Simon & Simon, Rick/A.J., boots & suits (1/2)
Rick dislikes suits. Not only are they restricting, but when he has one on he reminds himself of their grandfather. He prefers denim. He looks good in jeans, his ass looks good in jeans, and they look better with boots. But Rick only dislikes suits, he can't hate them. He can't hate suits because A.J. likes them. They make A.J.'s ass look good, and A.J. doesn't have to worry about them not going well with boots because A.J. likes those spit-shine oxfords and anyway A.J. looks like their grandmother in denim. He just doesn't wear it right.
Rick likes the vests especially, when A.J. gets a little too warm and takes off his jacket and he's walking around in those fitted pants and one of those vests with the silk back, and white-collared and cuffed shirt seemingly indelible, unwrinkleable, if that's a word. Rick thinks it could wrinkle, though, if left in a pile long enough.
Like now. Right now Rick's thinking on what it would take to wrinkle that starched shirt, what that silk would feel like against his cheek. He's watching A.J. from where he slumps on the couch in the houseboat, wearing swimtrunks and an open robe and his old but beloved cowboy boots, feet kicked up on the coffee table and over them he watches his brother in that vest, pacing a little, on the phone with some bail bondsman friend in the middle of the night. Almost midnight and the man ought to be wrinkled and a little sweat-dried but he's just A.J., all dry-cleaned and kind of perfect, even his manners remain, coaxing what aid he might from the sleepy bondsman on the other end of the line.
A.J. hangs up the phone. No help until morning, he says. He tried.
"You tried," Rick says, offers his little brother a beer and waits for him to sit beside him. He does.
A.J. sips his beer, seems to consider his brother for a moment, looks him up and down. "Did you go swimming?"
"Nope," Ricks says, takes a long draw on his beer.
"Going somewhere?" he asks.
"Nope."
A.J. shrugs and they drink their beers on the little couch in the cramped houseboat.
"Why do you ask?" Ricks says after a while.
"You're wearing your boots. With swimtrunks."
"I like my boots."
"Yeah, I know."
They're quiet for a while, listening to the water against the houseboat. Rick changes position on the couch, puts one booted foot over the other. They're shoulder-to-shoulder and Rick thinks about when they were kids. When they were kids he would have had no trouble pushing his brother down face-first into the couch cushion and finding out anything he wanted about that suit. A.J. wouldn't have complained, except to ask for a little more, a little harder, all polite and pink-cheeked, even blonder back then. Growing up complicates things, fucking your brother not the least.
(Only slightly too long! Continuation (and porn) in first comment!)