I reached out and pinched a pale ass cheek before he got out of my reach. I just liked hearing him yelp.
“You promised to help me with the kitchen plumbing today,” I reminded him as he ducked into the bathroom.
“Yeah, yeah. Start some coffee, would you?” he called back through the thin door.
We got our morning routine started and did the subconscious dance we’d somehow perfected around the tiny kitchen getting our breakfast made and fixing each other’s coffee. Once we were finished and cleaned up and Nacho had eaten his breakfast, the three of us headed outside into the cool mountain morning.
“I like it out here more than I expected,” Cooper admitted, stretching his arms over his head and then spinning in a circle. His new work boots stood out as too clean and perfect in the pine straw-littered dirt of the clearing. It wouldn’t be long before they looked worse for wear.
“It’s a far cry from LA.” I walked over to my truck to get the plumbing fittings I’d picked up the night before in town. “Sure you’re not missing your hot dance clubs and fancy clothes?”
When I turned back toward him with the shopping bag in my hand, I nearly dropped it. Cooper’s arms were still over his head, and now he was undulating his hips in a sultry move that made me instantly hard. “Ngh.”
His head snapped up, and he shot me a knowing grin. “Wanna dance?”
When I got close enough to set the bag on the makeshift sawhorse table near the cabin’s front porch, I tossed it down and came back to him, reaching one arm around his waist and taking his hand with my other one. “I only know how to do this boring boy/girl bullshit,” I admitted.
We danced to silent music for a few beats before he made me wait so he could take out his phone and turn on some real music. Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” blasted from the tiny speaker as he slid it back into his pocket. I only knew what the song was because Cooper had played it a thousand times this week and chatted my ear off about how the singer was enby and a proud example of the transformative nature of sexual identity exploration. I didn’t really know what any of that meant, but I also didn’t care as long as I got to have my hands on Cooper’s body while he swayed to the rhythm.
I enjoyed the familiar feel of his body against mine, and I realized that starting the day with his boundless energy and good mood was beginning to spoil me. He was like my own giant ray of personal sunshine, and I wanted to bask in it long after we were done here.
After the second song, I realized I was being had.
“This isn’t going to get you out of helping me with the plumbing,” I said against his lips before kissing him some more.
Cooper slid his phone out of his pocket and opened the camera, all without stopping our kiss. I heard the familiar ding of the Record button and tried not to think of my mother on the other end of that video when it posted.
“I love you,” I murmured against his cheek before moving down to nuzzle his neck. It took a few precious seconds before I realized what I’d said.
The phone dinged again to signal the end of recording just as I froze. An odd numbness hit my body. “I-I…” I stammered. “I was…”
Cooper’s smile was easy and confident. “It’s fine. You knew we were recording, so you went with it. Don’t freak out. I get it.”
I let out a breath, but still felt oddly numb. Was that true? Had I been playing it up for the camera? That didn’t sound like me, but then again, I also wasn’t sure I loved him exactly. It was too soon to think of feelings like that, and even if it wasn’t, Cooper wasn’t the kind of man you loved. He was the kind of man you tasted and relished before releasing him back to the world. He would never stay still enough to be loved by a man like me, a man more at home in a wooded clearing and half-broken-down cabin than anywhere else in the world.
“Back to work,” I said in a gruff voice. “Morning cheese video done. Now it’s hustle time.”
I didn’t say much for the rest of the morning besides grunting out instructions for what Cooper needed to do to help me lay the new piping for the fridge and kitchen sink. When we finished that, we moved right into the bathroom plumbing. By the time we took a break for lunch, we’d knocked out an entire day’s worth of work because neither of us had done any of our usual goofing off or joking around.