Cattle Stop by Kit Oliver

Chapter Seventeen

Cooper fluffsa flake of hay and sets it neatly in the feeder. A scoop of grain, a trough of fresh water, and that’s that. He gathers up his hammer, the last handful of nails he hadn’t needed, and sweeps his arm in a grand gesture to the doe.

She sniffs at the doorway. Icy rain trickles down the collar of his sweatshirt. She pokes her head inside.

“A palace for one,” he says.

She struts inside, looks around, and dashes back out into the rain, soaking the toes of his boots with a splash as she goes.

“Of fucking course.”

Dramatic, he’d once called goats, and then used the word for them a hundred times more. He blinks as rain drips down his face. He’d told Whit that. Years ago, when Whit had suggested adding a herd of dairy goats so Drew could make chèvre. Cooper shakes his head to whip the rain out of his eyes.

The doe snorts and skips off toward the corner of her pen, her head cocked and her ears pricked with an attitude he’s always been sure no other animal can muster. A cat, maybe. Socks had that sort of prance back in the day, but even he never managed that level of sass.

Enough, he tells himself.

Lunch. He needs lunch. Afterward, he’ll finish cleaning up the last of the scraps of lumber and feed out the rest of the herd’s hay. And then he can change out of his wet clothes and enjoy an evening of dry socks and thawed fingers before he trudges out tomorrow morning to start all over again.

It’s probably sunny at Drew’s. Crisp but warm in the sun, with autumn’s colorful riot of foliage. The barnyard smelling like woodsmoke and the cider Drew makes every year.

Enough. Enough, enough, enough, he thinks as he goes into his cabin.

“Cooper?” someone calls from outside as he tugs off his jacket.

“Yeah?” he shouts back.

He can’t see more than a few feet through the window with rain pinging against the glass and a bank of fog sitting beyond it, so he eases his door open an inch, rain splattering over his sopping wet boots, and calls out, “Cheryl?”

“Someone here for you!”

“Who?” Cooper shouts into the rain.

“Just down there, yep, follow that path,” Cheryl says and Cooper squints at the two figures, Cheryl’s familiar form and someone taller trailing her. “A friend of yours!”

Drew, he thinks, hope leaping in his chest.

But, no. Drew’s been on a plane maybe twice in his life, and he’s not one to drop in for a surprise, not with his herd of cows and the cheese that needs his attention. Probably just that guy from the co-op looking to buy some breeding does, or maybe the farmer down the road selling off some of the summer’s hay that Cooper has been trying to get a hold of.

Cooper takes his hat off and wipes a hand over his face, taking water and dirt with it. “Come in,” Cooper calls out and steps back to make room for them.

“Cooper?”

He freezes, a hand on the door and rain splashing over the threshold. “Whit?”

“Hey.” Whit hunches under the narrow awning over Cooper’s door. Behind him, Cheryl waves, then disappears up the path to her house.

“Hey,” Cooper says.

Rain pings against the roof and jumps where it splashes from the eaves to soak the cuffs of Whit’s pants.

Whit. Here.

The fuck?

Cooper steps back and widens the door and Whit comes through it, tugging the hood of his rain jacket down, his shoes squeaking against the floor.

“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting,” Whit says.

“It’s fine,” Cooper says. It’s not. Or it is. His ears feel like they’re buzzing.

“You were working,” Whit says.

“I’m having lunch.” More water rolls down Cooper’s face, and he pushes his hair off his forehead. He blinks once more, and Whit’s still standing there, his hands loose at his sides and the hem of his pants damp.

Whit licks at his lips. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why?” Cooper squints, like it’ll bring Whit into sharper focus.

Rain pounds down on the roof and Cooper wishes it would stop, just so he could hear himself think for a second, see if he can figure this out. Whit, standing in his tiny, cramped cabin. No, impossible. Cooper wants to rub his eyes and look again to find out if Whit’s really still there.

“I want to talk to you, just for a minute,” Whit says.

“A minute?” Cooper sets his hat back on his head, though his hands feel empty without it. He pushes his fingers into his pockets. The nails are still in there, his knuckles bumping against them. Cooper jerks the nails out of his pocket and sets them next to his keys on the small side table. That’s right, lunch. He was getting lunch. And then Whit walked out of the misty fog, and here he is, rain splattering down behind him.

“Gonna let me all the way in?” Whit asks.

Cooper gestures him forward with a jerky motion and pushes the door shut. “You on vacation?” Cooper wipes his palms on his thighs, then looks down at them, goat hair clinging to his wet skin.

“No, I wanted to talk to you.”

Whit sounds like a broken record. His raincoat looks new, must be new, Cooper’s never seen it before.

“Okay.” Cooper wipes his hands off again, like his pants are any dryer.

“Is—” Whit pauses. His head tips. Cooper’s not sure he’s ever seen Whit do that, glance away from Cooper and then back again. “Would that be okay?”

“I guess.” Cooper jerks open the fridge. Takes a breath, too. It sounds shaky. Whit, in Oregon. On this farm. Here to see him, apparently. Cooper clears his throat and when he turns back, Whit’s still there. “You, ah, hungry?” Cooper asks. That sounds like the type of thing he should say. Someone over to visit. Whit over to visit.

“Yeah.”

His cabin’s even more cramped with Whit taking up so much room. Whit steps out of his boots and Cooper looks down at his own. Normally, Cooper leaves muddy tracks all over, and then gets annoyed about it when he steps out of the shower, the floor gritty under his bare feet. Quickly, he bends down and unlaces his boots, the leather stiff with caked mud and soaked through with rain.

Cooper has bread. And peanut butter. And an old, mostly empty jar of jam that’s got dried rings of strawberry around the lip from not screwing the lid back on right. None of his knives are clean, and he rinses one quickly. Soap, he tells himself, squirting some onto a sponge. It’s Whit. Whit’s a soap kind of guy.

“Coffee?” Cooper asks the tiny sink.

“No, thank you.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk.”

“Right. You said that.”

The plates Cooper sets out don’t match. Whit’s too tall for the table and has to fold himself into a chair. His knee sticks out. And the leg of his jeans is wet, water splashed up on the cuff and dotting his thigh.

“I might have some chips too.” Cooper tosses the bag of bread onto the table. He sticks the clean knife into the peanut butter.

“This is fine,” Whit says.

Didn’t they once get into an argument about crunchy versus smooth? But Whit doesn’t complain about the lumps in the peanut butter as he spreads it over his bread. Cooper should’ve washed a second knife. He’d have something to do if he could be coaxing jelly onto his own sandwich, while Whit spreads peanut butter neatly to all four edges and corners. But instead, Cooper has to wait until Whit holds out the handle toward him. Cooper takes it, keeping his fingers well clear of Whit’s.

“So,” Cooper says finally, as he folds his sandwich closed.

“This is yours?” Whit looks around as if there’s more to take in than just the table, the bed an arm’s reach away, and the door to the bathroom.

Cooper didn’t make his bed that morning. Of course he didn’t, and he suddenly hates that Whit’s there to see it.

“Not mine, mine,” Cooper says. They can both be pedantic assholes, now can’t they? He takes a bite of his sandwich. He doesn’t even like peanut butter and jelly. It sticks in his mouth and doesn’t fill him up for the afternoon’s work to come. “I’m sorry, did you call? I don’t have service. Did you tell me you were coming?”

A little warning, he knows he means. What the actual fuck, he so wants to ask.

“No, I—” Whit shakes his head. “I, um.”

“Cheryl’s house has a phone.”

“Right.”

Whit’s chest fills with a breath, and he tears the corner of his sandwich off. Slowly, Whit puts it in his mouth and chews, looking around again like there’s anything else to see. Whit’s throat works as he swallows. It’s not like Cooper offered him water. He could.

“What’s this about?” Cooper asks.

“You called Drew,” Whit says.

Cooper looks up from his lap, eyebrows raised. “Is that not okay?”

Fuck you, he wants to snap. Months—months—of missing Whit and he just shows up here? To what, have a chat? All that careful chinking of a thick wall between Cooper and his feelings, and Whit just drops by?

“No, it’s—” Whit’s tongue darts over his lips. “It’s fine, it’s not that, it—”

He shakes his head. Quickly, Whit unzips his coat, stripping the sleeves off his arms and then shaking it out. He folds it, because of course he does, though there’s nowhere to put it. Gently, he lays it on the floor, next to the wet cuff of his jeans and his sock, a clean, pristine white against the rain on his pants.

“What is it, then?” Cooper takes another bite and sets his sandwich down. “I gotta go feed the herd.”

“No, I know.”

Cooper waits, but Whit only tears off another piece of his sandwich. Slowly, he chews it, and only when he’s swallowed does he say, “You, ah, you told Drew you weren’t coming back? To visit?”

“I know,” Cooper says.

Irritation threatens to burn through him. Whit, flying all the way here to—to what? Remind Cooper of a phone conversation that Whit wasn’t even a part of? Interrupting his day, his work here, his aching process of forgetting everything about their spring and summer? Cooper’s spent enough time trying not to think about him to now have Whit here where he lives, the scent of him filling up the small room. Cooper was doing so well, too. So no thanks, he doesn’t fucking want this, Whit here in his space, and the dim, hot flicker of hope that it stirs in his chest.

Stop, he tells himself, hunching forward over his sandwich. It’s Whit. Nothing’s between them and it never has been.

“So you’re not coming back?” Whit asks.

“No.”

“Okay.” Whit takes a breath. Opens his mouth, eyes on the table. Shuts it again, his lips pursed. “Okay.”

“Is this about finding someone for the farm? ’Cause I told Drew, that job won’t be hard to fill.”

Hell, knowing Whit, he’s probably interviewed a half-dozen people already. A dozen, maybe, and has some sort of horribly overdetailed spreadsheet outlining their pros and cons. Not Cooper, reads one column, he’s sure, a tidy tick next to each and every name.

“It’s not about the job.” Whit rips off another bite from his sandwich but sets it down. He brushes his fingers together, crumbs falling into the center of his plate. “It’s about, well, the job and—and you kissed me?”

“What?”

“That summer? All those years ago, you—” Whit stares somewhere past Cooper’s shoulder, deep furrows pinching his forehead. “And then everything this summer, but on the phone you told Drew that you thought I—” Quickly, Whit scratches at his neck. “I don’t care about you?”

Blood pulses in Cooper’s cheeks. “Drew told you that? That I said that?”

“No, he told Penny, and she—” Whit closes his eyes and pulls in a deep breath. When he opens them, he spreads his hands on the table, his fingers gripping the flat surface until tendons stand out.

“He wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“No, I know, I just…” Whit’s throat bobs on a swallow. “I’ve had this ridiculous thing for you for years and I’ve been trying to get over you and then this summer was just—I just couldn’t believe it, and then—” His tongue presses into his cheek, a bulge under the thin skin. When he looks up, his eyes are bright. “You’re really not coming back to Two Pines?”

Cooper blinks. “You don’t even like me.”

“Cooper,” Whit says softly.

“You can barely stand me.” Cooper’s whole face feels hot. His chest, too. Tight and pounding.

“No, I—”

“What the hell, Whit?”

Whit sniffs. His eyes are red. “I can stand you.”

“Since that summer?” Cooper asks. “That was fucking years ago. You’ve liked me since that summer?”

“Before that,” Whit says softly. “Since—since high school. I can go, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“High school?” Cooper’s voice sounds too high.

“Drew said—Penny said that Drew said that you—you don’t want to come back again because of me and—” Whit draws in a deep breath, his chest expanding on it. “I wanted you to know.”

Whit sits back in his chair, and with his tongue touched to the corner of his mouth, he stares at the window and the drops of rain rolling down. Cooper stares at him. Blinks. Watches Whit swallow again, his thumb rubbing quickly over his knuckles.

“I’m sorry, is this real?” Cooper asks.

Whit nods, still not looking at Cooper.

He got on a plane, Cooper thinks, turning each word over in his mind.

He must’ve gotten the address from Drew. And just…came. All this way. I had this ridiculous thing for you, he hears again in Whit’s voice. Cooper’s face is burning. It’s something he himself would say, not words that should be metered out in Whit’s deep, even voice.

Say it again?Cooper wants to ask. He inhales sharply. He can’t think right, his mind buzzing and the rain tapping on the windows and Whit so close, right there across the table from him. Cooper blinks. His eyes feel hot. And his nose is tingling. Cooper clears his throat. Then, he clears it again. This room is too damn small. “I need a minute.”

“Of course.”

Cooper gets up, puts his soggy boots back on, and goes out into the rain. Whit trails after him, head ducked and his hood pulled up. Cooper can still see the angle of his chin, the curve of his nose. Cooper yanks the brim of his hat down. His stomach is twisted over and around, something like hunger sitting deep in his gut.

Whit’s here. He came all this way, just to see Cooper. Because Cooper wasn’t going to come back again. He wanted…wanted Cooper to know how he felt.

He tugs on the brim of his hat again and turns slightly, and Whit’s still there next to him, sloshing through the puddles.

That summer they kissed was so long ago. Years and years and years ago. And Whit, since then…Cooper squints at him. All that time stuck in the same room. In bed together, wrapped up in each other. Whit’s hands on him. He’d been…Cooper shakes his head.

In the barn, a goat bleats, impatient for her hay.

“You said to Drew, that I’m not—” Cooper shakes his head. “You didn’t even tell Drew about us.”

“I thought you didn’t want him to know, so I—”

“And you said that you tell him everything and this? Us?” Cooper waves between them. “Of course I didn’t fucking say anything to him, you’re so goddamn fed up with me all the time.”

“I’m not,” Whit says. “I’m, Coop—I—”

“You just wanted to hook up with me. That was it.”

“No. Cooper, I want—you have no idea.”

“Apparently not.”

Cooper grabs the sides of the ladder and climbs up to the loft. He needs hay bales. And a second to make sense of everything rushing through his head. He catches his shin on the top rung and winces, bracing himself on the stacked hay.

When he turns to look down, Whit’s still there, just standing in the middle of the aisle.

“I constantly annoy you,” Cooper says.

“You don’t. I get—I get frustrated with myself. Around you. Cooper, I can’t think straight.”

Cooper pitches a bale down and Whit neatly sidesteps it. Chaff puffs up and clings to Whit’s damp pants. “You think I’m a joke. Immature.”

“I think you’re fun, you’re so much more fun than I’ll ever be, you bring out this side of me that’s—I’m better when you’re around, Coop.”

“You hate all my ideas. Everything I ever say, you just disagree with.”

“I’m not good at change. At new things. You told me that, but I—I can try to be.”

“Did you just fly out here to argue with me?”

“I—I guess I did.”

“You got a goddamn plane ticket to tell me I’m wrong to have moved out here?”

“I wasn’t going to put it like that.”

“How were you going to put it?”

Whit licks his lips. He’s rehearsed this, Cooper’s suddenly sure. On the plane here, before he left. That fact lights up Cooper’s chest, warm and bright.

“This summer,” Whit starts. Shifts his weight, scrapes his foot against the straw littering the barn. Cooper drinks it in, Whit’s uncharacteristic twitchiness, his plain-as-day nerves. “I—it was like out of a dream. You coming to the farm, and ending up staying for so long. I hated it and I loved it and just every day, Coop, you drive me nuts with how into you I am. You’re everything I could never be, you’re always just going for it. Grabbing life with both hands. And I get it if I’m not—if I’m too different. But you told me I’m too stuck in my ways and you’re right, so I came out here to just. . .to just try, Coop. ’Cause I can’t stand you thinking I don’t care about you, that you’re not who I wake up thinking about and that I haven’t missed you every damn day since you left.”

Cooper crosses his arms. Sniffs once, hard. “Yeah?”

“There wasn’t anyone else, Cooper. You kept asking but there wasn’t and there hasn’t been since you left.”

Cooper sniffs again. “Good.”

“Good?” Whit asks, taking a small, quick step toward the ladder.

“Yeah, that’s good.”

Whit seems frozen, staring up at him. Doesn’t look like he’s breathing, even. His eyes are wide, his fingers working together where his hands hang loose by his sides. Beside him, the goats strain through the fence, sticking their lips out, trying to reach the bale sitting at Whit’s feet.

Whit jerks when one of them bleats. Bends down to awkwardly, hastily start pulling the baling twine off the bale. He’s really going to help feed the goats. He got on a plane, flew out here, probably rented a damn car, and no matter what Cooper says in response to all of this, he’s going to lend a hand around the barn. That’s just so…that’s just so Whit.

Slowly, Cooper swings onto the ladder. Takes a step down to the next rung and peers at Whit. Neatly, Whit folds the baling twine in half and then in half again. He always does that, and today is no different. Each strand, every single time Cooper’s ever seen him open a bale. For all Cooper knows, he has a collection somewhere, years and years of farming and neatly folded twine to show for it.

“What’s the point of that?” Cooper asks.

“Of what?”

“The—” Cooper jumps down the last rungs and points, his sleeve sticking to his shoulder as he raises his arm. Whit looks at it. And that’s…that’s something, isn’t it? Whit’s eyes cutting down to Cooper’s arm, then back to his face. It feels good to have Whit’s attention on him. “The folding. Why do you always do that?”

“I don’t like it when it gets tangled,” Whit says.

He’s good looking. Hasn’t Cooper always thought so? Since that first summer, when they were so much younger. All this damn time, the two of them circling each other.

“You don’t like it when it gets tangled.”

“That’s what I said.” Whit puts the twine into his pocket.

“You better fucking mean all of this,” Cooper says. “I can’t, I’ve—” God, this is hard to say. Easier too, than he might have guessed. Might have expected, if he ever even thought to dream any of this. “I’ve been trying to get over you too, asshole.”

“You have?”

“So fucking hell, Whit, tell me this is real.”

“I mean it,” Whit says softly.

“You do?”

“I love you,” Whit says. He’s half-mumbling and he clears his throat. “I love you,” he says, louder this time. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. And I came because I wanted to know if there was a chance that you might come back home.”

Home,Cooper thinks. Drew and Penny and Sadie. Sunshine. Autumn. Cheese. Whit.

“I want that,” Whit says. “And Drew said…I think you might want that too.”

Whit’s really here. Standing in front of him, hopeful and looking nearly as miserable as Cooper’s felt all these months.

“Whit,” Cooper says softly and Whit’s eyes snap to his, that soft, deep brown. Cooper’s always liked Whit’s eyes. He likes them all the more now focused on him as he walks closer. Whit’s face is wet, his cheeks cool under Cooper’s hands. Cooper looks at him for a long moment, touches his thumb to Whit’s cheekbone and then leans in and kisses him.

A sound rises from Whit. Soft and surprised, and Cooper tips his face and kisses him again, slow and hard, Whit’s cheeks in his hands and his mouth so warm. Whit tastes the same as Cooper remembers, and beneath the rain and hay, he smells the same too. All these fucking years, and Whit right in front of him the whole time.

“It’s baling twine,” Cooper says when he pulls back. “It gets tangled anyway.”

“But less so.”

“Maybe.” Cooper kisses him again.

Whit’s hands close over the back of Cooper’s neck and Whit’s mouth opens for his. He pushes Cooper’s hat back and presses closer, until Cooper’s T-shirt sticks to his chest, Whit gathered up against him. And that’s better, isn’t it? A firmer hold on each other. Whit sucks at his lower lip and Cooper lets him, opening his mouth for Whit’s tongue and tipping his head to the side as Whit shifts the angle of their kiss. Cooper wants to laugh. Or cry, maybe. He pulls back enough to open his eyes, just to make sure Whit’s still there, no matter the fact of his body held tight in Cooper’s arms.

“You’re sure?” Whit asks, his lips brushing over Cooper’s.

“No.” Something’s tugging on Cooper’s pants. It’s a goat, the edge of his pocket caught in her teeth. Cooper nudges her away and Whit kisses his chin, his jaw, down his neck. “But you are, and you’re stubborn enough for the two of us.”

“Me?”

Whit’s even warmer when Cooper tucks his hands up under Whit’s jacket and the shirt beneath, and his pulse shoots through his stomach at the flex in Whit’s back, how his spine moves.

“Yes, you, you asshole,” Cooper says.

“Your hands are cold.” Whit reaches back for Cooper’s wrists and cups his fingers, blinking at Cooper, his eyes soft. Cooper could twist away if he wanted to, with how loose Whit’s grip is.

Cooper swallows. Whit’s watching him so gently. It’s a new look on Whit’s face. Though isn’t all of this new? Something full and aching wells up in Cooper’s chest.

“Don’t you know how to feed a goat?” Cooper asks.

“I think I can figure it out,” Whit says.

He drops his hold on Cooper, and Cooper readjusts his hat. His hands feel shaky. All of him does.

Cooper just watches as Whit finishes opening the bale. He’s allowed to look, he realizes dimly. And he does greedily, his eyes on how Whit’s pants tighten over his thighs and his jacket pulls up his back.

“Don’t fold it.” Cooper grabs away the baling twine once Whit tosses the hay to the goats.

“It’s easier that way,” Whit says.

He grabs the twine from Whit. Easier would have been one of them saying something years ago. But they’re here now and he shoves the twine into his own pocket. Whit’s probably right that it’ll make a mess.

“It’s absurd,” Cooper says. “Come on, let’s go.”

Whit follows him across the yard, a half-stride behind, nearly stepping on the heels of Cooper’s boots. Cooper finds Whit’s wet fingers and holds on, and when Whit squeezes, Cooper squeezes back.

Inside his cabin, Cooper grips the zipper pull under Whit’s chin. This isn’t real, he wants to say, but Whit’s standing there in front of him, his ears a little red, his lips shiny and wet, and his warm hand on Cooper’s elbow.

“You came all this way for me?” Cooper asks softly.

“You could’ve picked a farm in Pennsylvania,” Whit says. “It certainly would’ve been easier.”

Cooper smiles. “Shut up.”

Cooper works Whit’s rain jacket off and drops it on the floor. Their boots leave muddy, wet tracks and Cooper’s knees hit the bed, Whit’s tongue in his mouth and hands tight in his hair. Cooper’s shirt lands on the table next to a half-eaten sandwich. They left the peanut butter out, he realizes, and the rest of their lunch.

“Don’t you want to stop and clean up all the food?” Cooper whispers, hot into Whit’s ear. He touches three fingers to the small of Whit’s back, up underneath his shirt.

A soft nip at his jaw, all teeth and then the wet press of lips. “Get on the bed,” Whit says.

“But what about mice?”

Whit just sits on the edge of Cooper’s bed and Cooper laughs out loud, the sound startling him. He’s about to have sex. With Whit. He tries to hold on to that thought, like he can make it all the realer for thinking it harder.

Cooper settles on Whit’s thighs, straddling him. Tugs Whit’s shirt off too, and then there’s the planes of pecs to rub his hands across, the stacked muscles of Whit’s abs. Cooper bends and drags his mouth over the hard ridge of Whit’s collarbone. Hauls him closer too, fingers biting into the hard muscle in Whit’s spine. Gets Whit’s hips between his knees and squeezes, holds him there, fumbling for his belt.

Whit loves him. The power of that thought surges through Cooper, and he stands and kicks his pants off and shoves Whit’s boxers down over his thighs. Cooper’s got a condom somewhere. Lube, too. He gets them, and there’s Whit, lying back on his rumpled quilt. They’re both naked and Whit’s so fucking gorgeous. All tight skin over muscles, and the sharp points of his hipbones, and his hard cock that Whit grabs. Cooper kneels next to him and watches as Whit strokes himself once. There’s a scar on the heel of his hand. Cooper leans down and presses his forehead to Whit’s, his palm pressed to his breastbone.

Closing his eyes, Cooper whispers, “Fuck you, I missed you.”

He’s not sure he could really say that out loud if he had to look at Whit, too. Cooper rubs his thumb over the slope of Whit’s pec. Hasn’t he lain here so many nights, curled on his side and thinking of this? Whit lifts Cooper’s chin with a finger and gently draws him close for another kiss.

When Whit rolls them over, Cooper moves with him, letting his legs fall open, and Whit settles between them. Cooper touches his fingertips to Whit’s cheek.

“You got my bed all wet,” he says.

“So sorry.” Whit fumbles with the condom wrapper. He finally opens it with his teeth and Cooper grabs the lube.

“You’re not,” Cooper says.

His eyes close as Whit pushes a gentle finger inside of him. Whit’s knees shift and he’s looking, Cooper realizes, watching his own hand between their bodies.

“I’m not.” Whit sounds breathless.

And oh, that touch inside him is nice. Whit’s cock is, too, big and blunt as he slowly pushes in. Cooper didn’t appreciate that enough before, the stretch inside of him, how Whit so perfectly hits that spot—“Oh, fuck.”

“Too much?” Whit asks, his back locked tight, all ridges of muscle.

“No, fuck you, I got it,” Cooper gasps. It’s too fucking good is what it is. I could tell Whit that, he realizes. Just throw his head back and let Whit know exactly how good he’s making Cooper feel.

Though, Whit kisses him before he can and hooks an arm behind Cooper’s knee. It’s so slow, that drag out and ease back in.

“C’mon,” Cooper says against his mouth.

“I don’t—” Whit laughs. Cooper presses his head back into his pillow. He’s never heard that sound before from Whit and he stares. “I don’t want to come.”

Cooper lets out a laugh of his own. “Well, I do.”

“You can wait—ah—wait a second.”

“Are you going to let me know when?” Cooper rubs his hand up Whit’s back and into his hair. “What’d I say about that itinerary?”

Whit laughs again, a breathy, quick sound. “Fuck you.”

“Please. Finally,” Cooper says, and Whit does.

Cooper tries to squirm closer, draping an arm behind Whit’s neck, mouth open against his collarbone. Whit holds him like that, hips pounding, the sheets jerking beneath Cooper. It’s going to be over too soon and Cooper’s wanted this, waited for this.

“Whit,” he groans, head back and heat blooming through his stomach, down his thighs until they shake.

“I told you,” Whit says, and Cooper grabs his own cock, and when he comes, Whit grunts and follows him.

Cooper turns his face into Whit’s neck. Whit’s skin is sweaty, and Cooper tastes salt when he presses a soft kiss to Whit’s throat. He passes his fingers through Whit’s hair, scratching gently at his scalp.

“Since that summer?” Cooper asks softly. “You’ve liked me this whole time?”

Whit pushes his nose into the dip behind Cooper’s ear. He’s still breathing hard. “I tried not to.”

“Good job with that, apparently.”

Whit huffs a soft breath. Cooper’s skin is too sensitive. He tips his head and Whit kisses him, slow and wet and precise as Whit always is, all of that attention turned on Cooper. He slides his foot up Whit’s calf and presses into it, humming with how good it feels. How right.

“I kissed you that summer because I couldn’t get you out of my head,” Cooper whispers when Whit draws back. “It didn’t help any.”

“Sounds like kind of shitty planning,” Whit says, his lips on the corner of Cooper’s mouth, the side of his nose, beneath his eye.

“Well, I thought I’d give it a try at least, you giant fucking genius. Were you ever going to say anything?” He turns his chin and Whit’s right there and they kiss softly.

“I did say something,” Whit says.

Cooper smiles into their kiss, and whispers back, “You did.” And he’s smiling through their next kiss and the one after that too.