Lang Downs

by Ariel Tachna

  “Bloody hell,” Macklin shouted when Caine continued to work his sweet spot while taking Macklin down his throat. “Stop, Caine.”

  Caine ignored him, doing everything he could to push Macklin into climaxing right then and there. It took a gratifyingly short time to shatter his lover’s usual control, a hot gush of fluid filling his mouth as Macklin’s barely loosened guardian muscle squeezed his finger mercilessly.

  Licking his lips with a self-satisfied smile, Caine rocked back on his heels. “Now t-tell me the story.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Not until you tell me the story.”

  Macklin glared at him, but Caine didn’t back down.

  “Fine,” Macklin huffed, sitting up and pulling the covers over his lower body. “I told you Michael took me in when I was sixteen. I ran away when I was fifteen because my father had a temper and quick fists. For as long as I can remember, he hit my mother. Eventually I got old enough to protest, and one time—I was maybe twelve—he turned on me instead of on her. I was big for my age, already bigger than she was.”

  That hadn’t changed. Macklin’s size had struck Caine from the moment they met. “So what happened next?”

  “So I decided I’d do it deliberately. If he was hitting me, he wasn’t hitting her.”

  “He shouldn’t have hit anyone. Didn’t someone report it?”

  “I don’t know if anyone did or not,” Macklin said, “but nothing ever came of it if they did. I got good at pushing his buttons, at sensing when he was about to lose it with my mum and choosing that moment to draw his attention to me. I didn’t manage it every time, but enough that she stopped walking around in long sleeves all the time to hide the bruises on her arms.”

  “It wasn’t your job to protect her,” Caine said softly. “She should have called the police.”

  “She should have,” Macklin agreed. “I can say that sitting here at forty-three, but at twelve, all I knew was her begging me not to call the police and not to interfere. I couldn’t stop, though.”

  “So how did you get from there to Lang Downs?”

  “Mum found out about me,” Macklin said, his hands clenched so hard around the quilt on the bed that his knuckles turned white. “I never figured out how. She told me she loved me no matter what, but that I couldn’t live in the house with my father and be different. He’d kill me. I wanted to say ‘Let him try,’ but she was right. I’d listened to him rant for too long about poofters and pillow biters and every other foul name you could think to call someone. I begged her to come with me. We’d leave together, go somewhere he couldn’t find us, but she said she’d made her choice and she’d live with it, but I shouldn’t have to suffer for her weakness.”

  And yet he so clearly had that it tore at Caine’s heart. “You listened to her eventually.”

  “He broke my arm,” Macklin replied, his voice completely devoid of emotion. “I’d been named goalie for our footie team, and I missed a block. He went into a rage that night and broke my arm. He said I wasn’t using it anyway so what did it matter?”

  “Over a lost soccer match?”

  “That’s the worst part,” Macklin said with a bleak smile. “We won. I started stocking up as soon as we got back from the doctor, making a stash to hold me through as long as I could. An extra tin of beans, a jar of Vegemite, every penny of spare change he left lying around, anything I could hide in my room. A week after the cast came off, I left, and I have regretted it every day since then.”

  “What?” Caine said. “Why would you regret it? You have a life because you got out of that hell!”

  “I got out,” Macklin said. “She didn’t. I didn’t have the courage to stay or the strength to take her with me.”

  “You were fifteen,” Caine reminded him. “It wasn’t your job to be the strong one.”

  “You weren’t there,” Macklin said. “She was a meter and a half at the most. He was almost two meters tall. She didn’t stand a chance against him. I shouldn’t have left her.”

  The self-loathing in Macklin’s voice nearly brought Caine undone.

  “So you left,” Caine said, “but you didn’t get here until you were sixteen, or that’s the story I’ve always heard.”

  “I was almost sixteen when I left, but it took me about six months to find my way here,” Macklin said. “I worked odd jobs to get across the country, never staying for more than a few weeks, until I ended up in Boorowa.”

  “That’s where Uncle Michael found you?”

  “That’s where Charles Taylor found me,” Macklin said. “Devlin Taylor’s father.”

  Caine frowned at the thought of their neighbor. Taylor had been as good as his word and left the men of Lang Downs alone after firing the jackaroo who had sabotaged Caine’s fences earlier in the winter, but that didn’t mean Caine liked the homophobic grazier. He gestured for Macklin to continue.

  “I took a job at Taylor Peaks. It was the only thing I could find in the area, and I didn’t have enough money to get even to Yass. It was work for him or starve.”

  Macklin stopped after that, his face pensive. Caine tried to find a way to prompt him to continue, but he couldn’t think of anything. Before he gave up on subtlety, Macklin shook his head and gave Caine a wan smile.

  “It wasn’t awful at first. Charles was a better manager than his son. He worked us hard for not a lot of pay, but he was fair,” Macklin recounted.

  “So what happened?” Caine asked. “I mean, why did you leave?”

  “He hired a drifter who wanted room and board in exchange for a few weeks’ work. The man was a bully, but Taylor never saw it. He just saw me trying to fight back and blamed the situation on me. After all, I was the punk kid. He told me to leave. I didn’t know up from down in those days so I started walking and ended up going north instead of south to Boorowa. I ended up on Lang Downs. You know the rest.”

  Caine wasn’t entirely sure he did, but he’d gotten far more out of Macklin tonight than he ever had before or than he’d really expected to get. Scooting closer to his lover, he kissed him softly. “Thank you. I know how hard it must be to talk about it.”

  “It’s not something I think about anymore,” Macklin said. Caine doubted that, but he didn’t challenge it. “I’ve been on my own for so long that I don’t dwell on it. It made me who I am, but it doesn’t have the power to hurt me anymore.”

  Caine wondered if it could really be that easy. He wouldn’t bring it up again unless Macklin gave him a reason to, but he’d keep an eye on the other man. He needed Macklin strong and steady. “I love you.”

  Macklin smiled and pulled Caine into a kiss.

  Five

  CHRIS STUMBLED down the stairs the next morning at the appointed time, quite sure he wasn’t awake enough for whatever Kami would ask him to do, but he wasn’t going back on his word the first day on the station. He still didn’t think he’d be much help with his broken arm, but he wouldn’t compound that by being late.

  “There’s hot water in the kettle for tea or coffee brewing for the jackaroos if you want that,” Kami said as Chris walked into the kitchen. “Pour a cup and then come break these eggs.”

  Chris fumbled a little with holding the kettle in his left hand, but when he glanced furtively at Kami, the cook’s back was turned, giving Chris the privacy to negotiate the task without scrutiny.

  He managed the water, but the tea strainer was beyond him with only one hand, and his weaker one at that. He had no idea why they’d had tea bags the day before and a tea strainer and loose leaves this morning, but he didn’t want to ask. “Kami,” he said tentatively, “I hate to disturb you but I can’t get the tea leaves into the strainer.”

  Kami chuckled. “We take such simple things for granted when we’re well,” he said, scooping tea leaves into the ball and handing it back to Chris. “You will be well again. You just have to give it time.”

  “Not my strong suit,” Chris muttered as he carried his tea to the counter where Kami had eggs sitting out. “So
I just break the eggs into the bowl?”

  “Yes,” Kami said. “I’m not frying eggs for that many people. They’ll eat scrambled eggs or something else.”

  Chris nodded and picked up the first egg. The shell had an almost bluish hue. “These are an interesting color.”

  “That batch is from our chickens,” Kami explained. “Caine’s been pushing us toward organic certification for the sheep, but he’s also made some other changes. We can feed the men less expensively with our own chickens than we can buying eggs elsewhere. They’re fresher, healthier, and we have the added bonus of fresh meat when we want it.”

  “It sounds like he’s made more than a few changes around here,” Chris commented as he continued breaking eggs into the bowl. “I always heard stations were pretty backwards when it came to accepting change.”

  “You heard right,” Kami said, “but that’s because they’re run by people whose families have been here, doing things the same way, for generations. The average jackaroo doesn’t have anything to do with whether change comes. It’s the graziers who make those decisions.”

  “Caine’s great-uncle ran the station, didn’t he? So it’s in his family.”

  “It is, but not the same way,” Kami said, putting a tray of scones in the oven. “Caine didn’t grow up here so he isn’t looking at things through the eyes of his uncle. He sees everything with fresh eyes and a business degree.”

  “But nobody seems to resent that,” Chris said. “Sure, he’s the one in charge, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to like it.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Kami agreed, continuing to bustle around the kitchen, “and there are some faces missing from the jackaroos this year, maybe because of him, but there are new faces too, and there’s one face still there that might not be if it weren’t for Caine.”

  “Neil?” Chris asked. “I heard someone say Caine saved his life.”

  “Damn fool boy with no more sense than any of our sheep,” Kami muttered, “but yes, he saved Neil’s life, and Neil won’t let anyone forget that. Now finish those eggs. We have hungry jackaroos on their way for breakfast.”

  Chris knew the end of a conversation when he heard one, but given what he’d seen of Kami with Neil and some of the others the day before, he’d already gotten more out of the cook than most people did, and that reassured him. Working in the kitchen wouldn’t be easy with his arm banged up, but Kami wouldn’t make it miserable either.

  FIVE HOURS later, he wasn’t so sure about that. Kami hadn’t been cruel, but he’d been grumpy and demanding, snapping orders right and left as they worked on dinner. Chris had reached a breaking point and needed out. Tossing the knife on the counter, he stomped out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. He made it all the way to the fence separating the house from the road when his ribs started aching and he had to stop. He leaned heavily against the rail, trying to breathe through the pain.

  “You all right, mate?”

  Chris looked up to see Jesse walking his way, a toolbox in his hand. “Yeah, just sore,” Chris replied. “I forgot to take it easy.”

  “Kind of hard to do on a sheep station,” Jesse said with a wave of his hand at all the industriousness going on around them. “You pull your own weight or you end up out on your arse. It’s the way stations work.”

  Chris lifted his plaster-covered arm. “I’m not pulling much of anything at the moment.”

  “You’re helping in the kitchen. Isn’t that what Seth told me?”

  “I’m trying to,” Chris muttered, “but that stupid drongo won’t let me finish one thing before he’s told me to do ten more, and then he yells because I haven’t done any of them. I’ve never worked in a kitchen before. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m trying to learn with only one good arm.”

  “And seventy-odd people waiting for dinner tonight,” Jesse finished. “I feel for you, mate. I wouldn’t want Kami’s job, and yours even less, even with two good arms.”

  “I wouldn’t mind it so much if he’d let me finish one thing before asking me to do something else,” Chris said. “I can learn whatever I need to learn, even one-handed, but I can’t keep up with the speed of his demands.”

  “Try telling him that,” Jesse suggested. “Maybe after dinner’s over rather than now while he’s busy, but let him know. Some people are born managers. Other people have to learn, and from some of the comments I heard this morning, Kami isn’t one to let anyone in his kitchen, so he may never have learned.”

  “Great, now I’m an experiment on top of a charity case,” Chris sighed.

  “Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself,” Jesse scolded. “Take it from someone who’s been around a few more times than you have. You won’t win any friends or solve any problems by moping. You needed a break. Fine. You’ve taken a break. Now go back in there and do your job. Talk to Kami after dinner, and if it doesn’t get better, talk to Caine or Macklin. They’re fair men. They’ll listen to you. They hired you to work at Lang Downs, not necessarily to work in the kitchen, right?”

  Chris nodded.

  “So then if working in the kitchen is going to cause problems, ask if you can do something else,” Jesse suggested. “What’s the worst they can do?”

  “Kick me off the station,” Chris said.

  “For asking a question?” Jesse replied. “They wouldn’t have the kind of loyalty they do from the year-rounders if they were like that. I’ve worked on enough stations to have learned that lesson. If you want to know what kind of men the foreman and the boss are, you look at the way the year-rounders think about them. The men here are so loyal to Caine and Macklin that they defend them, not just turn a blind eye to them being together, but actively defend them. I’ve never been on another station where something like that would happen, even the ones that were otherwise good places to work.”

  “Otherwise?” Chris asked, the choice of words striking him as odd.

  “It’s nice to be somewhere tolerant,” Jesse replied with a shrug. “It makes being different easier.”

  “Different how?” Chris asked impulsively. He knew better than to assume Jesse’s comments meant what he hoped they did. Asking outright if Jesse was gay could be as bad as letting the drongos in Yass find out. Knowing someone was gay was a far cry from having someone assume the same applied to you as far as reactions were concerned.

  “How do you think?” Jesse asked in reply. “I tried to get a job here because I heard the boss was gay. I didn’t expect him to be interested in me—though the rumors didn’t say anything about the foreman being his partner—but I figured a station with a gay boss would be less likely to take issue with a gay jackaroo.”

  Chris let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “You say that so easily.”

  “That I’m gay?” Jesse verified.

  Chris nodded.

  “I don’t really, but you aren’t going to hit me for it, and even if you decided to tell everyone, they probably wouldn’t either, so I don’t have much to lose,” Jesse explained. “I don’t say it often. I don’t even think it all that often, because it’s not like there’s anybody to do anything with, out here in the bush. Before I got here, I’d never met another person in the outback who would admit to it. Maybe there were some people like me who were good at hiding it, but this is the first time outside the city I’ve ever told anyone.”

  Chris resolutely refused to imagine why Jesse might have told someone in the city. The other jackaroo was his only friend on the station. He was perving over Jesse enough as it was without imagining him hooking up with some guy in a bar.

  “I guess I’d better be grateful Seth stumbled into the right place when he went looking for someone to help me,” Chris said instead of what was really on his mind. “If he’d asked a different group of men, they might have come to help kill me instead of save me.”

  “Even if all they’d done was ignore his pleas, you’d still be a lot worse off than you are now,” Jesse agreed. “That shiner is looking
even blacker today than it did yesterday. Does it hurt?”

  “Everything hurts,” Chris admitted. “I don’t want to take the drugs they gave me because they knock me out, but regular Nurofen isn’t taking care of the pain.”

  “I’ve never been hurt as badly as you are all at once,” Jesse said, “but I’ve taken some tumbles off a horse and some falls that have left me pretty bruised and battered. You may want to wait a few more days before trying to work anywhere, even in the kitchen. The harder you push now, the longer it will take you to get well.”

  “Tell that to the bosses,” Chris said. “I owe them my life. I’m not going to repay them by being lazy.”

  “You aren’t going to repay them by hurting yourself worse and making them call the flying doctor to come out here either,” Jesse replied. “They’ll already have to take you back to Yass to take your cast off. Making them arrange a second doctor’s visit because you’re too proud and stupid to tell two reasonable men that you’re hurting is not a way to say thank you.”

  “Hi, Chris.”

  Chris spun around, wincing as the movement jarred his ribs. “Hi, boss.”

  “Taking a break?” Caine asked.

  “A short one,” Chris said nervously. “Kami was….”

  “Being Kami?” Caine finished with a chuckle. “He’s a superstitious old aborigine with an attitude the size of Ayers Rock and a heart of gold buried underneath it. I’ll talk to him and remind him you aren’t at full strength yet.”

  “About that,” Jesse said. “Sorry to interrupt, boss, but Chris is hurt pretty bad and—”

  “And nothing,” Chris interrupted. “I’ll be fine.”