GLITTER

Title: Longneck Bottle/A Straight Tequila Night (Sequel to Not Enough Beer/Whiskey River)
Author: Tesla
Pairing: DB/CK
Rating: NC-17

3. Longneck bottle, let go of my hand.

Burnin' stuff on the grill was an okay activity among friends. Some lameass
California team on the boombox, some other people around, sitting in the back
yard of the rental house, watching with fascination as Chris stuck the chicken on the
open beer can.

"All y'all gonna eat it," he said, not looking over his shoulder. "You laugh."
"It looks perverted," Dave said, from his seat in the shade. Long legs stretched
out, sunblock on, ball cap pulled low. "I've heard of choking the chicken, Chris,
but jeeze." Laughter from a couple of the guys.

Chris poured the contents of his longneck over the chicken, put the grill cover
back on, and went to sit in the sun, next to the open cooler. He wasn't going
to hang on Dave's every word, damn it. He wasn't some fan boy with a crush.
He looked around at the yard, at the high concrete block walls around it and the
small pool. Amazing that this bitty little yard cost so much. And the concrete blocks
reminded him of the crappy rental at OU. He missed the big back yards of
home.

Just because they did that stuff on the dock, that weekend. Just because
Chris couldn't stop thinking about Dave, and fretting about his dorky clothes
and non-sequiter conversations. If Dave wasn't always letter-perfect with
his sides, Chris would have thought he was stoned all the time, the way his
conversations....weren't.

Everything was a fucking game to Dave, nothing was serious. Chris felt almost
blank under the assault of contradictory yet equal emotions: glad he wasn't serious,
resentful that he wasn't serious. Because then, Chris would be. So. Fucked.
Chris was drinking too fucking much tonight. He was going to show his hand, and
he couldn't do that. Dave wouldn't understand/wouldn't care/feel like his mellow was
being harshed, pick one New fucking Age saying that the Zen Meister liked to
throw around. Hey, this wasn't Joss fucking Whedon's Sunday evening Shakespeare
readings, this was Chris' crib.

He let Steve take care of the hot dogs and the hamburgers, let the girls dish up chips
and dip and the fruit salad they brought and picked at. Chris was ready to bet that
any one of the girls was going back to the bathroom and puking up what they ate,
'cause this was HollyFuckingWood and you had to be skinny.

As the big guy knew, sitting and drinking his freakin' Guinness in the shade.
But even the girls ate some of the chicken, and Chris let one of them perch on his
thigh and feed him the pieces of burnt skin, black and bitter as Chris' heart, and
wasn't he the philosophical bastard these days? As the other girls kept swooping
by Dave in his lawn chair, offering him chips and strawberries and beer. Bastard
smiled that killer smile at them all, smile was enough to blow back your hair.

So when the evening light grew dark and soft, they got out their guitars and the
girls all knelt around Steve and Chris, eyes shining in the pool lights. Man with a
guitar, guy with a band---chicks loved that shit.

Chris looked across the deck at the big guy. Maybe not just chicks. He looked at
Dave when he sang "Longneck Bottle" and damn if the boy's face didn't close up
tight.

Old Chris could always get laid when he sang, man.

But he kept drinking because he didn't want to let him in. Let him in on how much
he thought about him, thought about that day at the lake, about Dave's tongue and
Dave's cock and how Chris wanted to just lie on Dave like he was a hammock,
be held like a fucking pussy.

Kept drinkin' Jack.

Managed to deflect, with the good ol' boy manners, the bikini clad girls, managed to
call cabs and make sure every one got home, and he guessed Dave got snagged
by that little blonde because pretty soon every one was gone, and Chris stumbled
through the house turning off lights. Because he wasn't the star of the show and
he didn't want a fucking huge power bill.

He turned off the pool lights, shucked his jeans and boxers and grabbed one of the
last of the Lone Stars, to go sit in the shallow end.

The creak of a lawn chair startled him, but he didn't have time to turn before someone
was in the water with him. "Drunk people drown in swimming pools all the time," Dave
said, and fuck if Chris didn't slip off the step, and come back up.

"Yeah, damn it, and you keep...you keep..."
Dave's big hands taking the bottle of beer away and setting it on the concrete; Chris
heard the scrape of the glass bottom. "I keep what?" he asked, very quietly.

Sexy bastard.

And Chris evidently said this out loud, because Dave laughed, and pulled Chris to
him. The water was soft, soft as fingers on every inch of Chris' skin, and that was good,
because Dave's fingertips were hard on Chris's arms and shoulders, his mouth hard
on Chris'.

"Only time I can get a word in is when you're drunk," Dave said, and bit his lip.

Chris grabbed Dave's head and kissed him, hard, scraping his teeth and tongue over
his mouth and chin.

"I keep what?" Dave asked again, his hands in the small of Chris' back, kissing him.

He actually stopped to hear what Chris said.

"You keep looking," Chris said. "Fuck, Dave, yeah, right there."

Christ, he was drunk. He was so drunk he didn't say a word when Dave dragged him
out of the pool and laid him on the grass and blew him. Not words, anyway.
But it was good. It was good, because Dave stayed with him all night, wrapping himself
around Chris like a blanket.

And then, despite being more hungover than a Sooner cheerleader after the OSU game,
he woke up Dave with his own blow job, and got to listen to Dave yell.

Because Chris had to show him, that Chris was the man for the job.

4. Don't ask me on a straight Tequila night

Chris knew that he had a temper. Knew all about it. Knew that's what got him
out of Oklahoma, what got him singing onstage. A hard coal of redneck anger that
managed to smoulder under his ribcage all the time. Kept it under control just
about all the time, kept himself on the right side of mean. It kept him going,
kept him strong and working, warm and dry and bought his beer and guitars.
Made him write songs and sing songs and go out for parts. Let him say, "Hell,
yeah," and get on strange horses and walk into strange bars and try new songs.
He liked it.

The don't-give-a-fuck tone of voice, the fuck you look. Made him wear his black
western hat to a screening, and when the big---fuck, huge---guy behind him
complained, the anger made him turn around and snarl at the guy.

Who thought it was funny, thank Christ. Because David B. could have torn his
head off and shit down his neck. But he didn't; he moved to sit next to him.
Turned out to be one of those guys who stoops over so he doesn't loom over
his friends; turned out to be one of those big, good-natured guys, so laid back
that he made surfer dudes look wired.

Chris was pretty much wired all the time.

And it worked out that Chris hadn't pissed Dave off, because the big guy was
now The Big Guy, the star of the show.

Rapidly becoming the star of Chris' show, god damn it. Chris didn't need the
aggravation. Didn't want to need Dave, didn't need to want him, but fuck, fuck,
fuck, if Chris didn't both need and want Dave.

He didn't need to feel mellowed out, soft as a feather bed, lazy as a stream in
summer. He needed his edge and his anger and his own space and his own
thoughts.

Which is why he was sitting on a barstool far away from Mr. Mellow's
orbit so he could drink and be around people who worked for a fuckin living,
thank you very much, not Industry. Fucking Industry Types and their fucking
magazine spreads.

Nashville, man. That's where Chris needed to be.

Fuck. Time to get out of there. He bums a cigarette from the bartender and
leaves.

He stumbles out of the bar and thinks he's hallucinating, because there's the
zen boy, himself, leaning against Chris' truck.

"Want a designated driver?" Dave asks, mildly enough, but his arms are
folded over his chest and he's got the Angel-stare going.

There's that word again. Want.

"I want a lot of shit," Chris says, digging his keys out of his jeans pocket.

"People in hell want ice water. Don't mean they get it."

"This is one of the things you get," Dave says, taking the keys from Chris
and opening the driver's door.

And Chris takes a drag on his cigarette and coughs, to cover up the water
in his eyes. When he gets in the truck, Dave doesn't look at him, just starts
the engine and drives.

Chris leans back on the passenger side of the bench seat, props his boot
on the dashboard, and rolls his head along the back of the seat to watch the
street lights flicker along Dave's face, light and dark, light and dark.

-End