His deadpan delivery made Cloister snort with a surprised blurt of humor.Javi glanced away from him to the gray house.He watched the man inside—tall and lean, with hair graying so elegantly Javi could see a stylist’s hand at work—walk back and forth.
Hewasgoing to ask, but it could wait a minute.Javi scuffed his foot over the paver next to Cloister and sat down next to him.Their shoulders nudged comfortably against each other.
“I would have put money on you punching him,” Javi said.
“Me too,” Cloister admitted.“Only thing that stopped me was the fact JJ was there, and he’d definitely use that to get our case thrown out.”
“He was your lawyer this time.”
“Yeah,” Cloister agreed.He rubbed the back of his neck.“I forgot that for a minute.Probably for the best.”
Javi wanted to touch him.His fingers ached to grab the back of his neck and pull him into a kiss, to lean his forehead against Cloister’s and just feel their breath mix.Healsowanted Cloister to go first, just to establish that they were still on.So he laced his fingers together between his knees, thumbs casually steepled against each other as if he just didn’t have anything else to do with them.
“How bad is it?”he asked.
“JJ said it could be worse.”
“That means it could be better.”
“I got that.”Cloister bumped his knee against Javi’s.“It’s fine.We’re fine.”
Javi didn’t move his knee away, but he didn’t unlace his hands either.He could have just taken the assurance as a given and moved on as if Cloister was the only one with an emotional stake here.It was the safest course of action, the one that kept his emotional integrity intact.
It was what Kincaid would do.
“You didn’t call,” Javi said.“I thought maybe you’d realized you should put your own oxygen mask on first.”
Cloister snorted.“Doesn’t sound like me.”
That was true.
“You didn’t call,” Javi repeated.He wanted to ask, it would have been easier to ask, but the words stuck in his throat.
“Yeah, I…” Cloister ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck.“I’m not used to checking in.”
Part of Javireallywanted to take that the wrong way.Apparently, now that he knew Cloister wasn’t going to blow this up, his instinct was to get in first and claim credit for fucking it up.Javi fought that off and reached out to cup his hand over the back of Cloister’s neck.He rubbed his thumb along Cloister’s hairline and felt the man lean into the touch like a cat.
The reaction sent warmth seeping under Javi’s skin.Before he could decide what to say next, Bourneville shoved herself under his arm and squeezed between them.She put a possessive paw on Cloister’s leg as she leaned pointedly against him.
Javi pulled away before she got dog hair all over him.“I thought the dog and me were cool,” he said.
Cloister shrugged as he let his arm drop to sling over Bourneville’s shoulders, fingers working down into her fur.
“You are,” he said.“At home.At work, she gets first dibs.”
Bourneville gave Javi a “what he said” look and then flopped down with her head on Cloister’s knee.Her tail thumped the ground a couple of times, stirring up the dirt.Javi brushed his hands together.He knew better than to ascribe human emotions to a dog with a much more basic cognitive range, butthis dogwas smug.
“That actually brings me to my next point,” Javi said.“Aren’t you suspended?”
Cloister glanced sideways at him.“Aren’t you meant to be at work?”he deflected.
“Technically, this is lunch,” Javi said.He checked his watch.“For another fifteen minutes.If Kincaid’s already gunning for you, breaking the rules isn’t smart.”
That got him a grin.The reminder that Cloister, in a different life, with a different nose, could have been almost ridiculously pretty was almost enough to distract Javi.Not quite.
“No one’s ever claimed I was,” Cloister said.
Before Javi could call that deflection out, the door to the house behind them opened, and Cloister scrambled to his feet to head that way.
