Flash Fic Challenge

What, only one taker? But it was J.M. Cartwright, who delights in trying to stump me. J.M. gave me these prompt words:

Pitbull (the rapper!)
painting
caramel
Mustang

Ross knocked, and heard Jesse yell, "It's open!"

Ross opened the door into the apartment's living room and found Jesse watching TV, sitting in the middle of the couch with his arms stretched over the back, a longneck dangling from his fingers. One bare foot was propped up on the coffee table. Jesse was wearing those skin-tight, spattered painting jeans that Ross loved so much, and better still, no shirt. Acting casual was so hard that Ross' face actually hurt from the effort. "Hey," he said. "I brought beer. What you watching?"

Jesse looked up at him with those amazing eyes, black and sparkling like a midnight sky, and then looked back at the TV. "Some music thing." He moved one arm so Ross could sit beside him on the couch. Ross would just as soon Jesse's arm had stayed there so he could pretend it was actually around him, but he just set the six-pack on the table and took the offered seat.

Jesse finished the last swallow from the beer he was holding and leaned forward to snag a new bottle from Ross' offering. He glanced at it, blinked in surprise at the artisan label, and looked more closely, reading its description. Ross was beginning to feel hopeful when Jesse started to laugh. "What the fuck kind of frou-frou beer is this, man? 'Accents of caramel?' Damn, could you possibly be any more gay?"

Ross felt his face flame. "Shut up," he said. "We can't all be cowboys, riding a Mustang into the sunset or whatever. It's good beer." He knew shouldn't get so defensive -- Jesse was every bit as gay as Ross, and they both knew it -- but somehow he couldn't help it. He stared at the TV, painfully aware of Jesse's laughing eyes on him, but on the screen Pitbull was chanting, "I know you want me, want me," and that was almost worse. "Drink it or not, whatever."

"Hey, lighten up," Jesse said. "I'm just fucking around. See? I'll drink your frou-frou gay beer." He twisted the cap off the bottle and took a pull. "...Damn. That's not bad."

The tightness in Ross' throat started to ease. "Told ya." He grabbed a beer of his own, and they both stared at the TV in apparently companionable silence. Every time Jesse lifted the bottle to his lips, though, Ross watched from the corner of his eye, enchanted by the way Jesse's throat rippled with each swallow. "What are we doing tonight?" he asked finally, just to give himself an excuse to look at Jesse. "Shooting pool?"

"We could do that," Jesse said. He set the half-finished beer on the table and turned those eyes on Ross, dark and direct and as hot as the sun. "Or we could just stop dancing around it and go to bed."

There you go, J.M.! One of these days, it'll be my turn...