Page 88 of Sean's Sunshine
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. So when you’re on cop time, you do cop things, and I don’t got no say. But you’re here and you’re onmytime, Idohave a say, and I say you get a little better, you rest tonight, you have fun tomorrow night, we get sexed up all Sunday, and then we do the thing. And if we’re wrong, we’re wrong. So far this guy hasn’t hurt anybody.”
“He’s actually been pretty smart about it,” Sean conceded.
“So I sort of get why cops in property crimes are so laid-back now. They’re like, ‘It’s stuff. You’re not dead. We’ll do our best.’ We’ll do our best, but you need to rest and eat your sour wieners and shit.”
“It’s kielbasa, sauerkraut, and french bread, and it’s delicious.”
“If it gives me gas, you’re gonna live with it, so I’ll believe you.”
Sean chuckled. “Fine. So since you’ve apparently taken over my life and my schedule and pretty much everything else because you’re, like, a control freak or something, what was that first item on Sunday? I need you to repeat that. It sounded interesting, but, you know, maybe you meant ‘go running at the dog park’ inste—”
Billy kissed him, hard and no bullshit, showing him that he’d wanted Sean’s scrawny recovering cop body all day. About the time he sensed the fight had leached out of Sean and they were going to spend a nice Friday night at home, maybe practicing for Sunday, Randy called out, “Hey, guys, want to look for dogs on the internet—it’s fun! I do it all the time when I want to destress… erm, sorry.”
Billy pulled back and smiled softly. “Yeah, Randy. We can do that. Dogs on the roster for next weekend, after the Halloween madness is all settled down and I’ve started my new job, okay?”
Sean smiled softly at him and winked. “Where have you been all my life, Guillermo? You do make the best plans.”
Billy grinned, kissed him gently on the forehead, and went to pull out his laptop.
Apparently Randy had a powerful need to look at dogs.
HALLOWEEN WASreally pretty awesome, Billy had to admit it.
Randy dressed up like Frankenstein because he said his height made him a natural, and he greeted every kid at the door with a growl, making them scream. Curtis, Cotton, and Vinnie all showed up dressed in black shirts and black pants with different dayglow painted jack-o’-lantern faces on their shirts. They put fun scary movies on Sean’s TV—Ghostbusters, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gremlins—and watched them with Billy’s mom while Billy’s three youngest siblings went trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. It wasn’t until after the party that Billy realized he hadn’t asked any of the flophouse kids to hide what they’d done for a living—it had never come up, and they’d never had to lie.
Sean ordered sandwich trays and had veggies and vegetable chips on the table for a buffet dinner, as well as apples galore, and Billy wanted to kidnap him to a desert island and give him a world-class blowjob for being considerate of Billy’s people.
Henry and Lance were enjoying the night couple style, as well as giving out extra candy in case therewereany trick-or-treaters in the apartment complex, and that was fine, but Andres Christie brought his two kids over to make the rounds of Sean’s neighborhood too. His neighborhood was nice, he said, but apparently a lot more spread out than Sean’s. Billy thought it was more so Andres could keep track of Sean, make sure he was doing okay, and that made him feel better about the next month, when Sean went back to work.
In all, it was a raucous, fun, safe and sane kind of night, and the kids showed up after their rounds with pillowcases full of things like full-sized Snickers bars and little cellophane bags full of mixed candy.
By the time every last person had gone—and the Johnnies kids had driven Lance’s Mazda home after staying to clean up—Sean had been asleep in the recliner for a good hour, and Billy had that happy, tired feeling of not wanting to talk to another person for at least a year and a half.
After he’d shooed Sean to bed and turned off all the lights, he realized that he and Sean reallydidhave Sunday off, and they could spend the whole day in bed.
And he wondered if he’d ever been this happy in his life.
He determinedly tried not to think about how Roberto hadn’t shown up again, with his blond ponytail and mysterious job and his connection to the neighborhood they were investigating. They’d find the culprit the next day, it would be some random stranger, and Sean could go commando on his ass, and that would be that.
Because otherwise, what were the fuckingodds?
Trust
SEAN SHIFTEDin his seat in the Charger and thought that maybe he should have taken his doctor’s advice and spent the next three weeks sleeping. Something about this car’s seats that used to feel like they were cupping his body with the love only leather could bestow on him was now hard and uncomfortable and making him want to wiggle.
Or maybe it was his ass, which had taken a pounding that afternoon and would probably need a good three-day rest before he and Billy did all ofthatagain.
It wasn’t abadproblem to have, but it wasn’t a comfortable one either.
“Would you sit still?” Billy muttered. “I swear, this car’s gonna be knocking, and whoever is breaking into these places is gonna be, ‘No, I can’t do no criming here because two homos are getting busy inside.’”
Sean did a slow pan to Billy, horrified by that entire sentence, and Billy met him with a giant grin.
“You’re being an asshole,” Sean said mildly.
“Only because I still have mine. Yours got destroyed today,” Billy replied smugly.
Sean couldn’t stay irritated. He chuckled softly. “So worth it,” he admitted, and then shifted again. “But, you know—”