Work Text:
It’s dangerous to love in an environment like theirs. Everyone knows it, and they all have their own special rules and boundaries. It’s filthy and brutal and unfair, even if there’s a nice layer of money covering it up in a company like this.
So when you find people who want the same thing, even if you don’t always get along, the long days and nights on the road and the cramped, heavy air of a single hotel room shared between three grown dudes fosters intimacy even if you fight it hard. The ones you trust to catch you when you fall, when you make a mistake, who see you and care for you when your eye’s swollen shut but you can’t afford to go to the hospital. You come back drunk together and have a too-personal conversation, and before you can stop it you know each other’s weaknesses. And maybe more than that — if fingers slip too low and their mouths fit together well at night, they can always play it off in the morning like they don’t remember. You both know you do, especially the way dark eyes slide over a white hotel towel. Faking it lets them stay strong, hard and impenetrable. They’ve grown the shells differently, a patchwork of scars and ink and meaning you forget to remember.
You wash blood out of his hair and more — there’s no shortage of revolting shit and bodily fluids with what they do, and he peels flecks of drying blood and globs where it congealed along his eyebrow like it’s nothing. The water runs pink over your fingers and the color stains the skin under your torn fingernails. His eyes open and he’s looking at you as you use the hotel shampoo lathered up in your palms to scrub crusted sweat and blood and grime from his head and neck. His eyes are wide and he follows the movement of your arm. Liquor breath puffs over your face as soapy pinkish water slides over his bare shoulders. He doesn’t seem to care that his jeans are filthy and getting soaked. “Thanks,” he mutters, barely audible over the rushing of the bath faucet.
"Yeah, brother" you say, a murmur that means I love you as surely as your cupped hand shielding his eyes as you wash him clean.