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If God was real, Satoru hoped He didn’t need to spend any time in Utah – for His sake.
Leaning into the glass, the scrub-coated fields and mountains below were a landscape identical to the rest of the land they’d flown over since Reno, and as much as he’d like to say there was nothing here for him, it couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Thousands of acres below bore the Gojo name, everything caged between two parallel mountain ridges running north to south. Where the lower fields were bare dust and scrub, the upper fields were green and rich, abundance reaching its peak surrounding a sizable lake that marked the northern border. Though the Gojo Ranch seemed to be boundless from the soil, it was exactly that unending sprawl that made you feel so small while you stood chained to it.
From 3,000 feet, it was a toy model of a future Satoru hadn’t asked for. Growing up destined to carry the torch through the scorching desert had felt a lot like being forced to live within this miniature version of it, and each time he crossed back over the state line, the chain began its snake back up his ankle once more.
The first three years of university had been good to him. Almost anywhere would have been sufficient to fulfill his dream of being surrounded by more humans than cattle, but Los Angeles had been a keen choice. There were school events and opportunities that didn’t shake out of his family tree, soda counters to flirt at and movie theaters in his neighborhood. Neighborhoods, period. The promise of something new each day.
And most importantly, people to do these things with. Classrooms full of ‘em. Clubs overflowing, where those emerging from similar isolation mingled with others who’d been living the nightlife for years. Friends of Dorothy, new and old. And none of them were dragging him to black tie rancher’s dinners or homeschool dances or church.
Satoru had made a life for himself independent of who he had to be here in the eyes of cattle and destiny and God, and it wasn’t dramatic to say that this trip marked the beginning of the end of it.
He sighed a little too loud, pulling the curtain back over the window as a stewardess arrived at his row with a low service cart. She was perfectly coiffed, a high-class, classic beauty that would’ve been alluringly attractive if Satoru had any interest in her stockinged knees.
“Your lobster course, Mr. Gojo.” She gestured gracefully at the meal like the money paying for it was his own.
Though Satoru didn’t feel like it, he met her plastered-on smile with an identical grin. A real dazzler, by the undisguised charm in her eye.
“Thank you kindly, miss.”
–
Father had made his intentions for the summer clear when he’d booked the ticket – watch and learn, prepare to inherit the Gojo Ranch and all the responsibility it held, get serious for once in your goddamned life, Satoru.
It wasn’t clear how anyone could be serious about anything here – anything besides cattle and dirt and an abundance of oxygen that Satoru didn’t value over the life he’d created in their absence.
Though the patriarch had originally demanded three months of his precious youth be sentenced to death, Satoru had other plans. The best deal he could broker with three-quarters of a fine USC education was one month – a 30 day taste of the future force-fed with an admittedly shiny looking spoon, bookended neatly by the yearly Rancher’s Association of America dinner.
The largest event of the year, every rancher in the Western US worth his weight in cattle would be in attendance to swing his dick and assert his dominance as the richest cowboy this side of the Mississippi (regardless of the fact that almost all of them were not). This year’s dinner happened to be hosted in Salt Lake City, and Father intended to use it as a means to announce that next summer, the highest grossing ranch in Utah would begin the transfer of leadership to the Prodigal Son.
By their agreement, the month of detainment ended the moment he loosened his tie and set foot back over the threshold of the country club. After that, Father was barred from bothering him about official ranch business until he was degree in hand next April, 1956.
Rising from his seat, Satoru fastened the button on his suit blazer and donned his matching charcoal hat. This would be his longest stay at the ranch since he’d entered college, but given the hard truth of what was to come, this was about the best deal he was gonna get.
He stooped to exit the plane, ascending onto the heat haze of the tarmac to find Ijichi waiting, likely boiling to death in his black Gojo-issued uniform.
“A man’ll turn into a puddle out here,” Satoru griped as soon as he was within hearing range, peeling off his outer layer.
“Afternoon, Satoru,” Ijichi said, unclasping his hands from behind his back. “I’ll fetch your bags and we’ll be on our way home.”
30 days to salvation. God grant him the serenity to make it there.
-
Imposing iron gates at the south edge of the estate led them in. The coupe’s suspension rattled loudly with the transition from pavement to dirt. While the waning sun lit miles of empty road through the windshield, a cloud of dust bloomed in their wake and erased the rest of the world from the rear view mirror.
A strange weight settled in Satoru’s stomach.
He messed with the radio tuner in search of a comfort to fill the space, a transmission from the outside world. An almost instant lapse in object permanence.
Patsy Cline had only been serenading them for 30 seconds before Ijichi muted her to a low whisper.
“It must feel awfully nice,” he tried, characteristically hesitant, “returning home after being away for so long.”
Satoru smoothed his hand over his hair only to find his careful style now melted and pliable in the heat. Sticky wax coated the tips of his fingers; this place wasn’t made for civilization. He leaned in to assess the damage in the rear view mirror, smoothing the mussed locks of his unnaturally light hair back into place before side-eyeing Ijichi.
Pointy all his life, it seemed like the years had only made him pointier. He was a spindly man, out of place in comparison to most of the labor-built bodies employed by the ranch. The neat but full mustache between the long of his nose and the long of his chin was new, though the proper man beneath it was still as uptight as the day he’d been sentenced to making sure child Satoru stayed at least mildly in line.
“After all these years, I’d like to think you know me better than that, Ijichi. I’m hurt.”
After a few nervous flicks of his eyes from the dusty road, Ijichi smiled back and let Patsy do the talking again.
The main house was the largest building, habitable or not, on the ranch. Built into the mountain, it was a modern marvel – three stories atop a spacious patio oasis. Its high ceilings and large windows saw everything, casting a shadow down over the rest of the ranch.
Impressive was a suitable word. Imposing was another.
A driveway diverged from the road to the barns beyond, steep and winding up to the top. Just short of it, something akin to panic soared high in Satoru’s chest. A burning need for just a few more minutes of freedom.
“Let me out here.”
The brakes screeched, and questioning eyes fell on Satoru.
“Your father will be waiting for you in the study.”
With the wave of his hand, Satoru reached for the door.
Sweat immediately gathered at his brow in the sunlight. He put on his hat, tossed his suit jacket over his arm, and slammed the car door shut. He didn’t have a plan, but he’d spent a lot of time here kicking rocks to avoid his father; hopefully his legs hadn’t gotten too long to ride that bike.
“Satoru?” A gruff voice came from somewhere far off.
Spinning around, Satoru squinted through the solar flare into the horse pasture at his right. Dust crunched beneath the perfect shine of his dress shoes as he crossed the drive, hand raised to shield his eyes against the dying sun.
At the other side of the fence stood an ornery farmhand that’d been working the ranch as long as Satoru had been alive (and wasn’t quick to let him forget it). Along with Ijichi, Toji had seen him at what most considered his worst – teen years of (in his opinion, righteous) rebellion, or, as much as was possible for a boy living largely alone in the desert. Unlike Ijichi, he could take a razz and dole out some of his own.
“Old man,” Satoru grinned into his insult as his feet came to a halt. “Looking leathery as ever.”
Toji lifted his worn flat brim and dragged a sun-darkened hand over his equally dark brow.
“The ankle biter returns,” he joked, replacing the hat on his head. “Not all of us were born to rule. Someone has to work.”
When Satoru scoffed, Toji finally cracked a smile. His clothes were dusty, and his hands were even dirtier where he leaned one lazily against the fence.
“Can’t say it looks like you’re doing a whole lot of anything right this minute.”
Toji tossed his free hand in the air in yield.
“He likes to run with ‘em before we put ‘em away for the night.”
Lifting his shielding hand, Satoru looked further into the ring.
Three horses galloped in play at the other side, manes rippling in the wind. Midstride, they juked in sequence, noses high in the air with a whinny of delight as they took off in the other direction. Beyond a pair of dashing boots, their impressive size blocked Satoru’s view of their playmate on the other side until the swirl of motion continued around the ring to reveal him.
All those people he’d left this desert prison to meet? None of them looked like this.
The most beautiful man Satoru had ever seen ran toward him soaked in golden hour light.
His face was delicate, sloping planes and full lips – a beauty rarely seen on any man let alone the kind of rugged, working body that propelled him across the ring. Still, his movement was fluid and sure, the fringe of his mid-calf chaps fluttering around him in the chase.
Most striking was his hair. Not unlike the mane of the deep brown gelding at his heels, it flowed long and dark in the wind while he ran and curled down over his shoulders when he didn’t, almost glowing as the sunset shined through it.
The sight of it all knocked Satoru senseless, catchin’ flies, though Toji didn’t seem to notice the world shifting beneath him.
“They seem to enjoy it,” he said cluelessly, chuckling as one of the horses trotted by. “Knock yourself out, I told ‘im.”
The man’s face lit up with pure joy as he altered course again and sent the horses into a new frenzy of playful motion. He chased them to the center of the ring where he stayed, hands on his hips and a beaming smile on his face as they continued to loop around the outside.
It was like he’d cracked the code to living – landed himself in the exact place on earth he was supposed to be. No one had ever been more right. Satoru had never seen anything like it.
He pressed his stomach into the fence; it’d dirty his shirt but it’d be worth it for a better look.
“Who is that?”
“New hire from some time last winter. Suguru Geto. Bit of an oddball, that one,” Toji said, crossing his arms over his broad chest and settling his rear against the fence. He paused where Satoru normally would have had something biting to say to fill the space. With only the sound of hooves, Toji continued.
“Showed up with almost nothing to his name, some kinda magician with the livestock. A real hard worker, mostly keeps to himself in the fields and in the house, but…” he waved a hand dismissively, “a little queer, what with the hair and all.” He paused again. “I’ve heard a few rumors at the pool hall I’d’ve rather not.”
Satoru tensed. There were limits to their longtime friendship – things Toji didn’t know about what he himself had been up to in his time away from the ranch. Things that would certainly be deemed worthy of similar gossip.
“I don’t mind so long as he brings the cattle home at night,” Toji mused eventually, shaking Satoru from his daze.
A chorus of snorts and neighs rang out. One gelding got a run on his master, swung his back end around, and halted them both face to face. The man accepted defeat with a blinding smile. Leaning in, arms out, he tucked his cheek against the horse’s nose, closing his eyes and lovingly petting over its neck. Pure sweetness in warm tangerine light.
The game – and the day – was over. The ranch hand pulled away and began to cross toward them, lifting the bottom of his yellow and green checked wild rag from his neck to wipe the sweat from his jaw.
“Suguru, this is Satoru. Gojo,” Toji said, puffing out his chest and forcing a mocking affect, “the heir.”
“Hi there,” Satoru said, pulling his hat from his head to his chest and leaning in with one foot braced on the fence. A thousand watt smile came naturally.
Immediate shock ran through him. The face that looked back at him held none of the warmth or love it had held in abundance for the horses milling behind him. Blank at best, his eyes grew sharp and guarded, a different kind of beautiful – one that looked made to kill.
“Hello.”
It barely passed the mark of being civil. Without missing a beat, he turned to Toji.
“I’ll get ‘em settled back at the barn, take care of the tack, don’t worry.”
With a flip of his hair, he turned at the hip to look back over his shoulder. Satoru searched his profile against the sun. His high cheekbones and upturned nose were even better up close, but held no explanation of his indifference to him.
Toji grunted affirmatively. Removing his hat, he swung a leg between the fence rungs, bending to cross through to the other side. Satoru glanced back at him as he walked away.
“Go easy on ‘im,” he called back. It was unclear who the message was intended for.
“I just flew in from-”
Satoru started to speak as he turned back to the ring, immediately finding that he was speaking to empty, arid air. His attempted conversation partner was well on his way to the barn’s entrance at the other side of the ring, a broad back in dirty, white linen, and a sliver of plain dungarees that had no right to cling as tight as they did to his swinging hips.
Three horses followed close behind for no reason other than the same magnetic attraction that gave Satoru the urge to jump the fence and follow him himself. When all three had entered, the barn door slid shut with a heavy clunk, not a single glance spared for Satoru.
Dumbstruck by the meeting, Satoru remained at the fence until deep blue seeped into orange and the sun finally fell over the mountains. Placing his hat back on his head, he began the long walk up the winding driveway to slavery.
-29 days to salvation-
Barely 24 hours into the educational exercise and Satoru was cursing his inability to bargain a more favorable deal, like 30 hours instead of 30 days.
If learning only equated to staring at the financial books to determine which kind of cow had lived and died most profitably for the past 20 years and staring across the room while Father puffed a cigar behind his desk, it was going to be an excruciating month.
All signs pointed to such.
Between the tasks his father laid out – and during them too – Satoru’s thoughts all seemed to wander back to the ranch hand. The somehow fluid movement of his rugged body. The pretty shine of his black hair in the sunlight and how it’d feel slipping through his hands. The way he wore joy on his beautiful face.
It was rare for Satoru to experience one-sided interest in an unfavorable direction. Good looks, a good name, and good luck were always on his side; most people were interested in at least one of the three.
Not Suguru, it seemed.
His disinterest in Satoru felt almost arrogant, like he was trying to make a point. While he pretended to read the reports on last year’s calving season, Satoru tried and failed to imagine what it was.
-
Finally freed from the work day and a conversationless dinner, Satoru stepped out for some air. The bottommost entrance to the house spat him out onto the expansive patio, modern stone and concrete with more highly maintained greenery than could be found in the rest of the state combined. The shimmering, turquoise pool called temptingly, but instead, he took the long staircase down to the access road and let the magnet pull him toward the barns.
He drew a short comb from his pocket and ran it along the sides of his head as he walked. Father hated his hair, too long to be a man you could respect. Lord knows what he’d have to say about Suguru. Whatever it was, it’d be wrong.
Satoru thought back to Toji’s description: a little queer, the hair and all.
Someone like that on the ranch a little earlier in life would have sped up a few realizations for a young Satoru.
Rounding the side of the horse barn, the ranch hand residence appeared in its shadow, neatly tucked out of sight from the opulent windows of the main house. Dilapidated was too harsh a word, though only by a hair’s breadth. The roof was rusting, the siding was warped and peeling, the whole thing looked like it may be sinking at the corner.
He’d never noticed when he was younger and it was only Toji and the others living here, but all of a sudden, it seemed like much more of a problem when he found Suguru pulling quilts from a sagging clothesline in the yard beside it.
A calico barn cat was weaving through his ankles, begging for the attention he was devoting to pulling clothespins from the line. He bent to give her a scruff on the chin before folding the blankets over his arm one by one into a quickly growing mound. The more he added, the less organized the pile became until the armful became almost unmanageable to hold, every attempt to reposition them an overcorrection that threatened to dip the edges down into the dirt.
Tired of the struggle, Satoru surged forward toward the three still hung over the line.
“Here, let me help you with that,” he said, quickly scooping them into his arms before he could be turned away.
Still, it’d be naive to think he wouldn’t try.
Suguru wheeled around, blankets flying outward in a welcome breeze as he twirled. Never before had Satoru seen such a twisted-up face at his offer of goodwill.
“Don’t- I didn’t ask-”
“It’s really no bother! I’ll help you bring ‘em inside.”
Satoru boldly stepped around him, long legs crossing the yard back toward the front door of the house. Paint chips crumbled off the door against the clean blankets in his arms when he clumsily reached for the doorknob.
“Stop,” a soft but stern voice ordered behind him. A cushy force bumped him sideways off the doorstep, opening the door and stepping inside.
“Yeesh, needs a new paint job!” Satoru called through the open door, inspecting the damage. He hadn’t been inside since he was ten, maybe twelve, and he was too busy drinking in his first peek at shabby walls and sparse furniture to realize that Suguru was only a step or two away out of view. “Jeez, I haven’t seen this place in-”
Before the sole of his shoe could meet the floorboards, a wall of man stopped him. That same pinched-up face scowled back at his enthusiasm as the quilts in his arms magically disappeared.
“I’ll move fixing this place up to the top of my to-do list right away.”
Sneering, Suguru took a rushed step backward and slammed the door shut, all but kissing the tip of Satoru’s nose.
After the shock wore off, Satoru walked away, hands in his pockets, whistling through an undeterred smile.
-25 days to salvation-
The house on the hill served well as a watchtower.
After scouring his father’s belongings and coming up nearly empty, Satoru had been determined to make do. For the last three days, his free hours had been spent camped out at the floor-to-ceiling windows, opalescent mother-of-pearl opera glasses pressed tight to his eye sockets.
Though his naked eye served him best to track the mass of movement from afar, gold handle in hand, he could see down into the herds as they approached the near pastures, handsome ranch hand at the rear.
Just as Father intended, Satoru was learning – learning about Suguru. He came home around the same time each day: 4:01 PM one day, 4:10 the next, 4:12 yesterday. When the day’s cattle rotations were completed, playtime began in the horse ring. Just a glimpse of him in his element was enough to make it worth the wait.
Still, he couldn’t make Suguru see the good in him if he stayed so far away.
Under the guise of “learning the ranch”, Satoru had gathered information from Toji – the ranch hands’ typical schedule, the field rotation for the cattle, who generally did what. While he had allowed the majority of it to go in one ear and out the other, he had selectively retained what he needed to know.
Now, bagged lunch in hand courtesy of Kuroi in the kitchen, Satoru saddled a horse for the first time in several years and set off.
Every pasture branched off of the road that ran straight north through the center of the ranch. The progression to more abundant grass was swift, and trees began to sprout with greater frequency as arid land transitioned to more wet, nutrient rich soil nearing the lake.
When Satoru was a kid, the upper fields served as a much more interesting playground than those in the south, and as a teenager, they served as a much better hiding place. Still, any time spent out here had been out of necessity, not out of respect for the land. He didn’t feel much different now, turning off the road onto the path into field six.
Wandering at the edge, he found a field’s worth of grazing cattle, a horse tied to nothing, and no ranch hand. He dismounted, stepping cautiously toward the lone horse when he spotted a pair of worn boots sticking out the side of a low, scuffy juniper tree. Circling it revealed more of those fitted dungarees covered by rich, tanned leather chaps and a dirty, pale shirt. The same yellow and green checked handkerchief, and then finally, two displeased eyes staring up from where Suguru laid with his hands behind his head.
The Arctic had nothing on this guy’s cold welcome.
“How do you know your horse won’t just wander away?” Satoru asked, planting a hand at his hip. A warm breeze billowed through the short sleeves of his shirt.
Closing his eyes, Suguru relaxed his head back down against the shady dirt.
“He won’t go anywhere so long’s it’s not where I am.”
Looking at how oddly serene the gelding was beside him, Satoru believed it. It even seemed to be rubbing off on his own horse who’d been nothing but fussy for him, but was suddenly docile and still, happy just watching the man on the ground below them.
What was it about-
“Do you need something?” Suguru asked, cracking an eye back open.
Loud and clear as it was how unimpressed he was to have a visitor, Satoru chose to ignore it, instead hoisting a tied cloth package up to shoulder-height in display.
“I made lunch.”
“I already ate,” Suguru shot back, gesturing at an empty can, spoon, and thermos scattered around him alongside a tan felt hat and a pair of leather gloves.
“You’re not gonna turn down perfectly good food, are ya?” Satoru smiled, stepping around them to find a place to sit at the edge of the shade. “I’m sure you can make room.”
“I’m not interested in trying.”
Quiet irritation emanated up from the ground as Satoru sat down anyway. When he reached to clear the space between them, Suguru sat up with a sigh, mild anger growing colder as he placed his belongings back into a worn leather bag.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than bother a man tryin’ to do his job?” he asked, setting his mouth into a hard line.
Gazing out at the lazily grazing herd, Satoru laughed.
“Lotta work you’re doing right now. Anyway, you’ll need enough energy to keep doing that job, hm?”
He sat expectantly, his most charming grin plastered across his face until with one final scowl, Suguru gestured in defeat at the package.
With a winner’s smile, Satoru untied the knot at the top of the cloth, ignoring the heat of Suguru’s stare burning into his hands. One by one, he opened the containers. Lamb chops, sliced and dressed with mint chutney, a side of mashed potatoes, still hot, buttered biscuits, and ambrosia salad waited for each of them.
When he looked up from his offering, Satoru couldn’t read the emotions on his lunchmate’s face, somewhere between ire, apprehension, and a new amusement.
“Ya make lamb chops often, do ya? Made this with your own honest hands?”
His words were laced with poison, disdain not pretending to be anything else. Still, it was a little more playful than his default frigidity – like he’d decided if he had to be held captive, he’d at least have a little fun toying with his captor.
This was something Satoru could work with; he beamed.
“I’m a regular Betty Crocker.”
Brief amusement flickered over Suguru’s features, something lighthearted that Satoru instantly knew he would do anything to keep on his face.
“Something tells me the ladies in the kitchen did a little more of the cooking than you,” Suguru said lowly, delicately plucking a biscuit from the spread with his hard worked hand. “Did Kuroi pack this for you?”
“You slander me! After I just brought you a nice meal!”
“That I don’t remember asking for.”
Suguru punctuated his point with a raised brow and a healthy bite into his biscuit. As he chewed, he coldly studied Satoru’s face.
Satoru reached for a biscuit of his own, taking a bite and attempting to mirror his stare. At the thought that he’d made a minor step toward success, a smile snuck back in. Then he gave up pretending.
“I like you,” he said.
Suguru shook his head, long hair brushing against his cheeks as he swallowed.
“You don’t know me.”
“But I’d like to,” Satoru shot back.
Suguru shook his head again, this time with just the barest hint of a smile as he brought his biscuit back to his lips. Midbite, his gaze fell to Satoru’s mare nibbling at the grass beside them. His amber eyes flashed bright before he tossed the remainder of his biscuit down onto the spread and rose from the ground.
Satoru watched as he approached her, smoothing one hand over the space between her eyes in greeting before the other attempted to squeeze between her barrel and the cinch of the saddle. When only the very tips of his fingers could slide beneath the leather, he loosed the cinch and adjusted the saddle at her back.
“Make sure you don’t have that cinch too tight,” Suguru warned sternly, rubbing soothingly across her chest. “She needs room to breathe, ‘specially how hot it is.”
“Yessir,” Satoru said, mocking salute at his forehead. Immediately, his face dropped as instead of settling back across from him, Suguru gathered his belongings from the ground and crossed to his waiting horse. He clipped the bag back to the saddle and set the hat back on his head while Satoru sputtered in protest.
“Thank Kuroi for the lunch for me,” Suguru said, effortlessly pulling himself up into the saddle. Without looking back, he rode away, into the grazing herd.
The rate at which Satoru was finding himself dumbstruck lately was truly something else.
He tossed down his own half-eaten biscuit and traded it for Suguru’s, inspecting the bite marks he’d left behind before picking up where he’d left off.
-24 days to salvation-
“If you keep making that face, I might start thinking you’re ungrateful,” Satoru said, bringing his horse to a halt at the same juniper tree.
“Don’t you have anyth-”
“-anything better to do, yeah, yeah,” Satoru cut him short, dismounting and securing his horse to a dead branch with a messy but effective knot. “Honest to God, I don’t today. Big man’s out of town ‘til tomorrow.”
The loitering gelding’s black nose sniffed at the bag in his hand as he passed by, but his hooves didn’t lift from his waiting place.
“Lucky me.”
Suguru stared up at him with lazy disinterest, arms crossed.
“Careful, I might start to think you don’t even like me,” Satoru joked.
With a dead stare, Suguru held his tongue.
The shaded space around him was clear today, belongings already packed up as if he was long done with his lunch, or maybe he expected a guest’s arrival — that’s what Satoru told himself as an invitation to sit down.
“What is it today?” Suguru finally asked, silently watching the struggle to untie the knot in the cloth. “An entire pineapple-baked ham? Baked Alaska?”
“I took what you said to heart,” Satoru said, finally breaking in. He laid out the cloth and shuffled several parchment wrapped items apart. “Kuroi’s hands were nowhere near today’s lunch. I banished her from the kitchen, she didn’t even look at it.”
Suguru watched intently as Satoru began to unwrap and dole them out. The sight of their contents made his stonewall briefly falter as, with the wiggle of his fingers, Satoru verbally labeled each of his creations.
“Peanut butter and jelly – hope you like grape,” he slid his finger to the next package, “carrots, washed, peeled, and cut,” he held up his hand to highlight the bandaid on his thumb, then pointed once more, “and animal crackers.”
Suguru’s eyes narrowed, smug, clearly brimming with new insults.
“Wow,” he feigned his fawn, leaning in to inspect the unsightly brown and purple ooze pooling around stark white bread, “now this is gourmet.”
“I’m very receptive to critique!” Satoru said, popping a tiger between his grinning teeth with a crunch. “Tell me what you think.”
With a stink eye, Suguru reached down and gingerly picked up the sticky sandwich, taking a bite and descending into thought.
He swallowed, eyes flashing to the missing bite in the sandwich, then to Satoru.
“It’s a little mushy.”
His face crinkled in disgust, but he brought the sandwich back to his mouth to take another bite.
Satoru brought his own sandwich to eye level. When he gave it a squeeze, an absurd amount of goo oozed out.
Okay, it was too much.
“I just need practice,” he said, taking a bite and continuing to talk through it. “I’ll impress you yet – tomorrow.”
Rolling his eyes, Suguru grunted as he chewed. A purple smear at his upper lip moved enticingly with each grind of his jaw. The urge to reach up and brush it off with his thumb – or his mouth – gripped Satoru, lasting even after Suguru’s tongue darted out to clean it.
“Something tells me you’re not gonna listen when I say you don’t need to come here tomorrow.”
Satoru’s attention was finally pulled from those lips.
“You’re right.”
Suguru held his sandwich over the dirt, squeezing until its innards fell to the ground with a splat.
“You’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said, eyes a silent challenge.
-23 days to salvation-
“Go on, tell me how it stacks up. Really let me have it.”
Though Satoru had managed to sit down without incurring too much hostility, the shrinking space between Suguru’s eyebrows as he chewed said he was quickly running that well dry. He smiled regardless.
With the hand not holding Satoru’s creation, Suguru tucked his long, dark bangs behind his ear, as if he wanted to make sure the fed up look on his face was clearly visible.
“It’s a PB&J, Satoru.”
“Yes, and?” Satoru brought his hand to his ear, leaning in with his eyes pointed at the clouds. For a while, all he heard was the bellowing of the herd in the distance.
“It’s better than yesterday,” Suguru said as if someone held a gun to his head. The corner of his mouth flicked upward. “Not like it was hard, though.”
-19 days to salvation-
Two metal lunch pails dug up from childhood hit the ground, followed by the seat of Satoru’s slacks. The leather bag and untrusting lunch remnants that usually sat discarded by the time he arrived were notably missing. When Suguru looked up at him, hungry and eager for his arrival, acceptance burned bright in Satoru’s chest.
-14 days to salvation-
For the first time since he’d started, Satoru didn’t bring lunch to the fields.
When he’d arrived to take his regular post watching cigars burn to stumps, he’d been instructed to turn himself around and swap his casualwear for a stifling wool suit. There was real business to be done.
The grain supplier had been attempting to bump the price of their stock for the last three months. Today, real business entailed being locked in a room with their soon-to-be sorry representative for as long as it took to get a maximum price guarantee locked into something his father found acceptable for the next three years. Watch and learn.
Lunchtime had come and gone with Satoru looking nervously at his watch. He’d given up hope when, according to schedule, the afternoon drive to field nine was already underway, wrangled by a handsome, starving cowboy – a mad one, if he had to guess.
It was a good thing he hadn’t been holding his breath; meeting turned to lunch turned to late afternoon whiskey, and by the time the suits drove back down the winding driveway with the papers signed, the cattle had long come home and the horses had already been run.
Satoru looked down from the window onto the almost complete stillness of the ranch. The list of reasons to resent his new position grew longer today, yet Los Angeles hadn’t crossed his mind once.
Instead, he’d only been wishing for a few minutes with Suguru – Suguru, whose trust was hard earned and, he unfortunately felt safe in assuming, easily lost.
If it were anyone else, Satoru wouldn’t have thought twice about letting them down. Tough break. Any regret would be self-serving. Instead, Suguru sat in some growing soft-spot in that apathy; as silly as it sounded for one missed lunch, he couldn’t help but feel he’d done Suguru wrong.
Maybe it was because Father had insisted he accompany him to church last Sunday and for the first time since his teenage years, a preacher’s words were ringing in his skull. A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself. Satoru didn’t want to be a cruel man – but for Suguru’s sake.
With his jacket and tie shed, and his starched sleeves rolled to his elbows, Satoru wandered toward the barns.
A quick stroll through the horse stalls came up empty, and a circle around the ranch hand residence only turned up Toji having a post-dinner cigarette. He pointed Satoru further into the ranch, to a break in the fenceline that had poured cattle out onto the access road for an accidental taste of true freedom.
Having ruined enough good trousers with saddle and soil since he arrived, Satoru set out on foot, running a comb through his hair out of habit.
He'd always felt a kind of kinship with the cows that managed to get out. They weren’t smart, but they were smart enough to know they didn’t want to be here. Painfully relatable to a teenage boy, and growing in relevance again. If it were up to him, he would have let them wander to the iron gates, out and beyond. Love thy neighbor as thyself for the remaining time they had as equals.
Tonight’s sunset leaned grapefruit pink, dusty at the high mountain peaks. Satoru heard him before he saw him, the dull, repetitive thud of manual labor entering its maker into an unknowing game of Marco Polo from behind a thick patch of juniper trees.
Just off the side of the road, Suguru stood at the fencepost in question, hoisting a heavy, steel pipe with two hands and driving it straight down to pound the fallen post back into sandy ground.
Trading his typical linen and wild rag for a plain, white t-shirt, he was even more of a sight for sore eyes than usual. Each meeting of metal and wood revealed the carved bulk of his bicep and the flex of his forearm, each thrust a full body effort that tossed his hips up into the post.
A sheen of sweat coated the entirety of his exposed skin, shining almost as bright as the tiny, gold cross that Satoru had never seen, unmissable now as it jumped against his chest with each rise and fall of his arms. When he got close enough to hear it, the grunt of exertion that accompanied each drive cataloged itself deep in Satoru’s brain.
It was better than anything on television, that’s for sure.
Better, until Suguru looked up at him with a gaze more frigid than he’d worn since the third or fourth day of lunch.
“What do you want?” he huffed between heaving breaths. He glanced only briefly at Satoru before turning his attention back to the post, palming it in one leather-gloved hand and frowning deeper when he found it was wobbly.
“Bad day without me?” When he got no reply, Satoru took a tentative step forward. The closeness seemed to make it too uncomfortable not to answer him.
“I didn’t get to dinner before the cows got out.”
With a grunt, Suguru lifted the heavy tool from where it hung in one hand at his side, lining it back up with the fence post and giving it a solid slam. It sank maybe an inch lower into the soil.
“Grain company’s been trying to pull the wool over our eyes, so I was called in as reinforcement for the negotiation.” A fly landed at the back of his neck. He reached back to wave it away. ”Once they realized they were old friends, they spent more time trying to out drink each other than out maneuver each other, I guess-”
“Oh, what a good reason to go hungry.” The sarcasm dripped like honey from Suguru’s voice.
“Now, don’t be upset, I-”
“I’m not upset about anything. I should know better than to rely on you.”
The cold burn of his narrowed eyes didn’t match the way his voice played it off, or the way he brought the tool down so hard that Satoru was shocked the wood didn’t split clean down the middle.
Hands in his pocket, the pointed tip of Satoru’s brogue traced a half circle over the ground in thought.
“I really didn’t know. Otherwise, I would’ve warned you.”
The pole pounder landed in the grass with a heavy thud, and the post withstood a hard rattle. As Suguru crouched to riffle through his metal toolbox in heavy silence, the chorus of cattle brayed beside them. Satoru pulled out the olive branch.
“Thought maybe I’d take requests for tomorrow. To make it up to you.”
“Ya don’t have to-”
“I know, I know, I don’t have to and you were happier before I started showing up,” Satoru waved a hand, leaning an elbow against the newly driven fence post and looking down on him. “There must be something you want – can’t get easily.”
An unspoken I know what they pay you hung in the air.
Another nerve had clearly been struck; when he looked up with a hammer in one hand and a handful of fencing staples in the other, Suguru’s eyes were razor sharp. He stood, not totally non-threateningly given the weapon in his hand. In truth, he looked a little like he was doing his best not to sock Satoru in the face, but Satoru waited patiently, knowingly standing in the way of his task.
With a huff, Suguru looped his thumb into his belt loop and turned to look out to the mountains that all but surrounded them. Pink, dying light painted him beautiful, made it hard to take his anger seriously as he seemed to be deliberating where to bury the body.
When he finally turned his gaze back to Satoru, his face was set with resolve.
“Strawberries.”
“Strawberries? Just, plain strawberries?”
“It’s what I want,” Suguru said, with a single, inarguable nod of his head.
“Well, alright, I can-”
“Now get off my fence post, go.”
Like he was a fly himself, Suguru shooed him away, leather hands brushing against the bare skin of his arm. Satoru almost wanted to wait and see what the next step in his removal was. Not while he was already in the doghouse. Instead, he stumbled backward with a smile and walked home.
-13 days to salvation-
“Not only is that a whole paycheck’s worth of strawberries, but I had plans for those, believe it or not!” Kuroi had chided when she caught Satoru in the act of draining her entire supply into his lunch pail, though they both knew she had no power to stop him.
Shameless, he had asked her what the second most expensive fruit was, then filled the remainder of the space with the last of her raspberries.
It was worth it for the way yesterday’s leftover ire melted to poorly masked excitement on Suguru’s face as he unveiled the ruby-red gems he’d stolen away.
The second pail of sandwiches sat untouched, and that was fine with Satoru so long as he got to watch Suguru bite down into the red flesh, juice flooding out around his lips as they closed around each fruit. The look of satisfaction on his face came the closest to the way he’d looked the first time Satoru saw him.
Transfixed by the sight, Satoru didn’t think to pick up a berry of his own until Suguru’s teasing voice pulled him from his hypnotized state.
“You’re still on thin ice.”
-10 days to salvation-
The price to pay for the abnormally short walk to field two was little to no tree cover, no boulders to hide beneath while they ate – just the sun at its zenith, the patchy grass, and a curiosity of a man waiting for him.
“You’re too fair to be forgettin’ a hat out here.”
He was right. Satoru had skipped over the beautiful tan that resided on Suguru’s skin and veered straight to angry, speckled pink after loitering too long unprotected yesterday. Always had.
“Here, for now.”
Though he didn’t sit from his recline, Suguru held his wide brim hat at the end of his reach, long hair suddenly reflecting sunlight at his crown.
And who was Satoru to say no? The felt was soft in his hand, a well worn tan, and when he brought it over his head, a cloud of salt and petrichor settled over his senses. Welcoming, damn near verging on intoxicating, he filled his lungs with it.
“I still don’t know what possesses you to come out here every day,” Suguru said, side-eyeing him from the shade of his open hand.
Palms pressed into the dirt behind him, Satoru flashed him a devious smile. He brought his hands forward, brushing the grit against the brand new dungarees he’d pulled, long forgotten, from the back of his teenage closet. There, christened.
“It got a lot easier when you stopped tellin’ me not to.”
-7 days to salvation-
A real scorcher had driven them on a journey to the north end of the field where the trees grew large enough to offer some respite. In the comfort of an old pine’s shade, Satoru’s hat laid beside him, and his pocket comb ran smoothly through the sides of his hair. A soft chuckle at his left had him snapping his head with a swell of energy that routed him toward antagonism.
“What’s so funny?” he said, but Suguru only shook his head. “Go on, wise guy!”
There was a moment’s pause where it seemed like Suguru was deciding whether it was a good idea to speak his mind. When he spoke, it was through another chuckle with enough unwavering eye contact that’d make a lesser man cower.
“You’re fixin’ your hair like it doesn’t already look perfect.”
Trying hard to quell the heat in his eyes, Satoru stared back. When it was too much, he looked down at the comb in his hand, shining and globbed with melted hair product that had previously been on his head.
“They need to invent something that holds up a little better to the hell that is Utah summer,” he said with a sigh. He looked around for something to wipe it off on before having to slide it back into his pocket, but mostly came up empty.
“Here-”
Satoru watched him untuck the green and yellow check from his shirt collar, untying his wild rag and slipping it out from around his neck.
“Hell, huh?” he asked, offering the handkerchief out to Satoru with a little shake when he hesitated. “Here, it’s what it’s for.”
Where it had been tucked in, his shirt hung alluringly open. The gold cross Satoru had seen at the fenceline glittered bright against the sliver of skin exposed to the midday sun. It distracted him as he plucked the silky fabric from his hands, almost making him stupid enough to bring it to his nose and take a deep breath. Instead he turned his gaze down and began to wipe the comb clean.
“You’re a big believer?” Satoru asked with a vague gesture toward the necklace. He wasn’t sure why he asked, most people were.
Suguru raised a brow until it dawned on him. He took the cross between his fingertips, looking down and thumbing over it, then back to Satoru.
“It was my mother’s.”
He dropped it back against his skin, tilting his head as if to size Satoru up. Then he continued.
“I’m in the pew every week, though I’d say I’m more of a… silent believer than most.”
“That doesn’t surprise me one bit. I have no doubt you’d even bite God if he tried to talk to you when you weren’t lookin’ to talk.”
Suguru glared, but immediately dropped it for deeper thought.
“It’s nice to have something to believe in. To get through the day.”
Satoru nodded in understanding. He wasn’t sure the last time he really believed in something, though coping to make it through was his bread and butter here. The knowledge that soon he’d be back to his preferred life, the knowledge that another day of work with his father meant another lunch-
“And you?”
A conflicted noise rattled at the top of Satoru’s throat.
“I think a real believer wouldn’t want to claim me as their own as of late, no.” Satisfied with the comb, Satoru slipped it back into his pocket and wiped his hands clean. “In the city, it’s less common for people our age to attend services, at least with any regularity. I don’t typically feel compelled to go.”
When he looked back up, Suguru was studying him, listening intently as if he wanted him to go on. Tell him how he really felt. Satoru held his amber eye.
“Never much liked how… unwelcome our kind are.”
It wasn’t something he’d ever dared say out loud here between these mountains; surrounded by the sprawl for all those years, the only place that particular thought had ever had space to live was inside him.
Now it floated between them as he waited for a reaction.
There was a split second with Suguru’s heavy gaze locked onto him where he regretted giving it voice. His stare was tense and critical, though the longer they looked into each other’s eyes, the more it felt critical of the same thing Satoru described rather than Satoru himself.
“We’re all born into sin,” he finally said with the sureness of an end-all solution that surely didn’t exist. His fingers reached to play at the cross again as he elaborated.
“Life’s trials don’t seem so bad when there’s somethin’ there to love you regardless. There’s… salvation in God, but to me, it’s more like,” he paused again, looking down at the scattered remnants of their lunch, “it’s more about believing in somethin’ outside yourself. Somethin’ good. Lettin’ it make you better.”
Though Suguru tried to meet his eye again, Satoru couldn’t pull his gaze from his proselytizing lips.
“Some people say God’s the way to find that… ” Suguru trailed off.
“But not you?”
The corners of Suguru’s mouth played upward.
“I didn’t say that.” The turn of his head drew their attention to the horses that’d brought them to the field. They stood in wait, the dark gelding watching out over the herd while Satoru’s mare looked adoringly at Suguru with chocolate eyes. “Animals have always been somethin’ like salvation to me. Never met one I had a good reason to dislike.”
Satoru thought about himself.
“Animals never much cared for me – no more than the next guy,” he said, picking some grass and studying the long, flat blades between his fingers before tossing it down again. “Does it have to be animals?”
He stretched out on his side, elbow in the dirt and toes inching into the sunlight. Against the pinyon, his new spiritual guide looked down on him, eyes patient and warm.
“No,” Suguru smirked. “Look around, I’m sure you can find something.”
-2 days to salvation-
The mare’s rarely galloping hooves almost drowned out Suguru’s call across the field.
“You’re late!”
As Satoru dismounted, he finished his harassment. “I thought you mighta been held hostage by the kitchen staff… Fallen into that swimming pool… Died.”
There was no use tying his horse to the large pinyon pine before stepping over Suguru’s outstretched legs. Though there was a sizable patch of shade available, Satoru planted himself down close with a grunt.
“No, just crushed under the weight of my father’s thumb.”
“Thank God you survived,” Suguru said sarcastically, leaning in as if to bump their shoulders together. An inch or so closer and they would’ve.
“Don’t speak too soon.”
Satoru passed out the bologna sandwiches and celery and carrot sticks he’d made, then watched Suguru’s face as he opened the second pail filled to the brim with beautiful, ripe strawberries.
“I thought you might like that,” Satoru said, allowing the excitement radiating off of his lunchmate’s face to soothe him.
Tomorrow was both the end of his sentence and his damning day, where the closed door decision to pass the reins became public. He couldn’t eat his breakfast in the mountain house without being plagued by the thought of what was to come, and he couldn’t eat his lunch in the field without being painfully aware that while his goal in bargaining down this trip had always been to leave this place posthaste, two more months here with Suguru didn’t sound so bad.
While Suguru talked about his morning, Satoru imagined stealing him away in his lunch pail back to Los Angeles. In a suit and tie on the plane, beside him taking notes in the lecture halls, on the dance floor of a jazz club that didn’t mind them pressed as close together as he wanted them to be. Strangers would think he’d taken a wrong turn off the MGM lot. He could have a life for himself in civilization.
It’d all be great, but none of it would be right; he didn’t belong anywhere but here.
“Oh,” Suguru said through a mouthful of strawberry. He tossed down the stem in his hand, holding up one finger as he chewed and rose from the ground. The horses’ tails swished in gentle excitement as he approached them. He smoothed a hand over his gelding’s hind quarter, then flipped up the flap of his saddle bag.
Levi Strauss couldn’t have dreamed of something as perfect as the swell of denim over Suguru’s ass, the tight thigh strap of his chaps that fell beneath it with his weight shifted onto his tiptoes. Satoru bit into a strawberry, sweet like candy, and drank it in while he could.
“Close your eyes.”
The mischievous look thrown over his shoulder, hands still in the bag, made Satoru want to get off the ground and kiss him senseless. Instead, he followed direction, placing his hands in his lap and listening intently to the crunch of boots in the dirt as they approached. With a dull thud and a rush of otherwise still air, he felt a presence at his side, likely kneeling, shuffling closer.
It came to a halt, and for a moment, nothing happened, though he could feel a heavy gaze taking him in.
Satoru swallowed hard.
Just when he thought it was all an elaborate joke, some experiment to see how long he could be kept quiet, he felt Suguru shift further, lean closer and rise above until something slipped over the top of his head. Gentle hands guided it down, brushing over his cheekbones and jaw until a heavy weight fell to his chest.
Anything he could glean about the item itself was overshadowed by the man holding it. The unavoidable knowledge that the surprisingly smooth knuckles against his jaw, the strawberry breath at his cheek, and the gentle approach — they were all Suguru.
Though he hadn’t been told to look, the promise of seeing that nearness he craved, of confirming it was true with his own two eyes, was too great.
Against every effort not to, he let his eyes blink open to find Suguru’s face inches from his own, closer than it’d ever been. He stared frozen in shock, eyes tinged with fire where they’d darted up to meet his. Red stained the inside of his lips, overwhelmingly enticing where they’d parted in silent surprise.
He looked about as perfect as he’d ever looked.
Only when his gaze darted back to his frozen hands did Satoru look down to his chest. Calloused fingertips clutched a striking turquoise bolo tie hanging low between his pecs: a chunk of green-blue stone spiderwebbed brown with ornate silver wire hand-wrapped at the edges.
“Sorry, I should’ve asked.”
“No,” Satoru rolled his tongue out over his lip, “please.”
With a clumsily recovered clinical focus, Suguru continued tightening the tie, guiding it carefully beneath Satoru’s checked collar.
When he finished, he collapsed sideways onto his hip where he knelt, placing him at Satoru’s outstretched knee, a barely safe distance away.
“I made it myself, a while ago,” he said, watching with guarded eyes as Satoru ran fingers down the light leather ties and over the pointy end caps, letting them fall against his chest. “I don’t have much occasion to wear it, and I just thought…”
Satoru looked up and raised a brow when he didn’t finish. The horses snorted and Suguru smiled more timidly than the smug grin he usually reserved for him.
“I thought you’d have more use for it.”
“It’s beautiful,” Satoru said. It felt warm against him, the heat of the day and the knowledge that he’d been deemed worthy. “Thank you. Makes me feel like a real cowboy.”
With pursed lips, Suguru grabbed Satoru by the boot, casual but as pristine as the day he bought them, twisting it sideways questioningly.
“For when I wanna play pretend,” Satoru corrected. When the smug smile returned, Satoru let out the breath he’d been holding. “Thank you, really.”
With a single, definitive nod, Suguru looked back to the ground beside them.
“We could use some rain. I checked this morning, the roots here are worse than I thought they’d be,” he said, looking out to the cattle. “I may need to rotate them ahead of schedule.”
Satoru hummed, looking closely at Suguru’s face. He’d looked at it every day since they met, but he still hadn’t been able to believe it was real.
“I won’t be around tomorrow,” he said.
The fringe of Suguru’s chaps was suddenly very interesting to him, and to Satoru by extension.
“So, uh, don’t forget to pack a lunch,” Satoru continued, watching the leather twist in his calloused fingers. Then he looked back to his face, glowing in the afternoon sun. “Ya remember how to do that?”
Suguru’s gaze darted up, eyes sharpened and mouth set in a pucker that felt like a cover for something else.
“Yes, Satoru, believe it or not, I got along okay before you came along.”
Though he didn’t feel like it, Satoru smiled, then slowly let it drop from his face again.
“I’d like to see you.” Absent-mindedly, his hand came up to play at the dangling ends of the tie. “On the other side, tomorrow night. Say goodbye before I go.”
“A free man.” Suguru tried the taste on his tongue.
“Temporarily free.”
The distinction felt important, though Satoru wasn’t totally sure whether he was implying that it was a positive or a negative as Suguru pinned him with a contemplative stare.
“Saturday nights the ranch hands all go to the pool hall. You can find me there if you’re okay slummin’ it with us.”
-1 day to salvation-
Many men reveling in newfound freedom, even if only for the night, found themselves at the pool hall. Satoru was no different.
In a town where the library, town hall, and firehouse were housed under the same roof, really, to call it a pool hall was to downplay its capacities. It was all-encompassing: a bar and a dance floor, a community space for the weddings and funerals of the godless, the church on Sundays for the godly after the local chapel burnt down and a gamblers den any second it wasn’t.
The wall of smoke and sound that greeted Satoru as he entered the rundown building was like a hard slap in the face. He crossed through the grid of emerald tables, dodging the threat of cue impalement as he passed, until he reached the middle of the seemingly endless, long room. Save for the bar at the right side, the space was crammed with tables, every surface covered in shiny glass empties and overcapacity with patrons – all tables but one.
In the far corner, Suguru sat alone, back slouched against the wall, staring straight at Satoru. One hand draped at his spread lap, the other elbow rested at the table top with a cigarette smoldering in his fingertips above. When their eyes locked, he raised his chin with a smirk and brought it to his lips, taking a deep pull that looked satisfying enough to make anyone consider taking up a habit. Satoru was satisfied just as much watching him do it.
It took a shoulder from an uncoordinated drunk to pull him back to reality. He raised his arm and pointed down at the bar beside him questioningly, shouting uselessly over the crowd shouting over the honky tonk blasting from the dancefloor in the final third of the room. When Suguru shook his loose hair no, Satoru turned around and ordered himself a beer.
Suguru’s eyes never left him in the time it took the surly bartender to pop the bottle top and Satoru didn’t mind one bit. Weaving through the crowd, it struck him that coming home to Suguru, beer in hand after a long day, felt right – like some kind of life. Waiting for him in that same white t-shirt and worn high top sneakers, he fit right in here, unlike Satoru.
“You stick out like a sore thumb,” Suguru said as he fell into the chair across from him.
Satoru smiled through a healthy swig from his bottle. He made a satisfied ah just to watch Suguru roll his eyes.
“I haven’t been home yet,” he explained. “Took the car and came straight here.”
To see you. Satoru gave his head a shake.
“I’ve never seen you look so outta place.”
“What, ya don’t like it?” Satoru smiled, looking down incredulously at what remained of his suit.
He’d opted for black – a mourning of his youth, if you will – and while his jacket and matching leather cowboy hat laid shed in the backseat of the coupe, the perfect tailor of his white, yoked shirt and suit pants alone were miles above the average pool hall patron’s fashion and cleanliness. His pointed western boots likely cost more than bar’s till would hold at the end of the night. And, most eye-catching, the precious lump of silver-wrapped turquoise sat cinched tight at his collar, rivaling even the blue of his eyes when he’d looked in the mirror this morning.
He knew he looked good.
He looked pointedly at Suguru drawing the final drag of his cigarette in thought, but only received an indifferent hum. Averting his eyes downward, the shadows fell over his face where a blush would sit.
“I never said that,” he finally said to the ashtray, releasing a cloud of smoke as he stamped the life out of his cigarette. He was smug when he leaned back against his chair. “What do you wanna hear? Ya look like a real cowboy?”
It wasn't true, and Satoru didn’t know anymore if he wanted it to be, but he pouted regardless. It invoked a rare belly laugh that didn’t make it feel so bad.
“I’m not the only one who noticed how out of place you are,” Suguru said when he regained composure. His eyes scanned the room, and Satoru followed their path. All over the bar, there were eyes on him. They ranged from harmless curiosity to violent dissatisfaction, eyes throwing daggers that Satoru’s indifference stopped in their tracks just before they could pierce his skin.
“I don’t care what these people think of me.”
“Maybe you should,” Suguru shot back. “A lot of them’ll be workin’ for you soon.”
“Don’t remind me,” Satoru groaned. A second scan of some of the more disgruntled looks turned up a few familiar faces.
“How did it go?”
“Well,” Satoru said, clicking his tongue. “The announcement’s been made, there’s no going back now.”
His father’s retirement from the business had landed like a bombshell, and Satoru spent the entirety of the night fielding one drunk, old rancher after another. Most wished him well, though time will tell how genuine it really was. A few showed themselves from the start, course, money-grubbing men who looked at him like fresh, naive meat. Satoru didn’t have the teeth to be thrust into the old boy’s club, and he wasn’t particularly interested in developing them, but it was clear he would need to start teething quickly to keep the ranch at the top.
“That well, huh?” Suguru raised his brows and scrunched his mouth up like he’d just learned something unthinkable. “Sometimes even rich boys have to do things they don’t want to.”
“Well, this rich boy is free now until next year- Hey, ya know, I am capable of caring.”
Suguru scoffed. “About yourself.”
“Ouch!” An invisible arrow shot through Satoru’s heart, and his hands flew to clutch it. Suguru shook his head in amused disapproval. “One or two beers and you get a little brutal, don’t you?”
As harsh as it was, it felt good to have Suguru come at him so freely. Compared to the man he met a month ago, he much preferred the one here insulting him with a smile he could believe. He couldn’t hold the rest against him.
Suguru crossed his arms and pulled him back with a serious look.
“You really think it’ll be so bad? Livin’ up there on your mountain, looking down?”
One easy answer was no. A month’s worth of how-to-run-a-ranch lessons had really driven home what he’d always known: while his father wrote the checks and had the final say, it was who was at the bottom of the mountain that kept things running. The silver spoon was sparkling and his future in the sprawl was cushy as could be.
Another easy answer was yes, that all that was at the expense of any other life he’d prefer.
The hard answer? He hadn’t worked out yet. While that inevitable responsibility cast a dark shadow over him, the past month had left him feeling more connected to the ranch than he had in his entire life. More appreciative. But it wasn’t the land that made it happen in this God forsaken place; the reason sat across from him.
Satoru took a swig of his beer and met Suguru’s contemplative stare.
“Depends on what qualifies as living.”
On the dance floor, the couples twirling a bouncy two-step slowed considerably when Bobby Helms began crooning about his Special Angel. All over the crumbling dancefloor, the women allowed the hand at their back to tuck them in toward their lead, cheek-to-cheek, cheek-to-chest, always a slow, intimate rock. The idea of holding Suguru just as close right here in the dense air of the smoky pool hall brushed all other serious thoughts aside, however unrealistic.
“Do you wanna dance?” Satoru asked.
Suguru’s gaze went guarded, shifting over to the swaying crowd. Perhaps it was a case of seeing what he wanted to see, but Satoru thought that the yearning he felt may not be his to bear alone.
“No,” he said, turning back to Satoru like a petulant child.
Satoru crossed his arms and planted them on the table, leaning into the neutral space between them.
“Seems like you might wanna say yes.”
Picking up his bottle, Suguru paused before it reached his lips.
“Doesn’t matter what I wanna say.”
“It does to me.”
The people danced and the ivory pool balls clicked and the two men at the table in the corner sat locked in a staredown. Satoru only blinked when Suguru raised the meager remainder of his beer to his lips, draining the bottle straight up and down like it could save him from whatever ailed. It came back down on the table with a semi-controlled clap.
“Don’t change the subject. If you wanna prove you care, come back to the barn and help me out. I’ve got a mare about to give birth any day who needs checkin’ in on before I can go home for the night.”
With a raised brow, Satoru gestured down at his sweating glass bottle.
“Let a guy finish his beer before you put him to work.”
-
In the dark desert midnight, Satoru pulled the black coupe between the ranch hand residence and the horse barn, then turned the key in the ignition.
“Turn the goddamn lights off,” Suguru said, reaching across to do it himself. The headlights shining straight through the window of the nearest corner of the house went dim. Undrawn curtains flapped softly against the open bottom half of the glass in the moonlight. “Toji’ll kill us if you wake him up.”
“Has he ever thought to use the curtains?” The passenger door had shut before Satoru finished.
Suguru slid open the barn doors, turning on the flickering work lamps that dotted the high rafters as Satoru wandered in behind him. Just inside the door, a mass of hay spilled down into the aisle opposite the small storage space where Suguru was rooting around. Down the length of the aisle, a few curious, dark noses poked over their doors to see who had arrived; a few gave a snort of happiness at the answer.
Out of the corner of his eye, something came flying at Satoru’s head. He caught it by the skin of his teeth.
“Go muck out the foal’s stall while I check on Darla – second on the left. First is empty.”
Satoru stared down at the pitchfork in his hands, turning it over to take in just how caked with filth it was. Then he looked at himself.
“In this?”
The look on Suguru’s face was enough of an answer. Prove yourself.
Though he’d never been one to work the barns, it was no secret that shoveling out the newborn stalls was a literal shit job. Hazing at its finest.
He took the halters from the blanket bar outside, then stepped gingerly into the stall. After walking the mother and child to the next stall, Satoru got to work scraping up their soiled bedding, piling it into the wheelbarrow carefully at first, then less so as he accepted that the expensive leather of his boots was doomed from the start.
“Really scrape to the bottom, that’s where the worst of it’ll be.” Only Suguru’s gloating face leaned through the door, long hair dangling loose beneath it.
“I know how to shovel shit,” Satoru bit back defensively through a laugh. “Quit givin’ me hell and go do your own job!”
It was clear to both of them that his bark was much worse than his bite.
By the time he’d mucked the stall and moved the horses back to their home, Suguru was finishing up with the mare at the other end. The sound of his shoes came to a halt behind Satoru as he was tossing his excess back into the hay bay, followed by the light sound of his laughter.
Satoru spun to find him leaning against a structural post, toned forearm bearing his weight beside his head. The long line of his body was enticing, relaxed and easy, and the hanging light above him was a spotlight on his delight as he took Satoru in. It was a joy no different from what Satoru saw as he ran the horses in the ring a month ago. The exact place on earth he was supposed to be.
For a moment, Satoru was flustered by it. He looked down at himself, finding the root of the comedy was at his expense. Hay clung to the bottoms of his boots and his white shirt was streaked with brown where he’d absentmindedly ran his hands over it coated in who knows what. An odd feeling on his right cheek told him there may be something visible there for Suguru to be reveling in.
“And just what do you think’s so funny!?”
The words exploded out of Satoru with a bout of incredulous laughter, all at a volume much louder than the still of the night required. It boomed and echoed through the rafters and fell back down onto all God’s creation. The horses fussed and snorted in their stalls in rebuke, and Suguru’s eyes went wide.
Launching off the post, he shot forward, closing the gap between them in three steps to cup his open hand over Satoru’s mouth. As the other clamped down onto Satoru’s shoulder, he whipped his smiling face to look pointedly out the open barn door beside them. The surprise of it all made them both stumble a few steps deeper into the hay.
“Shhh-” His own snicker interrupted his attempt to shush the troublemaker in his grip.
“This is my best suit!”
The words came out muffled and buzzing through Suguru’s fingers at his lips. Still, his hand didn’t move, face so close and gazing straight at him again. It made Satoru feel drunk.
“Guess you’ll have to burn it. Buy yourself a new one,” Suguru teased. His voice was dangerously soft, eyes drawn in challenge.
Satoru loved challenges.
And after 30 days of yearning, his patience was running dry. Instincts were all that was left.
He grabbed Suguru at the sides, fisting into the soft cotton of his t-shirt. With a tug, Suguru took an unstable step toward him, and when Satoru rolled his neck in a small circle, the hand shifted away from his mouth, ghosting down to match the other that had fallen loosely to his chest.
“Tell me what you really think, Suguru.” His voice was merely a rumble.
Suguru cocked his head to the side. His fingertips flexed, digging in as his sparkling eyes searched Satoru’s face.
“You always get what you want, don’t you?”
He did. And right now, he wanted Suguru more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.
Dropping his hold, Satoru’s hands flew to Suguru’s cheeks, gripped them hard and leaned in to capture his lips with his own. Immediately, he was met in return; Suguru’s hands grasped at his neck beneath his ears, fingers threading into the pale hair behind them.
The full lips Satoru had been dreaming of were soft and pliant between his own, hungry in the same way, and tasted like the sin of the pool hall. Sucking the swell of his bottom lip hard between his teeth, Satoru couldn’t get enough.
They were a tangle of arms made wobbly with need, too much focus on holding the other so intently, as if they’d float away. The force of it all sent them both stumbling through the loose hay, tripping backward until Suguru’s back slammed into the wooden wall of the first stall with a thud.
A soft little noise fell from Suguru’s lips onto Satoru’s own on impact and Satoru thought he might just fall down in the hay and die.
While Suguru’s hands pushed up into the long top of his coif, Satoru’s ran an exploratory mission up into his soft hair, down his neck and chest, and around the back. The lower he moved, the more Suguru arched into him, opened his mouth wider and pulled Satoru’s face closer.
It was desperation that tugged the t-shirt from the backside of Suguru’s waistband, Satoru’s urgent need to run his fingers over the hard-earned muscle that had to be there. He’d barely had time to feel it before Suguru arched to his limit, lifting off the wall and pushing them backwards. Satoru’s fingers sank divots into his skin, held on for dear life and pulled him along as he tripped and got turned around by the pitchfork on the ground. With a noise of surprise and a twirl of their unbalanced tangle, they collapsed into the pile of hay.
For the first time since they’d connected, Satoru could see who he had beneath him. Suguru’s face was blushed pink, lips shining with spit and worrying between his own teeth in Satoru’s absence. Hay stuck out in all directions around his head. His eyes still burned with a challenge Satoru desperately wanted to meet.
“God, I do want you,” Satoru breathed out.
Overwhelmed, he dove back down for more, lacing a hand back into the loose hair at the back of his neck and letting Suguru pull him closer; he only ever wanted to be closer.
Suddenly, the world was spinning. The strong grip at his shoulders overtook him, rolling him down into the sweet-smelling hay. Still, their eager lips never parted until Suguru had straddled his hips, and the immediate grind pulled two loud moans into the minimal space between them.
“You’re-” Satoru began to say against his lips. Then they were gone.
Blinking his senses back, he found Suguru still settled over him, hands gripping the yoke of his shirt, attention thrown back over his shoulder. When he curled up from his natural pillow to look through the barn door, Satoru found the curtains still aflutter in Toji’s window at the other side of the coupe, too perfectly in view.
“We can’t do this here,” Suguru said. The weight on his eyelids was heavy and his chest heaved as he looked down on Satoru with want.
Satoru nodded quickly, watching the thoughts play over Suguru’s face until he rose from the soft mound and rushed to the tack storage across the aisle. With a rustle and jingle, leather fell onto the hay next Satoru still agape. Eyes wild standing above him, second bridle in hand, Suguru radiated the sexiest kind of mischievousness Satoru had ever seen in his life.
“Race ya.”
Before he’d even finished speaking, his powerful legs were in motion.
Scrambling for traction, Satoru escaped the hay and propelled himself down the aisle after him, entering his usual mare’s stall as cautiously as desire would allow. He rushed through bridling her, silently giving thanks that they’d grown fond enough of each other over the month of lunches to allow it. Extra treats later. Still, Suguru was already galloping out across the aisle with a drunken smile on his face before Satoru even had a chance to mount his horse.
“Not fair!” Satoru shouted after him. “They like you better!”
Giving his well-tailored black trousers a hitch and hoping for the best, Satoru pulled himself onto her back with a handful of scruff at the back of her neck. He found his seat, tested the squeeze of his thighs against her bareback, and leaned forward over her neck to coo encouragement into her ear as he kicked them off down the aisle.
As they emerged from the barn into the night, Suguru galloped out onto the ranch road and turned north, looking back over his shoulder at them from a cloud of dust. That magnetic force that pulled Satoru and the mare toward Suguru each day propelled them forward, stronger than ever. Wherever he’d lead them tonight, they’d follow.
-
The waxing moon illuminated their guide clear as day as they chased him over the length of many pastures.
Each time he posted, Suguru’s flowing hair bounced, trailing beautifully behind him in messy ribbons. The wind blew through his shirt, still untucked at the back from Satoru’s earlier exploration, billowing and whipping up to expose little peeks of the skin that Satoru so badly wanted to touch and feel and taste.
Determined hooves beat hard against the ground to catch him, and when Satoru finally felt he could reach out and touch the streaming tail of the gelding before him, Suguru turned around and flashed him the most blinding smile he’d ever had the fortune of receiving. It nearly knocked him off his horse as Suguru turned forward, leaned into his horse’s neck, and pulled out of reach again.
Satoru had never felt so alive – here or anywhere else. The road through the ranch felt endless in the best way, like it all belonged to them. Hopeful, so long as Suguru was there too.
He leaned in and followed the feeling, loose hair falling down over his brow as he chased him to where the path narrowed and diverted through the thicket of trees that surrounded the lake. When Satoru emerged into the clearing at the other side, Suguru was already sliding down from his gelding, landing gracefully in the dirt, and he clumsily followed suit in record time.
With nothing to hold them back, two powerful magnets collided; both men sprinted to close the gap with arms outstretched in a flurry of adrenaline, to pick up where they’d left off with double the desperation.
“I won,” Suguru purred, smiling into Satoru’s greedy kiss. Satoru hummed.
“I don’t feel like I lost.”
With his grip at either side of Suguru’s face, he tilted his head back and licked deeper into his mouth. He’d let him gloat as long as he wanted if they could stay like this, stumbling around, grasping at clothes and hair and skin, anything that’d keep them closer than the arm’s length he’d had more than enough of.
They moved in an ebb and flow – a push in one direction, a needy stumble back the other. Satoru quickly lost all perception of where he was (never having looked too hard in the first place) until Suguru yanked him to a halt with purpose.
“You’ve done enough to ruin those fancy boots tonight,” Suguru teased, out of breath, eyes darting down to begin unbuttoning Satoru’s shirt.
When Satoru looked around for the first time since landing, he found their feet at the calm lake's edge, inches from stumbling into the moonlit water. It seemed to go for miles, and at the other side of the expanse, mountains rose up toward an unbelievable number of stars above them.
It was beautiful, but none of it stood a chance at holding his attention.
Gripping Suguru’s chin, he tilted his face back to meet him, mouthing over his jaw and biting at his ear as workworn fingers continued to fumble at his shirt buttons. In his periphery, a large boulder caught his eye back off of the shore.
“This way.”
Sightlessly, he walked them back into it, pushing Suguru down and pressing himself between his spread legs. He tore Suguru’s shirt over his head and let his greedy eyes and hands consume what laid beneath. Smooth, chiseled shoulders and a muscular chest still soft in his hands: the product of working this land, making this place good.
Satoru bent to pour his devotion back into his mouth, ducked enough that those sturdy arms could latch on to him. They hung their weight around his neck, drew him in and pulled him down in a full body collapse onto the dusty, hard ground.
Laughing, Satoru stretched out on his back with Suguru caging him in. A hand traced dirty lines over his chest where needy fingers had dragged down the yoke of his shirt, and Suguru stared down with his bottom lip pulled into his teeth, unabashedly gluttonous for Satoru’s fall from on high.
“You enjoy that too much,” Satoru said, yanking open the source of his joy in his rush to remove it.
“Rich boy looks good in a little dirt- wait-”
Everything slowed from its frantic pace for Suguru’s eyes to go soft. He flipped up Satoru’s collar, tugged the leather string up over it, and brought it to a purposeful rest on his bare skin in an unspoken request.
Satoru stared up at him as he did it, feeling the weight of the motion and licking over his lip until Suguru’s eyes met his again in satisfaction. When he nodded affirmatively, the rush washed back over them.
His shirt flew away from them in a white and brown streak followed by his undershirt with the aid of over-helpful hands. Turquoise fell with a thud against his skin, heavy and branding where Suguru’s burning gaze focused on it. Flicking his eyes up to Satoru’s face, Suguru took it in his hand and pulled him up off the ground to connect their lips.
“You gonna let me have you, Suguru?” Satoru murmured into the kiss when his head was back on the ground.
Suguru hummed, a pretend non-answer. His fingertips scraped down Satoru’s stomach to the waist of his pants. He loosed the button and slipped his hand inside, closing around Satoru’s cock with a twisting stroke that made him feel like his bones could jump clean out of his body.
When Suguru spoke, his lips brushed softly over Satoru’s own.
“Would I be the first person to say no?”
“Yes.” While Suguru continued to work the beading precum down his shaft, Satoru grasped hard at his ass and drank in the way he bucked between his palms and his hip in time with each pull. “But I don’t think you want to.”
Refusing him the satisfaction of an answer, Suguru’s hand froze and his face went sour, playful still as he crawled down his body like a determined big cat going in for the kill.
“Somebody should tell you no some time.”
Together they wrestled his pants down his thighs, limbs scraping against the dirt until Satoru’s cock sprang free with a heavy slap against him. Without hesitation, Suguru pulled it into his mouth, engulfing him in wet, soft heat that Satoru couldn’t help but melt into. Clearly satisfied by his response, he stared up doe-eyed as he bobbed, so pretty with his lips stretched wide around Satoru’s girth.
The swell of his ass rose higher in the air the further his nose fell toward the fine, fair hair at Satoru’s stomach. The masterful flick of his tongue and the circling hand at the base said those pool hall rumors Toji had heard might have some basis, and when he buried the weeping head of Satoru’s cock past the tight ring of his throat with nothing but a smug narrow of his eyes, they were all but confirmed.
“Jesus Christ.” Long black hair went taut between his fingers at the root.
Impatient with need, Satoru reached down to pull him off with one hand at the bulge beneath his chin and the other at his cheek. Even empty, his mouth hung open in Satoru’s hands, a thick line of saliva hanging proudly from his lips. He looked pleased with himself, like he always did when he knew he had a leg up on Satoru.
Satoru sat up, pushing and tugging desperately at Suguru’s bare skin to turn his smug grin around and lay him cheek to boulder, knees in the dirt. With his head propped in the cradle of his arm, he strained to look back as Satoru rushed to yank his loose black trousers down over the presented swell of his ass.
With both of their pants at their knees, Satoru draped himself over his back.
“Do you know how good this thing looks with your chaps strapped over your jeans?” he asked, kneading at the bare flesh of his ass. While he waited for an answer, he put his mouth to work on Suguru’s shoulder.
“No, why don’t you tell me?”
Instead of answering, he pressed forward, laying his own forehead on the rock to capture Suguru’s lips, grinding his still wet cock against the cleft. He got lost in it, in Suguru so strong yet pliant, softly groaning beneath him each time the tip of his cock brushed up over his hole.
When Satoru finally pulled away, he trailed his mouth back down over the length of Suguru’s tanned neck and faint sun-freckled back. He smoothed a hand over his ass, taking a bite out of each cheek before spreading them and settling down on his heels to revel in what awaited him.
The assumption that Satoru was a clean little rich boy, too afraid to get messy, wasn’t totally true. He simply preferred to pick and choose when it was worth the effort. Suguru was worth the effort.
As soft as his desperation would allow, Satoru laved his flat tongue from his taint up over his hole. The moment his tongue made contact, the muscle beneath flinched and tightened, and a low moan vibrated through Suguru’s chest. Spreading him further, Satoru circled around, covering more and more area with each flick of his tongue as Suguru began to squirm in his grasp.
When his tongue found its way inside, Suguru let out the most uninhibited sound Satoru had ever heard him make. He pressed back into his face, and Satoru let him, because the deeper he thrust, the more that single moan morphed into a low, constant whine. Prettiest sound he’d ever heard. He worked his fingers up the underside of his balls, gathering saliva and massaging over his taint before pulling aside to sink two impatient fingers inside.
“Oh, mmm, Sa- toru.”
A grin spread across Satoru’s face as he sucked the soft swell of an ass cheek between his lips and teeth, devoted to the up close view of his fingers pumping in and out of his puffy rim and the way Suguru seemed to be shattering apart beneath him.
The slide was easy, but he dove back in with his tongue before sinking in another finger. When Suguru’s wails became broken cries of his name, need burst inside him like fireworks.
Removing his fingers, he rose over him again, burying his messy face into the hair at the back of his neck and wrapping his arms around his ribs. He sat them up pressed plumb, and let Suguru pull him into a hungry kiss. The grasp at his arms was tight and sure, pleasing as is, but his cock between them served as a constant reminder that the need to bury himself inside was unbearable.
Pliant in his hands, Satoru spun him around and laid him out on the ground. He frantically kicked off his own shoes and pants before returning to help rid Suguru of the same.
Each day after finishing Satoru’s offering for the past 20 days, Suguru had leaned back at his elbows and stared Satoru down, and this was the most lewd version of it – laid out naked and blushed dark all the way down his heaving chest, a pretty cock curled and oozing down onto his leg in wait, hunger in his eyes that would’ve brought Satoru to his knees if he wasn’t already there. Beyond dreams.
“You’re so good,” Satoru said, shaking his head in bafflement as he slotted himself between strong thighs. 30 days of internal thoughts started to slip through. “How are you real?”
He pressed Suguru’s knees upward to raise his ass from the dirt, and even the suggestion made Suguru throw his head back in satisfaction, reaching out as he lined up above him.
“Do it-”
Inch by quick inch, Satoru lowered his weight and sank into him, a fit so snug and inviting that he could’ve sworn it was carved out just for him. Two cries of intense satisfaction rang out over the sound of the crickets.
Surely the closest to heaven he had ever been.
Suguru keeled against him, arms grappling up over Satoru’s back to pull him deeper, closer, scraping tracks over his skin until there was no closer.
“Oh, you’re so good,” he muttered into Suguru’s ear, far less controlled.
Pushing through the initial flash of ecstasy, his brain begged his hips to thrust, and they eventually did, soft with growing power. Suguru’s arms went frantic again, running over the ground beside him with a crunchy scrape. Satoru pulled back to grab them, pinning them against the dirt above his head and setting a pace to toss his hips up toward them. Suguru writhed beneath him, a new gasp of air drawn heavy into his lungs each time Satoru’s cock pulled nearly free of his hole.
A sheen of sweat slowly grew over their skin. The bolo tie swung and danced against Suguru’s chest between them. The longer Satoru fucked into him, the more his pleasure steadily grew and his knees ached, grinding and slipping against dirt and stone until he had to let go, pull back and resituate.
Suguru’s hands wandered down over Satoru’s ass in their new freedom, up his back and down his arms in jerky motions as he bounced up and down.
“Don’t stop, Satoru,” he said, tucking his chin down into his neck, then tossing it back up with the furrow of his brow. “Right there, I need it there, keep it-”
Fighting for breath, Satoru stooped down toward his ear to murmur, “to think, you didn’t even wanna speak to me when you met me.”
Though Satoru couldn’t see it, he heard the noise of protest, felt it rattle against his chest. The grip at his arms tightened and the legs at his ribs searched for purchase, and before he knew it, Satoru was rolling again. A force of man tossed him, off-guard and sideways until his sweat-soaked back hit the dirt. With the flip of his hair, Suguru landed over his stomach.
“You’re lucky I’m speaking to you now,” he said slyly, leaning over Satoru like he had a knife pressed to his throat.
Still, Satoru laid willingly at his mercy, entranced by his shining face above like some kind of debauched vision as he took his time disappearing the entirety of his cock again.
Unmoving, he settled on top of him, muscle heavy like the weight on his eyelids. The gold cross nearly glowed at his collarbone and his dark hair was wild against the bright night sky. His built thighs shook with his stubborn stillness, walls clenching furiously around Satoru’s throbbing cock as he surveyed him below.
“Suguru…”
“Hmm?”
He smiled like he wasn’t struggling himself.
When he finally moved, it was only to reset the turquoise pendant to the center of Satoru’s chest. Satoru gripped at his thighs as he carefully pointed the silver ends of the ties down to where his flushed cock drooled precum against his stomach, then harder as the majority of his cock slid out, dragging slow and long along his walls when Suguru reached toward the top of his head. From his messy hair, he plucked a stowaway piece of hay, twirling it in his fingers and propping it to hang loosely between Satoru’s lips just as he sank hard to collide ass to hip.
The self-satisfied look on his face told one story, and the slack jaw moan that fell from his mouth told another. He stilled and regained composure, and Satoru went cross eyed.
“Now you look like a real cowboy,” he purred, drawing his fingers down Satoru’s chest and onto his abs.
It didn’t matter if he meant it. Newly sheathed in his perfect heat, Satoru could only gawk up at him, jaw dropping open until the hay tumbled down to the ground. When Suguru still didn’t move, he shook himself from his daze, pushed against the dirt, and ground up into him.
“You tryin’ to kill me?- move-”
With a winning twinkle in his eye, Suguru gave in. Sinking his fingers into Satoru’s sides, he let himself get lost in it again, propelling himself upward with those strong, riding thighs only to slam himself down and bury Satoru deep inside. With each rise and fall against him, his head fell back and the gold chain bounced against the long line of his neck in time.
Satoru let the pleasure roar over him. He reached up to take hold of Suguru’s hips, guiding him as he posted over him with perfect form. Slamming him down at the border of too hard and just right.
As if the idea of needing Satoru’s help was comical, Suguru laughed down on him with a broken chuckle, heaving breaths with each punch. Satoru couldn’t help but smile; maybe he was right.
With a quick shift, he cracked his open palm over Suguru’s perfect ass mid-drop. The sound echoed out over the lake, and he watched Suguru’s eyes and grin go wide. His muscles clamped impossibly tight around the entire length of Satoru’s cock, runaway heat as breathy gasps ascended to a wail of Satoru’s name.
Wrapping the leather ties around his fingers and planting his balled fist in Satoru’s sternum, he began a forward and back rock with Satoru’s cock buried as deep as possible.
The strain at the back of his neck curled Satoru up off the ground, giving him something new to look at: beyond that strong hand pressing the oxygen from his lungs was Suguru’s cock, blushed and rubbing against his abs in a sticky slide with each thrust.
“Goddamn.”
Satoru’s hand flew to it. It slid easily through his hand, and the reaction was instant. Every muscle in Suguru’s body seemed to tremble, his eyes rolled and his free arm reached back to try to stabilize himself against Satoru’s thigh.
“Gonna come,” he wheezed, staring down at him through cracked eyes.
“Yes.”
Hips stuttering and cock kicking, cum shot out from Satoru’s jerking hand. They both watched it fall down around the sides of his leather wrapped fist. Paired with the final squeeze so tight around Satoru’s cock, there was no choice but to follow suit.
When he came, Satoru could’ve sworn he saw God, but the only thing here in Utah was dirt and cattle and a moonlit Suguru riding his cock with a smile of perfect, debauched joy. That was something he could believe in.
The force of it threw his hips up, greedy in seeking more as he flooded him, gave him everything he could in return.
Satoru rubbed over every inch of skin he could find as Suguru rode out the last of their orgasms, grinding deep circles against him until he came to a slow halt. He released his hold on the tie, planting his hands in the dirt at each side to rise with a wet squelch, leaking out onto Satoru and the dirt below as he shifted.
“Come here,” Satoru said, tugging at his arm weakly.
Instead, Suguru bowed on all fours to bring his face to Satoru’s stomach. With his tongue bared, he traced the lines of his cum over pale skin and pink nipple, black hair tickling in its wake. It had barely registered before he’d made it to the top, hanging face-to-face over Satoru, lips pressed closed and eyes on fire.
A desert sacrament.
Satoru’s eyes went lidded and his jaw dropped open, tongue flat and waiting to receive his offering. It poured down from Suguru’s mouth, a salty devotion chased by his full lips and warm tongue until slowly, their bodies melted back together.
Eventually, Suguru rolled off to the side, tucking his cheek to Satoru’s chest and tossing a leg and an arm over his spent form. He was heavy dead weight, the welcome kind. As if some long ingrained habit, Satoru’s hand came up to pet soothingly over his hair; Suguru wordlessly leaned into it.
From his back, Satoru glanced around the clearing. Their clothes littered the ground. The horses stood together chewing grass not too far off at the lake’s edge. The only other spectators were the mountains, the trees, and the stars that lit them all.
“I don’t think I’ve been up here in five, six years,” he said, voice rough as he laid his head back against the ground. “What a way to return.”
Suguru scoffed, jerking against him.
“You’ve got too many acres. Probably haven't seen most of ‘em too recently.” His voice was uncharacteristically soft. He played with the leather ties against Satoru’s chest, tracing over them with his fingertips. “Too busy bein’ too good for us.”
“I’m a man with things to do!”
Satoru said it as a joke, but regretted it the moment he did. Too loaded, too ambiguous when everything he thought he wanted now pushed him apart from the only good thing he knew for sure. Sadness came over him and Suguru fell silent.
The absentminded stroke of his hand traveled far enough down Suguru’s scalp to encounter the necklace. He considered the chain as he traced his finger along the texture of it, the delicate strength it held, a welcomed tie to something worth believing in. Then he moved back to the crown of his head.
“When’s your flight?”
“Ten A.M., I think? Leave around eight.”
The ball had been in motion more than thirty days. He’d made plans to start an internship that week, see a friend for their birthday the next, live the final throes of freedom in his university sweater until Father dragged him kicking and screaming from beneath the palms. Now the prospect of ten months away and the uncertainty that what he’d found may not be here when he returned, tightened his hold on Suguru’s hip.
Neither spoke for long enough that Satoru would’ve thought that he’d fallen asleep if not for the gentle worry of the hand that had migrated to his ribs.
“It’s gotta be late now,” Suguru finally offered, soft lips and warm breath against Satoru’s skin. “We can… go back when you’re ready.”
Satoru stared up at the moon above. The ground was hard and unwelcoming beneath him. He wasn’t ready for almost anything.
“No, the sun’ll wake us up soon.”
-Salvation-
At the base of the mountains that formed the outer edge of field eighteen, Suguru sat on his gelding’s back atop a high point in the rocks. With his wide-brim hat removed, he ran his fingers through the top of his long, dark hair. The sun shined down almost at its zenith, hot and bright where it fell on his face.
The most beautiful ranch hand in all God’s creation.
It was nearing lunchtime; he replaced his hat and gazed solemnly out into the pasture, probably in search of a shady place to rest.
Instead, he found Satoru and his mare halfway up the path toward the base of the bluff. Slowly, his look of bewilderment melted to joy. He tossed a hand up toward the sky and shook his head.
“What about your flight?”
With the most genuine smile he’d ever grinned, Satoru unhooked his bag from his saddle, holding it up to his shoulder before shouting back up at him.
“Had to make sure you had lunch!”