Lang Downs

by Ariel Tachna

  Chris pondered that as they drove on. He’d planned to go to university once upon a time, before his mum got sick and Tony turned into more and more of a bastard when she wasn’t around to see him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when Tony kicked them out. He wondered about using the job at the station as a chance to get his life together, save up a little money to live on while he was at uni, maybe even go part time so he could work here from shearing to whatever event marked the end of the work year for the seasonal jackaroos. He had no idea what or when that would be, but someone could tell him. He could get his degree and “do something” with his life, as Tony had always yelled at him to do. That would mean leaving Lang Downs, though, and at least for the next couple of years, Seth would be here. Chris didn’t care how hard he had to work to make sure Seth had the time he needed to get his HSC so his choices wouldn’t be limited, and if staying a few more years meant Seth could go to uni, then that’s what Chris would do.

  He glanced over at the man sitting in the cab of the ute with him. Or he could just stay. Jesse certainly seemed to be happy with his life as it was. Kami, Neil, Patrick, Kyle, Ian, and of course Caine and Macklin had carved out lives for themselves on the station. Patrick was married, and he wasn’t the only one. Neil seemed well on his way to being married before the end of the summer, and Caine and Macklin were the closest thing to it, but Kyle and Ian were both single. They weren’t twenty anymore, but they made a single life on a station work year-round.

  If Jesse stayed too, like his conversation suggested he might, Chris wouldn’t even have to go without in the winters. He’d have company all the time for as long as their arrangement lasted.

  “There’s the first drover’s hut,” Jesse said, drawing Chris out of his thoughts. “Let’s go see what it needs.”

  The hut was basic at best, four walls and a roof with a lean-to shed behind it, presumably for horses if the jackaroos rode in instead of driving, but the inside showed no signs of water damage, so it was that tight at least because Chris knew they’d had bad storms in the tablelands during the winter.

  “It’s not a lot to look at, is it?” Chris said.

  “When your other choice is spending the night in the open in the pouring rain or huddling under a tree or trying to get home on horseback in the middle of a storm, this looks like paradise,” Jesse replied. “You have the list Caine gave us?”

  Chris pulled it out so they could inventory the cabinets and see what they needed to add from the supplies in the flatbed of the ute. They switched out the blankets for clean ones, because Caine had insisted all the blankets could use a good wash, and refilled the cabinets with tins of vegetables and fruit as well as biscuits and Vegemite. It wouldn’t be fancy dining, but it would be enough to fill a man’s stomach in an emergency. They changed the flashlight batteries, checked the condition of the cots, and declared the cabin ready for summer.

  “Once I get rid of this lead weight, we should volunteer for a night shift out here,” Chris said as they climbed back into the ute. “We might actually have some time alone and some privacy that way.”

  “Time alone and privacy, maybe,” Jesse said, “but out here, we’re working.”

  “Even in the middle of the night?”

  “Unless we’re stuck out here and are using the huts as refuge, yes,” Jesse said. “From what I heard, they drive the sheep close to the drover’s huts at night so the men can keep an eye on them. We’d be inside, but we’d be expected to pay attention for threats in the night. Dingoes and feral dogs like to make off with sheep when it’s dark and it’s harder to see them to stop them.”

  “Bummer,” Chris said with a frown. “There goes my great idea for getting you alone.”

  Jesse laughed. “We’ll figure it out, Chris. It’s not like we have to fuck every night, you know.”

  “We haven’t fucked yet,” Chris retorted.

  Jesse elbowed him lightly. “You know what I mean.”

  Chris did know, but hearing Jesse talk about fucking, imagining what it might be like to have Jesse inside him, did things to Chris’s libido. Suddenly the air in the cab seemed charged with electricity, and Jesse’s hands on the wheel steering the ute toward the next hut drew Chris’s eyes constantly as he imagined those hands on his body again.

  “If we can’t meet behind the tractor shed, can we meet inside the tractor shed again?” Chris asked after a few minutes, his voice sounding rough to his own ears.

  “Feeling horny?” Jesse joked.

  Chris grabbed one of Jesse’s hands and rubbed it over his crotch. “Hell, yes.”

  “Careful, mate,” Jesse said, putting his hand back on the wheel. “If I crash the ute, we’ll both be in trouble.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Chris said. “Can we meet in the tractor shed again?”

  “I don’t know,” Jesse said. “There’s just no guarantee we won’t be interrupted, and I’m past the age where someone walking in on me having sex has any appeal.”

  “You make it sound like you’re ancient,” Chris said. “You’re only, what, twenty-five, twenty-six?”

  “Twenty-eight,” Jesse said, “but that’s not the point. The point is I’m not a fan of sex with an audience, even when it’s an appreciative audience, and there’s a good chance it wouldn’t be an appreciative audience here.”

  “Everybody seems pretty tolerant to me.”

  “There’s a difference between being tolerant in theory and having it rubbed in your face,” Jesse replied. “Yes, we’re both adults, but that doesn’t mean anyone else wants to see us together. I’m sure you’ve noticed Caine and Macklin keep it pretty far under wraps in public.”

  “Hiding in plain sight?” Chris asked.

  “I don’t think they’re hiding,” Jesse said. “That would be kind of pointless given Neil’s speech the day we all arrived. They simply choose not to act in ways that would make people around them uncomfortable. They rely on their jackaroos to do their jobs as much as the jackaroos rely on them to have a job. If people suddenly started leaving, they’d be in trouble.”

  “I suppose,” Chris said. “Can’t we do the same? Hide in plain sight?”

  “We’re hardly in the same situation they’re in,” Jesse reminded him. “We aren’t the boss and foreman.”

  “Macklin suspects,” Chris said, “and he didn’t seem to care. He said what I did with my off time was my business as long as it didn’t affect my work or yours.”

  “That’s good, I suppose,” Jesse said, “although I’m not sure how I feel about them knowing, honestly.”

  “I didn’t tell them,” Chris said, hoping he hadn’t done something wrong. “I was sitting on the veranda and Macklin mentioned a trip into town for supplies. I said I needed to pick up a few things. He offered to pick them up for me, but I wasn’t going to ask him to buy me condoms so I said I’d rather go with, and that’s when he told me it was okay if we were letting off a little steam as long as we knew what we were doing. I swear I didn’t tell him.”

  “He didn’t get to be the foreman of Lang Downs by being slow or stupid,” Jesse said. “If you’d needed shampoo or something, you’d have asked for it, so you either needed condoms or you had the clap and wanted medicine for it. If you had the clap, they’d have treated you at the hospital. Therefore you wanted condoms.”

  When Jesse put it that way…. “I guess I did sort of tell him, then.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jesse said. “He wasn’t upset, you said, and he didn’t tell you we had to stop or anything so I figure that’s tacit permission.”

  Chris scooted closer to Jesse in the cab of the ute. “So can we spend a few extra minutes at the next hut? I’ve missed you.”

  “At lunch,” Jesse relented. “Wherever we stop for lunch, we’ll be on a break and I won’t feel so much like we’re abusing their trust.”

  “They won’t know when we take our break as long as we get a reasonable amount of work done today,” Chris cajoled.

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sp; Jesse chuckled. “You really want to take that chance? You really think you can look Macklin in the eye when he starts asking questions and not give yourself away? I know I wouldn’t be able to.”

  Given Chris’s track record, he decided not to push it. “Okay, lunch time it is.”

  “Think of it as foreplay,” Jesse said as they pulled up to the second hut. “Another two hours of anticipation, of wondering what will happen when we stop for lunch.”

  “Or of planning what I’m going to do to you,” Chris teased. He refused to be the only one desperately horny by lunch time. “I can think of a few things I’d like to try.”

  “If I let you,” Jesse retorted.

  Chris grinned. “Oh, you’ll let me. I’ve got a talented mouth, or so I’ve been told.”

  Twelve

  JESSE WAS tempted to make a comment about Chris’s experience, but he didn’t want to provoke a fight, especially when his own track record for relationships was probably as spotty as Chris’s. He’d had one hook-up several years ago that turned into a season of messing around, but neither he nor the other guy—Jesse couldn’t even remember his name—had ever pretended it was anything more than a convenience when they didn’t feel like going out on the prowl. Jesse didn’t know if Chris had ever had a boyfriend, a real one with emotions involved, but since Jesse couldn’t claim one in his own past, he decided not to ask. “I certainly benefited the other night,” he said instead.

  “Good,” Chris said, his voice so smug Jesse decided right then what was going to happen when they stopped for lunch. Chris was getting his mind blown along with his dick. Chris might have a talented mouth, but he was still a kid compared to Jesse, and Jesse would bet he’d been the one doing the sucking, not the one being sucked. He knew how gay bars worked. A kid like Chris, fresh-faced and more slender than stocky, would have been the one on his knees blowing the other guy or else the one with his pants around his knees getting fucked. Unless he picked up someone even younger and skinner than him. Jesse had known a few exceptions to that dynamic, but they were few and far between, and usually in enough of a relationship to set aside some of the posturing. Chris didn’t have that vibe.

  “Let’s get this hut stocked,” Jesse said, his voice rough. “We should be able to do one more before lunch.”

  Chris hopped out of the ute, carrying his list inside. They checked the hut, finding this one much more depleted of supplies than the last one.

  “I’m glad we’re doing this,” Chris said as they carried in tins of food. “I wouldn’t want to be the one stuck out here with nothing more in the cupboards than what we just found.”

  “Me either,” Jesse agreed, thinking of the nights he’d spent sleeping rough on other stations. He could see why the Lang Downs jackaroos were as loyal as they were. Accepting a gay boss had to be easier with perks like these to ease the sting. For someone like Jesse who had left jobs in the past because of discrimination, the combination seemed like a dream come true.

  They switched out the blankets and closed everything back up. “Where’s the next hut?”

  Chris looked at the map Macklin had given him. “That way.”

  The roads worsened as they made their way to higher elevations, proof of the powerful storms that had hit the area over the winter. It took them nearly two hours to reach the next hut. “Lunch time,” Chris declared as soon as they stopped.

  “Let’s check the hut first,” Jesse suggested. “Then we can relax and eat.”

  “And fuck.”

  “And something,” Jesse agreed. “I still don’t carry condoms while I’m working.”

  “We’ll have to do something about that,” Chris insisted. “There’s nowhere at the station itself, which means we have to find other places to be alone.”

  “We’ll see,” Jesse said, not entirely comfortable with that compromise unless they drove out to one of the empty huts after they finished work for the night and came back in time for breakfast. His sense of responsibility to Caine was too strong. He didn’t want to lose this job, and while he didn’t think he’d lose it for messing around with Chris, Caine would have every right to fire him if he messed around when he was supposed to be working.

  The stench of animal dung hit them the moment they opened the door. “Damn,” Jesse cursed. “Something spent the winter in there. I hope it wasn’t anything nasty.”

  “It was nasty enough just from the smell,” Chris complained, holding his nose with his good hand.

  “Yeah, but there’s nasty and then there’s dangerous,” Jesse said. “Get one of those extra flashlights and let’s see if we can figure out what’s in there before we go in.”

  Chris grabbed a flashlight out of the back of the ute, and Jesse shone it in the door, looking for the reflection of eyes or anything else to show where the animal was. He found them, finally, in the back corner of the hut. “Over there,” he said to Chris. “See it?”

  “I see eyes,” Chris whispered, “but I can’t tell what it is.”

  “Me either,” Jesse said. “Bandicoots, bilbies, bettongs or potoroos, or if we’re unlucky, a wombat.”

  “Why unlucky?”

  “Because they’re bigger and tougher than the others. If it’s a wombat, we may want to talk with Macklin before we do anything else. I knew a man at another station who tangled with one and ended up in the hospital,” Jesse explained, “and that one wasn’t cornered and protecting its home.”

  “So how do we figure out what it is?” Chris asked. “If they’re that tough, I’m not sure walking in and opening windows to let in light is the best idea.”

  “They’re nocturnal,” Jesse said. “I know that much. The light ought to drive it deeper into its nest if it’s a wombat, and if it’s not, we’ll be able to see what it is. Keep the flashlight on it so we can see if it moves. I’ll try to get a window open.”

  Chris nodded as Jesse slipped inside and edged along the wall farthest from the animal, feeling for the window rather than looking for it. He wasn’t taking his eyes off the creature until he knew what it was. He found the latch and pushed it open, letting in the late morning sunlight. “It’s a wombat. We’ll report it to Macklin and see what he wants us to do about it.”

  “We’d have to come back and clean the hut out anyway,” Chris said as Jesse inched back toward the door. “We don’t have shovels and the like to clean out its nest, and I’m not sure how much help I’d be to you anyway. I can’t hold a shovel at the moment.”

  “Not to mention that even if we run the wombat out, there’s the question of how it got in here and keeping it from coming back. Macklin might want to send a more experienced crew out to deal with it. I’m not much of a carpenter. I mean, I could pound a couple of nails to hold a board over a hole if there is one, but that’s not the real solution. I was going to suggest eating lunch in the hut, but I think we’ll be better off sitting on the bed of the ute.”

  Chris grabbed their lunches from the cab of the ute while Jesse spread one of the clean blankets over the metal bed of the truck. It wasn’t a bed, or even a cot like in the huts, but it was better than cold steel. Fortunately the sun was out, warming the day enough that the breeze off the highlands felt good, although Jesse wasn’t sure about getting naked out in the open. He’d been imagining stretching Chris out on one of the cots and taking his time licking and sucking all over, not just getting him off and rushing on to the next hut. It might be a little cool for that, though. He’d see how things went.

  Chris hopped up on the gate of the ute next to him. “Here’s your lunch,” he said, offering the bag to Jesse. Jesse waited a moment before opening his bag. Chris had been so eager earlier, but now he seemed content to sit and eat, so Jesse did the same. He wasn’t eighteen and so horny he couldn’t stand it. He could afford to wait until after they’d eaten or even until another time entirely.

  “Seth seems to be settling in well,” Jesse said as they ate. “Other than a couple of pranks, anyway. That should make you happy.”

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nbsp; “A couple?” Chris said around his mouthful of sandwich. “I only knew about the one he played on me.”

  Jesse cursed under his breath. “And I told him I wouldn’t tell you since he apologized and cleaned up the mess he made,” Jesse said with a shake of his head.

  “What did he do?”

  “He messed up Patrick’s toolbox,” Jesse said. “It was harmless, just annoying, and he put everything back in its place. Patrick checks his box every morning now before he starts work, but other than that, he doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge.”

  “Little shite,” Chris muttered. “I told him not to do crap like that here on the station. He thinks it’s funny, but he’s past the age where he can get away with it.”

  “Which is what Patrick told him,” Jesse said. “Even better, I really think he listened. He’s been on his best behavior ever since. Just let it go.”

  “I guess I can do that this time since Patrick already got on him about it,” Chris said slowly. “I’m trying my best to be a good role model for him, but bloody hell, I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.”

  “Hey,” Jesse said, tugging on Chris’s good hand until Chris scooted into his arms. “None of that. Seth isn’t a little kid you have to coach constantly. He’s nearly an adult himself and old enough to make his own decisions. If he screws up, that’s on him, not on you. You’ve done more than your part already making sure he has a place to stay and enough to eat.”

  Chris sighed and leaned against Jesse. “I will never, ever make a disparaging comment about a parent again. I don’t know how they do it, because just six months with a mostly-grown teenager and I’m at the end of my rope.”

  Jesse kissed the side of Chris’s neck, more in comfort than in an attempt at seduction. He had no idea how he’d handle that kind of responsibility. He only hoped he’d have half Chris’s success if something like that happened to him. He hadn’t seen any of his younger siblings since he left home, though, so it wasn’t likely. His “baby” sister was already older than Seth.