“Danny,” Lance murmurs desperately, not sure how much longer he can listen to Danny talking out loud about porn—porn that belongs to Robbie and that isn’t all girls—without his head exploding. “Please stop.”

“Well, you asked,” Danny huffs, but his gaze is lingering on Lance, not returning to the comic book open on his lap. He looks like he’s about to say something.

“What?” Lance mutters.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. It’s just—I don’t know. Why do you…what do you…?” Flustered, Lance gropes for something to say that won’t be incriminating.

For once, Danny lets him off the hook. He looks down at his comic with a shrug so casual that Lance wonders if he imagined the intent look in his eyes a moment ago. “Whatever. It’s not a big deal. But I guess he’s probably bi.” He looks up from the page again, a thoughtful expression on his face, and Lance can tell he’s about to orally draft another thesis about Robbie’s porn habits, or an adjacent topic, before he even begins. “Or, maybe he’s pansexual, or autosexual but responsive to different visual—”

“Please stop,” Lance insists in a strangled voice. “Please.”

Danny shrugs and looks back down at his comic. Lance worries for a second or two that he’ll start up again, but he just turns one page, and then a bit later, he turns another.

Lance looks down at the issue he’s holding and pretends to read it, too. But there’s no way he can focus now.

After dark, Lance leaves out the back door to walk home. In the fading light, he might not even have noticed Robbie around the front of the house by the truck if he hadn’t heard the whir of the cordless drill. Lance pauses, unnoticed by Robbie and nearly at the tree line, so that he can watch Robbie loosen the tailgate’s bolts to remove it from the body of the Chevy. After he’s detached it, he sets it in the bed and stares down, presumably at the painted words. Then he steps back and kicks the tire several times, so hard that Lance hears the impact of his boot on the rubber. That’s more like what he’d thought punches would sound like, he thinks absently, as he slowly melts into the trees and makes his way home with leaden feet.

Today.

“I’m still cold,” Lance says, knowing exactly what effect those words will have. Still, a part of him can’t believe that Robbie steps forward, picks up the corner of the blanket, and slides underneath it.

Robbie is fully clothed, and there’s an outside chilliness clinging to his clothing that flushes the bit of trapped body heat out of the shelter of the blankets. Lance shivers despite himself, but when Robbie settles the blankets back around them, lying on his side and facing Lance, but somehow not touching him anywhere, the warmth returns twofold within a moment.

“I’ll lend you a little body heat,” Robbie says, his voice a low, rough murmur that Lance feels like the soft rasp of wool on his bare chest, his thighs, and his cock. He shivers again. He’s at eye level with Robbie, facing him, their cheeks pressed into the same long pillow. It’s like being plunged into a dream unexpectedly—and like any plunge, it’s as frightening as it is exhilarating.