Dale swiped water from his beard with a scoff. "If we're gonna live together," he muttered, adjusting the tap one-handed, "we're gettin' a place with a fucking industrial water heater." The words hung between them, casual as a grocery list, but Artie's fingers stilled against Dale's ribs. Dale didn't seem to notice, just grabbed the shampoo with his free hand. "And thicker shower walls. These ones rattle like a '78 Chevy."
Artie stared at the water swirling down Dale's back, the suds pooling in the dip of his spine. Fifteen years of shared lunch breaks, near-misses on scaffolds, and not once had Dale ever said "live together" without it being about some job-site trailer. The shower's steam suddenly felt too thick in Artie's lungs. "Who said anything about living together?" he managed, aiming for casual and missing by a mile.
Dale paused mid-lather, his shoulders stiffening under Artie's hands. The shampoo bottle slipped from his grip, hitting the shower floor with a hollow thud. For three heartbeats, the only sound was water drumming against tile. Then Dale turned, water sluicing down his chest, his expression unreadable beneath the dripping beard. "You wearing my shirt," he said slowly, nodding toward the flannel clinging to Artie's wet shoulders outside the shower. "Drinking my beer. Taking my dick like it's yours." His calloused thumb brushed Artie's hipbone where fresh finger marks marked his skin. "Seems pretty settled to me."
Artie's throat clicked when he swallowed. Fifteen years of watching Dale operate bulldozers and steel girders had taught him the man didn't make idle statements. The shower's steam curled around them as Dale reached past Artie to shut off the water, his forearm brushing Artie's chest with deliberate contact.
"Your place reeks of mold," Dale continued, snagging a towel from the rack with his free hand. He didn't look at Artie as he spoke, just scrubbed the terrycloth over his salt-and-pepper chest hair. "And your couch has more bad springs than my granddad's '57 pickup."
Artie blinked water from his lashes, watching droplets slide down Dale's back where old scars intersected with fresh scratches — Artie's doing. The casual brutality of Dale's words hung in the humid air between them, more intimate than anything they'd done with their bodies tonight.
"Springs ain't the only thing poking through that couch," Artie shot back automatically, the old defense mechanism kicking in before his brain caught up. He watched Dale's shoulders tense further, the way his knuckles whitened around the towel. Fifteen years of worksite banter had trained them both to deflect with humor, but the shower's afterglow left Artie's usual armor full of holes.
Steam curled off their bodies as Dale turned, water dripping from his beard onto Artie's bare feet. The fluorescent bathroom light caught the silver in his chest hair, the old burn scar from the '07 welding accident. Artie knew every mark like blueprints.
Dale tossed the towel at him. "You're staring again." His voice was gruff, but his fingers lingered on Artie's wrist when he passed the fabric.
Artie caught the towel, rubbing it roughly through his damp hair. The terrycloth smelled like Dale’s detergent — something cheap but sharp, clinging stubbornly to every fiber. He exhaled through his nose, watching Dale swipe water from his beard with one calloused hand. The shower had washed away the sweat and come, but not the tension between them — not the weight of those three words hanging in the steamy air like a crane load suspended mid-lift.
"Alright," Artie said, tossing the towel back. The word came out easier than he expected, like loosening a rusted bolt after the third try. "We’ll start lookin' tomorrow."
Dale froze mid-stride, water dripping from his elbow onto the bathroom tiles. He turned slowly, eyes narrowing like he was deciphering rebar schematics. "That easy?"
Artie shrugged, the motion making Dale's flannel shift against his damp shoulders. "You want central air, too?"
Dale's towel hit the floor with a wet slap. He crossed the bathroom in two strides, crowding Artie back against the sink. His palm slapped against the mirror beside Artie's head, rattling the medicine cabinet. "You're serious." It wasn't a question. Up close, Artie could see the way Dale's pupils dilated — like they did when he spotted a misaligned beam twenty stories up.
Artie met his stare without blinking, water from his hair dripping onto Dale's forearm. "Since when do I joke about central air?" His fingers found Dale's hip, thumb digging into the old scar from their first job together. "Yeah, I'm serious. I love you, goddammit." The words tasted like the copper pipes they'd installed in '14 — unexpected but solid, meant to last.
Dale's breath hitched. His free hand came up to grip Artie's chin, callouses catching on stubble. For a heartbeat, Artie thought he'd messed up — said too much too fast — until Dale's mouth crashed into his. The kiss was all teeth and desperation, Dale's fingers twisting in Artie's wet hair like he needed to anchor them together. When he finally pulled back, his lips were swollen, his beard dripping onto Artie's collarbone. "Took you long enough," he rasped.
The bathroom fan whirred overhead, struggling against the steam still curling off their bodies. Artie could feel Dale's pulse hammering where his thumb pressed against his carotid. "Asshole," he muttered, but the insult dissolved into a huff when Dale nipped his jaw.
Dale's laugh vibrated against his throat, warm and rough as he reached behind Artie to snag his toothbrush. "Fifteen years of you mooning after me like a damn puppy —" He spat toothpaste into the sink, foam catching in his beard. "— and I'm the asshole?"
Artie watched him in the fogged mirror, the way his shoulders flexed under water droplets still clinging to his skin. He'd seen those same shoulders strain under steel beams in hundred-degree heat, watched them shake with laughter at bad jobsite jokes. Never like this — never relaxed, never his. Artie's fingers twitched at his sides. "You knew?"
Dale rinsed his mouth, water sluicing through his beard. He straightened slowly, meeting Artie's gaze in the mirror. "Knew what? That you'd stare at my ass every time I bent over a toolbox?" He smirked, tossing the toothbrush into the cup. "Or that you'd steal my shirts after the '09 Christmas party?"
Artie's ears burned. He remembered that night — Dale's flannel draped over his shoulders, smelling like sawdust and whiskey, both of them pretending it meant nothing. He grabbed a towel, scrubbing it over his face to hide his expression. The terrycloth muffled his voice. "You never said shit."
Dale's reflection shrugged in the foggy mirror, water dripping from his elbows onto the tile. "Neither did you." He reached past Artie for the aftershave, their shoulders brushing in the cramped space. The familiar scent — sharp, medicinal — curled between them as Dale dabbed it on his neck. Artie had smelled that same aftershave on a hundred Monday mornings, lingering in porta-potties after their shifts overlapped.
Artie watched Dale's thumb rub the balm into his throat, following the motion of his Adam's apple. Fifteen years of stolen glances, of pretending not to notice how Dale's hands lingered when passing tools. Artie exhaled through his nose. "I thought you were straight."
Dale's snort fogged the mirror. He tossed the aftershave bottle onto the counter with a clatter. "I thought you were smarter." He turned, crowding Artie back against the sink again, his damp chest hair tickling Artie's collarbone.
Artie's knees wobbled — not from the weight of Dale's body, but from the exhaustion suddenly crashing over him like a dropped I-beam. His eyelids drooped as he leaned into Dale's warmth, inhaling the familiar musk of sweat and Old Spice beneath the aftershave's bite. The adrenaline of confession had burned through him, leaving his muscles slack.
Dale's chuckle rumbled against Artie's sternum as his fingers carded through Artie's damp hair. "Christ, you're swaying like a drunk," he muttered, but his own voice held the gravel of fatigue. When he pulled back, Artie saw the same dark crescents under Dale's eyes that mirrored his own — the kind earned from decades of predawn commutes and overtime shifts.
The bathroom tiles felt suddenly glacial under Artie's feet as exhaustion dragged at his limbs. He blinked slowly, watching Dale's pupils dilate with matching weariness. They'd been running on coffee and adrenaline since sunrise, and now their bodies were cashing the check. Artie's knee gave a warning twinge — the old injury from '17 when a scaffold collapsed — just as Dale's shoulder popped with an audible crack when he reached for the light switch.
Dale's hand hesitated mid-air, his fingers trembling slightly under the fluorescent glare. Neither of them were twenty anymore; their bodies bore the receipts of three decades of hauling rebar and swinging hammers. Artie could see the exact moment fatigue won — Dale's shoulders slumped like wet drywall as he exhaled through his nose. "Fuck," he muttered, rubbing at the silvered scar across his ribs. "We're too old for this shit."
Artie snorted, but it came out as more of a wheeze. His lower back throbbed in agreement, the familiar ache from last winter's slipped disk flaring up now that the adrenaline had drained away. The bathroom mirror showed two middle-aged men swaying on their feet, steam still curling around their ankles like jobsite dust. Dale's eyelids drooped heavy as crane cables, and Artie realized with dull surprise that his own hands were shaking — not from nerves now, but from sheer depletion.
They stumbled down the hallway shoulder-to-shoulder, Dale's hip knocking against Artie's with each step. The bedroom doorframe caught Dale's elbow — the same spot that always did — and he grunted, feeling eighty instead of fifty. The mattress sighed louder than they did when they face-planted onto it, Dale's beard scratching Artie's shoulder blade as they collapsed in a tangle of exhausted limbs. The sheets still smelled like them from earlier, that musky blend of sweat and come and the cheap detergent Dale bought in bulk at Costco.
Artie mumbled something into the pillow that might've been "love you" or possibly "move your elbow," but Dale answered anyway, his voice thick with sleep. "Yeah, yeah." His calloused palm slid over Artie's ribs, settling where the skin was still damp from the shower. "Know it." The words slurred together like drunk men leaving a bar at last call, half-formed and heavy with meaning.
Dale's breathing evened out first, his exhales warming the back of Artie's neck. Artie lay still, listening to the familiar creak of the bedsprings settling under their combined weight — the same sound they'd made for years when he and Dale had crashed here after double shifts. Only now Dale's knee was hooked over Artie's thigh, his arm a dead weight across his waist, his beard catching on Artie's shoulder blades with every sleepy twitch. Possessive even in unconsciousness.
Artie shifted just enough to press his lips against Dale's forearm — the skin there still damp, tasting faintly of chlorine and that godawful pine-scented soap Dale insisted on buying. "Love you," he murmured into the dark, the words absorbed by the calluses on Dale's knuckles. It felt easier to say it now, with the lights off and Dale's snoring filling the room. Like confessing to the night shift foreman instead of the man himself.
Dale's fingers twitched against Artie's stomach in response, his pinky hooking reflexively around Artie's hip bone — a gesture so small it shouldn't have made Artie's throat tighten. "Mm-fuck," Dale grunted into his shoulder blade, his beard scraping skin as he nuzzled closer. The syllable was half-swallowed by sleep, but Artie recognized the tone; it was the same one Dale used when handing him the last breakfast burrito on site. A gruff "I know, you idiot" wrapped in a middle finger.
The bedroom fan clicked rhythmically overhead, out of sync with Dale's snores. Artie counted the spaces between each rasping exhale — two seconds, three — until the pattern matched the tempo of rain on a jobsite trailer roof. He'd spent years memorizing Dale's sounds: the way his boots scuffed concrete before coffee, how his cough echoed differently in unfinished stairwells. Now he learned this — the wet click of Dale's palate relaxing, the way his exhales warmed the same patch of Artie's back like a welder's torch held too close.
Artie's last thought before sleep took him was of Dale's thumb tracing his hipbone earlier, the callus catching like a nail snagging drywall. Then darkness, thick as fresh tar, poured over his consciousness.
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