder. “It’s okay. Just glad to help.”

“What’s your name? So we can thank you properly,” Hakyeon asked, watching Hongbin try to sit up and the lifeguard immediately putting an arm around his shoulders to help him.

“What? Oh, I’m Wonsik. I’m new here, actually.”

“Well, thank you, Wonsik. I’m sure Hongbin here is really grateful too,” Hakyeon nudged Hongbin hard in the side, and Hongbin took a few more labored breaths before looking at Wonsik.

“Thank you. You’re right, I won’t do that again,” Hongbin said, his voice raw from the coughing.

“Right. Or, you know – I mean. I could teach you how to swim.”

Hongbin and Hakyeon both looked up in surprise.

“Yes,” Hakyeon said, not missing a beat. “He would like that.”

*

“He has really nice arms,” Hongbin later muttered, wringing out his board shorts with more force than necessary, Hakyeon looking slyly back at him in the mirror in the changing room.

“Really nice hands too.” One of those hands had lingered on Hongbin’s waist when Wonsik had helped him to his feet, and Hongbin was mad.

“I mean,” Hongbin burst out, throwing down his board shorts. “Where the hell does he get off being so hot? For what? Why does he need to be so hot?”

Hakyeon grinned, trying to hold in his laughter. “You finally noticed.”

*