Work Text:
Nate was busy enough that he hadn’t noticed when Sully came in, but from the mostly empty glass in front of him at the bar, it had been a bit. Thankfully the rush was calming down now and Nate could take a moment to breathe. And to make his way over to where Sully was sitting, of course.
“What are you doing here?” Nate asked, pulling out a glass to clean so he didn’t completely look like he was slacking.
Sully grinned. “Just came by for a drink,” he said. “Unfortunately the best bartender was apparently a little too busy for me. Too bad.”
“I’m pretty sure any of the bartenders are more than capable of pouring whiskey into a glass,” Nate replied, but he was grinning too. He knew Sully was just teasing, but it was nice.
A movement to Nate’s left caught his attention and he looked over to see his coworker Ellen looking at him with a raised eyebrow. He frowned a little, knowing that likely meant he should probably be getting back to work instead of chatting. But when he stood up straight, she just shook her head, smiling a little.
“Go ahead and take your break,” she said. She flashed a significant glance at Sully, then back to Nate. “I’ll cover if you’re a little longer than usual.”
Nate flushed at the — incorrect! — implication, but nodded. “Thanks, Ellen.”
Sully drained his drink and followed Nate out the back, through the door the staff used when they took smoke breaks in the alley behind the building. Nate honestly shouldn’t be taking Sully out that way considering he didn’t actually work there, just hung out sometimes when Nate was working, but Ellen had practically told him to.
Not that Nate had ever been overly worried about sticking to the rules, he just felt kind of funny about this for some reason. He was probably just a little in his head after the big rush at the bar, where he’d barely gotten a second to breathe much less think. That was all.
To distract himself, Nate pulled out his pack of cigarettes. Well, cigarette, apparently. He tapped the last one into his hand and lobbed the box at the nearby trash bin, then held the cigarette between his lips as he patted his pockets down for his lighter. And came up empty. He had a sneaking suspicion that he’d left it on his bedside table earlier and sighed in frustration.
A hand with a lighter came up, the flame coming to life in front of his face. He glanced at Sully, whose face was strangely shadowed now between the dimness of the alley and the lighter flame. But he let Sully light his cigarette, smiling his thanks as best he could.
“I guess that’s a no to if you have one for me,” Sully said, amusement in his voice.
Nate shook his head, feeling a little bad. Here he was taking his break, and Sully didn’t have anything to do but just stand there. “Sorry.”
“No problem,” Sully said with a shrug. “You don’t mind sharing, right?”
Without waiting for an answer, Sully reached out and took the cigarette from between Nate’s fingers, bringing it up to his own mouth. Nate’s eyes widened, caught on the way Sully’s lips tightened around the filter as he sucked in a breath, then pursed again as he breathed it out a moment later.
He almost missed it when Sully held the cigarette back out for him to take, but he managed without too much fumbling. He kicked himself a little for being so awkward about something that really shouldn’t feel so weird. Nate had shared cigarettes with plenty of coworkers before, but he’d never gotten caught up in the way their mouths closed around the cigarettes or the way light from the street behind them made them glow in the haze of smoke.
Nate shook himself. He needed to stop being so weird.
They passed the cigarette back and forth until it was burned down completely. It was mostly silent, but comfortable in the way of two people who knew each other pretty well by this point. Nate appreciated that. He and Sully were friends, they'd been through a lot together by now. Everything was fine.
Except for how, once the cigarette was finished and Nate went back to work and Sully went back to wherever he usually spent his evenings, Nate couldn’t stop thinking about it. It occurred to him that sharing a cigarette was basically sharing an indirect kiss, and the thought startled himself so badly that he almost fucked up the old fashioned he was making for some random businessman. That was a drink he could practically make in his sleep, so he was kind of pissed that he was being so affected.
It was ridiculous! They’d shared a cigarette, not a kiss. He shouldn’t even be thinking about kissing in relation to Sully. They were friends and sort of business partners on occasion, that was it. He shouldn’t be replaying the look of Sully’s mouth around a cigarette and wondering just how those lips would feel against his.
By the end of the night, he’d had a couple more near mess ups, obvious enough that Ellen was looking at him strangely. He tried to ignore it, concentrating on cleaning up and getting out as fast as possible. He really just needed to get home and sleep off all these weird thoughts.
“Hey, Nate,” Ellen started as he rushed to grab his things and go. “About that guy-”
“I’ve gotta go!” Nate interrupted, feeling a little bad about it but absolutely not wanting to know what she was about to say. Especially since it had to be about Sully. Who he was trying really, really hard not to think about right now. “You can lock up, right?”
He practically sprinted for the door, waving behind him without looking back. She’d probably be pissed about it and make him pay for it later, but that was the least of his worries right now. He just needed to get home.
“Woah, you in a hurry, kid?”
Nate came to a stop just before running right into the very person he most didn’t want to see right now. Sully was standing just outside the door of the bar, a concerned look on his face, hands held up like he was ready to catch Nate as he stumbled to a stop.
“What are you doing here?” Nate asked, remembering how he’d asked the very same thing just a few hours before but in a very different tone. Oh, how things changed.
“I thought you might want to go get something to eat after you got off,” Sully replied with a frown. “But if you had other plans…”
“No!” Nate exclaimed instinctively, then grimaced.
Saying he had plans would have been the perfect out for him to go home and try to forget about Sully and his lips. Now here he was, unexpectedly face to face with those lips again. And thinking about them and the cigarette in ways he really, really shouldn’t be.
He was moving before he even realized what he was doing, the thoughts he’d been trying for hours now to suppress surging forward before he could control the impulse. The impulse to, apparently, kiss Sully right on those lips. It was exactly what Nate had been trying not to think about since the alley. But here it was, happening. He was kissing Sully.
And more than that — even more surprisingly — Sully was kissing him back.
It was completely beyond what he’d imagined. He’d been obsessing over Sully’s lips, but to feel them against his own was something different altogether. Soft skin, the prickle of stubble, the smell of aftershave. It wasn’t like he’d never kissed anyone before! Sully was just… special.
That thought struck Nate so sharply that he had to pull away, taking in a sharp breath. Did he have actual feelings for Sully? Romantic feelings? It hadn’t even occurred to him before, but he hadn’t been thinking about much except trying not to think about Sully. And his lips. Well, that probably should have been a good indicator in retrospect.
“Was that a yes or a no to food?” Sully asked, sounding just as breathless as Nate felt. “I gotta say, kid, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that kind of answer before.”
Nate couldn’t help but laugh, feeling warmth bubble up in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t sure exactly where to go from here, but it seemed like Sully was probably on board for wherever they ended up. At least he knew where to start.
“Yeah,” he said, “that’s a yes to food.”