“You’re just saying that,” Sully insisted, using his apparently agile big toe to latch on to one wicker handle of the discarded picnic basket and drag it close enough to reach inside.“Because I’m your first.”
“I’m saying it because Iwantto say it,” Dean insisted, admiring the fresh bottle of bubbly Sully liberated from its special cooling sack.“I may not look tough, Sully, but I want what I want and am willing to fight to get it.Whether it’s graduating early or wrangling financial aid out of the Admissions Department or, hell, getting to do my spring project on some long-forgotten ghost town.Maybe ...maybe that’s why I waited so long to do anything with anybody.”
“Was it worth it?”Sully croaked, making quick work of the cork this time and offering the fizzing, gurgling bottle to Dean first.He took it, greedily gulping down a long, refreshing swallow straight from the bottle before handing it back.
“The wait, I mean?”Sully added quietly.
“Hell, yes,” he gasped through wet, glossy lips.
Sully rolled his eyes and drank deeply from the bottle.Dean stared in quiet admiration, watching the way his lover’s Adam’s apple bobbed and weaved with each deep, rich swallow.“You have nothing to compare it to,” Sully insisted, foisting the bottle back upon him.
“Why are you arguing with me?”Dean teased, nudging Sully’s sweaty, naked hip with his own.“I’m out here professing my love for you and you keep fighting it.”
“Because you throw that word around too easily,” Sully insisted.“I’ve had colds that lasted longer than we’ve known each other.”
“Screw that,” Dean barked, turning gently to face him.“It’smyheart, I’ll give it to whoever I want.”
Sully started to speak, then grew silent, eyes moist but brooding.Dean wriggled to get more comfortable, realizing this might take a while, crossing his ankles and resting sticky hands on his knees as if they were telling ghost stories at summer camp.
“Look at all you did tonight, Sully,” Dean pointed out, nodding at the romantic gestures strewn all about the back of his truck.“You act all tough, with your macho cowboy bullshit, but look at this spread.Pillows, blankets, little twinkling lights and champagne?You can’t do all this and tell me I’m the only one catching feelings right now, can you?”
Sully merely shook his head.“No, I can’t.”
“So why fight it, baby?”
“Because I don’t trust it,” Sully admitted, turning to face him.“I’ve never felt anything this good before, this powerful.I don’t ...don’t know how to feel.”
“Just ...feel, that’s all,” Dean insisted.“What’s so hard about that?”
“It’s not the feeling I’m afraid of,” Sully said quietly.
“What then?”
“It’s what happens after I’ve let my guard down,” he insisted.“Gotten used to having you around, stopped feeling so lonely and bored and ...and stuck all the damn time and then you up and leave.Go back to school and forget all about the big, bad cowboy who popped your sweet little college boy cherry.”
Dean frowned.“Go back to school ...three hours away?”he teased, nudging Sully’s big, sticky knee with his own.“And you’re like, a land baron gazillionaire entrepreneur whizz guy so, just rent a helicopter or something every weekend and come rail me silly.That’s what you’re worried about?”
Sully managed to smirk.“Yeah.I guess?”
Dean grinned.That smirk, his little, tiny smirk of acknowledgement for how petty and small his argument had grown, was all the hope he needed.For now.“Look, cowboy,” Dean sighed, handing over the bottle and sinking down into the pile of pillows beneath him.“We’re getting ahead of ourselves here.”
“You think?”Sully snorted, polishing off the bottle and joining Dean in the pillow cluster beneath them.They canoodled, not quite in each other’s arms but damn close enough.
“We’ve got all week,” Dean assured him.“Hell, you’ll probably get sick of me by the time you run me out of Pistol Creek.”
“Fat chance,” Sully harrumphed, lids growing heavy as the sleepless night and, uh, extracurricular activities caught up to him.To both of them.
“I hope so, but until then?I’ll lay off the lovey-dovey stuff and we can go back to you, caveman and me, nerd, okay?”
Sully gave him a dreamy little smile before shutting his heavy lids, apparently for good.He laced his arms behind his head, sweaty armpits resplendent with damp, sticky, glistening brown fuzz.
“Sure thing, nerd,” he teased before promptly passing right the fuck out.
