InsaneJournal

Horsepower AU Fic: Good to be Home
Title: Good to be Home
Series: Horsepower AU
Author: sheffiesharpe
Characters: Basch, Noah(/Vossler)
Rating: Worksafe
Length: 1352
A/N: Takes place about a month after Calling the Shots.

For a Boots. Because happy things are good things.



When Basch manages to fish his house key out of his pocket in the dark—out of practice after six months on horseback, half a year without needing a key to anything at all—he opens the door as quietly as he can. It’s late, so late it’s almost early, and Noah’s not expecting him until tomorrow, but by the time he hit the eastern edge of Texas, he felt too close to stop, too almost-there to want to spend twenty bucks to sleep on the seat of his pickup in a campground somewhere. Trick, in her trailer behind the truck, too, liked a quick trip, and Basch had smiled to see Noah had already gotten fresh hay in. The hose hookup right on the side of the barn was new, too, the ground still dug between the house and the barn—he hadn’t even mentioned it, the sneaky bastard. But Trick was settled, and he was back, and the front door opens easily.

He leaves his duffle just inside the kitchen, no sense in banging it into anything and waking up his twin. Despite the dark, the kitchen table still lay covered in paperwork, reflecting whitely.

He resists the urge to flip on the light and see what his brother’s been working too hard on; Noah will be up early, and Basch has already been awake a long time. Best to just crash on the couch for three hours, worry about getting his bed cleared off tomorrow. Noah puts his mail there. And when he knows Basch is coming home, he’ll put new sheets on the bed, and pile the magazines and credit card offers right back on the blanket, just to be that way. Basch takes his boots off, puts them under the coffee table, and it looks like Noah got some new shoes—heavy black construction boots, steel-toes—because there’s a pair beside the end table. He’s impressed. Noah’s been buying the same soft-toe Wolverines for a decade, never cared for the stiffness around the toes, the safety of his feet be damned. Stubborn bastard.

Basch doesn’t mean to, but he’s drifting down the hall before he can stop himself, and Noah’s door’s a little ajar. He can look in, then, without risking waking him, because Noah sleeps heavily. He should, the way he works.

There’s just enough glow from the streetlights that he can see the pale width of his brother’s back, and it’s tempting to wake him up anyway, because it’s so good to see him, but Noah never gets enough sleep, and he’s—he’s not alone. Someone else’s arm and leg are hanging off the bed, visible now as his eyes adjust. He backs up as quickly as he can, but his elbow jostles the doorknob.

The bedside lamp snaps on all at once, and—Vossler Azelas is looking at him through narrowed, sleep-suspicious eyes. Noah makes a grumbling noise and shifts, slapping at the lamp.

“Basch?” Vossler says, and now Noah's scrambling to sit up, the sheet tangled around both of them and sticking conspicuously at Noah’s waist, but he finally fights free of it, almost falls out of bed, and he’s got Basch in a bearhug, squeezing hard.

Basch is vaguely aware of Vossler moving, the sound of fabric rustling, but for what has to be a couple of minutes, he just holds onto Noah, squeezing back until they’re both a little breathless. Eventually, though, Basch inches back, and Noah starts in on him for not calling, not saying he’d be in tonight, because he would have waited up—

Basch is about to make some joke about being glad he didn’t interrupt, because the room smells like sex, when he notices.

“What the hell did you do to your hair?” Basch flips on the overhead light, and yeah, it’s orange. One shade less violent than road cones.

Vossler grins, even though he’s got the sheet over his crotch now, is sitting up and trying to look awake. Noah gives him the finger. “I lost a bet.” Noah turns around to snag his boxers from the floor, and there’s a big ‘A’ shaved into the back of his head, too, and it’s familiar-looking somehow. He glances at Vossler, and Vossler’s eyes are glued to Noah’s ass until the plaid fabric covers it, and then Vossler looks up, sees he’s been caught. Vossler Azelas blushes. But he still puts on his smug bastard expression, and now the letter makes sense. If he looks from a different angle, he can see the arms of the ‘U’ coming up from the sides of the ‘A’. The Auburn logo. It’s on the coffee mug that never left Vossler’s side on the jobsite.

Noah runs his hand through the orange mess and hits Vossler with a pillow, and Vossler takes it, rests his head against the wall, easy-looking. Except when he looks at Basch every other breath, and then it seems he’s not sure where to look, like Basch is going to be mad at him. Maybe he should be, after all the shit he gave Noah when he quit, but his twin looks…comfortable now. Basch isn’t about to start anything with anyone, as long as Noah looks like that. And the orange is funny, and Noah’s always been willing to take a bet or a dare, and there are some fading lines across Vossler’s chest that look a lot like old permanent marker, beneath half a ring of really pronounced hickeys. His brother’s half vacuum-cleaner. His brother grins at him, too. “Want breakfast? I was going to get groceries later this morning, since I didn’t know you’d be here so early, but there’s cereal and a couple of bananas—”

Basch shakes his head. “I’ve been driving since about this time yesterday. I’m bushed.” As soon as he says it, too, it’s like his eyelids grow lead lashes.

“Christ, Basch,” Noah mutters, and he’s pushing Basch out the door, toward his own room. As they’re leaving the room, Noah says, in the worst Schwarzenegger ever, “I’ll be back,” and Vossler snorts, but there are the sounds of him stretching out again, and he leaves the bedside lamp on.

Basch undresses while Noah piles the mail in one corner. It’s the only little jab he ever makes about Basch being gone so long every year—stacks of Western Horseman and the eleven Cabelas catalogues they both get—piling up, and Basch can live with it. He wraps his arms around his brother’s shoulders one more time before flopping onto the mattress. “You need a shower,” he says into Noah’s ear, grinning, because his brother smells like sweat and come and Vossler Azelas’s cologne, and Noah bites him, right on the arm.

“Says you, horse-face. You taste like pony,” he says, pantomiming spitting. But he tugs the sheet up over Basch like he needs to be tucked in.

Basch doesn’t protest. And the mattress feels good, like it’s miles thick compared to half-inch pad that goes under his sleeping bag. Noah’s still standing there, so he says, “You didn’t tell me you two started having sleepovers.” When last they talked about it, all Noah said was that there was positive, specific, and literal evidence that Vossler Azelas was a cocksucking tightass.

Noah’s cheeks pink a little bit, and that’s rare enough that Basch has to grin. Noah shakes his head. “It’s not a thing,” he says, and he flips the light off.

“Sure it’s not.” Basch rolls the pillow mostly under himself, wraps his arms around it tight.

In the dark, Noah huffs, and Basch would bet he’s sticking his tongue out. He smiles into his pillow, listens for the creak of Noah’s box spring on the other side of the wall. It creaks just enough, too, that Basch is going to tease the hell out of him tomorrow for it, and there’s a low murmur of voices for just a moment that he’s trying to make out, but the room is dark and the bed is soft, and his pillow still smells like it should. It’s good to be home.