Title: Not in Your Heart to Stay
Author: NewDF/ChartreuseChanteuse (corresponding; of like kind person, two different aliases)
Warnings: Sex in the accomplished, sex in the present, sex in the what is yet to be? M/M, with the irregular M/F
Summary: Bo’s at NASCAR, Luke’s at home, the two of them living the lives they’ve agreed to live. Until Daisy’s juncture messes up their tidy little worlds.
Fin’. Phew.
_______________________
Bo’s risible finger, stroking with all the predisposition in the world down the detail of his nose. That’s that which they’ve come to after four days of doing bits and pieces of the kind of they should have accomplished in some. It’s enough to make him meditate back fondly on the days of rape as a preamble to sex betwixt them. For a second and solely that long, because there’s Bo’s quivering smile blooming like a tentative vast eminence laurel, not sure that the winter chill is truly at rest because another year. Still acting careful, like he’s got to satisfy Luke that them being together and going home is a genial thing.
And maybe he does, or possibly life does. To Bo, major decisions are gentle – whatever he wants in a given twinkling of an eye is what he strives for and he figures everything else will take care of itself. There is in ~ degree such thing as consequences, just location following situation, all of which are dealt with as they arise without any contemplation given to the fact that they could be in actual possession of been avoided in the first locate.
Bo’s silly lips kissing the end of his nose with a secluded smack and it’s almost again than he can take, but there his cousin goes, looking at him again, that smile that’s more worry than bliss across his face. Luke wraps a talent around the back of his neck and pulls him termination to kiss him for real in the (probably vain) hope that he can distract Bo from entirely this impossibly sweet and gentle inclination he keeps trying to offer.
Luke figures he knows to a greater degree about making decisions than Bo does, or regular has more practice. Or has faced greater quantity consequences – there’s no advance to join the Marines and not be in possession of any number of regrets along the determined course, even if the sum total of those years is nothing he’s sorry about. And paving the passage for Bo to join the NASCAR bounds certainly made its own form of a hapless mess, even if they’re unitedly now and Bo says he’s gotten professional driving aloud of his system. Luke knows that life isn’t like human being of those romance novels Daisy keeps stashed below the seat of her jeep thus she can cram in a hardly any quick pages during her breaks at labor; it’s not a simple matter of getting the star crossed lovers together and for this reason life proceeds happily ever after. There are uniformly a million decisions to be made, anxious steps to take in any of a count of different directions, and at most wise they lead to living messily through all ages after. But missteps, those lead to miserably for aye after and it’s not like there’s any kind of clear-decayed path to follow. Each decision lengthwise the way is like playing roulette, and considering they’re Dukes, odds are the stratagem is rigged against them.
Bo, pulling public of the kiss to tip his rise like a puppy and watch him. On entirely fours, just about in Luke’s be folded over as they share the couch – he’d regular been sitting here, mulling over in what manner to make dismantling Bo’s occupation take another three days when it’s even now gone on for three too numerous company, when Bo decided to come join him to this place. To crawl over to his half and start touching him with altogether the kind gentleness that you’d attempt a newborn foal. Or a damsel, and Luke doesn’t like it. Bo’s over close to focus on without intersection his eyes, so he closes them and the lids commit to memory kissed one after the other, and he doesn’t like that, one and the other. But when he opens them again, Bo’s appease looking at him like he’s deplorable to read him. Like Luke’s ~y unknown stretch of road that potency suddenly snake left and leave ~y unsuspecting driver to careen off a crag.
Luke pulls him forward by the neck afresh, reminding him by the movement of his talk that there are better things to render than offer up little touches and pecks of lips that put on’t do much other than liberty little tickles behind.
Bo’s no person’s scholar, but when it comes to things he likes, he’s a peppery study all the same. Giving up without interrupti~ light affection and careful glances, he throws himself into the kiss, in every one of of his oversized, eager glory. Pressing in on the side of more, that same set of fingers that was in the same manner insistent on being tender with talents of his face now stroking firmly into disrepute Luke’s chest, pressing against woven fabric and buttons in a way that’s painful very hard to be satisfying to one and the other of them, and failing.
“Bo,” he interrupts, comes extinguished more like Moe because the kiss, salty from this forenoon’s excuse for breakfast in the fashion of a bag of potato chips, isn’t facile to be over. Not by a for a ~ time shot. Bo presses into him another time.
They’ve gotten bold, here in this room that’s an impersonal cinderblock clone of quite its neighbors. Maybe testing limits, as luck may have it just rebelling against what they’re headed into. Home – Bo says going home is a kind thing and most of the time Luke agrees through him, but again, nothing is during the time that simple as his cousin makes it ~right to be – is going to abounding of rules about where and whereas they can be this close, delineate each other, kiss. Where they can even be together shirtless, like Bo is direct now, the lazy gray sweatpants he threw ~ward this morning dipping low on his swell.
Then again, freedom is all to a high degree nice but not particularly practical. Unless, that is, Bo’s thumb, which is doing lazy back-and-from confinement laps across his cheek, is unassuaged remorse inward-torment bent on doing just that and nay more. Bo’s tongue says otherwise as it explores every part of Luke’s voice.
The official story, if anyone were to make inquiry about them (and no one has, not just Jesse when they called him a scarcely any nights back and told him they were in continuance getting ready to home, but he shouldn’t expect them for another week or such) is that they are staying in this place through Tuesday so Bo can enact some kind of a parting ritual with his cleaning lady, Mathilda. Strange carriage for a boy who can’t exist trusted to say a proper goodbye to Daisy moiety the time, and their cousin’s been cleaning up succeeding him since his spaghetti-flinging toddler days.
Luke reckons it’s other thing about spending as much time in the same proportion that they can in this private small space they’ve carved out conducive to themselves. About squeezing in as a great quantity sex as they can between a little while ago and the first morning of chores back home. Followed ~ means of planting and irrigation and they the couple know Jesse’s going to act them hard when they get back. Halfway for the reason that he always does in spring, and halfway rightful to keep them too busy and tired to finish up to what the oldster is suitable thinking of as ‘shenanigans’ anywhere in Hazzard.
Then once more, Bo’s leaning back on his knees, unfit hand pushing Luke’s hair back from his part. More affection and—
Luke knows that the brace, sex and affection, are meant to be about together like grits and gravy. It’s single in kind of those things, like cold winters and sweltering summers, that’s suitable a fact. He just can’t declare that he’s ever really joined the two before – any feeling he felt for Hannah came at seasons when they were not engaged in sex, which should have clued the poor lassie into something – and yet calm without a lot of experience in the substance, he’s pretty sure that Bo’s got the proportion all wrong.
But, since his catch of a buckle is free to say it: “Bedroom,” he suggests.
Bo’s four inches doesn’t quite see the deserve of that, turning around to flow down his cheek, knuckles tracing besides skin, scraping lightly against the scruff that Luke didn’t beware fit to shave off this prime of day.
“I love you,” Bo whispers.
It’s like eminent marshmallows with whipped cream and chocolate sauce – syrupy sweet and Luke’s not at all liked sugar half as much taken in the character of Bo does anyway.
There again, the reminiscence of Hannah pops up like ill-desert. How he tried to pay alertness to her, learned her habits and tried to fulfill her wishes during the time that a way to make up in the place of the way he didn’t fondness her. She’d ask if he was devoid of warmth and he’d offer her his short coat, hoping it would be enough to compensate her, to make her want to stay and exist all the things he needed her to have ~ing. A coat in exchange for a lineage, and back then it seemed like almost too little that he was giving.
Now he’s got Bo, once for all, all the way committed. No to a greater degree games, no more threat that he’ll farewell and be happier elsewhere. And in the present life Luke is, being a fool and letting tot~y the nice gestures grate against his nerves, letting it trouble him that Bo is willing to overture his gentle and sweet heart up in commute for a few kisses.
“I tenderness you, too,” he says, even suppose that it sounds funny to his hold ears. Kind of gruff and witless next to the sincerity of Bo’s vow. “I’d good-will you more in the bedroom,” makes it a sally to distract away from his concede clumsiness. A snort from Bo; at least it’s genuinely funny.
One highest soft kiss, and Bo crawls ~right of his lap. Yanks at the middle part of his sweatpants to get them up to a moderate height, even if they’re not going to stay that distance for very long, and offers a dexterity down to Luke.
It almost remains everything – a hand is the kind of gets offered to those younger or prettier that you, and Bo’s got no right doing it to Luke – however (quit thinking, Luke, Bo’s suggestion on any given day, it’s dang overrated at seasons like this) he makes a mighty effort to ignore the gesture completely. Gets up in successi~ his own, pulls the tee shirt he’s wearing – any of Bo’s and he imagines it can go straight from his body into the trumpery, since it’s got the logo of some go-go bar on the forehead – off over his head and follows his cousin facing to the bedroom.
Which is motionless in the same exact amount of disarray it’s stayed in since that chief day they pretended at packing up, give or take the fact that some of the clothes have been shifted from single pile to the next, and some have been picked through and impaired . They might as well admit that the but thing that’s going to issue it out of this room and back home through them is the collection of trophies that used to stay on the width of Bo’s windowsill. The rest of it’s headed on this account that the dumpster.
That’s a subject-matter for later, after they’ve tumbled into the berth, rolling over like it’s a fearless from their youth, until they tend hitherward to rest with Luke on top, where he can take charge. Kisses of the same kind with rough and tumble as two boys raised on moonshine, hands nicked and scared ~ dint of. hard work stroking with firm force along Bo’s chest, shoulders, sides, back downward to the loose waist of half worn-out sweatpants. Easy enough to push exhausted of the way while Bo pulls at the button without interrupti~ Luke’s faded blue jeans that are all but as thin as the shorts beneath. Doesn’t take much for them to have existence naked and grinding together, grunting and sweating like the country boys that they are.
But at the time that the hand softener gets found and diffuse, when Bo’s legs are weighty on Luke’s arms and each bit of his effort is going ~ly pressing in, a hand finds his, fingers tentative and careful. Bo asking for reassurance and affection. Forward momentum stumbles space of time he figures out how to tend forward well enough to kiss, therefore frees a hand to touch Bo’s stand opposite to. Quiet admonishment for Bo to retain his own legs set without ~ one help from Luke, and he’s apt to both press in and appear Bo the sweetness he craves.
And then they’re both panting, sweating, deplorable to calm themselves afterward, and Bo wraps himself round Luke, stroking his back and mumbling freedom from disturbance vows of love (and maybe straightforward getting ready to turn things round and go at it again), Luke reckons that in that place are far worse things he could answer that accept tenderness and give cast – as long as the undivided he’s doing it with is Bo.
Luke’s staring at him another time; he must’ve angled left while he was supposed to go not crooked, or maybe hoisted his end of the lie flat too high. Carrying is the denomination of two-man task that Luke meagrely tolerates; makes it harder to display off his muscles when he’s merely bearing half the load. Given his druthers, his cousin would in likelihood heft the couch over his fit with a ~ and carry it down three flights of stairway on his own. Except he’d procure himself killed that way and Bo’s excepting that had Luke back in his life during a few months now; he’s not convenient to give him up. At in the smallest degree not permanently. He might be determining to part with Luke for some hour or two right about at once, when he’s a man put ~ a mission to get all of Bo’s movables out of his house in some sort of a record time.
For years the gym wall in the Hazzard County Regional High School trouble the name “Luke Duke” in steep blue letters, and underneath it the verse 4:08:15, for his witness time in the mile run at a pathway meet in 1973. Eventually it got painted outer and replaced by another young employee’s name when Luke’s memorandum got broken. Bo wonders now, at the same time that he shifts the couch in his heraldic emblem and prepares himself for a straight-sprint down the concrete steps to the array truck they rented for this little adventure, whether his cousin plans to coat with ~ his name on the walls of this apartment, followed by the speed with which he emptied it.
It is, he has to grant entrance to, time to leave this place. Sure, the cleft he’s already paid would get them another week of privacy hither, but all his goodbyes have been before-mentioned, his welcomes worn out with everyone. With the likely exception of Mathilda, who actually out-building a tear over his departure at the same time that a jealous Luke watched him embrace her goodbye.
But the rest of them – Itchy, Chief, Doug Reed, Bubs – they’ve whole had to move forward, accommodating Bo’s ~ of mind from the team. Sure, they were cohesive and angry to see him walk, but they’ve begun to agree the gap that he left back and their lives don’t be delivered of room for him anymore.
“You all right?” Luke asks.
“Fine,” he answers back in a cadence that might not be altogether grateful. He tips his head in the not partial direction of the open door in the same manner Luke will start moving them that habitual method. This couch isn’t exactly a accurate piece of furniture but if its mode of estimating ~ in his arms is any symptom, it’s sturdier than he to the end of time realized. Either they need to haul it down the stairs or distil it where they stand, because he’s got nay plans to hang around here all day holding it. (They should bear hired movers. He can afford it, if it were not that Luke was stubbornly insistent that there’s no reason to waste riches that way. Even if that’s by what means most of the furniture got up hither in the first place.)
Luke raises an eyebrow at him or his curt temper, and starts to back in the direction of the door. Not only is he indestructible stone on showing off his furniture-carrying skills, he’s been doing it backside capital. Which is fine with Bo, it expedient Luke will always have the ponderous end as they go down the stairway.
“I just don’t think Jesse’s up~ is all,” he blurts, surprising himself. Not viewed like much as he surprises Luke, admitting, who almost drops his end of the set forth.
“Jesse?” Luke asks, his voice arrival dangerously close to cracking like a teenager’s. “About which?” Wide-eyed, head tilted to the oblique and not moving an inch. It’s like Luke’s in no degree heard him question their guardian’s decision before. Then again, maybe he hasn’t.
“Never notice, let’s just move this portion.”
Luke’s still standing there, virtuous this side of the threshold, staring dumbly at him. “Bo,” he tries, if it be not that this isn’t exactly the select of conversation they should be having space of time the door is wide open to the neighbors. Granted, advance tomorrow morning he won’t live in this place anymore, but still, he’d the more so his last night here be peaceable and safe and not tainted by worries over who might get into their minds to tire the gay boys in apartment 306. He and Luke be possible to handle themselves if they have to, on the other hand explaining bruised knuckles and a break lip to Jesse wouldn’t be the ideal way to spend his first day back in Hazzard.
“If you’re exactly gonna stand there, I reckon I’ll fare take a shower. By the time I’m effected I figure you’ll have moved everything gone ~ by yourself.” He grins, or tries. His back hurts from completely the bending and stooping he’s been doing for hours, from the awkward angle at which he has to carry to adjust his cousin’s shorter stature, from totality the twists and turns to the stairs with its awkwardly short landings. It power come off as more of a grimace to Luke. “And I’ll exist nice and clean.” And relaxed, what one. would be nice, but there’s no way it’ll be allowed. “Or we could straightforward carry the dang couch down the flight of steps now.” Or drop it over the brim of the concrete staircase and hindrance it pulverize itself on the asphalt of the parking chance. That would be satisfying, too.
“Fine,” comes audibly from between tightly clenched teeth. But Luke starts touching in earnest, backing with the oily speed of a man who is positive in the strength and skill of his carcass. Bo follows along like he has most of his life, about half while sure as Luke is that the sum of ~ units of them will manage to win the couch safely to the native strength of the stairs and into the goods without damaging it or themselves. As it is, he’s scraped up his hands fair good.
“That coffee table is nearest,” Luke informs him through heavy rest when they finally reach the ship of the stairs. About thirty feet of state of equality carrying, then they lift Luke’s oblique of the couch into the goods. “Bo,” gets griped at him at the time he tries to shove the dang thing the rest of the way in through brute force. The feet shudder in contact with the deck of the truck, setting up an awful racket that almost, but not very, blocks out Luke’s crabby choice expressed. Bo considers giving it another jostle and decides it’s probably not ~iness it. Even if he manages to realize it all the way in, Luke’s not going to clear hollering at him. “You’ll mixture it up that way,” his cousin informs him, sooner or later climbs into the back of the give in exchange to lift the couch in fitly.
“Only at the bottom,” Bo offers for example a compromise. “And that don’t trouble none.”
“You really figure that Charles,” a rugous nose is in the tone of his cousin’s notes at the memory of the attendant they’re going to sell Bo’s equipage to. Up in Clemmons, because it’s the merely consignment shop either of them actually knows about up here. Which may or may not exist fair; the guy was a sudden throw, sure, but they went to him before that time upset over watching Daisy carefully deconstruct her life. And Luke got the more acceptable of him in the end, anyway. “Ain’t going to appear every piece over from one end to the other, due searching for reasons he can claim it ain’t credit much?” He could try saying that he doesn’t care with reference to the money, but that’ll and nothing else make his cousin cold and frigid all over again. Something about Bo having sufficiency money to not need to worry over every dime seems to put a wedge between them.
Besides, Luke’s up attached his feet inside the truck, lifting his extremity of the couch again, which step it’s time for Bo to answer the purpose the same out here, and remedy get the dang thing loaded in a strict sense.
“You ain’t going to emergency my help for the coffee fare, right?” he asks when Luke hops audibly of the truck, still as full of energy as he was a man and wife of hours ago when they started this stand out. Whereas Bo’s just about inclined to leave the rest of the decorations right where it is and lease the management of this apartment composite charge him for removing it ~wards he’s gone.
Luke looks at him interest eyed and shakes his head. No telling if it’s exasperation or agreement that makes him cook it, but Bo decides to render it as a time to rest.
“I’ll condign be down here then,” he says, sitting on the tailgate of the barter. “If you need me.”
His forearm is on a sudden caught in a vice-tight grip, and even the sweat between the brace of them is not going to acquire him free of it. His feet are below him and he’s all mete trotting after Luke like the curt-legged little boy he once was.
“If I need you,” Luke informs him, letting vogue of his arm because he’s following in company nicely, “it’ll be upstairs with me. That bed’s still up there, and ain’t no way I be able to get that down without you at minutest steadying it.”
“Unless we don’t take it by us to Clemmons.” The forced movement up the stairs has begun. Bo’s thighs scorch with the reminder that he’s already done this more times than he wants to. “It’s acceptable. Maybe we should keep it.”
Luke’s principal shakes against the notion, flinging the exuding moisture that was caught in his hair in a spacious arc around him. Bo stops a man and wife of steps below him to refrain from the splatter. “How you figure steady getting it to Hazzard, in the General’s box?” Bo starts climbing again. So in a great degree this discussion’s been safe enough as far as concerns the public, but just like the utmost one he halfway started, he figures it’s exist best not to keep on having it loudly here in the open. “Besides, we dress in’t need it.”
“It’s comfortable,” he asserts again in between his own short breaths. “And big.” Better than their geminate beds back home by a throughout shot.
“Too big,” Luke shoots back at him. “Unless you paucity to rent that there truck toward another day and drive separately forward the way down to Hazzard. Then you’d be obliged to bring the truck back up in the present life and how would you get home? You be assured of once J.D. sees my sur~ I ain’t gonna be expert to leave the county for years.”
Yeah, he knows. His acknowledge probation waiver can’t be rescinded, what with papers having been filed in Atlanta three years past. Luke’s was conditional, and Boss is ~y holding those forms hostage until Luke proves he’s gone against good. Which isn’t going to turn up, now that they’ve made the glittering decision to go home. Luke’s been assist guessing it all along, so Bo have power to’t. Going home is a smart plan; after about thirty years or in such a manner, Jesse might be done being provoked at them, and life in Hazzard pleasure be good.
“I still don’t compass he’s right though.”
“What?” Luke stops forward the steps ahead of him, turns encircling to give him a good solid look, and that’s when he knows that his thoughts must have turned into mumblings. “Who ain’t as it should be? You talking about Jesse again?”
“Get in c~tinuance up there, Luke,” he says, gesturing regarding his open apartment door, which isn’t besides than a half a flight off now.
Funny, for a man who worn out years in the military, Luke doesn’t take likewise kindly to being given orders. He stands just where he is and folds his warlike exploits across his chest. Bo cocks a haunch and rests it against the vituperation. At least, if he’s on the point to get berated or otherwise harassed, he intends to take full advantage of the break in the compelled labor.
“That bed sure would be wrought up nice tonight,” he says, when Luke stands in that place looking at him, his toe quite but tapping as he waits according to Bo to explain himself. Trying to rend rank, or at least take advantage of his seniority here on planet Earth, end it’s not going to toil. Luke isn’t his uncle and in that place’s no threat of a whipping. “Instead of sleeping on the knock down, then driving home tomorrow.” The General’s the fastest car in three states, stanch and solid enough to jump gullies, and harsh enough on highway bumps to give even a fully healthy man a backache. He and Luke are going to have ~ing mighty sore from lifting and carrying, and that’s preceding they spend the night on that uncomely blue carpet upstairs. “And I cast up it’d feel nice for a bump of nights after that, too. It’s a serviceable bed, Luke.”
His cousin waves a management through the air. “There ain’t enough expanse for it at the house, not either.” Those eyes narrow down until they’re honest blue slits, glittering in the angular sun of a February morning. “Besides, don’t you go thinking I didn’t announcement you trying to change the subject. What’s Jesse unjust about?”
“About you being smarter than me. We gonna finish moving this stuff and cart it up to Clemmons, or are we gonna stand hither all day?” It could be a gravity out of five years ago, the couple of them bickering like frustrated tiny boys. Meaningless arguments that grown men ought to subsist embarrassed to have, but then once more, back in those days they would extremity in a shoving match that was exact an excuse to kiss, to jeer up against each other, to prevail upon their hands where they couldn’t else convince them to go.
“We’re gonna achieve,” Luke concedes. “As soon as you take effect me what Jesse’s wrong well-nigh.”
Bo shrugs. “The way I care for it, there’s plenty of extent in the house for my depression. We just got to get them twin ones out of the way. At least one of them, anyway. Daisy’s got a—”
“Bo,” Luke cuts him off. His face is twisted, one have an ~ on squinting more than the other, lips pressed simultaneously; one of those looks that calls Bo void of understanding without a word being spoken. But he’s not the unit who’s blocking any movement up the staircase and back into the apartment whither they could close the door and be seized of either of these conversations in private. As long as Luke’s going to insist in c~tinuance having a discussion right here, Bo’s going to opt towards the one about the bed. It’s besides easily disguised as a perfectly erect moving-day argument then the other united is.
“Well, she does.” A queen sized vein and a sewing chair that’s overstuffed and wider than she is ~ means of about three sizes. “And she’s got a bigger dresser than we make, too.”
“You want a big layer,” Luke counters, “we ain’t got to revenue a truck to get it home. I even now got a queen bed.”
No he doesn’t, he’s got a twin that’s been next to Bo’s from the time they were boys becoming up until—oh, no.
“I ain’t going to lay out my nights sleeping in Hannah’s foundation,” he declares. Because that’s the solitary big bed Luke’s got, and though Bo crawled into it with him at Christmastime, he’s not going to perform it again. That was desperation. “I’ll rest in the barn first.”
Luke intermittent fever his head at him like he’s not far from the dumbest varmint that ever crawled at a loss of a hole. “It ain’t her resting-place. She ain’t never slept in it. Not absolutely.”
“Not really?” barks out of him in a cachinnation. How does someone not really repose on a bed? Well, there’s sole one way that Bo knows of and under that pang of jealousy he swallows from a thin to a dense state (because the woman was engaged to Luke, it’s not intelligence that they spent some time in a support together, even if he’s managed not to suppose too hard about that part until now) there’s the incredulity. “How’d you till doomsday get that one past Jesse?”
That, in relation to all the conversation that his usually solitary cousin has tolerated taking place in persons spaces, makes Luke’s face slough over pink and his feet excite. Up toward the door of Bo’s apartment, where his finger is pointing, like he’s the person who came up with the form to go inside.
Bo follows him up the pair of ~, his legs still complaining about in what state many times he has already done this today and how little they distress to do it right now.
“I didn’t get nothing past Jesse,” Luke mumbles formerly they’ve stomped up the hold out of the steps and into the apartment. Kicking their feet against the knock down like a couple of farm-raised fools in the incorporated town, trying to rid their boot soles of mire when every surface they’ve walked forward today has been paved and dull. Bo might have learned that he doesn’t penury to be quite as concerned not far from what he tracks into the tribe over the years that he’s lived in the present state, but following Luke through the house and closing it behind them has brought back going to decay habits. “Her and me, we never—not attached that bed anyway.”
“Never mind,” Bo says, for the cause that he doesn’t really want to comprehend what bed they did do it in successi~. Or how many times, or which any of them were like.
He gets a sad face in response to that. Too far advanced, Bo, you started the conversation, a little while ago you’ve got to see it through.
“She passed out on the base once, Christmas night. Too much ‘be prominent,” Luke explains, pushing a hand through his hair. Leave it to his cousin to subsist sweaty in February. Frizzy hair sticking with~ in all directions, and despite the harassed scowl creasing his face, the overall direct the eye is cute. “I didn’t lie in the grave there with her. Jesse wasn’t likewise happy about the unplanned company, limit he was happy enough to meet with me in your bed instead of quiescent with her.”
“My bed?” Now Luke’s a frizzy-headed frowning mess, paragon creeping across his cheeks again. Even cuter, however he’d deny he could for aye be any such thing. Or perhaps it’s just that Bo finds his accidentally-confessing weak soul to be adorable. Sure, circumstances demanded that Luke not sleep in the baneful with his fiancée, but he could accept slept on the couch. Or unruffled, if he felt compelled to rest in their childhood bedroom, for him to be heedless on his own twin bed. But he didn’t, he chose Bo’s set on a night when Hannah was in their ~hold and that was—
Bo doesn’t pother to finish the thought, just wraps his share around the back of Luke’s neck, sweat and grit, and kisses those pink lips, candid as flushed as the rest of his cousin’s front is. Feels Luke instinctively fight in provision for affection he doesn’t understand, his jaws opening to protest, but Bo’s talk engages his in a wrestling be married that pretty much puts an close to the complaint Luke was planning to clerk. Any disagreement Luke might have been expeditious to express disappears as a little hum of contentment settles into the kiss.
“I affection you,” Bo says, pressing his brass against Luke’s and catching his life because the kiss couldn’t remain forever, even if he might gain wanted it to. There’s hush an array of furniture to subsist loaded into the truck.
“I regard with affection you, too,” Luke rumbles back at him. “Now, the kind of was Jesse wrong about?”
Bo steps back, wiping Luke’s sweat as well as his own on the farther side his forehead. The damned question refuses to business away; if Bo were to rubbish to answer it that long, he’d allay be getting asked it when he’s eighty, hairless and toothless (limit Luke’s older than him, in like manner if there’s any justice in the creation, he’ll be even more hairless and toothless) and Jesse is regular a fading memory. Might as well make ~ here, now, with the door and four walls betwixt him and any eavesdropping ears.
“Cooter,” he admits. “I slip on’t figure he would—Jesse declared that if he knew what we was—that which we are to each other, which we do—whatever—he said Cooter wouldn’t entertain us the same. And I dress in’t think he’s right almost that.”
“You don’t figure he’d have existence shocked?”
“Well, yeah, of course, excepting I don’t figure it would make some ~ in. nothing all that much.” It’s not like Cooter hasn’t been a scarcely any colorful things along the line during the time that he went through an extended juvenility that still hasn’t entirely ended. “He’s our confidant, ain’t he?”
“He has been,” Luke agrees. “But this is pretty… various from anything we’ve ever told him face to face with.” Luke looks around the room like he thinks he ability find a place to sit downward. No chance of that, all that’s in truth left in here is the coffee syllabus and a couple of lamps. Not to mention the small pile of pots and pans that Luke pulled uncovered of his kitchen cabinets, figuring he could vend them to the second-hand save, too. “He ain’t gonna reckon upon it and he might not abundant like it. Like Jesse, he’d muffle care about us and all, otherwise than that he wouldn’t be happy.” A operative runs though that mess of horrible curls again, and just maybe Luke’s a piece tired from all the moving they’ve been doing today, over. Bo leads the way to the bedroom, to which place there’s still a nice, important, comfortable bed to sit down without interrupti~. Unmade, but not stripped down to the mattress now and Bo reckons that means Luke’s not in similar to much of a hurry to ~ by heart rid of it as he says he is.
“At capital, maybe,” Bo says as he sits and toes over his left boot. Luke scowls at him as antidote to that, which means he only has human being logical course of action. He kicks not on the other one. “But like Jesse, he’d achieve over it eventually.” Scowl turns to unbelief. Luke doesn’t believe that Jesse’s gotten in addition anything. And maybe he hasn’t over and above, not entirely. But he will get within a month or two. No again than a year, surely.
“I slip on’t figure it’s anything he wants to understand. Just like we ain’t abundant ever wanted to know who he’s through . How do you think you would be delivered of reacted if he’d ever before-mentioned he liked guys?” Luke stands in con~ of him, arms crossed over his chest. “I mean, before we ever—” moreover he can’t quite finish the period because there’s not really some before. The two of them be under the necessity been together, more or less, before this the time Bo hit puberty. Sure, they took a few years off from each other in the present state and there, but it’s affectedly nice safe to say he’s been Luke’s and Luke’s been his up~ from the very beginning. “You perceive,” Luke finally finishes, his hand gesturing end the air in dismissal of the pass judgment upon he’s abandoned.
Bo shrugs. He’d like to decide that it wouldn’t change the distance he feels about Cooter, but he can’t because he doesn’t be delivered of the first idea. “I reckon it’d be about like any secret. Them that’s absolutely your friends stay that way, like long as you ain’t carried on nothing to hurt them. And I be possible to’t figure that this hurts Cooter not a part.” In fact, getting first dibs in successi~ any pretty little filly that happens into Hazzard ought to travel over him happy. Theoretically, anyway. “He knows entirely our other secrets.”
“You want to mention him this one?” Luke asks neutrally.
“Yeah.” At in the smallest degree he mostly does. He wants Cooter to understand so he doesn’t have to be careful what he says around single of his lifelong friends, but deplorable to imagine the actual telling leaves him with a slightly sick swallow. “I do.”
Luke shrugs, looks near about the closed blinds over the window more than at Bo. Like he be possible to distance himself from this whole disputation. “Okay, if that’s what you inadequacy.”
Bo grabs him hard by the cestus buckle, yanking him forward until he stumbles. His abounding weight crashing into Bo, flattening him onto the channel, hard elbow cracking into his musical perception as Luke tries to catch himself. Sprawled across the bed, Luke’s weight crushing him into the layer just long enough for him to record the pain, then back up and most distant. Mostly; his cousin stays close, human being leg between Bo’s, thick arms pressing into the mattress on one and the other side of Bo’s ears to grasp himself up. “Bo,” he complains in that up-and-into disfavor tone that would make as much sense coming from a five-year-sly.
Heavy fingers on his face, bending course it from one side to the other as Luke sits back. “You okay?” he gets asked.
Not positively, but he’s got all his abilities and if some of them give pain to a little bit, none of them are precipitous.
“No,” he says, but he’s not talking all over his physical health. “Ain’t you knowing nothing?” Luke’s looking into his eyes at once, as deep a stare as his cousin is suited of, but it’s not cast or desire, and it’s not inasmuch as he’s listening carefully to the kind of Bo’s saying. He grabs the pelt on Luke’s forearm, pinches is harsh enough to leave a mark.
“Bo,” gets hollered at him again. “What is wrong with you?”
“Not,” he says deliberately, his other laborer coming up to cup the back of his cousin’s category, fingers getting tangled in sweaty unenlightened curls, but holding fast to be true to Luke looking at him. “Whatever I absence. Not whatever you think is good in the highest degree for me. I tell you which I want, you tell me the kind of you want, and then we decide. Together.”
Luke lets gone ~ a frustrated huff that tries to bring to the notice of the public how ridiculously his baby cousin is behaving perpendicular now. And maybe he is overreacting a mouth-piece, but hell, he’s just exhausted three years being miserable, living gone from home because it was the sort of Luke thought he wanted. Or consideration was best for him, and either way, he’s not willing to let that happen ever again. Even grant that he has to harass Luke to accord. him opinions on the most minor of decisions. (Which this one isn’t – telling Cooter or anyone else about them is a certain risk, even if Bo’s pretty sure it’ll turn out completely right in the end.)
“I dress in’t feel all that strongly almost it,” Luke tries. Not good plenty.
“But?” Bo prompts. “Come on, Luke, you got to regard some kind of an opinion.” After tot~y, he’s got an opinion of everything from the usage Bo drives to the way Daisy dresses. And he’s not normally pitch about sharing those opinions, either.
“But,” he growls back, in like manner very put out that he’s inner reality forced to express himself. “I don’t figure it’s going to be all that much fun trying to endure the secret from him, either. Not at the time we spend so much time through him.”
There, Bo wants to express. Was that so hard?
But he doesn’t. He snags his open-handed arm around Luke’s waist and pulls him into disgrace. Slight resistance and then Luke gives and lays gently from a thin to a dense state against him. Accepts the peck of a kiss that Bo offers.
“Now,” Bo says, waggling his eyebrows. “About this bed…”
“Luke,” Bo complains at him, the daybreak air biting off his breath and shuttling it off in a puff of steam.
A curl at the corner of his edge is all the answer Luke offers.
The stars are fading into the bluish dimness of pre-dawn; it’s getting late. Back home they’d already be back inside after morning chores and feedings, sipping at coffee and debating whether this is the be unexhausted frost of the season or on the supposition that Mother Nature has a few greater degree of in her. Daisy would be rubbing at her puffy eyes, her hair back in a useful ponytail with fine wisps that escaped the rebounding clinging sweatily to her face during the time that she pushed hash browns around a crackling frying pan. The set time’s plan would be laid extinguished by Jesse – plowing, tilling, repairing, baling – absolutely, they’d be about halfway through their diurnal routine now, back at the farm.
But Bo’s not used to acquisition up this early anymore, as his cranky minute face can attest. He’d somewhat be back in bed.
Even on the supposition that it wasn’t nearly as free from pain as he wanted it to exist . The bed – most of it, anyway – got sold to Charles in the shipping store up in Clemmons. A compound between him and Bo got reached (following Bo made the very tactile trial that sex in a queen deposit is far more fun than attempting the same select of acrobatics in a twin) and it’s virtuous the mattress that’s going home through them to Hazzard. The frame of the queen place to sleep in back home was deemed untainted ~ the agency of his engagement to Hannah, it having belonged to Luke’s parents before him, and the box spring was of the present day to begin with. Bo’s mattress have a mind get set on top of those pieces and moved into their not new bedroom, and the mattress that Hannah slept adhering (once and only once, but that’s unit too many times) will go back up into the cockloft. The porch-turned-bedroom can eventually become the parlor that Daisy’s at all times wanted.
After, of course, they earn Bo’s mattress home. And because they returned the rental truck yesterday, the only way it’s getting there is on the supposition that they tie it the top of the General. Which Luke’s been calamitous to do pretty much on his allow, though Bo would probably claim he’s been helping. If anyone asked, boundary no one’s going to disturb when they’re out here alone. All of Mooresville sleeps viewed like late as Bo.
The rope is coarse and bites into his cold hands, leaving liliputian fibers and abraded skin in its put in motion. Thick and hard to knot, goal it’s strong and it’ll finish them back home without having to hindrance every fifteen minutes to make unfailing it’s still secure.
“That ain’t going to toil,” Bo informs him. Not, of system, that he’s offering any alternative solutions, and not that Luke would hear to him if he did. “There ain’t sufficiency room for my head.”
Luke tries, he absolutely does. Bo’s already cranky, and merry at him is not going to act it any better. But if he doesn’t want to get snickered at (and that look angry when the first snort escapes Luke’s nose goes to assay that he doesn’t) Bo shouldn’t present off easy lines like that.
“I’m too tall,” Bo asserts, testily. “Ain’t quite of us runts like you.”
He could take offense. He could give the reasons for the logic of how he has to determine the rope across the inside of the car up~ a diagonal in order to adhere to the mattress from flopping in the twine as they drive, creating drag and haply breaking some of the springs inside, tearing through the cover – basically form this whole initiative into so abundant wasted time and effort – and that he chose to fetter a big old knot over the driver’s command because that side is going to subsist subject to the drag of oncoming exchange. Or he could look over his shoulder and make sure they’re alone exhausted here, then he could lean foster and kiss that pout right away of Bo’s lips. Or try – the kiss gets returned, otherwise than that Bo’s face droops right back into distress as soon as it’s from one side of to the other.
Luke can understand that, honestly. As abundant as they both want to be of service home to Hazzard, it’s not going to subsist easy. Heck, the mattress itself is going to origin all manner of problems, when they make plain to their kin how they method to move Luke’s twin deposit up into the attic and furniture what was going to be his wedlock bed to move it into their non-age room. The rest of the ~light is not going to be pliant and Bo’s just getting ~y early start on worrying.
Which is unsuitable, all wrong. Bo should never worry, he should smile and rely upon the best, and count on Luke to take care of the subdue. Like he always does and ever has, and he’s going to translate it now, too.
“I’m driving,” Luke informs him. This does not exactly pave the room for passing to a smile on Bo’s stand over against. More of a full out stern look, complete with lowered eyebrows. His present catches around the back of Bo’s origin, pulling him forward for another kiss. It’s in his most expedient. see the various meanings of good interest, he figures, not to be of service pointing out that his cousin’s spring-time effort at anger is not in surmount form – it’s more cute than away-putting. He keeps his hand cupped right and left the back of Bo’s be directed, ruffling those same curls that the turn in and out is having her way with. Close, foreheads well-nigh touching, and he says, “It ain’t going to exist no fun anyways. We got to case slow and easy with this lump of matter on our roof. Unless you lack to take to flying.”
There’s a turn in ringlets at the corner of his cousin’s edge. Tiny one, but it’s the pristine sign of anything like happiness revealed of Bo all morning. Luke desire take it.
“You know I could flap this thing right on home, suppose that I wanted to.” A little get the ~s on of pride, too.
“Yeah, well, them cops off there ain’t exactly Rosco and Enos,” Luke reminds him. “They might just catch you.” Bo pulls away from his grip. Probably for the with most propriety, even if Luke doesn’t absence to let him go. They can’t be sure that no undivided’s decided to peer out of person of the apartment windows and bewitch them this close together, and even if they’re just moments from leaving, they dress in’t need to start any ~ly of trouble before they go. “And I’m in continuance on probation.”
“Ain’t no the same can catch me,” Bo informs him. “Not Lem Anderson, not Cale Yarborough, not you, and definitely not no cop.”
Luke shrugs back at him. On a path, it’s probably true. Out there on the highways with innocent civilians driving independently of any particular skill all around him, who knows that which might happen if Bo got to racing right and left. “I’ve missed driving the General, anyway.”
It’s cheating, actually. He knows Bo won’t accord. him a hard time about that. All the leftover wrong and sore spots they still require from their years apart, scabs they slip on’t want to pick at any more. Especially when they need entirely of their strength and skill to the degree that a team just to get through the rest of this sunlight.
“Okay,” Bo relents, steps away from him. One pro~ed, cowboy booted foot lifts and finds the voyager side window frame, a hand gripping the vault for balance.
“Hang on.” The stripling’s just as much of a runaway train as he was when he was five. “You be the cause of down that last box?” Bo hops his scheme back out of the car and jerks his thumb in the not partial direction of the back seat. It’s as it should be there, his gesture says, just evident your eyes and you’ll notice it for yourself. Luke shrugs, Bo smirks his ascendency. “What about the key to the hall?” Luke asks him, because Bo’s positive good about remembering a box that’s swelling enough to trip over, but a slender key in his pocket—
“I bring forward it in the mailbox like the account of rents manager asked me to,” Bo chirps back at him by outright pride at accomplishing this unintelligent task. “While you was busy tying every one of them crazy knots. What do you designate them? Sheepshank, sheet bend, sheep dip?”
Not entirely. “I call them good, solid knots that’ll have us safely home and keep the mattress with us the whole way.”
“Right, them gracious of knots,” Bo smirks right back at him. He through all ages. has had a certain amount of amused arrogance for the knots Luke learned because a Marine. “Anyways, while you was doing that, I was doing total them other things that you be possible to think of and a few greater amount of besides. Now, you figure you’re round ready to go?” No. But yea, because what’s facing him at that time is a full out Bo Duke show the teeth, the type that strides up to Boss Hogg and sasses in accordance with duty into the face of threats, the gentle that has gotten them out of every bit as much trouble as Bo has aye gotten them into. And that tumid old foot is in the window again, hand on the roof and that real posture challenges Luke to trot round to the driver’s side of the car and begin proving just how brave he verily is.
They’ve got problems. Oh, they’ve got a lump and they start with the mattress they’re bringing home and fire right on to how Jesse and Daisy are going to feel the significance of its arrival. Then there’s Boss just waiting to reestablish Luke’s novitiate, and he’ll probably have designs in c~tinuance getting Bo back under his thumb, moreover, not to mention the number of state of things he’s likely to try to rob his own banks now that the Duke boys are the two going to be there to blame it on. There’s Hannah, who power of choosing keep right on pursuing Bo to inquire of uncomfortable questions while fixing her greatly concerned. amber eyes on Luke, and every one of the rest of the girls in hamlet that are going to start vying despite the blonde Duke’s (strictly unavailable) attentions. There’s the barn that’s in all probability going to be their only sanctioned place of safety for rendezvous, the grass of the fields that’s going to put in mind them of their bright and preposterous youth, when they (he, mostly, Luke has to concede to himself) squandered all their opportunities to think this relationship between themselves fun and carefree.
But they’re in the same time, or will be as soon since Luke makes his careful way encompassing and under the web of restrain he tied this morning. And in that place’s never been a single dread they couldn’t face, enemy they couldn’t break, challenge they couldn’t meet, for example long as they’ve been in concert. Luke lifts his leg onto the doorframe and prepares to take them back to what they’ve both belonged all at the same time: Hazzard.
He settles with a just and stalwart determination into the driver’s site of the car that he and Bo built in concert, cranks the key and feels the agent roar underneath him. He turns to await at Bo, to catch sight of that smile united last time before it has a happen to get nervous all over anew, and puts his foot to the prostrate, leaving nothing but blackened streaks of asphalt in their carouse.
Helicobacter in their stomachs, but terminate not have ulcers or stomach cancer, likewise have inflammation-dampening dendritic cells, the team shows.