Page 11 of Snowbirds
“Will that hold both of us?” he asked doubtfully.
Chris raised an eyebrow at him. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
“I could sit in the matching chair, I suppose.” He took another good look at the couch and the equally weirdly spray-painted chair. “Who puts this kind of shit inside their house? Isn’t this outdoor furniture?”
“We’re in Arizona, Ivan. Life works differently here.”
Ivan. Gah.
Morrison’s heart stuttered. He loved hearing his first name roll off Chris’s tongue the way it was meant to be spoken. How many times could he get Chris to say his given name while they were pretending to be boyfriends?
Admittedly, Ivan hadn’t been kidding about the boyfriend thing. This forced vacation was a gift from the federal gods, his best chance to get Hatch to see him as someoneotherthan the guy he needed to constantly monitor. As the man who loved Chris Hatch regardless of his Little Black Cloud tendencies. And anyway, most of the shit he got up to was just to get Chris’s attention.
What could he say? That laser stare of Chris’s turned him on.
With care, Ivan lowered his weight down onto one side of the couch. No way was he sitting in the chair. He wanted to be as close to Chris Hatch as possible. When Ivan Morrison made a plan, he stuck to it.
And if that sounded a bit creepy in his head, he didn’t mean it that way. He was just glad he hadn’t said anything out loud. Fingers crossed. Quickly, he glanced at Chris; nope, his ex-boss wasn’t staring at him like he’d said something inappropriate.
Counting that as a win.
Shifting around, he made the couch creak under the additional weight, but it held. Exchanging a goofy grin with Chris, he settled back against the cushions and directed his gaze out the window, where he could see that the neighborhood was getting ready for the night. Lights were clicking on inside the homes, the blue flicker of TV sets was gleaming through front windows, and he heard something that sounded an awful lot like a car engine trying to start.
“What’s that sound?” he asked.
Chris listened for a moment. “Cactus wren.”
“That’s a bird? No way.”
“Yes, way.”
Hatch was, possibly, as relaxed as Morrison had ever seen him. His arms were slung across the back of the couch and one ankle rested on the opposite knee. This was one of the first times he had seen Chris not wearing anything that wasn’t a suit, suit-related, or suit-adjacent. Not the very first time, but no more than the fifth time for sure.
The first instance had been a year ago, when Special Agent in Charge Hatch had answered Ivan’s knock on his front door wearing a pair of disheveled pajama bottoms and a hoodie with an unidentifiable stain on it. Human after all.
“You look good in shorts,” Morrison blurted. “And the t-shirt is nice too.” He refrained from commenting on the fact that they were all black.
Chris looked down at himself as if he’d forgotten what he was wearing.
Oh, damn. There went his mouth.
Glancing back up at him, Chris said, “So, I guess there are some things we need to talk about,Boyfriend.”
Morrison grimaced and groaned, knowing what was coming next. His big mouth went and got him in trouble. Again. He wished he could blame the alcohol, but he wasn’t drunk, just tipsy.
“No need to talk. Nope, nope, nope,” he said, dragging his thumb and index finger across his lips as if zipping them together. “Zip it, lock it, put it in my pocket.”
For a second Chris stared at him, eyebrows drawn together in what appeared to be utter confusion. Then, without warning, a bubble of laughter burst from him. This was followed by more, louder, hoots of laughter. And he kept laughing. Bemused,Morrison watched as Chris flung himself forward and wrapped his arms around his middle while he lost it, his shoulders shaking as he huffed and guffawed.
Chris Hatch. Mister Fucking Serious. Howling with laughter until tears were streaming down his face, and it was beautiful, joyous. Ivan wanted to make it happen over and over.
Doubt he’d been pushing aside reared its head and hammered into him.
This whole shenanigan was ridiculous. Of all the shenanigans he’d ever shenaniganned, this one... He paused his train of thought to ponder for a moment: Just how big was a shenanigan?
Anyway,moving right along.
It was beyond outrageous that he’d driven all the way to Arizona to barge in on Chris’s vacation. There was no way anyone would ever believe Chris would be interested in him, much less want the label of Ivan Morrison’s boyfriend. But laughter was the most infectious disease of them all, and regardless of his self-doubt, Morrison found himself laughing along with him.
