(no subject)
Beta by jj. Bitches, you ain’t even know.
Remember when I first wrote WBrps, and all y'all bitches were "you know Jensen's friends with Christian Kane, right?". Yeah, I know it.
The soundtrack:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/oeb7di
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iplhpx
Ben Nichols: http://www.myspace.com/lucero
Steve is Steve Carlson, the *other* guy from Kane.
MacKenzie is Jensen's sister.
This is my love song to southerness, Texas, rednecks, Jacyn, Lar, country music (esp. Steve Earle, my god), Ashley for hooking up the Steve (if prayer's the same as beggin' lord I don't take no charity), and my youth. It’s been a long time since I really wrote about what it’s like to be from the south, or what it’s like to go away again and feel that serious longing for what you know isn’t what you remember it to be. I did that when I wrote Lindsey in Angelverse. Chris was just waiting on me to remember he’s my real love.
The House Rules
When Dark Angel gets shit-canned, Jensen tries to be reasonable about it all, tries to be make lemonade out of the fucking lemons Fox shoved up his ass, but he’s depressed. No two ways about that. He’s not looking forward to more crap t.v. work on a show with established relationships, coming in cold as the new guy.
He’s really not looking forward to the call to his mom.
Chris shows up on the set with his hair cut real short for him, one hand in his pocket and his trouble-making grin smeared all over his face.
“Dude, fuck it.” He smacks Jensen on the back as they fall into step on the way to the trailer so Jensen can wash the make up off, wash the Hollywood away a little. Just for today.
He hasn’t seen Chris in a month-he’s been filming a movie where he plays the dim but hot guy who loses out to the smart guy in the end. They don’t have to say out loud sorry, I’ve been there, there’ll be more work.
“Come out with me and Dave tonight, son. Wear somethin’ you don’t mind messin’ up.” Chris smiles bigger, laughs to himself. Jensen thinks maybe getting blind drunk will help with the thinking too hard part of his crap life.
“No strip clubs. I thought that girl was going to eat me alive last time.” Jensen lifts an eyebrow. Dave had paid a stripper to “give Jenny something extra”, and that had mainly been her molesting him in the parking lot. He had really been too drunk to be embarrassed about it, to even remember more than the resilient feel of silicon beneath his hands pushing at an immobile obstacle and the tequila numb slide of Chris’s voice twisted up with Dave’s patter.
“Hey! That shit was all Dave, man. I tried to defend your honor, sweetheart.” Chris laughs again, but his eyebrow’s up, and Jensen knows he’s not lying.
“You need new friends.” Jensen pulls his shirt over his head and flings it onto the make- up table.
“Truer words were never spoken.” Chris clicks off, dampened down. Jensen doesn’t ask what his problem is, because he’s got enough of his own.
*
Jensen wakes up in to the wheezing of the air conditioning. His parents have replaced the outside unit, but still need to get a new fan. The midsummer heat is defeating technology. He’s sweated his sheets into a sad state, cotton sticking to the skin on his back and clinging to his ass. It’s disgusting, but familiar. It's comfortable in a way that reminds him he’s home, in his own bed, that his dad’s down in Houston doing fuck knows what related to his radio show and his mom’s probably packing for the trip to Michigan she had tried to yank him along on. Mackenzie’s bound to be out tempting the law and death with her friends. Jensen rolls out of bed, pulling his shirt over his head and wiping his chest with it when he gets it off.
He steps out into the hallway with the shirt balled in his hand. “MAMA! The freakin’ air’s not blowin’ in my room again!” He shouts down the stairs in the general direction of where he assumes his mom is.
“Shut up your whinin’, baby!” Mackenzie hollers back at him. He flips her off with a scowl and pads to the bathroom. There’re no towels or toilet paper. He stomps back out again, ready to rip someone a new one. Someone being his sister-the only person who shares the bathroom with him.
He frowns and stomps. He frowns and stomps in his underwear with his t-shirt in his hand and murder in heart right into the kitchen where he knows that little bitch is.
“Goddamn it, Mac, what did I tell you about the toilet paper thing?” The words fly out of his mouth before he registers the scene in the kitchen.
His sister’s perched on a stool by the center island leaning on her elbow, and her brain’s in a pool at her feet as she stares at Chris who’s sipping tea and smiling. His mother is standing next to Chris’s chair, dirty gardening clothes on and a plate of biscuits in her hand.
“What did you just say?” His mother sets the plate down, turning her back to Chris, who shrugs at him and mouths goddamn? at him, smiling and wagging a finger.
“Sorry, mama.” Jensen hangs his head and tries to look contrite, all the while wanting to reach out and snatch a knot in his sister’s tail.
“I think Jen should get put on restriction for that.” Mackenzie’s got it out for him, there’s no doubt. He supposes maybe he shouldn’t have threatened that boy so convincingly when he’d busted them making out.
“I’m a grown ass man, Mac, I can’t be put on restriction!” Jensen’s in his underwear being browbeaten by a seventeen year old girl while Chris eats a biscuit and drinks his tea looking on.
“You might be grown, but I can still spank your ass. Go put some clothes on, since we’ve got company.” His mom’s not really mad, which is good. Mackenzie’s gonna get it later. As soon as his mom leaves, that little bitch’s in for it.
“Chris isn’t company.” Jensen’s pissed off on general principle now. He still turns around and marches out of the kitchen.
“Really, you don’t have to do anything special for me, Miss Donna.” Chris can really turn it on when he wants to.
Jensen storms back upstairs and snatches up a pair of shorts and t-shirt and grabs a towel off the floor of Mackenzie’s room. He gets a modicum of revenge on her by dumping all of her Plumaria shower gel straight down the drain of the tub.
*
When Jensen gets out of the shower, he’s calmer, happy that Chris’s shown up after all. He hadn’t believed him when Chris had called and said he was thinking of doing a little kamikaze gigging in Dallas and Plano. He pulls on a pair of threadbare, cotton shorts and a sleeveless shirt. If he’s going to have ride in the car with Chris, he’s dressing for the heat. Chris always wants to drive around with the windows down and air off. And that makes him a first class sadistic bastard.
Mackenzie’s made herself scarce, and his mother’s also no where in sight when Jensen comes back downstairs. He can hear Chris’s voice in the backyard when he walks through the kitchen. Jensen bangs open one side of the French doors and slams it behind him. Chris’s talking over the hedge to Mr. Johnson, the neighbor, about propane.
Chris’s wearing cut-offs and a University of Oklahoma t-shirt so beat up that it probably was vintage from even before Chris went to college. His hair’s already growing out again, and he’s sunburnt on his arms and face.
Mr. Johnson waves with his bottle of Miller Lite. He’d taken an early retirement package from Enron before the shit hit the fan, and he spends most of his time fishing and building doll houses.
The heat’s fucking oppressive, gotta be near a hundred, and Jensen’s completely covered in sweat in under a minute. Chris waves to Mr. Johnson, nods, and crosses the yard to where Jensen’s squinting in the glare of the sun.
“Come with me to Dallas for a couple days.” Chris isn’t asking, because that’s how he does things. Apparently Jensen’s done something to warrant a rescue, maybe just stayed out of L.A. too long, maybe his mom called Chris. He’s not going to ask.
“If I say no, what’re you gonna do?” Jensen’s not going to say no. He’s got new strings on his guitar.
“I got a roll of duct tape in my trunk.” Chris wipes his forehead with his wrist, smiling up at him with understanding.
And in a blink they’re both moving towards the house, Chris’s hand hot on his sweating back. They just get each other, and that’s not so much about G major and their accents as it’s about all the things people miss because of those things.
*
Jensen’s cousin-actually his daddy’s first cousin, Jensen’s second-owns several bars in the Dallas metro. Not that it matters. Chris knows everyone.
Chris makes a few calls, mostly him saying “hey, how ‘bout it?” and a lot of laughter. Jensen has never seen anyone not instantly take to Chris. Grandmas and preachers and thirteen year old girls and terrorists-everyone loves Chris.
Jensen breathes through his mouth, tasting grit on the back of his throat and the smoke from bar-be-que pits-charred apple wood and mesquite. It’s getting dark. They sit in traffic, Jensen watching angry people in gridlock screaming into their cell phones or messing with their radios. This is the life he was avoiding by moving to L.A., the futile every day grind of home-work-home.
“I’m only gonna say this because you’re obviously not getting this here.” Chris hits seek on the stereo and the station flips from John Lee Hooker to Arrested Development. “I’m here to fix you, then you’re goin’ back to L.A. because no matter how down you are, you’re not gonna fuck your whole life up over a fucking television show starring a pornstar who caught a cosmic break.”
Jensen smiles in spite of himself. “I heard she wasn’t even that good in bed, dude.”
“The ones with rocks in their heads usually aren’t. Too stupid to be creative.” Chris honks the horn at a guy trying to cut him off.
“You’d be the one to know.” Jensen wonders when the drinking’s gonna start.
“I’ll have you know I’m savin’ myself for marriage, son.” Chris pops the car into drive and hauls ass around a guy who seems to not comprehend the green-light red-light system. “Let’s get a drink.”
Great minds.
*
They park the car-a Cadillac Catera, and that’s a whole side story involving Chris’s mom and always buying American-and it dawns on Jensen that he’s not asked some very pertinent questions.
“Where we stayin’?” They’re in a decent neighborhood full of newish houses, not anywhere he’d expect to walk around a corner and find a bar with peanut shells on the floor and girls fallin’ out of their clothes.
“Jenny got the house in the divorce. Hasn’t sold it or moved the shit yet.” Chris pops the trunk and pulls out a bag, his guitar case. Jensen follows suit.
“She ok?” Chris’s sister is actually how the two of them had ended up friends. In a weird way. She knew Jensen’s mom. It had been a phone circle of well-meaning relatives, and eventually they’d gotten together for a beer in L.A. to shut up the women in their lives.
“Better off.” Chris’s tone dips into one of the ten kinds of angry he has. Jensen doesn’t think Jennifer was getting smacked around, but he doesn’t think it’d even have to get close to that for Chris to put a beating on someone.
“We could both have guns in twenty-four hours.” Jensen slams the trunk closed and follows Chris towards the sidewalk. Chris’s low laugh floats back to him.
“Yeah, if there weren’t kids involved…” He doesn’t have to finish that.
Inside the air’s on arctic, and Jensen breaks out in gooseflesh. Chris beeline’s it to the thermostat, turning it down a good ten degrees-way too much. They toss their shit onto the floor of the split-level living room, and Chris pulls a can of Skol out of his back pocket. He offers the can to Jensen as he tucks tobacco between his teeth and cheek.
“Fuck off with that shit.” Jensen has a pack of cigarettes in his bag for later, when he’s too drunk to remember that smoking gives you lung cancer.
“Suit yourself, city boy.” Chris rustles around in his bag. “Get changed,” he says around the chaw in his mouth, leaning an arm against his braced leg and pointing behind Jensen. “Bathroom’s down that way if you wanna take a shower. Jen buys that Oil of Olay bath shit. Smells good.” He smiles, and Jensen laughs.
“Don’t even get me started on who’s the fucking queer in these parts, Christian.” Jensen grabs his bag and raises an eyebrow. “Broken Heart’s Club.”
Chris chucks the tin of tobacco at his head and catches him in the ear.
“Direct score.” Jensen snaps his fingers.
*
Jensen gets out of the shower to find Chris in the living room tuning his guitar, hair damp from his own shower, dressed in a Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt with the sleeves ripped off and his old, straw cowboy hat. His bracelet clicks against the wood of the guitar as his he twists the frets. He’s got a can of Bud sitting on the table in front of him and is humming “Georgia On My Mind.”
“You gonna start any fights tonight?” Jensen twists his ring around, moving it up so he can dry the skin where the metal usually rests with the tail of his shirt.
“Only if someone offends a lady.” Chris tips his hat back and smiles.
“You got bail money in your pocket?” Jensen smiles back.
“Bail bondsman’s number in by back pocket right next to my I.D. and the rubbers.”
“Where’s my beer, boy?” Jensen hooks his thumb over his shoulder towards the door.
That exchange is their standard, going out routine. It’s almost a superstition for them at this point.
*
They take a cab to Adair’s Saloon. The ride in the back is a passed flask of Jack and Chris spitting tobacco juice into his empty Bud can.
“I don’t really think I’m up to snuff for this.” Jensen says, because it’s the truth, and he doesn’t want Chris to look bad in front of a crowd. Even on a weeknight, the bar’s gonna be packed.
“A couple more drinks and you’ll think you’re Johnny Cash.” Chris spits the tobacco out and wedges the can between his thighs. “Damn, Jen, it’s a couple of songs and some rowdy college kids, not an audition for Spielberg.”
He presses the bottle of Jack into Jensen’s hand and wraps his arm around his shoulders. “You could give up the acting and just join the band.”
Chris’s been saying that for a while now. Some days Jensen actually thinks about it. Like, really thinks about it. He and Steve are tight, and something about the idea of it appeals to him. But the traveling would kill him. Too much time away from his family.
“We’re not really on the road that much.” Chris knows him pretty damned well.
*
They stash their guitars on the edge of the little stage and sort of blend into the crowd. One of the things about being down home is that people, even if they recognize you, tend to be too polite to say much besides “hey” with a sort of familiarity in their voice. Until everyone’s really drunk. Then things can get interesting.
Chris tugs Jensen through the crowd with a fist wrapped in the front of his Southern Methodist t-shirt. Jen scuffs his boots on the wooden floor of the bar and goes where Chris wills. Chris wills shots.
A pretty brunette in tight jeans and a low-cut shirt slaps down a twenty, and Chris smiles pretty.
“I can’t let you pay, sweetheart, that’s against my religion.” He pushes the money back towards her. She’s obviously confused as to whether he’s shooting her down or being a gentleman. That’s the whole point.
“Good ol’ boy?” She smiles, sharp teeth behind a lipstick red smile. She’s not offended, waiting for Chris to buy her a drink.
“Goodest and oldest, babe.” He downs his shot, and the band kicks off. Ruckus and heavy on the drums. They’d have to shout to be heard, and they’re too close to the stage to manage that without being blatantly rude. The woman wanders off during the second song.
Jensen matches Chris drink for drink, relaxing enough to feel an emotional muscle shift, allowing him to just be there, in the smoke and beer tang smell of the bar with Chris’s hat nudging him at a steady beat.
When the band wraps up, Chris grips Jensen’s elbow, pulls him down so Jensen’s ear touches his mouth. “You gonna pussy out on me?”
Jensen almost says yes, almost says stop pushing me. But Chris’s pressed right into him from his thigh to his mouth, with his need to fix things, with his inexhaustible desire for everyone to be happy around him.
“No.” Jensen taps a knuckle against Chris’s chest.
“Okay then, boy, let’s do this.” Chris yanks him away from the bar and out into the alley behind the building.
Several people stand around in clusters smoking. Smoking the kind of thing they can’t legally inside.
“Chris!” Ben Nichols materializes out of the darkness next to a Dempsey Dumpster. He’s got on an old John Deer hat and plain white shirt, jeans with paint splatters all over them, and his tats look more extensive than the last time Jensen had run into him.
There’s whole round of backslapping and “hey!s”. Jensen suddenly realizes he’s drunk. It took moving around. The heat’s dissipated some, but it’s still hot enough that the crooks of his elbows and backs of his knees start to sweat almost immediately. Chris smacks him on the small of his back and leaves his hand there. Ben pulls a pipe out of his pocket, and Chris flips him a twisted up baggie.
“You playin’ tonight?” Ben pulls a lungful of humid night air riding behind a long pull of pot.
“Me and Jen, yeah.” Chris hits the pipe and passes it to Jensen. Hit and pass. It goes around like that for three rounds.
“Combine the sets? It’s just me anyway.” Ben smiles, all sweet, syrupy drunk with the extra laze of the marijuana laid over it.
“Sure, man.” Jensen says before Chris can.
*
Chris stoned is a thing of glory. He can’t stop laughing, and his laugh is something between kissing and groping on the sex scale. When their call comes, Jensen’s too wrapped in cotton to care about the whole singing in public thing. He doesn’t care that Ben’s practically holding himself up by wrapping around him, that Chris hits the stage and starts offering Jensen up for prostitution if they can get a bottle of Jack and some beers, or that he can barely feel his teeth.
The bottle gets passed through the crowd. Somebody lobs a couple beers at them. Jensen pretends to tune his guitar while trying to figure out if it will be obvious if he just moves his fingers back and forth without playing.
Ben whips his guitar around and thumps it. “Y’all ready for this shit?”
Everyone screams. A girl in the front flashes her boobs.
“Yeah, alright, I guess so!” Chris’s laugh slides up the backs of Jensen’s legs, settling low on his back where Chris’s hand had been resting earlier.
He leans over to Ben. “Whatcha feel like?”
“Let Jenny sing a bit.” Ben smiles, wags his head and his hands fly over his guitar in a little warm-up riff. “David Allan Coe?”
So Jensen slings his guitar around his back and sings the lead on “You Never Call Me By My Name” while Ben and Chris improvise bullshit catcalls and off-color call-backs.
They slide into a couple of Lucero songs with Jensen harmonizing to fill in the lack of a band and Chris playing around Ben’s lead. When Chris launches into “Oklahoma State Of Mind” the rafters shake and the crowd surges so that Jensen feels like he’s slid into some group-mind universe, where he and everyone else in the room have synched their heartbeats and blood pressure.
“O-K-L-A-HOMA!” Chris and Jensen and Ben all scream in unison, and the crowd screams it back.
Chris sets his guitar down, and Ben and Jensen pick up the slack, playing back up for him, half the time improvising through “American High”. Chris is so on that Jensen really can’t believe it’s the same guy who fell down his steps last fall and tipped into an elderly Chinese lady who beat him up with her grocery bag.
“Hell yeah!” Chris hollers, out of breath, face red and hair plastered to his face.
“Steve Earle?” Ben twangs a couple chords on his guitar, smile bright and giving, open.
“Mercenary Song.” Jensen answers. Chris throws his head back in a laugh dirty enough to be a sin if you’re a Southern Baptist.
They skip through several Steve Earle songs, rhapsodizing with fanboy glee in between the songs, Chris declaring “I’d sell my soul or my dick to be him, man.”
“The soul part I believe.” Jensen tosses out.
“He sold that for the pretty face, didn’t he?” Ben cuts back.
My brother died in Wilson's Creek, and lawd, I seen him fall, we fell fell back to the Boston Mountains in the North of Arkansas they all sing, and there's the blood of their fictious families in it, blood and hardcore South, and they own it.
*
Jensen doesn’t remember getting back to Jennifer’s house that night. But he’s got a footprint shaped bruise on his thigh the next morning when he wakes up in his clothes hung-over and starving.
Chris’s sitting in his underwear on the couch with a pen in his hand and a notepad on his lap when Jensen gets out of the shower.
“Is Ben alive?” Jensen’s voice is lower than usual when it emerges from his mouth. He feels like he’s been beaten with a bat and eaten glass.
“Went home with two girls, so maybe not.”
“You know he was in town?” Jensen’s not exactly sure what makes him ask that. Probably the hangover.
Chris doesn’t look back up. “Nah, man, that wasn’t a set up.”
There’s no food in the house.
Jensen has a beer for breakfast. He feels so much better he considers giving up acting and just drinking for a living.
*
“You need to stop worrying so much, stop micromanaging.” Chris flicks a match into the grill and the paper and kindling catches.
“Whatever. Maybe you don’t worry enough.” Jensen knows he’s got some anxiety issues.
“There’s no such thing as not worrying enough, man, that’s just bullshit. Relax.” Chris’s the picture of redneck ease, barefoot on the patio with the grill smoking behind him, Bud in his hand, bright smile on his face under a slight sunburn, sporting cut-offs and a rodeo t-shirt.
“Dude, you’re such a loser.” Jensen laughs, leaning down to grab a beer out of the cooler sitting next to the grill. “Where’s my supper, bitch? Don’t make me smack you around, now.”
“I told you, if you hit me again, I’m calling the cops.” He pauses, leaning over the grill to inspect the fire. “I mean it this time, Bobby Ray!” He pitches his voice up to a falsetto.
“Cook me supper before I beat the sass outta you.” Jensen flops down in a threadbare aluminum framed lawn chair and pops the top of his beer. “Who’s comin’ over?”
“Ben. His women maybe? He might bring half the Dallas county lock-up. My cousin Jimmy.” Chris laughs.
“Oh no, fuck you.” Cousin Jimmy’s a Marine, and he talks about that A LOT. Jensen has been in his crosshairs for recruitment ever since they’d met. “Why would you do that to me?”
“Simmer down, son, I’m joshin’.” Chris closes the lid on the grill. “Why would I do that to myself?” He scratches his belly, pulling his shirt up with the other hand.
“Dude, you are such a fucking redneck.” Jensen drinks half his beer in one gulp.
*
Chris can cook. Jensen sits on his lawn chair and eats a rack of ribs and a plate of greens and peas and rice that the neighbor brought over when Chris invited her. The neighbor brings several of her people, who invite more. When Ben shows up with what might be bikers and might just be fellow musicians, the party’s on.
Night settles on Jennifer’s back yard, on Jensen happily wrapped in bar-be-que sauce and a thick scent of smoke, on Chris smacking Ben with his flip-flop for groping a neighbor girl, on three women with perfect pitch harmonizing in Spanish, on mosquitoes and Old Milwaukee and home.
“You’re getting’ eat up with bug bites. Get in the house and rub some Skin So Soft on you.” Chris tugs Jensen up by the arm.
“Nah. I’m fine.” Jensen shrugs him off, not wanting to let go of the unnamable something that’s weighing him down with pleasure. It feels like Vacation Bible School and his mawmaw’s plastic swimming pool, like staying out ‘til eleven when he was sixteen.
“Don’t talk back to daddy, now, son,” Chris pulls him up, and Jensen just goes.
Inside, the house is lit with 60 watt bulbs, all long shadows and yellow, incandescent light straining against the resilient dusk flooding into the windows. Chris drops his hand to rest around Jensen’s wrist.
“Your mama will kill me if I send you back covered in calamine lotion.” He flips on the light in the bathroom and shoves Jensen down onto the closed lid of the toilet. “This stuff smells like a three dollar hooker, but it’s either that or pour citronella wax all over you and set you fire.”
Chris smiles big, dimples and just good-natured. He waves the Skin So Soft in front of Jensen’s face. When Jensen makes no move to reach for it, Chris snaps open the top and squirts a huge daub into his hand. He sets the plastic container on the sink and reaches for Jensen’s arm.
When Chris leans down to smear the lotion on Jensen’s arm, Jensen leans forward, wrapping his hand around the back of Chris’s neck, twisting his head so that Jensen can just slip right into him, pressing their mouths together, both just barely parted. Chris wipes the Skin So Soft off his hand onto the back of Jensen’s shirt, spreads is legs and sits right on Jensen’s lap, straddling him, both hands coming up to hold Jensen’s face. They kiss like it’s their first time, because it is. And that works for Jensen, works with the comfortable, happy, homey feeling pressing out all the negative and only leaving a slow burn of yes.
Chris is heavy against him, muscular thighs holding his hips, strong, callused hands on his face and neck. The smell of smoke is so strong on him that Jensen tastes it along with beer and vinegar from the greens. When Chris presses back into the bruise on Jensen’s thigh, Jensen winces and pulls back, watching Chris’s closed eyes and tongue sweeping over his mouth to taste what Jensen has left.
When Chris’s eyes open half-way, they’re bluer than usual; the pupils have almost devoured the color. He tilts Jensen’s head down a little and touches the tip of his tongue to the freckles on Jensen's cheekbones. Jensen breathes through his mouth, drifting into the zone where can’t stop is actually a biological imperative more than a bullshit line, runs his hand up Chris’s slightly damp back under his shirt. The muscles on either side of Chris’s spine are thick, covered by just enough padding to give the thrill of something just fucking perfect to hold on to.
The wet slide of Chris’s tongue on his face stops.
“We’re gonna do this, and it’s gonna be a whole helluva a lot more than making out in the bathroom, baby, but Ben’s in the backyard of my sister’s house, and I don’t know if him causing a riot’s covered under the whole ‘act of god’ home owner’s clause.” Chris bites down on Jensen’s jaw, hard enough to sting, and holds on as he licks between his teeth at the captured skin.
“You go on ahead, because I have some business to handle here.” Jensen smiles at Chris’s bark of laughter.
Sliding to his feet, Chris looks down at him with the smile that satan covets and a lifted eyebrow. “Ah, I don’t think so. That’s why Jesus made lotion.”
Chris pops the cap on the Skin So Soft again and sits on the edge of the tub. He reaches for his fly, watching Jensen with a ducked head. It’s a dare, and it’s a whole lot more besides. Jensen blinks long and slow, not really thinking; he lives in that place he had totally forgotten existed, of the thrill of first times and just the spicy, brilliant edge of being naughty. He pops the fly on his pants and holds his hand out for Chris to squirt lotion onto his palm.
Lotion administered, Jensen doesn’t hesitate. He braces his feet flat on the floor and pumps his hips up, gripping himself hard enough that dry it would have left him unable to touch himself for a couple days. Chris makes a sound, deep and rough, and Jensen opens his eyes to see Chris watching him from under his lashes, bottom lip between his teeth.
Chris leans towards him, and Jensen opens his mouth before they meet, ready for Chris’s tongue, more than ready for Chris to rock him back into the shelf of toilet paper and magazines and hotel shampoos. Jensen comes when Chris makes a sound like his name bitten off into three parts. He collapses onto Chris’s sweaty shoulder, surrounded by the smoke and beer smells, the muscles of Chris’s arm working under his cheek, jostling him. Chris comes when Jensen turns his face up to press his lips just under Chris’s earlobe, looping his tongue around Chris’s earring.
Chris leans behind him and wets a washcloth under the tap in the tub. He hands it to Jensen.
Jensen wonders why he’s not in the least bit surprised that Chris’s gentleman routine isn’t limited to the ladies. He cleans himself up, smiling to himself over Chris’ odd combination of sleazebag and protector of other people’s virtue.
“Don’t be gettin’ any ideas.” Chris says, but he’s obviously making fun of himself.
When Jensen’s together enough to wobble back outside, Chris calls out, “Hey, now, I wasn’t kiddin’ about the mosquitoes! Get your ass back here and rub yourself down in lotion before I have to hold you down and apply it myself!”
Jensen retreats to Chris with a smile that indicates exactly how many snotty comebacks he’s repressing.
Chris rubs him down with Skin So Soft. “If you want me to hold you down later and rub something all over you, you have to wait for the kids to go to bed.” The thing about Chris’s nasty remarks now is that they the make Jensen’s hair curl because he believes in the reality of the follow-through. He’s hard again before they’re even out of the bathroom. But that feels right and natural, too. Part of feeling like he’s sixteen, in the embrace of his place and his people, is being hard all the time.
*
Outside, the party’s full-throttle and now occupying three yards. Jensen wonders for a second, standing amid the swirl of moths surrounding the backyard light, about the cops. Probably half the men here are cops, though, so Jensen’s not too worried. Ben’s sitting on the table part of the picnic table strumming his guitar, a girl leaning on his legs and another girl sitting between that girl’s spread thighs. Everyone looks like they feel just like Jensen-cool. Just calm and all’s right with the world. The screen door bangs open, and Chris slips up to his side.
“Well, this’s more of a church social than a party, but what’re you gonna go do with Texans?” He pops open a beer. Jensen snatches it out of his hand. The smile Chris gives him as his fingers let go of the metal is predatory. Jensen likes that. He likes being the focus of Chris’s attention, and he realizes a little late that maybe that was the whole point of this romp.
“Are you fixin’ me with your dick?” Jensen whispers it, just drunk enough to say it at all.
Chris throws his head back and laughs, loud and long, slapping a hand to his stomach. “Man,” he wags his head back and forth. “If I woulda known all it was gonna take was fucking, I’d’ve done that in L.A. and saved myself the airfare.”
Jensen rolls his eyes and laughs along. He knows that’s a fucking lie.
Chris leaves Jensen standing on the patio to circle through the crowd and demand car keys. He gets a shadow, a guy in a Hook ‘Em Horns shirt and jeans who proves Jensen right about the cop thing.
Somehow Jensen ends up in a plastic kiddy pool in his clothes drinking a 40 and singing counterpart to Chris through “The House Rules”. When Chris sings Well rule number seven says don’t touch the women, but they can grab whatever they want to the girl practically sitting in Jensen’s lap wiggles a hand between his legs. He doesn’t smack her away. Chris watches from under his bangs, putting a little more growl into his voice. Jensen smiles back.
When Jensen starts in on the Jack and coke, Chris sparks it up and the kiddy pool somehow gets filled with mud. Things seriously degenerate from there. Jensen thinks it says a whole lot about the way Chris wears his cut-offs low on his hips-all frayed waistband and little pieces of denim resting against the hair on his thighs and the ink of the tattoos on both his thighs-that Jensen’s way more interested in Chris than half-naked girls covered in mud pulling each other’s hair.
*
Jensen wakes up from being passed out in the tub to Chris with a cigarette clutched between his teeth yanking Jensen’s shirt off.
“Welcome to my house, buckle up tight, everybody sings and drinks and gets high,” Jensen sings.
“Boy, you’re tore up.” Chris tosses Jensen’s shirt behind the toilet. He crouches down, whipping his own shirt off, and works Jensen’s shorts off. “Too drunk to fuck.”
“No such thing,” Jensen slurs, wrapping his arm around Chris’s neck.
“Too drunk to do it right,” Chris whispers, tossing his cigarette into the toilet. He leans down, licking Jensen’s bottom lip. He collapses down onto his knees between Jensen’s legs.
“It’s all right if everybody gets off.” Jensen’s drunk. He does not dirty-talk. Hopefully God will take pity on him and let him have a blackout in the morning.
Chris sort of rumble/growls. He twists around and yanks off his cut-offs and turns around to turn on the tap.
“You’re fucking filthy. Bath now, ‘cause you’re not getting in my bed all mudded-up.”
Jensen runs his nails down Chris’s back. Chris laughs and leans back into it.
*
Jensen wakes up naked and wrapped around Chris who’s sleeping on his back with his hand over his head. He feels heavy and safe, somewhat hung over in a totally dim way. His brain’s not really on. He flips the sheets off Chris and gets a good look at the native American tattoos on Chris’ legs. They’re intricate and huge, starting on his hips and inked almost all the way to his knees. The hair on his belly runs thick and dark brown to his navel. His skin’s tanned all over, like he runs around naked outside all the time.
“Do you want to brush your teeth and spend the rest of the day in bed?” Chris rumbles out, hand reaching down to push through Jensen’s hair. When Jensen looks up, Chris isn’t smiling. His face is flushed, and Jensen watches his dick hardening out of the corner of his eye.
Jensen doesn’t bother to answer. He just rolls off the bed and onto his feet, feeling a zoom of vertigo as butterflies explode in his stomach. Chris follows behind him, scratching at himself and making smacking and stretching noises.
They take turns peeing.
“You’re fucking heavy,” Chris says around his toothbrush. He’s flawless in a real way in the dimness of the bathroom-hair in disarray and compact under his skin. The light coming in from the hallway catches the silver hoops in both of Chris’s ears, bright sparks in the darkness. Jensen rinses his mouth and snatches the toothbrush out of Chris’s mouth. He kisses him without finesse, all tongue straight into Chris’s mouth and swallowing down toothpaste.
Chris dances them out of the bathroom without breaking the kiss, walking Jensen backwards until he’s pressed into the wall by the bedroom. Chris’s leg comes up between Jensen’s to rub against his balls. He’s hot in the cool air of the insane air conditioning that has gotten jacked back up again, his hands welded to Jensen’s head, mouth yawning open and making stuttering sounds so dirty Jensen’s skin sparks.
Chris pulls back, still holding Jensen’s head tight between his hands. “Jen, shit,” he whispers, six kinds of broken, voice liquid and owning Jensen in a way he didn’t think was even possible.
Jensen remembers this is what sex used to be like. When it was a precious gift and unexpected, something you worked for, waited on, wanted in the loud moments when everyone else was worrying over football and grades. Chris licks his neck and yanks him by the shoulder into the bedroom.
They fall into bed in a tangle, mouths immediately resettling against each other. They twist up and twine together breathing hard and both moaning, skin on skin. There’s no frantic hurry to end it, to move it further, just kissing and touching, hands everywhere and a little bit of laughter when one of them cusses or gasps.
It’s easy and right, like waking up with sunshine hitting your face through open drapes.
When Chris wraps his hand around Jensen’s cock and leans back to look him in the eye, it occurs to him that Chris knows Jensen’s not done this shit before. Jensen doubts that street goes both ways. Chris is Chris, and he does what feels right. He doesn’t side step the hard questions, and he sure as hell doesn’t give a fuck what people think about what he gets up to.
Jensen bucks up into Chris’s hand and slides his fingers back and forth against the dimples at the bottom of Chris’s back. This is Jensen’s right sort of fucked up, and he wants Chris the same way he wanted Missy Foster when he was in tenth grade-fully and ready to give whatever he has to in order to get it.
“Jen,” Chris whispers into Jensen’s cheek, slipping his lips back and forth. Jensen works his hips up and down, feels Chris tighten his hold. “Man, you know, if you’re fucked up later, I’m gonna beat your ass raw.”
Jensen laughs and comes. He shocks to white behind his eyelids, feeling Chris’s tongue against his lips.
Jensen slips back and forth into sleep with Chris trailing spit and Jensen’s come all over his body, sticky and fucked up and comfortable. He wakes up and refuses to think, refuses to make this something wrong. He slips down Chris’s body, feet hanging off the bed, and bites all that resilient, baby fat skin down to Chris’s cock. He licks and tests that out until Chris’s got his hands in his hair and is cussing a blue streak about Jensen being a tease.
Jensen has a gag reflex and drools a lot, but Chris comes all the same, yells Jensen’s name like it’s the fucking solution to world peace or explanation for unsweetened tea.
*
When Jensen wakes up for the third time that day, Chris is propped up naked against the headboard of the bed eating leftovers and swearing about the TIVOed football game he’s watching.
“Jen tapes football games?” Jensen feels used and more hung over than before.
Chris licks his fingers. “Boy, it’s my sister. Let’s not discuss her misspent youth, because it might make me kill a couple people.”
“Jennifer does Dallas?” Jensen tempts fate.
“I could whoop your ass in ten seconds flat, don’t be saying shit about my sister.” Chris thumps Jensen’s stomach hard enough to sting.
“Gimme a rib, bitch,” Jensen reaches out blind, and Chris slaps a sticky, cold rib into his hand.