by Ariel Tachna
The thought made him twitchy after years of avoiding anything that would tie him down, but he ignored the feeling. That had landed him in this mess already. He had to get past the inclination to run at the first sign of commitment and decide what he could offer Chris, because if he went back unprepared, Chris would be perfectly justified in telling him to take a hike.
Could he go back and offer to stay? Could he commit to Chris, to a family with Seth, to a life on Lang Downs?
He’d pretty much decided to return to Lang Downs next summer, so the thought of staying on the station was the least unnerving of the three questions. He could make a life there, and a good one if the experiences of the other year-rounders was any indication.
He’d enjoyed being footloose for the past ten years, but he couldn’t live that way indefinitely. He’d always known it, but he’d always figured when he got tired of the wandering life, he’d get a job working as a mechanic in a shop in Melbourne or Sydney, where he wouldn’t be immediately shunned for being gay and where he had at least the possibility of congenial company from time to time. He hadn’t been to Lang Downs, though, when he’d formulated that approximation of a plan. He hadn’t imagined he could find a sheep station that wouldn’t run him off, much less one where he could envision living comfortably with a partner.
Lang Downs could be home if he chose to let it be.
That left Chris and Seth.
He enjoyed Chris’s company. They were friends. They worked well together. They were comfortable together whether they were herding sheep, hanging out in the bunkhouse, or fucking like madmen. None of that necessarily equaled love.
Last night had shown him that it was more than fucking around, though, because last night he’d tried to go back to empty fucking, and it had felt nothing like what he shared with Chris. Maybe he hadn’t labeled it for what it was, but he’d felt the difference almost from the beginning, chalking it up to having sex with someone he knew and cared about rather than with a stranger.
He might not have been ready to call it love, but he’d known Chris was more than another random fuck, so it wouldn’t be so much a matter of changing things between them as it would be admitting what was between them. The risk inherent in that proposition unnerved him, setting his stomach churning again, but he reminded himself he wasn’t taking that leap with no safety net. He knew Chris loved him, or, to be precise, he knew Seth thought Chris loved him, but that was close enough.
That brought him back to Seth, because Chris wasn’t a one-man deal. Starting a relationship with Chris meant taking on some responsibility for Seth as well, for the next year and possibly beyond that. Seth wasn’t a baby to need constant supervision, but he would be there, part of Chris’s life, desiring (and deserving) attention and love from Chris and from anyone who wanted to be more than a passing part of Chris’s life. It wouldn’t quite make Jesse a father, but it would make him a whole lot closer to older brother or uncle than he’d ever expected to be.
He lifted his tea to his mouth only to realize he’d emptied it. Staring down into the dregs, he considered his two options. Life at Lang Downs with Chris openly as his lover, Seth at their side for the next year or two until he went off to uni and then visiting as he had breaks from school, or an endless series of nights like the preceding one. Suddenly the choice seemed obvious.
He dumped the cup in the sink and looked around for paper to leave a note for his friend. He had to get back to Lang Downs.
He had some groveling to do.
CHRIS PARKED the car in the car park outside the Boorowa Hotel. He’d hoped to get away first thing after breakfast so he could make it to Melbourne before the end of the day and hopefully find Jesse before that night, but circumstances had conspired against him and he hadn’t gotten away until well after lunch. If he’d left on time, the twelve-hour drive to Melbourne might have been possible in one day, but as it was, he wouldn’t get much farther than Yass if he tried to continue, and the thought of spending the night alone in a hotel room in Yass was enough to convince him to stay in Boorowa instead. The hour’s extra drive the next day would be worth not having panic attacks every time someone walked past his hotel room door.
He would eat dinner, get a good night’s sleep, leave early the next morning, and be in Melbourne in time for lunch. He could call Jesse once he got to Melbourne and figure out how to meet up with him. And if he was wrong and Jesse had gone somewhere else, he’d decide what to do then. For tonight, he’d settle for a place to sleep.
The hotel had rooms available so he took the cheapest one, tossed his bag on the bed, and went back down for dinner. As he was finishing up, he heard an all-too-familiar voice asking for a table.
“You don’t need a table,” he interrupted Jesse and the hotel waiter. “You’re welcome to join me.”
The smile that lit up Jesse’s face made Chris’s heart beat faster with hope, love, and desire. “Chris! What are you doing here?”
Chris shook his head, not wanting to have this conversation where others could hear them, but he pushed the chair opposite him back with his foot. Jesse took the seat, ordered something to drink, and turned back to Chris expectantly as the waiter walked off.
“I was coming to find you,” Chris said, keeping his voice soft. “I wasn’t taking the chance that you weren’t coming back.”
“I’m coming back,” Jesse replied. “I’ll always come back.”
Chris liked the sound of that except for one little thing…. “Does that mean you plan on leaving again?”
The waiter interrupted with Jesse’s drink. Jesse ordered bangers and mash without even looking at the menu.
“Maybe this isn’t the best place to talk,” Jesse said after the waiter had left again. “I got a room. We can talk after we eat.”
“I have a room too,” Chris said. He and Jesse had shared a room here the last time they’d come through town at the same time, but that had been a combination of availability and Chris’s panic attacks. Now, though, they didn’t have either of those excuses, and until Chris knew what Jesse intended, he didn’t think falling back into bed would be a good idea. They’d made that mistake once. He didn’t want to make it again. They could talk in Jesse’s room, but Chris would return to his own room to sleep unless Jesse said all the right things.
“Where did you go?” Chris asked while they waited for Jesse’s meal to arrive.
“To Melbourne,” Jesse replied. “I crashed with a friend for a day or two.”
“Why did you leave?”
“We’d better save that for later too.”
Chris nodded and let silence fall between them. They had spent many a silent hour together riding fences or keeping watch on the sheep during the night, but the silence between them had never been as tense as it was now. Chris twitched on his seat, racking his brain for something to say to break the silence, but he drew a blank. He could wait to discuss the issues between Jesse and himself, but he couldn’t fill the intervening time with meaningless chatter.
“How’s Seth?” Jesse asked when the waiter had brought his food and the silence had truly reached the uncomfortable stage.
“He’s fine,” Chris said. “He’s feeling guilty for messing things up.”
“He didn’t mess anything up,” Jesse replied. “He just made me see some things I hadn’t realized before. Or would you have let me leave in April without saying anything?”
“It would have depended on what happened between now and then,” Chris answered honestly. “You’d never given any indication of wanting to stay.”
“I’d never had any reason to think about staying,” Jesse reminded him.
“Oh, and sleeping with—” Jesse’s hiss drew Chris up short. He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a whisper. “And sleeping with me even when we weren’t fucking wasn’t a reason to think maybe something had changed?”
“I was a blind, stupid drongo,” Jesse said with a sigh. He pushed the food around his plate, looking so forlorn Chris almost too
k pity on him. “I owe everyone an apology, and I’ll give yours to you as soon as we’re somewhere private to talk.”
“Fine,” Chris said, trying to keep the hurt and anger out of his voice. Somehow he didn’t think blowing up was what Caine had in mind when he told Chris to fight for Jesse.
Jesse ate a few more bites of his dinner before pushing the plate back. “Let’s go.”
They paid and walked up to the rooms they had rented for the night. They reached Chris’s room first so he unlocked the door and gestured for Jesse to go inside. If nothing else, he could kick the other man out if he got fed up with the course of their conversation.
Fight for him, not with him, Chris admonished silently.
“Why did you leave?”
“Does it really matter?” Jesse asked. “Isn’t it more important that I came back?”
“I don’t know,” Chris said. “Why did you come back?”
“Because I realized something when I ended up drunk and puking in a bar in Melbourne,” Jesse said. “I didn’t know how good I had it until I nearly threw it all away. As soon as I could drive, I started back to Lang Downs.”
Chris arched an eyebrow.
“Back to you.”
That was more like it.
Chris wanted to throw himself into Jesse’s arms and kiss him, but they hadn’t actually resolved anything.
“So what happens now?”
“What do you want to happen?” Jesse asked in reply.
“I’m not the one who freaked out and ran off,” Chris reminded him. “I’m not the one who has to explain myself.”
“But that’s just it,” Jesse said. “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen unless I know what you want to happen, because what I want is to give you what you want.”
That sounded a little too good to be true. “Stop it, damn it. You’re talking in riddles. Just answer the question. Why did you leave and why did you come back?”
Jesse reached for Chris’s hand, drawing him closer. “Seth told me you’d fallen in love with me,” he said. “He was talking about your birthday and making plans about me being a part of your family like it was a given, and I hadn’t thought about any of that and I freaked. I didn’t start the season expecting to settle down somewhere and stay. I didn’t even kiss you the first time with that thought. It was supposed to be exactly what we said it would be. It was supposed to be a nice way to pass the summer. I didn’t plan on falling in love with you, even if it took running away to realize it.”
“That’s why you left,” Chris said, although the words appeased some of the hurt and anger he’d been feeling since watching Jesse’s taillights disappear into the night. “Why did you come back?”
“Because I’m not quite stupid enough to throw away the best shot at a future I’ll ever get,” Jesse replied. “I’ve been around enough to know there aren’t many stations like Lang Downs.” Chris frowned, opening his mouth to protest, but Jesse held up his hand, forestalling the words. “It’s more than that, but that’s part of it too, because you’re tied there already. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but you’ve already made the station part of your future. You’ve put down roots there with Seth, whether you were looking to do that or not. So if I want to be with you, I have to want to be at Lang Downs too, and that’s what I figured out while I was gone. I want it all. I want you and Seth and Lang Downs and a future I’d never imagined could be possible. Maybe I’ll make a mess of it, but I want to try. Will you give me another chance?”
“I was coming to find you,” Chris said slowly. “I’d come to the conclusion that you didn’t just get to walk away and pretend like nothing had changed since the beginning of the season. I was going to fight for us if I had to.”
“You don’t have to,” Jesse said, “but I kind of like knowing you would have. It’s probably a good thing you didn’t find me last night, though. You wouldn’t have wanted me if you had.”
“You said you went out,” Chris remembered, suddenly leery again. “Did you pick up some guy and fuck him?”
“No,” Jesse said. “I thought I would, but I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. I ended up comparing every guy I looked at to you, and I didn’t want any of them because they weren’t you. When I was sober enough to drive this morning, I started back north. I’m glad I stopped for the night instead of trying to get all the way back tonight, or I would’ve missed you entirely.”
“I was going to call you when I got to Melbourne so I could come wherever you were,” Chris said with a chuckle. “That would’ve been bad, if you’d been back on Lang Downs and I’d gotten all the way to Melbourne.”
“So am I forgiven?” Jesse asked, leaning his forehead against Chris’s.
“I don’t know,” Chris teased. “You haven’t kissed me yet. Are you sure you’re in love with me?”
Jesse growled, the sound sending both amusement and desire through Chris. “Yes, Chris, I love you.”
Chris ran his fingers through Jesse’s hair. “Then kiss me and I’ll forgive you.”
RELIEF SURGED through Jesse as Chris stroked his scalp. He bent the little bit to close the gap between them, keeping the kiss gentle and loving for the moment. He didn’t expect it to stay that way for long, but he lingered for now, brushing their lips together, back and forth in sweet, tender contact to feed the heart. Chris made no move to speed things up, his fingers stroking through Jesse’s longer hair but otherwise resting trustingly in Jesse’s embrace.
The emotion of the moment overwhelmed Jesse, and he pulled Chris tightly against him, burying his face in the crook of Chris’s neck. “I’m sorry I fucked up,” he said, his voice muffled by Chris’s skin.
“Hey,” Chris said, pulling back and tipping Jesse’s chin up so their eyes met, “that’s life sometimes. We’re back where we need to be, well, mostly, and back on track. Nothing’s fucked up.”
Jesse nodded. “I think it’ll take me some time to really realize that. Last night was, well, bad.”
“You love me. I love you. We have a place we can be together. The rest is just a question of working out the details,” Chris said. “We can spend the rest of our lives doing that if we need to.”
Jesse sucked in a breath at hearing the words from Chris directly. Not that he’d doubted Seth, but he hadn’t realized how badly he needed the reassurance of hearing it from Chris.
“I don’t suppose you brought condoms with you,” Jesse said hopefully.
“I was coming to fight for you, remember?” Chris replied. “Of course I brought condoms because I couldn’t be sure what you’d taken with you and I wasn’t going to search your room. I might have given up before I ever left the station if it’d been empty.”
“It wasn’t empty,” Jesse said. “I was coming back. Well, no, last night when I realized what I’d done and how badly I’d messed up, I thought about not coming back, but I came to my senses this morning.”
“Good,” Chris said. He kissed Jesse quickly and opened his bag to pull out condoms and lube. “Caine warned me I might have to make you see reason, and I would have done my best, but this is so much better.”
“Straight to the make-up sex?” Jesse teased.
“Do you have a better suggestion?”
“No.”
Jesse kissed Chris again with more passion this time, licking the seam of Chris’s lips. They parted for him, inviting him inside the way he hoped he’d soon be inside Chris’s arse. He took advantage of Chris’s willingness, twining their tongues together as he slid his thigh between Chris’s legs. Chris moved against him, rubbing provocatively against Jesse. It felt so good, so right, after the gut-churning nothingness of the night before. Jesse slid his hands down to cup Chris’s arse, urging him to move faster, harder, anything but stopping. Chris moaned and followed his head.
Jesse attacked Chris’s mouth, hard, nearly brutal kisses born of desperation and near loss. Chris met him kiss for kiss, bite for bite until they were clawing at each other’s clothes. Jesse finally p
ulled back.
“Naked. Now.”
Chris groaned and practically tore his clothes off, his lightly furred, perfectly real body coming into view. Jesse advanced on him, pushing him backward onto the bed. He followed Chris down, biting at his nipples before soothing them with his tongue, doing everything he could think of to drive Chris wild.
It worked if the way Chris bucked up against him was any indication.
He followed a meandering path over the line of Chris’s ribs down to the treasure trail that bisected Chris’s stomach. He lingered for a moment at Chris’s navel, fucking it with his tongue, but the seductive scent of desire beckoned him on.
Chris tasted so fucking good when Jesse finally licked his way to the head of Chris’s cock. Chris’s wordless shout made Jesse smile and want to wring more delicious sounds from his lover.
God, just thinking the word made him tremble. He wanted to cover Chris with his body and fuck him into oblivion, and then hold him all night long. And tomorrow night. And the night after.
He sucked Chris deeper and reminded himself he could do all of that. Tonight, tomorrow night, forever.
“I’m not… gonna last,” Chris groaned.
Jesse thought for an instant about pushing Chris now and getting him all worked up again for a second round. Chris was only twenty. His recovery time wasn’t in question, but Jesse didn’t want to wait. He pulled back and stripped quickly before returning to the bed to cover Chris as he had imagined doing. The sheen of sweat on Chris’s skin eased the slide of skin against skin as Jesse pressed Chris into the mattress.
