“I’ll have to check with human resources.”
Nathan reached for one of his shoes, but Liam gave his hand a little tug.
“You don’t have to run out so fast.”
“We both know this can’t happen again.” Nathan made sure there was levity in his voice.
“Nah yeah, I wasn’t even planning for it to happen at all.”
“Same.”
“And you’re leaving soon anyway.” Liam said it with a matter-of-factness that startled Nathan. He wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t sound right either. “When does your movie start shooting?”
The movie. Fucking Babe the fucking pig. The lie was like a virus, spreading and growing.
“Soon.” There was no use getting attached to Liam, to anyone. They could ditch you on a doorstep at any moment.
“I hope you’ll stay through lambing season. I can’t get it through it without you.”
The words hit Nathan right in the gut. Before he could stop himself, he returned into the warm bed and let Liam’s arms curl around his body.
“I’ll be here,” Nathan said.
* * *
One more ewe gave birth during the day. It was just as amazing as it had been yesterday. The lambs came out and were walking and bleating within hours. It was a miracle, Nathan thought. And again when the ewe took care of her newborn lambs, the scene tugged at Nathan’s heartstrings. He couldn’t imagine an ewe abandoning one of her lambs, just pretending it never existed. How could humans do that? It didn’t make sense to him, and he liked to hope that his mum thought about him even after she gave him up.
That night, he and Liam went to dinner at Mark’s. As soon as they opened the door, Franny ran up to Nathan and enveloped him in a hug.
“And a good evening to you,” he said.
She pulled back. Her face was bright and eager. “I’m Cinderella!”
“In the play?”
She nodded over and over like she was a bobblehead. “I’m Cinderella in Into the Woods! I can’t believe it.”
“Franny, that’s wonderful!” Liam gave her a hug.
“You’re barely going to see me these next few weeks,” she said. “I’m going to be busy with rehearsals. The show goes up in five weeks!”
“And you will stay busy with rehearsal so long as this doesn’t negatively impact your schoolwork.” Mark came out of the kitchen and put a casserole dish on the dining table. He pointed at his daughter with his oven-mitted hand. “I mean it, Franny.”
“Dad.” She sighed, embarrassed. “I know.”
“I’m just reiterating so you don’t forget.” Mark came over and kissed her on the head. She pulled away with embarrassment in a way that Nathan remembers from seeing his boarding school classmates squirm from the public displays of affection they received when their parents came to visit. With his free hand, Mark patted Walt, who was sitting on the couch, looking at his mobile, presumably already up to speed on Franny’s news.
“It’s exciting,” Nathan said to Mark.
“When this playhouse put on Into the Woods years ago, Mariel played the witch.”
“We should watch the performance tonight after dinner,” Franny said.
“For pointers?” Nathan joked, though inside he was already excited about watching more video of his mum.
“Thank you so much, Nathan. I never thought I could do this, that I could even sing. I wouldn’t have been able to audition without your help and telling me I could do it.”
“You could do it.” Nathan found himself overcome with emotion, but kept it restrained. However, Liam seemed to notice. “It was a whirlwind week of practice, but you did it.”
A few minutes later, Mark announced dinner was ready. Nathan noticed that his folding chair was missing. He looked at Mark and pointed at the empty space where his chair should have gone. Mark exchanged glances with Liam, Franny, and Walt. Nathan was the monkey in the middle of his telepathic moment.
“We decided to put the folding chair away,” Mark said.
He gestured to Mariel’s empty chair.
Nathan was about to say something, but his voice stopped working. His eyes fell on his mum’s chair. The light hit it in a special way and give it an ethereal glow.
Liam pulled the chair out for him. Around the table, he was greeted with the warmest looks, the looks that the ewes gave their newborn sheep.
This time, Nathan couldn’t restrain the emotion. He cleared his throat to say something, but was at a loss for words.
He sunk into the firm cushion of the seat and felt the wood against his back. He was extra careful pulling the chair in, making sure to hold it gently and not drag it across the carpet.
“Much better,” Franny said.
“I’ll say the prayer tonight.” Mark bowed his head.
They held hands. A spark of electricity hit Nathan’s palm when it made contact with Liam’s.
“Dear Lord, thank you for your bounty, for filling our bellies, for filling our hearts. Thank you for bringing this unique web of family into our lives.”
“Amen,” Nathan whispered.
He didn’t let go of Liam’s hand when the prayer was over. Quite the contrary. He squeezed it tight. And Liam squeezed back with equal tenderness.
Chapter 18
Nathan
Over the next two weeks, Nathan and Liam’s life consisted solely of birthing lambs and fucking each other’s brains out. Nathan soon learned how all-consuming lambing season was, and sex was the perfect antidote to get through the stress. Ewes would go into labor at any time of day or night. It seemed like as soon as one finished giving birth, another one would start up, the familiar painful bleats emanating from another corner of the pen. No matter how used Nathan got to some of the more graphic parts of the birthing process, the sight of a ewe with her newborns hit him in the gut each and every time. Liam taught Nathan how to tail dock. They had to put a special rubber band around the lambs’ tails so they would fall off. Liam assured him it was humane and safe because bacteria frequently built up in tails.
The farm was like a department store during the height of the holiday season, or an emergency room after a natural disaster. And yet no matter how busy Liam and Nathan were, they found time to fool around. After a particularly trying lamb birth, Liam would pull Nathan behind the hoof house, and they would make out and suck each other off. Or Nathan would surprise Liam in the outdoor shower. Even eating breakfast together somehow led to sex.
Day after day of watching Liam in action, of him taking charge running the farm and being tender with the animals, made Nathan perpetually stiff in the pants. Farm work was its own form of unending foreplay. The guys didn’t sleep; they got by on wisps of naps throughout the day. The exhaustion became its own aphrodisiac, tearing away their inhibitions. It reminded Nathan of the time he had sex while on Ambien, only this time he remembered everything clearly. He remembered Liam’s calloused, rough hands peeling off his clothes and exploring his body, the storm of passion glowing in his blue eyes as he grunted with orgasm, the moans of pleasure that wafted through their tiny abode, the way his own long cock slid into Liam’s thick ass.
When they weren’t birthing lambs, or fucking, they were building a new pen for their expanding brood. Nathan had never built anything before in his life, save for primary school arts and crafts projects. Mark and the kids would come over to help them out when they could.
Liam and Nathan had to keep track of the lambs being born, make sure their farm’s new additions had food, water, and a place to sleep. That meant more fresh hay, more feeding rounds, and of course, more manure to shovel.
So much manure to shovel.
Lambing season was so all-consuming that after the first week, Nathan stopped sleeping at Mark’s house. Mark set up a cot for Nathan in Liam’s living room, which he used for only the first two nights before he wound up sleeping with Liam. At first, it happened naturally after a bout of nighttime sex. Nathan was so exhausted that he literally couldn’t fathom stumbli
ng to his cot. He woke up in Liam’s arms from what was probably the best sleep of his life. There was something about Liam’s arms and his warm chest that dipped Nathan right to sleep. Everything felt strangely natural, as if they’d been sleeping like this for years, though Nathan chalked that up to the fog of sex. Each morning, Nathan purposely mussed the blankets on his cot in case Mark dropped by.
“You don’t have to do that,” Liam said while sipping his coffee. He watched from the kitchen area as Nathan balled up portions of his cot’s top sheet in his fist to create creases.
“Your family will wonder why I don’t seem to move when I rest.”
“If only.” Liam laughed and handed Nathan a piping-hot mug of his new favorite beverage. “You play tug-of-war with the blankets in your sleep.”
“I do?”
“Even in a REM cycle, you’re still a prick.” Liam kissed his neck, sending a rush of heat through his body. “Are you still up for dinner tonight at the house?”
“Absolutely.” Mark had convinced them to come out of lambing hibernation for a family dinner. He’d been nice enough to bring over home-cooked meals. Nathan looked forward to other human contact.
“We’ll just remind the ewes not to pop out any lambs after four o’clock.” Liam leaned against the kitchen counter, mug in hand, his shirt half-unbuttoned, glancing out the window at the livestock.
Nathan was hard in seconds.
“Are you getting good research for your film role?” Liam asked.
And then he wasn’t. Nathan had drafted a synopsis of the gritty Babe reboot to show to Liam, more proof of his alibi (and his shoddy writing skills). The guilt over lying to Liam and his family lingered in the back of his mind everyday. He wondered how much longer he could keep the truth locked away inside him.
“I’m getting really good material to use, yeah,” Nathan said. “I’ll make sure you get acknowledged in the credits.”
“I have to admit, I love seeing my name in the credits. This time, I won’t be mentioned alongside a hundred other visual effects artists.”
“Is this your family?” Looking for a change of subject, Nathan picked up a framed picture partially hidden on the corner of Liam’s desk, one of those awkward family photos destined for internet mockery.
“Nah yeah, it is.”
Nathan pointed to the youngest child on his father’s lap. The boy was giving the camera a pouty sneer, one that had been given to Nathan several times when he first started on the farm.
“That’s me.”
“You have a big family.” Nathan felt a twinge of jealousy.
Liam came over and wrapped Nathan in a hug from behind as he looked over his shoulders. “I have four older brothers.”
“That’s hot.”
“Why is that hot?”
“I don’t know. Five brothers is just hot.”
“You think we sat around giving each other hand jobs?”
Nathan pictured being in the middle of it. Liam yanked the picture away.
“It was not fun being the youngest.”
“Aw, you got teased?”
“Yeah.” Liam’s voice got heavy. “Mark’s great, but Callum, James, and Oliver were…they loved to torment me, beat me up. They called it roughhousing so Mum and Dad wouldn’t punish them. They knew where to hit me so our parents wouldn’t see the bruises.”
“Punches in the thigh because they left the biggest marks,” Nathan said with familiarity. The phantom pain tingled in his leg. “But you’re all adults now.”
“You might want to remind them.” Liam stared at the family picture with a mix of sadness and disgust. “By being the youngest, I was the black sheep without even trying.”
“I’m the ginger sheep,” Nathan said. “Only there’s nothing lighthearted and playful about my family’s hatred of me.”
“The ginger sheep?” Liam replaced the picture on the table. “Cause of your hair?”
“My oldest cousin, Damian, called me that and it stuck. He was named after the demonic child in The Omen, which seemed to be appropriate foreshadowing.”
Liam cheeks bunched up in that cheeky smile that was familiar to Nathan, one he had on while throwing teasing comments at each other during sex or even when he was microwaving dinner for them.
It was a smile Nathan didn’t want to forget.
“You’re the coolest ginger sheep.” Liam put his arms around Nathan and pulled him in for a soft kiss.
Nathan kissed him back, although inside, he flinched at something in the moment. He didn’t like talking about his family, especially such personal moments like those. It was too easy to drop his guard around Liam, and that was dangerous.
“Mark kind of feels that way with his own family of redheads. He’s the black haired sheep. You’d fit in perfectly with him.”
Nathan bit his tongue and gulped back the awkwardness. The truth rattled in its locked cage deep down inside him.
You have no idea.
Nathan let out a sigh.
Yet.
Chapter 19
Nathan
Nathan recognized a new car in Mark’s driveway when they walked over for dinner. Had he been ensconced so much in lambing and sexing season that he didn’t know Mark got a new car? Hanging from the rearview mirror was a gold cross that caught the moonlight in its clutches.
“Did Mark find religion recently?” Nathan asked.
“Shit,” Liam said when he saw it. “That’s Pastor and Mrs. Fry. Mariel’s parents.”
“Mariel’s parents?” Nathan repeated. Mariel’s parents equals my grandparents! Nathan hadn’t thought about having grandparents. He thought that since Mariel had passed, so had her parents. They must have been ravaged by losing her, so hopefully finding out they had another grandson might cheer them up.
But the spring in his step vanished by the time he reached the front door. How could he tell them the truth and not Mark and Liam?
Liam let out a sigh and turned to him. “Just so you know, you might be the first openly gay person they’ve ever met.”
“That they know of.”
Liam raised an eyebrow, somewhat agreeing with him. He opened the door.
And there they were. Nathan’s grandparents. They sat on the couch with Walt as he showed them something on his phone. They had to be in their late sixties, but they looked like a pair of those active senior citizens who play golf and tennis. The Pastor was a tall man with a full head of unabashedly white hair and a bulbous nose that Nathan remembered from his pre-nose job days. (Fortunately, Damian hit him in the face with a ball once. It was the nicest thing the kid ever did.) He hoped he held onto his hair like the Pastor had. His grandmother was shorter and had a plumper frame. She wore an ankle-length skirt and very little makeup.
“Hiya Pastor Fry. Hi Brenda,” Liam said with reluctance. Nathan’s grandparents stood up. Pastor Fry shook Liam’s hand, while Liam went in and kissed Brenda on the cheek. “Good to see you. This is Nathan.”
Liam stepped aside and let the grandparents have a good look at their grandson. Nathan found himself straightening his back and smoothing down his hair.
Nathan found himself getting emotional instantly, the same way when he’d first seen Franny and Walt. This was his family. His grandparents back in London had favorites, and Nathan was not one of them. They went three years without acknowledging his birthday, and gave a shrug when he was cast in a movie.
Pastor Fry looked him over for a lengthy moment, and Nathan wondered if he knew. Oh, how he wanted to ask, but now was not the time. He would charm them at the dinner table and let them fall in love with him like his half-siblings had.
“Pleasure to meet you.” Nathan shook both of their hands.
“Likewise,” Pastor Fry said. Brenda gave a polite smile.
“I’m working on Liam’s farm during lambing season. It’s been quite an experience.”
“Busy, eh?” the Pastor asked.
“You have no idea. Lots of lambs. We had to build a whole extr
a pen to house them. But it’s part of Liam’s grand plan to expand this operation.” Nathan couldn’t stop himself from speaking. He was like a little kid wanting to impress his grandparents with all the cool, new facts he learned in school.
“Nathan!” Franny ran down the stairs. She wore the baby blue dress Nathan had bought for her and still looked like a million bucks. “And Grandma and Grandpa!” She hugged them, too, though with less enthusiasm.
“When is your show, dear?” Brenda asked.
“Three weeks away! We’re in the thick of rehearsals.”
It turned out Franny had quite a voice, and with each practice, she was sounding more and more like their mother, according to the videos Nathan had watched.
“You’re going to be great,” Nathan said. “I’ve been helping her practice her singing and getting down her lines. I’ve dabbled in acting.”
“Very nice!” Brenda said with an exaggerated nod.
“Well, more than dabbled. I’ve acted in theater and movies.” Judging by their impressed head nods, he believed he was quickly getting on their good side.
“I just had a fitting for my costume,” Franny said.
“It seems like only yesterday we were going to watch Mariel in her performances at that playhouse,” Brenda said.
“Well, the performances that were appropriate,” Pastor Fry added. “Some of those shows were not right for a family-friendly community theater.”
She turned to Nathan. “Our daughter used to be an actress.”
“I’ve heard.” Nathan played along.
Brenda stared into his eyes for an extended second, as if she recognized him. The world seemed to stop turning. Nathan thought he was going to explode from nerves.
“Is everyone ready for dinner?” Mark asked from the dining room, breaking their staring contest. “The food is ready.”
They made their way to the table. Brenda sat down first.
“Franny,” Pastor Fry said. He stopped at the foot of the couch.
“Yes, Grandpa?”
Nathan turned to listen from the dining room, as did Liam.
Outside Looking In: A Browerton University Book Page 12