The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters (7 page)

“You have really amazing eyes, Rance,” Ben said quietly. “You don’t need to look away from me.”

Crawford wanted to say something nice back, something about how ever since he’d seen Ben’s eyes he’d been obsessed with capturing it in yarn, but that wasn’t what came out of his mouth. “I’m not complicated,” he said. “There’s nothing deep or interesting going on in my eyes.” Not like what he saw in Ben’s eyes: Ben, who could charm half the town with a smile and a quick comment or who could look up at the Colorado sky with such yearning and such joy.

“I had complicated, you know.” Ben’s eyes darkened now to almost the same teal color of the half-mitts on those hands that were still holding Craw’s.

“I assumed,” Crawford said cautiously. He hadn’t wanted to pry.

“We had separate apartments, and
he
at least, had separate other lovers, and I was just… just me. I just wanted one lover, and one place, and someone to keep me warm and listen to my bullshit and tell me a little about his day. But… it was….” And his voice grew bitter and black like burnt coffee, and Crawford felt bad and helped him finish the sentence. “Complicated,” they said together, and Ben’s bitterness faded, and his smile came out again.

“I told you, I like simple.”

Crawford nodded. “I… I’m doing Thanksgiving this year.” Thanksgiving was in a couple of days. “It’s just me and Ari, her husband, the twins. Aiden has his own family, but he likes it at my place or Ari’s. Jeremy hasn’t had anyone besides us.” As he spoke, Ben took a few steps in until they were eye-to-eye and so close he could feel the heat of Ben’s breath. “Would you like to come?”

“I’d be honored,” Ben said, and Crawford shook him off.

“Don’t be honored. Just be there.”

Ben pulled away his hands away and turned around, muttering something about killing a fucking moment, and Crawford sighed. Oh God. He really had. Ben had been there—he might even have thought about kissing, a thing that Crawford hadn’t done in a
very
long time, but Crawford and his irritable pride.

“Tomorrow, then?” Crawford said, as humbly as he could.

Ben turned around and smiled then, and if his smile was troubled, his words weren’t. “I’d love to.”

The day went well. They started with coffee, and Crawford let Ben get the coffee, because whatever Ben said to the girl inside sure did give her a loose hand with the cream. The whole town knew he was gay; she must know he wasn’t flirting for real. He just had that effect on people—they wanted to give him things. Crawford could testify.

The trip itself was good, although the roads were icy and negotiating the twelve-something hairpin turns up the mountains and out of the valley was tough. Crawford was lucky his upper-body strength was considerable from wrangling sheep and alpacas, doing the shearing, and wrestling with the mill. Hell, his entire life made him a good candidate for steering his monster-beater of a truck.

Ben kept up a steady stream of conversation, so he must not have been worried. “I had to take a trip to Boulder last week,” he said like Crawford hadn’t noticed his absence keenly, “and I can’t get over the… the
sky
in this state. In Granby, it’s amazing… it’s like you’re the smallest Cheerio in the bowl full of sky!”

Crawford didn’t even hardly have to respond. “It makes you feel big and small at the same time.”

“It does, and that’s why it’s funny how sometimes the animals just make everything standard-sized again. I feel important and the world feels big and the sky doesn’t make—” Ben stopped himself, and even though Crawford was driving, he caught the quick, darting look his way.

 Crawford was wrestling the wheel at the moment, so even
he
was surprised when he heard himself say, “Make what?”

“Make it feel like what you want doesn’t matter.”

They had 200 yards of straightaway then, and Crawford managed a look square into Ben’s eyes. “What you want matters,” he said soberly, and then he was on another fifteen-mile-an-hour hairpin turn, and he only hoped what Ben said was “What you want matters too.”

Lunch was good. They ate at one of those steakhouses with the girls in the tight T-shirts, mostly because the steak was good. Crawford dug into his twenty-two ounce T-bone and watched with amusement as Ben damned near charmed the tits off their blonde waitress. She left, giggling, after leaving Craw an extra baked potato and some bacon to go with it, all on the house, and Crawford swallowed a mouthful of steak and said, “Are you sure you’re gay?”

Ben laughed, his eyes crinkling warmly in the corners, and primly wiped the scruff around his chin. “Yeah, Rance. I’m absofuckinglutely sure.” Something about the way he was looking at Craw made him think sincerely about kissing the man before the end of the day, and for a little bit of time, he let that thought, that wildly optimistic plan, warm him from his stomach to his chest to his balls. He even let it make him sweat.

Then they stopped to make a delivery to Stanley, and it all went to hell.

Ben insisted on coming in, and that was embarrassing. Crawford stammered and turned redder, and then, because he was socially damaged, apparently, blurted, “I used to bang this guy in the bathroom. I don’t know how nice he’ll be.”

Ben grew very, very still. “Uhm, used to? When did you stop?”

“About three months before you got here,” Crawford said, because he delivered about once every two months.

Ben wasn’t fooled, though. He raised his eyebrows. “So how often do you deliver?” he asked pleasantly.

Crawford sighed. “Every three months.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed, and he got out of the truck without another word.

He beat Crawford in, because Crawford was carrying two boxes of yarn, and he didn’t offer to help with the other two cases of roving that were tucked into the back of the truck under the bungee cords, either. Crawford lumbered in, and Stanley pointed disinterestedly to the back room. He wore a thin little smile, and he and Ben were busy showing shark teeth to each other and discussing… well, Crawford wasn’t sure what they were discussing, but he thought it might have been him.

“So you’ve known Rance long?” Ben asked after offering Stanley the large coffee Craw had insisted on bringing.

“’Bout five years,” Stanley said, as though that meant something. “But I call him Crawford.”

“That’s funny,” Ben said using that tone of voice that said it was pretty much the opposite of funny, ever and always. “I’ve known him for two months, and I call him Rance.”

“Oh, honey,” Stanley said, his voice dripping with something that would gag a bee, “you can’t ever know Crawford. It doesn’t matter how deep he gets under your skin, baby, he’ll always be just one mysterious bundle of grizzly fur, wontcha, Craw?”

Craw was on his way out to get the second load of boxes, and his sudden involvement in the conversation came as quite a surprise. “Huh?”

“I’m just saying that you don’t let anyone get too close, do you?”

Stanley seemed to be challenging him in some way, and Ben was looking at him like he needed Crawford to defend him somehow.

“Of course I do,” Crawford said, feeling puzzled. “I live right next to my store. People have to get close or I wouldn’t sell any stock.”

He looked at Ben to see whether or not he’d said the right thing, and Ben’s eyebrows were squished in together over wide, shiny eyes, as though he couldn’t decide either, but he was looking at Crawford like he still held some value, so Crawford smiled back into his pretty sea-green eyes.

“You’re right,” Ben murmured. “You do let a select few get close.”

“You have a store next to your house?” Stanley asked, and Craw shrugged and went back out into the shortening day to get the rest of the stock.

He came back in, and Ben was looking less like he wanted to cry and more like he wanted to think, so Crawford had to hope that was a good thing. “That oughta do you through Christmas, Stan. Have Margie give me a call if you need more stock, okay?”

“Okay, fine, Crawford. You can take your pretty little skank here and motor any time.” Stanley was looking at a stock clipboard

Ben took a deep breath and then put on his most charming expression. “So nice to meet you, Stanley!” he said, his voice so jovial it could cut through frost on a pane of glass. “I can’t wait until Craw’s next delivery. I’m sure I’ll be coming with him then, too.”

Stanly pulled up his lip and looked bored. “Good to know one of you will be coming
sometime
,
then,” he said, and then jerked the fingers of his hand in a little wave. “Buh-
bye.”

Craw grimaced. He and Ben climbed into the truck in the fading light, and he was conscious that the wind had picked up and there were snowflakes swirling lightly from the clouds overhead. But true to Colorado’s fickle little heart, there was sun shooting under the cloud cover, turning the sky in the west the same orange and pink that Aiden had tried to capture with his last color chart.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said as he started the truck. “The outfitters is right around the corner from here. We can get you a jacket you can move in that’ll keep you warm, okay?”

Ben nodded but didn’t say anything. In fact, he kept his eyes fixed on that strange, sun-snowy horizon.

He was preoccupied through shopping, too, and in the end, Craw just picked the waterproof/windproof lined coat with the faux-denim exterior, and Ben put it on his credit card without protest or even much interest.

The drive home was melancholy and quiet, and Crawford was too invested with not killing the two of them on the icy road to protest much. When they pulled up in front of Ben’s house (Craw no longer thought of it as Ms. Gertie’s), he got out of the truck and swung around, the better to help Ben down.

“I’m not a girl, Rance,” Ben said, his sadness too strong for his words to sting. “I can get out of the truck myself.”

Crawford sighed and stood, his bare hands buried in his pockets, shifting from one foot to the next. “Yeah, but… I want….” He stopped, feeling stupid. “I want to take care of you.”

Ben grunted, the sound so much like Crawford’s own that Craw’s head snapped back in surprise. “In what way, Crawford? Seriously. In what way? Like Burlingame, the alpaca? Ariadne, the mommy? Aiden, the kid who’s got a crush on you? Maybe like Jeremy, who was just lost until you showed up? You take care of everybody, Crawford—how do you want to take care of me?”

Crawford looked at him and floundered for words. “I… God. Your smile is so pretty,” he said by way of introduction. “You just smiled that day, with the movers, and I… I went home and designed that yarn just for you.”

Ben’s eyes crossed. “So you take care of me with yarn?”

“You got a better idea?” Craw asked, truly at a loss.

“Jesus, Crawford—you go home and knit your goddamned fingers to the bone, but have you ever once thought it would be easier to kiss me? A guy could freeze his dick off before you’d offer him a hand job, couldn’t he? You’ll go and bang the counter guy at the yarn store before you even fucking—mmmmmmffff….”

Crawford was devouring him. His hands were on Ben’s slender shoulders and his rough, hard mouth was plastered against Ben’s sweet, soft, pillowy one, and Ben was opening the barn door for Crawford and letting him pillage the stock.

Oh God, the guy tasted good. He tasted like the chocolate they’d eaten in the car on the way back and like the gum he’d chewed after that, but it was more than just what he’d eaten. His lips were soft and his tongue was inviting… hell, it was fierce, and Crawford opened the same way.

Ben made a
mm-mmm-nummy
sound and thrust his tongue in and tasted Crawford the same way Craw had just tasted him. Craw wasn’t good with kissing, but he’d made sure the lead-in to this one was nearly two months long, so he was okay with it. Ben invaded, and Crawford wrapped his arms around Ben’s shoulders and crushed their bodies together between their parkas in the swirling snow, and Ben just cuddled up next to his chest and ground up against his groin and made Crawford feel warm all over.

He wasn’t sure who pulled away first, but his cock was stiff against the placket of his jeans, and his breath was being forced out in pants. Ben was literally whimpering, and he had one leg wrapped around the back of Crawford’s thighs as he tried to grind up against the front of Craw’s leg and get off. They had just come to the part of the kiss where it was either back off or go down on each other in the snow, and thank God someone had the good sense not to go that far.

Craw wasn’t completely sure it was him who had it, either.

“God,” Ben panted. “God. There’s only one thing I want right now, but I’ve got to go put the heater on in the lean-to, and you’ve got to tend stock, and it’s late and…”

Craw nodded. He had an hour, maybe two, of chores to do—they both knew it. He swallowed and placed a brief, promising kiss at the corner of Ben’s mouth. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he gasped, and then, over Ben’s whimper of protest, he said, “I’m going to have a question with me. You decide how you answer, okay?”

“God,” Ben panted, “you got a question that’ll go with
that?
”

Crawford didn’t have enough left to laugh. “Well,” he said with the kind of snuggle that made Ben’s ribs creak and the muscle between his own shoulders stretch out, “I didn’t say it would be in words.”

They didn’t let go after that, but they didn’t talk much either, and Crawford managed to brush Ben’s cheek with the side of his nose and to notice, even in the darkness, that Ben had a few freckles on his cheeks that the scruff didn’t cover.

“Why don’t you shave?” he mumbled, his lips rasped by that little bit of stubble.

“Why don’t you talk?” Ben answered, making a
hmm
sound as Crawford explored him, and those were the last words they had.

Crawford kissed him one more time—oh God, so sweet—before he found himself back in the truck and on the small dirt road to tend to his critters.

He did his chores by rote, making sure the animals were warm and happy in the barn before he retreated to his house and started the fire in the modified Franklin stove in the middle of his kitchen. His bedroom was right above the kitchen itself, and with the gas heat on and a little bit of wood, he could have a floor that didn’t make his feet ache with cold when he woke up the next morning.