Title: whatever happened to the American Dream
Summary: They get out.
Not with Lennie, of course, because Lennie is... isn't.
But they get out, so George decides to sort of reward himself. And Slim, of course, because Slim has put up with him for ages now.
Title from the American dream by MKTO
I SERIOUSLY need to finish this but I think even if I do I'll still think of more chapters :s
~0~
They get out.
Not with Lennie, of course, because Lennie is... isn't.
But they get out, so George decides to sort of reward himself. And Slim, of course, because Slim has put up with him for ages now. And he and Slim and Candy and Crooks all put their money together and worked a few more months and brought a nice farm from another old couple who needed the money and were willing to sacrifice their finally-tangible dreams for it.
George and Slim did most of the work- George steadfastly ignoring how much easier it could have been with Lennie there- and Crooks looked after the horses and Candy did the easy gardening and cleaning and looked after the bitch and her puppies.
It was good.
Only it could have been better. It could be George-and-Lennie's room instead of George-and-Slim's with Candy and Crooks in the same room and all far too aware to make the spare room into an actual official guest room. Instead, it was the ghost room. Of what, well, that was personal and a man didn't ask 'bout another man's ghosts. It weren't right.
There was however, a few advantages of it being George-and-Slim's room.
~0~
One month, two weeks and five days after being properly settled into their farm, it is a tired evening. Quiet, not even because George still doesn't really talk all that much, but because a ranch is hard work; theirs or not.
A good tired, but tired.
Slim comes in from his evening cigarette- he could smoke in their room but he doesn't; a mixture of politeness and habit George would find quaint if he was the type of man to think of something as quaint. And George looks apathetically from where he sits on his bed leaning against the wall as Slim switches his work shirt for his thin night one, puts his hat on his bedside table.
The thing is, Slim looks good, and George won't deny it, not anymore. Because being best friends/brothers with Lennie means he's a bit more accepting than most. Deep down, of course, it's mostly because that by the time he had the time to wonder if he was wrong for liking men he was too world-weary and strung out and disillusioned to really care and had just accepted it.
Maybe Slim won't mind, he reasons to himself. Because he didn't seem to when the front page was how a homosexual had gotten himself lynched in a tree.
Slim looks good.
"T' hell with it," George says out loud quietly. Slim turns and looks at him because those are quite possibly the first words he's said of his own volition in a long time but George stops him asking by standing up and kissing him.
Admittedly, it's wonky. Neither have done anything akin to this in too long and it's dirty and messy and awkwardly not quiet enough but none of that makes George not notice that Slim is kissing back.