Page 59 of The Barn: Frost and Q
“So when are you leaving? Do you need me to help you pack?”
“What?” Surely Q didn’t want him to go jumping into a fire? That wasn’t—was this how it was supposed to be?
“Listen, this is your job, right? This is what you do. That’s what I want. I want you to do what you do.”
He shook his head. “I, I can’t just?—”
“What? You can’t just what? Leave me to go to work? Love, I’m safe as houses. I have my dog, I’ve got my computers, I’ve got the guys. I am literally the safest human in Alaska.” Q grabbed his hand and squeezed his fingers. “You have to promise to be careful, though. Pay attention. Be careful with you.”
He knelt down in front of Quentin’s chair. “I hate this. I hate not going with you.”
Q nodded, his face twisting up a little, proving that maybe his lover wasn’t as calm as he pretended to be. “I hear you. I shouldbe there, I should be helping, but I’m not, and I can’t, so you have to. I’ve got your back, though, don’t worry.”
“You’re good to me.” And he felt so selfish, because he loved the rush, the intensity, the satisfaction of his job.
Q nodded, expression deadly serious. “I know. I love you, I might be the worst sub in the world, but there’s nobody got your back like I do. Nobody loves you like I do. Nobody ever will. So come on, let’s get you packed. You’ve got to file a flight plan. You’ve got to call Cap back. There’s a lot to do, and you don’t have a lot of time to do it.”
Frost sighed and stole a kiss. “I’ll do this, and then I’m coming home.”
“That’s how it works. You do this, you do your job, and then you come home. That’s the whole enchilada.”
Frost turned his back to Q and grabbed his phone. “Cap, I’m packing my stuff. I can be there tonight.”
Eighteen
Qwatched the wind patterns and the fire patterns as they moved along the West Coast. That was showing up on one screen. Another screen had security queued. A third screen had some spreadsheets and an inventory sheet he needed to cross-check. There was a screen playing an X-rated movie, and the last screen had dog food advice because he didn’t want Yukon to get fat, but he didn’t want to starve him either. That recommended amount of food on the bag seemed utterly outrageous, and he was going to do this right.
Still, he didn’t love the wind patterns that were going on in California. He didn’t wanna bother anybody, not yet, because he wasn’t sure.
But his gut said things were a little hinky.
It really wasn’t his business anymore.
Oh, fuck that. It was totally his business. Frost was his business. He was going to wait until he knew, and also he wanted to know where Frost was in comparison to the fire line. He had a locator on the man. It wasn’t a secret that Frost carried it, either. One of the things that he loved about his husband was that the man trusted Quentin’s gut and trusted him to be able to get him out of shit situations when things hit the fan.
There was a knock on his door, and he checked the camera, then let Boone in. “Hey, man.”
“Hola. Yukon. Buddy.” Boone scratched Yukon’s ruff and glanced at the screens. “Dude, look at the size of that dildo.”
“I know, right? I’m trying to figure out how he could ever recover from that. It’s kind of fascinating.” Not that he was really watching. It was just something interesting to look away from everything else and see. It reset his brain.
“Don’t get that dog food. I don’t think that it’s very well made. I’ll send you the one I think that I’m going to buy when I get my dog.”
Q blinked at Boone. “You’re going to get a dog?”
He got a glare. “Of course I’m going to get a dog. There’s a Saint Bernard at the shelter who I’m picking up in a few weeks. Especially now that there’s going to be people who take care of the dogs. I personally think this is fabulous. You know how cool it is that we live in a universe where I can hire subs to just walk my fucking dog? And I don’t even have to do anything. I could just say, ‘boy, walk my dog.’ This is like heaven.”
Boone needed to get laid. Or have a really intense scene.
“All right, you sit. What did you come up here for?”
Boone shrugged. “I don’t have anything better to do, really. Carson’s grumpy. Tug’s gone. I thought I’d come hang out up here and watch dirty movies with you.”
“Uh-huh.” Right. He believed that bullshit. “Frost made you promise to come keep me company, didn’t he?”
“Oh, yeah. But I would have done it anyway, you know? But yeah, he made me promise. He said you would just watch the cameras obsessively and guess what you’re doing—watching cameras obsessively.”
Q rolled his eyes, pushing back in his chair so that he didn’t have to crane his neck to watch Boone’s face. “That’s in my jobdescription. Obsessive Camera Watcher. Like literally—it is in my paperwork write-up.”
