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Well, all he had to do was wash the remnants of Tidal River off his body and clean his hair. It’d take only a few minutes. He could deal with the cold water. With that, he turned the cold water tap. No water came out of the shower head. He turned the tap some more until that tap started squeaking too. Nothing.
“Beckett?” Miles called, his voice echoing through the men’s bathroom.
After the river, they returned to the campsite, picked up their bathroom supplies and went to the bathrooms, a simple building painted camouflage green. On one side was the women’s and on the other side, the men’s. Within the men’s bathroom were three toilet cubicles, three urinals, three shower cubicles and a long sink in front of a mirror.
It was still early in the afternoon, so when Miles and Beckett came in, only one of the showers was occupied. No need to wait.
“Yeah?” Beckett said.
“Something’s wrong with my shower. Can you help me?”
On the other side of the wall, Beckett turned off his shower and made a couple rustling noises. A moment later, he knocked on the front of Miles’s door.
Miles unlocked it and swung it open, and Beckett’s eyes shot straight down.
“Jesus, fuck,” Beckett said, slapping a hand over his eyes and turning away.
“What?” Miles asked.
“You’re…” he lowered his voice to a hiss, “naked.”
“That’s what you do when you get in the shower,” Miles said dryly.
“I thought you’d have covered yourself up,” Beckett said. Clearly that was what Beckett had done, with his gray towel tied around his hips.
“We have the same parts,” Miles said
“Cover yourself up. Please.”
Miles stared at Beckett’s back, heart sinking. The words were polite enough, but they still hurt. Beckett really didn’t want to see Miles’s naked body, huh? Miles tried to not take it personally — Beckett probably didn’t like looking at any guy’s naked body. But still, they’d been friends for ages. He thought this stuff wouldn’t matter.
He grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist. It wasn’t a neat as the way Beckett had done it, but it still got the job done.
“Okay. All covered.”
Beckett turned around, removing his hands. His cheeks and the tips of his ears were bright pink, and he glanced at Miles’s crotch, probably to make sure it was indeed covered, before stepping into the cubicle and tinkering with the taps and inspecting the shower head. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do to fix it. I’ll let maintenance know. I’ll quickly finish washing off, and then you can use my shower.”
“Or maybe we could just shower together,” Miles said.
Beckett’s head whipped to face him.
“Kidding,” Miles added with a weak smile.
Beckett’s shoulders relaxed. “I’ll be two minutes tops.”
While Beckett finished showering, Miles gathered his toiletries and waited by the sink. When Beckett came out two minutes later, wearing fresh clothes and towel drying his hair, Miles jumped into the shower and blasted the hot water. As he was shampooing his hair, he looked down at himself. His tummy, his patch of pubic hair, his dick, his balls. He remembered the way Beckett had spun around, body stiff, like if Miles touched him, he’d crumble into a million pieces.
Miles would be lying if he said he hadn’t wondered what Beckett looked like naked. Beckett was a big guy — tall, broad shoulders, large hands, huge feet. He was probably proportionate everywhere. The kind of big that’d make someone’s jaw ache.
Miles flinched. What the fuck am I thinking about? Shoving those thoughts down, he focused on washing himself.
When he left the shower, he checked his reflection in the mirror. He had a straight nose and light brown freckles that dusted the peaks of his cheekbones. Water made his hair go dark and wavy. He had light brown hair, but everyone around him claimed it was blond. Sometimes Callum or Wesley would call him ‘blondie’ to tease him.
But Miles’s hair wasn’t blond. It was just extremely, extremely light brown.
*
At the campsite, they dumped their stuff in their respective tents and cooked dinner under the gazebo, which was made out of four metal poles holding up a tarp roof. Miles cooked salmon on a gas stove, which they had to use instead of a campfire because it was summer and the last thing they needed was to start a bushfire; in a national park, no less.
