Sully sighed, glancing down at his knees.“Kid, lemme tell you, those guys back in the bar?Big Red?Tiny?Phil?I spend more time than I’d care to admit with them, and guys just like them.This whole town?Is full of guys like them.The ladies, too.Even the pretty young ones, talk and act and spit and chew and guffaw and snort and belch like those three.So for you to stroll into my bar today, asking me for a ghost tour off season, and staying up here in my storage pad, plumb out of nowhere?Well, let’s just say, you could fall asleep and still be more fun than my regular routine, okay?”
Dean nodded quietly.“I know we’re different,” he confessed, meeting Sully’s rich green eyes.“In probably mostly every single way we’re different.But I can’t help but notice that your days?Sound a lot like my days.”
Sully looked more than surprised.“Yeah?”
“Boring,” Dean expanded.“Routine.Dull.The guys in the Study Lab may not wear overalls or chew tobacco, but they don’t have a lot to offer in the way of excitement, you know?”
“So what’s the big deal then?”Sully grumbled, shifting slightly so that he had turned to face Dean just a little more, his knee gently creeping across the middle couch cushion between them.“You, me, a little chow, some chit-chat, no big deal.”
“I just...”Dean tugged at the collar of his t-shirt, as if it had suddenly grown two sizes too small.“I’ve never been out with a guy before.”
Sully did that sexy little head cock thing again, shadows from the midday sun behind them caressing his lean, chiseled, manly face.“Probably because you skipped most of high school,” he cautioned him.Again.“You know, hanging out with your bro after football practice, sharing a shift meal with your coworker at your after-school job.Wiling away the hours in detention.It probably stunted you in some way.”
Dean made a playful little raspberry sound with his rippling lips.“Hate to break it to you, Sully, but even if I’d spent six years in high school, repeated senior year three times, I still...All that stuff still wouldn’t have happened for me.”
“Why?”Sully pressed, in that probing way of his.He might have looked like the Marlboro Man with his faded jeans and jaunty ball cap, his big belt buckle and taut, sinewy body, but his eyes were soft and kind, his words quiet and probing, his patience curious and genuine.It was oddly flattering and disconcerting at the same time.
“I’m just not ...great with people?”
“I’m people,” Sully insisted, as if unwilling to let Dean off the hook so easily.“And you’re not that bad.”
Dean snorted.“Trust me, I’m just not like other guys you probably ‘break bread’ with.”
“Good!”Sully leaned forward, slapping Dean on the knee in a macho “good old boy” gesture before standing abruptly.Dean felt the ripple of energy radiate from where their flesh had connected, searing him in place as he sat, frozen, watching Sully stand before him, literally radiant in the late afternoon light filtering through the recently opened windows.“I just told you I’m tired of being around people from here, kid.So let me take you to dinner and get tired of being around someone new for a change!”
Chapter Six
Sully
“Ithought you saidthis was a diner?”
Sully nodded, following Dean’s gaze around the Wagon Wheel as if seeing it for the first time.Nightly dinner specials written in chalk along the slate walls, roughhewn wooden booths beneath swinging wagon wheel lanterns, cute little menus in Wild West cursive printed on thick tan paper with burnt edges and fastened to little clipboards at each place setting, like individual treasure maps for each table.“It is.Don’t you like it?”
Dean wore an incredulous expression.“I love it.I mean, it’s like something we might have on Sable Street back at school.”
“Yeah?That’s a good thing?”
