#hbdiesel

"Aw, do I have cooties?" Shawn teases while Bret unlocks the door. "I thought we could share."

The wooden desk with its accompanying office chair becomes a makeshift bar. Bret drags up the wingback chair and expects Shawn to go for the swivel one. Shawn ends up across his lap instead.

"That can't be comfortable."

"You've put me in worse positions on live TV." Shawn stays in his lap, stretches to fiddle with the liquor on the desk.

Bret puts a hand on his hip to keep him from falling. "How am I gonna get my drinks?"

"I'll be your bartender, Hitman." There's the sound of a pour. Shawn takes the shot, arching his back more than necessary so Bret can enjoy the spill of his hair and the stretch of his muscles. He refills and turns to offer Bret a drink. "All I ask for in return is some stimulating conversation."

Bret accepts the shot and raises an eyebrow. Shawn's obviously getting at something more than the million and one tops they've traversed tonight. He bids him to elaborate. Shawn does.

Were they a Normal Couple, they might be getting ready for a honeymoon phase conversation about Past Loves or something equally playing at classiness. They're wrestlers, so it's about --

"Who's the best piece of ass?" Bret repeats derisively.

"Or Who's the best lay or whatever's nice enough to let you sleep at night."

Bret knocks back the shot and wipes his mouth with the edge of his finger. "And this is just comparing notes."

"Okay, it's to turn me on," Shawn admits. He brightens and taps Bret on the nose. "And you too."

"Rules?"

"Just shots and stories."

"Story for story."

"Unless," Shawn says, shaking on it, "at some point you start saying something I find really really sexy, and I want you to elaborate on the point."

How can Bret argue with that?

+++

"Your favorite new guy on three," Shawn says.

Both men say Stone Cold at the same time.

There's a collective head tilt.

"When?" Shawn pours a drink in front of Bret this time and downs it. Pours another for Bret and gets a few drops on Bret's leather jacket when he hands the shot over.

"After a pay-per-view." Bret drinks, feeling Shawn run a finger up his breastbone to collect the spilled liquor.

The burn and buzz hit Bret as he watches Shawn bring that finger to his mouth and suck, then pull it out with a pop. "It was before one for us."

Bret shrugs, pretending his dick isn't well on its way to being interested. "So, at least one of those days you came out glowing on the ramp, it's 'cause Stone Cold screwed you, huh?" He hands the glass back to Shawn. Shawn accepts it with his wet hand. "Not like I can blame you. You woulda thought I'd proposed to him at 'Mania, way he was when I got done with him. He's an enthusiastic guy."

"One, he'd lost a lot of blood, if this is the same WrestleMania I'm thinking of." Shawn pours another drink and sloshes more rum on Bret, which makes him growl and grip Shawn tighter, which makes Shawn sigh. "Two," he continues, "He was tangoing with the Hitman." He licks around the rim where Bret's mouth was, drinks, then fixes Bret with bedroom eyes. "Anyone would've acted a little giddy."

"Makes one wonder what it says about the Heartbreak Kid that he has to ply Stone Cold with beer."

A satellite promo from Bret's recent memory: HBK playing househusband to Stone Cold live from Shawn's Texas home. Happy to look pretty, pass beers, cater to Steve's whims. Bret can only imagine what happened off-camera.

Shawn leans in. "Now you know damn well as I that if Stone Cold says to give him something, you give him what he wants." He nuzzles Bret's nose. "As much as he can handle."

Bret thinks of the 'Mania bout. Of holding Stone Cold down to make the gig in his forehead. To cut him when, in the moment, he'd tried to chicken out of the spot. It was easy to rationalize: you don't half-ass WrestleMania, and at the end of the day, Steve had wanted to get color in the ring.

He'd gotten a lot more of it in Bret's sheets later on.

"Anything to put him over." Bret feels warm as he steals a kiss. "Next question."

"Favorite old-timer." Shawn pulls away with a grin. "Don't pretend there ain't one. We've both been in this since the territory days."

After Shawn's one, two, three, both men say "Rick -- " and shout.

Shawn rubber-necks at Bret. "Which fucking --"

"--Steamboat," Bret clarifies, mentally framing this answer as a Best Lay because 'piece of ass' just doesn't suit the Dragon. "One of the best guys I've ever danced with in the ring."

"Steamboat, Dreamboat the way you're looking," Shawn drawls. "Fuck, Hitman, your eyes tell it all."

Bret tilts his head to one side and wonders if Shawn can really see it. Not the televised match, which was charged in its own right, but what was going on below the surface. What happened beyond the show's runtime.

Steamboat had made some quip about the Art of Love and War while he'd had Bret on his back, under him, all around him; Bret groaned because of the joke and because he was really, really, good -- just as good as he was to wrestle.

There must be something revealing in his gaze, because Shawn smiles. "Is it any wonder why I got obsessed with you? Anyway," he continues, "Aren't you gonna ask me about me?"

Bret puts on an exaggerated expression of intrigue. Shawn rolls his eyes.

"It's Flair, obviously, and what did it for me was the chops," he says. "We were wrestling and he smacked me one so hard out of the blue that I just came." He watches Bret and says, "Thank fuck for trunks over tights, am I right?" When Bret breaks and laughs, Shawn adds, "Got a pointer or two on bleaching my head as well."

They give in to the easy tension and kiss for a while. The closest Bret will ever get to some of these party drugs is tasting their chalky remnants on the back of Shawn's liquor-soaked tongue. And — short of rewinding time so he can sit in on the action himself — the closest Bret will ever get to knowing what Shawn's been like with other people is by fooling around with him now. Telling stories with mouths and hands and moving hips.

"Now," Shawn says during a break for air, "inquiring minds want to know about your Sunny Days." He barely gets the words out before Bret's jostling him so hard he that almost topples over.

"Still on that bull?"

"It's not bull if it's true." Shawn is audacious as ever. "Look." He steadies himself in Bret's lap and gestures around. "Nobody's here to judge." He tilts his head. "Nobody but a guy who fucked her too."

"Even if it were actually true, I'd never share notes with you on women."

"'Cause you have soooo much more class than that, right?"

Shawn has eyes; he, like every other wrestler, knows the truth of Bret's behavior on the road. But there's a difference between anonymous fucking and cheating with the kind of intent that targets whole relationships besides your own. Bret's more discreet than Shawn about that kind of thing. He's not about to confirm nor deny anything about his own alleged Sunny Days after the know-it-all act Shawn's been pulling on TV and in the press for months.

Bret must be quiet for a bit too long, because Shawn starts walking his fingers up Bret's arm. "Sometimes," he says, sultry, "I think you forget Sunny didn't trip and fall on my dick." He kisses at Bret's jawline. "Everything we did -- she wanted it, and she wanted everybody to get a certain idea about it." Bret moans when he sucks on his earlobe. "Didn't do a lot to steer people away from the truth: that we were fucking without her boyfriend."

"Not behind his back?"

"It was right in front of the whole world's face. He didn't wanna see it."

"Still not trading notes."

"It's okay. I know what you both like. I can use my imagination." Shawn tosses his hair back, then cards his fingers through Bret's hair to cradle his head. "Okay, Hitman. Here's one just for you. Most unexpected person on the roster that I know and have also screwed."

What Bret says on three has his partner tumbling out of his lap and yanking him out of the chair.