Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/6582442.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Rhett_&_Link
  Relationship:
      Rhett_McLaughlin/Link_Neal
  Character:
      Rhett_McLaughlin, Link_Neal
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Time_Travel
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-04-17 Words: 2538
****** I lived through those early days. ******
by strangeglu
Summary
     Rhett gets the opportunity to relive one of the happiest memories of
     his life.
Notes
     Repost. Originally posted to mythical-rhink.tumblr.com.
The company that provides the service guarantees that the time the customer
visits will be one of the happiest periods of their lives. They can’t say for
sure exactly when that time will be, the equipment is not that precise, but
they guarantee a satisfactory experience, an emotional trip down memory lane or
your money back, no questions asked. As Rhett McLaughlin signs his name to the
printed contract and hands the clipboard back to the prim receptionist behind
the desk, the emotion he most prominently feels is scepticism.
When the company’s incredible services first hit the market almost eighteen
months ago, the demand had been sky high, the young and old of Los Angeles and
the wider world scrambled to make appointments for the miracle drug which sends
you back in time. A chance to go back in time, that’s what was promised. Not
literal time travel, no, that was impossible, just a trip back into your own
memories, a chance to relive, or remember, half-forgotten experiences. The
traveller, it was said, would inhabit the body of their previous self, not able
to actually change anything substantial, but not bound by the confines of
memory either, able to control simple actions, to feel everything just as it
was, a completely immersive experience.
Rhett sits in the company’s waiting room on a plush leather couch as the doctor
prepares for his appointment. The walls of the room are lined with framed
photographs of smiling men and women, each printed with a testimonial extolling
the virtues of the company and their amazing work, and describing the wonderful
memories the company had allowed them to relive.
Six hours, that’s what he’d be getting, six hours to experience a snapshot of
his own past before returning to the present.
He had been holding off on undergoing the procedure himself, even as everyone
else raved and gushed about it, part of him not wanting to disturb or corrupt
the memories of his past that he held dear in his heart. When his wife, Jessie,
however, had returned from her own session, she had talked to him for hours
about how wonderful it had felt to be back in her home in North Carolina,
surrounded by family, to experience being sixteen again for just a few hours,
and his resolve had finally begun to crumble. It might be nice, he had thought,
to experience being a kid again, to go back to a time before he felt the
inevitable pressure and responsibility of adulthood.
It wasn’t, however, until his best friend and business partner, Link Neal, a
fellow holdout, had succumbed to the pressure and booked himself an
appointment, that Rhett really thought about doing the same. When Link returned
from his session he was visibly elated by the experience, he had told Rhett,
and the viewers of their internet show Good Mythical Morning, about how the
experience had allowed him to relive of one of the best days of his life,
although he remained coy about what day exactly he had visited, and after
hearing the genuine happiness in Link’s voice as he talked, Rhett made his
decision and reserved his appointment there and then, despite his hesitation.
“Mr McLaughlin?” A woman in a white labcoat calls from a set of double doors,
Rhett raises his hand in acknowledgement and follows behind her as she walks
back through the doors and down a long, white hall.
When he arrives in the room he greets the doctor, joking idly about his own
nervousness as he is directed to sit in the large green chair in the middle of
the room, and finally falls silent and still as round disks attached to wires
are placed on his temples, which the doctor explains will monitor his brain
activity while he is under. The doctor tells him that she is about to
administer the drug that will send him tumbling back through his own memory,
and asks him to count slowly backwards from ten. The doctor places an IV drip
in his arm -9- and Rhett tries to focus on anything -8- but the cold leather of
the chair -7- and the numb sensation which is beginning to take over his
senses. -6- He thinks about Jessie -5- and her wonderful memory of her family,
-4- and about Link, and the memory that he refused to describe -3-what had he
seen? -2- Rhett doesn’t have much time to wonder because he is already done
counting, and in a swirl of colour the room melts away and he is plunged into
darkness, his mind spinning as it plummets towards its unknown destination.
---
When Rhett McLaughlin arrives in the body of his past self it is to the
sensation of tight heat and pleasure thrumming through his suddenly alert and
aroused body. Startled and disoriented, Rhett pulls away from the sensation,
nearly falling backwards from where he is knelt on the unstable, downy surface
of a bedspread. Rhett keeps his eyes closed as he gains his bearings, sitting
back on his heels, aware vaguely of the other person whose bony hips his hands
are still clutching to, who he can feel moving now, perhaps to look back in
confusion at the sudden halt in proceedings. Rhett calms himself, and breathes
deeply.
Being in the memory is a heady experience, he feels every sense ten times more
intensely than he did on the surface, he can smell, feel, hear everything in
striking clarity, and as he settles he realises – he knows exactly where he is.
He tilts his head back and opens his eyes, the painted cream ceiling of his
childhood bedroom coming into focus. He cranes his neck to look around the
room, for now ignoring the questioning figure with soft warm skin in front of
him as he takes in the red papered walls, exactly as he remembers them from his
childhood.
A mountain of bunched up clothes is piled in a corner, where his mother hasn’t
yet procured them to place in the laundry hamper. Various trophies, basketball,
little league, even a golf one or two surround him on shelves and dressers. In
another corner a forgotten suitcase, half filled with clean clothes is strewn
with various debris from around his room. A gentle light shines through the
crimson curtains at the window, the sun is near rising, and the room is lit by
a dim red glow. He must be in his senior year of high school, he thinks to
himself as he drinks in the sight, about to go off to college, that explains
the lazily packed suitcase, and that also explains…
Rhett turns just then back to the young man that is splayed on his stomach
before him on the bed, a naked expanse of tanned skin, marked by various thin
white scars gained from childhood escapades, Rhett’s own hands clutching at his
hips where his legs splay wide around Rhett’s own, the skin of his round ass
creamy white and pristine in comparison to his back, his goateed face now
turned to look at Rhett with a frown at the sudden loss of Rhett’s presence on
top of and inside him.
“Whus wrong with you?”
Link Neal asks, his eyes still slightly hooded and his accent thick with youth
and the foggy remnants of his pleasure. Rhett stares at the boy with wonder,
the long skinny limbs and the mop of parted hair, shorn underneath to the tips
of his skull. He glances down at his own body, similarly skinny, a golden tan
from days spent shirtless, swimming in the river, no doubt. His hand rises
quickly to feel at his face, beardless and smooth under his fingers for the
first time in nearly a decade.
Gazing back down at his prone best friend, Rhett is filled with a feeling of
awe; amazed at the fact that the company had managed to send him here, to the
short period of time in which his best friend had become more than a friend,
that they had gone from sharing summer days in pursuit of childish adventure to
sharing kisses in the back of Link’s truck parked in shady corners of abandoned
lots and longer embraces locked in the safety of Rhett’s room, a time before
college and convention and fear had ultimately forced them apart.
“Rhett, what is up with you?”
Rhett rallies at the sound of his friend’s curious voice, hushed, calling to
him for a second time.
“Nothing’s wrong, baby.” He mumbles automatically.
He falters over the ‘baby’, a crack in his voice. The word had been seldom used
between the two, hissed out in the passion of furtive fumbles or whispered in
the dark of the night for no one but the speaker to hear - now reserved for a
different brunette with a round face and a laugh warm like afternoon sun. Link
isn’t placated, he knows that something is bothering Rhett - he always knows –
and he twists his torso, propping himself on an elbow to raise a questioning
eyebrow and offer a wry, but kind smile. Rhett gazes at the man before him, the
boy whose intimate smiles and longed-for embraces were snatched away from him
long ago, and feels the overwhelming urge to protect, to keep, to love fiercely
and wholly and cling to for as long as he is able.
“Nothing’s wrong.” Rhett repeats as he gently takes hold of Link’s wrist - his
long fingers making an easy circle around the delicate, hairy forearm - and
pushes the boy to his back, trapping him with the heat of Rhett’s own body as
he moves up the bed and leans down into a kiss that bears the weight of almost
two decades of unspoken feeling. Link’s lips are as soft as he remembers, but
hotter too, the sensation of Link’s slowly parting lips and his searching
tongue searing in Rhett’s stomach and up his bared back like the touch of a hot
poker.
Where the shock of the arrival had dampened the flames that his younger self
had kindled, Rhett now feels himself responding to the kiss with urgency, his
naked body seeking Link’s own to join in ecstatic reunion. As their hardened
shafts press firm against each other’s abdomens Link throws his head back,
breaking the kiss, the long line of his neck a stubbled expanse that Rhett
can’t help but mouth at, drawing a noise from Link that has Rhett moaning in
turn and gazing at the boy in startled reverence.
When Link’s eager legs start to scale Rhett’s sides, trying desperately to hook
themselves behind his back, Rhett takes his cue to re-enter Link’s body, the
tight clench of Link’s hole filling him with heat from his stomach to the
raised hairs on his head as he slowly slides into its half-forgotten embrace.
The feeling of pressing his hips to the backs of Link’s thighs, of leaning down
with his arms bracketing Link’s head to drop kisses to Link’s slack and panting
mouth, is one of such security, such fierce loyalty and devotion, that all
Rhett’s senses feel as though on a razor edge, in constant danger of convulsing
into hot, fat tears, that would spill themselves onto Link’s body and face like
summer rain.
The intense heat, amplified by the proximity of their downy chests as Rhett
rocks steadily into Link, face pressed to the musky cavern of his neck, propels
both boys quickly towards their completion, Link’s shaft trapped between their
bodies slicking the skin of their torsos and anticipating his imminent release.
As Rhett pushes home, nudging against Link’s prostate the younger boy starts to
tighten around him, his head pressing back into the pillow and hushed moans
falling from his throat. Link’s orgasm hits him with a visible shudder, his
arms coming up to squeeze around Rhett’s body as his cock spills his release.
Rhett looks down on the younger boy as he continues to rut and grind against
his hips, savoring the feel of the boy’s embrace, the expression of humorous
contentment on his face as he opens his eyes and wriggles his hips to tease
Rhett’s own orgasm from his body. Rhett leans down for one last desperate kiss
as his hips begin to falter and he is overcome, drawing back enough to gasp out
“I-I love you L-” before he tips over the edge with a groan.
When he comes down from his immediate high he sees Link’s still panting face
staring up at him with a surprised and curious frown – casual ‘I love you’s had
never been a part of their relationship – but something in Rhett’s demeanour
seems to stay his questioning thoughts, and cause him to instead pull Rhett
down to lay spooned into his side as they shudder through aftershocks and
regain their halting breath.
Rhett presses his nose behind Link’s ear and breathes in the slightly chemical
scent of Link’s shampoo, the smell nearly drowning him in the sudden deluge of
memory; long nights spent lying pressed together in dark bedrooms and truck
beds, each just breathing the other in, the time for talking long exceeded in
the adventures of the previous day.
They lay like that for a long time, the rays of the morning sun filtering
through the curtained window to cast panes of light across the bed. The alarm
clock on the bedside table tells Rhett that it’s nearing ten o'clock, a
Saturday he deduces by the fact that no one has yet knocked to rouse them for
breakfast or church. If he listens closely he can hear the sounds of his mother
moving pans in the kitchen, surely in the process of preparing one of the
delicious if slightly excessive late breakfasts that she was prone to make
whenever a guest was in the house, even if that guest was as familiar as Link.
His stomach growled at the thought of it.
His older brother would be sitting at the kitchen island, eating cereal as he
watched TV through the open living room door. His father would be making
coffee, occasionally helping his mom to reach an ingredient or utensil from a
high cupboard, or stirring some pancake batter as his mom tended to the eggs.
He should go to them, he thought to himself, while he still had the time, take
the opportunity to relearn the feeling of being a cherished son, of being cared
for without responsibility.
But Link is warm against his side, dark hair mussed and pushed back from his
face to splay over the pillow in a fractal tangle, like the thatched branches
of the cottonwood trees they’d climb in the summer, sun warm on their backs and
carefree joy pumping through their hearts, propelling them towards higher
perches, better adventures, and eventually the quiet, soft feeling of
interlocked fingers, and hushed voices, as they lay down on riverbanks, the
night air cooling the black waters of the Cape Fear as they made plans and
dreamed of the stars.
In a red bedroom in North Carolina, Rhett McLaughlin turned his back for the
moment to the bustle of his family waiting outside the door, already lost in
the clean, peaceful face of his slumbering best friend.
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