Wide Open Space | 4 (the end!)

[aukestrel]

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3



They eat lunch, canned tomato soup thinned with milk instead of water, the way Christy's mother used to make when he was a kid, and grilled cheese sandwiches made with thick slices of Mama Bresnyachuk's homemade bread, sharp cheddar, home-grown tomatoes, onions, and lettuce for garnish.

For some reason, maybe the sultry post-rain heat of the afternoon, or the swimming, or all the sex, Christy finds himself nodding sleepily over his plate.. The beer they wash lunch down with doesn't help matters. Sasha starts chuckling as he yawns for the fifth time in as many minutes, and tugs Christy to his feet. "Come on, let's go take a nap."

"We should go turn the hay," Christy objects half-heartedly.

"Relax, we've got hours of daylight left. We can take a nap. Forty-five minutes, max. I'll set the alarm."

"You're the boss," Christy says, letting Sasha pull him toward the master bedroom.

A slight frown wrinkles Sasha's forehead. "Not here," he says slowly. "Not now."

Christy's too sleepy to get it. "Huh?"

"I'm not your boss. I can't be your boss, not here. It's not right."

Christy stops, which makes Sasha stop too. "You're worried about that?"

Sasha, his eyes anxious, finally nods and Christy sighs. "Come on, Sasha. You're a smart guy. You think I think that? I don't. And I know you don't."

"I don't know what to think," Sasha says quietly, almost like he's being careful. "I've never done this before."

Christy stares at him. "I thought you said you'd done this. You know, up north."

"Well, I've done this." Sasha waves his hand between them. "But not like… this. And I don't want you to think you have to do it. This. And I… I like you. I mean, I like you. And I just… I want you to know that."

Christy shakes his head and reaches out to rest his hands on Sasha's shoulders, pulling Sasha forward until they're practically nose-to-nose. "Nobody's made me do anything I didn't want to do since the day I shot my dad. If I didn't want this, I wouldn't be here. Got it?"

Sasha swallows hard and then finally nods, taking a step back, but for once his eyes aren't on the floor, they're on Christy, and the relief on his face is almost painful to see. Christy feels that urge again to find out who did this to Sasha, to go back in time and make sure they learn that it's not the way you treat a man as fine as he is.

Then again, if he did that they might not ever meet, so maybe he just needs to get over it and move on, just show Sasha that he doesn't have to worry about that with him.

He reaches out and finds Sasha's hand, laces their fingers together, calluses catching and rubbing. "C'mon. Nap's calling."

Neither of them speaks as they go into Sasha's room and strip down. The furniture is good, heavy maple, well made, and the curtains and spread are plain dark blue. Christy glances around, looking for evidence of Sasha's wife, but there's not much to find. Just one photograph on the tall dresser, Sasha dressed up with a pretty, dark-haired woman in a wedding dress, both of them seeming happy. She looks older than Christy expected, and stronger too. He thinks she probably made Sasha a good wife, and for a moment feels a little jealous, until he realizes he's being jealous of a dead person which is kind of… weird. And, lucky for him, he guesses, Sasha doesn't seem the pining sort.

Sasha's not paying any attention to Christy, bending over to turn back the covers, and Christy stares at his naked ass, rounded and firm. "I want you so bad, I want you to fuck -" he remembers Sasha saying, and knows suddenly, with a flash like heat lightning inside him, that he wants that too, wants to find out what it's like to bury himself inside Sasha. And maybe, even, to find out what it's like the other way, to have Sasha in him. He knows that's what men do. Even in a school as small as Phillips County High, he'd heard it whispered about. Ran across it once or twice in magazines - he'd read a lot of those waiting for his dad at one doctor or another, and the magazines in Malta and, once, that week in Billings, had been a far cry from anything Verna'd have thought of getting at Dodson's little library. After that he'd even touched himself there a time or two, out of curiosity. It had felt surprisingly good.

Maybe he'll get a chance to find out for real, if he stays around a while.

Sasha's sitting on the bed with the alarm clock now and Christy wills his half-formed erection away. The nap was sounding like all he wanted up to about fifty five seconds ago and now…

It's kind of embarrassing.

Sasha finishes with the alarm clock and looks over at Christy and Christy feels himself blush, hot and heady. But Sasha just looks him over, head to toe, then reaches one hand to the alarm clock again without taking his eyes off Christy, turning it off, Christy guesses.

All the words are dried up in Christy's throat, so when Sasha says, "Nap later?" with a grin just this side of shy and wicked - and how's he do that? - Christy can only nod.

It takes just a few seconds, though, for Sasha to come to his feet and meet Christy halfway, and it's pretty obvious Sasha's suddenly not all that tired either. So Christy relaxes and takes Sasha's face in his hands to kiss him, sort of an apology. And Sasha kisses him back the same way, almost like a promise.

And this time there's not that urgency Christy's felt before. Something's changed, or maybe Sasha's just finally clear on the fact that Christy wants this too, that Christy's more than happy to be here, so Christy lets himself indulge, running his hands over Sasha's body, his taut abdomen, his smooth back, his tight, round ass, pulling Sasha close against him and throwing his head back so Sasha can suck harder, just there, at the base of Christy's neck. But when he starts to slide to his knees Christy comes back to himself, manages to catch Sasha by the elbows, push him back onto the bed. "You wanna fuck?" he whispers into Sasha's neck, not sure he can actually look him in the eye, not sure if he's supposed to ask or even remember what Sasha said before, but wanting to know all the same.

Sasha goes still beneath him and Christy raises his head just enough so he can see Sasha's face. His eyes are closed and he's swallowing hard, and Christy figures that's a 'yes,' more or less.

So he's surprised when Sasha rolls them over, dumping Christy on the bed and disappearing out of the room. He's up on one elbow, rolling onto his stomach to get up all the way, when Sasha comes back into the room with a jar, stuff they use on cows in the winter.

"You got to… grease up," Sasha says, turning about fifty shades of red and each one hotter than the last. Christy doesn't laugh, doesn't even smile, just pulls Sasha back down onto the bed, rolls the two of them over so he's on top again and sets to making sure Sasha knows Christy's not laughing at him, far from it, let him know Christy's on board with the whole thing.

And it works: Sasha kisses him back, licks him too, and soon he's relaxed again under Christy, moaning when Christy licks a nipple the way Sasha licked him before, flipping the two of them over so he can get Christy's arm up over his head, licking there and even using his teeth, makes Christy shudder all over. He tells Sasha please, and Sasha says it back to him and then goes still again.

Well, Christy's not going to back out now, it's the farthest thing from his mind, and he says that to Sasha, point blank: "I want this."

"Good," Sasha says, swallowing again. "Me too."

But then he starts to roll over, leaving Christy kneeling up on the bed staring at both of them like someone just handed him a potato fork and told him to go empty the river. "Uh, Sasha…"

"Just grease it up," Sasha whispers, the back of his neck going red. "Stick it in." He spreads his legs too and Christy doesn't know whether to come already or try to do what Sasha says. But it's not what he thought. Maybe he knows less than he thought he did.

"Can you turn back over?" he asks, touching Alex's ass, rubbing his thumb against the hollow at the base of Sasha's spine. "I sort of thought…"

Sasha rolls half onto his side, his face and chest beet red. "I never…"

"It's all in the same place, pretty much," Christy says, pushing Sasha's hip for all the world like he's coaxing him. "Least I thought it'd work like that."

"Yeah," Sasha says slowly, as slow as he's turning onto his back. "I s'pose…"

"And I want to see you," Christy whispers, leaning down and onto Sasha to kiss him again, feel his hardness pressing up against Christy, wondering for a few seconds what it'd feel like to have that hardness pressing up inside him. "Better that way."

"Yeah," Sasha says, a hitch in his breathing, one hand in Christy's hair and holding Christy down and close. "You're the boss."

And is that all it takes? Christy thought it'd been love, yeah, twice before. And now he knows it wasn't, not even close. 'Cause this is love, has to be, Sasha uncertain as hell but leaning out to take a chance - again - and teasing Christy about the very thing he'd been afraid of not fifteen minutes ago.

Christy could walk one end of the world to the other and not find a man the like of Sasha's heart and courage. He's not sure how he knows it but he does.

Sasha's still holding him close; Christy feels like he just took a turn around the paddock but he wasn't even gone long enough for Sasha to notice. He feels tears wet on his eyelashes and he rubs his face deep into Sasha's neck, licking him and tonguing him up and down so Sasha doesn't notice.

"Christy," Sasha whispers to him after a while, his legs fallen open and Christy between them like it's the most natural thing in the world. "It's okay…"

Christy pulls back onto his knees, reaching for the jar Sasha left on the night table and putting his finger on Sasha's lips for a second. "Damn sight better than okay," he says deliberately, twisting the lid off and letting it drop to the table top, then pulling out a fingerful of the stuff. "Me and you?"

"Guess so," Sasha says, his eyes dropping. "You, mostly."

Christy looks at the two of them, Sasha tilting his ass up and Christy's cock shining. And his cock never looked so big, and Sasha never looked so… vulnerable. "You sure?" he says doubtfully, putting his cock there but then stopping. Sasha pulls his knees back, but the hole's still awful small.

Well, he's the boss. So he grabs another finger of the stuff and pushes it into Sasha's hole. Sasha jerks like he's been shot and Christy pulls back right away. "God, no," Sasha says. "Please, God -"

So he goes back to what he was doing, working it in a little with his finger, then his thumb. And it's softer than he thought it would be, softer and smoother. He thought maybe it'd freak him out, when it came down to it, but it's not. He wants to grease up, stick it in, just like Sasha said.

"It's good," Sasha's saying somewhere above him. "Christy, it's so…"

He listens to much more of that and he won't last long enough to get it in there. "Okay," he says, more for himself than Sasha, and he puts the head of his cock back there, right there, and pushes a little.

He has to push harder: it's not like a woman after all. Too hard, maybe; the head slips in and Sasha gasps. But when he looks up at Sasha, Sasha's eyes are closed, his teeth in his lower lip, and his ass is still moving towards Christy, pushing up and down, taking Christy's cock in bit by bit.

So Christy grabs hold again, pushes in again, and this time his cock slides in part way. It's all too much, suddenly: pressure around him, behind him, under him, and he squeezes his eyes shut and pushes hard, harder, Alex giving way under him until he's all the way in.

Fucking hell, better than any woman, smooth and tight and strong, and he can't stop. He's moving out, then back in, and Sasha's moving with him, groaning under him, his hands gripping Christy's ass like he'll never let go. A few more thrusts and Sasha's pulling Christy down, arching up off the bed, his mouth wet and open and gasping words Christy doesn't understand against Christy's collarbone.

It's working, working, the two of 'em together and face to face, and he can even feel Sasha's cock between them, still hard, even wet, and he pushes in hard again, wondering how it all feels for Sasha. Must feel good, can't feel as good as this, as good as he feels, caught and held inside Sasha, so tight and warm and deep that he never wants to leave.

And then it gets even better, and he doesn't know how, or why: Sasha wraps a leg around him and moans into his ear and then convulses, his cock is pulsing between them.

Too good, so good, so fucking good, and he drives in over and over until he goes over, head over heels, spending himself in a glorious burst inside Sasha.

His face is wet, or maybe it's Sasha's; and maybe he needs to learn Ukrainian because he's pretty sure it's not English Sasha's murmuring to him; and he burrows down, wrapping himself around Sasha even though he can feel his cock, wet and soft, slipping out when Sasha puts his legs down.

And then there's a sheet over them and Sasha wrapped around him again and Christy goes to sleep with Sasha all around him.

When he wakes it's still light, but he's cold, the bed's cold. And he doesn't know where he is for a few seconds until he remembers: Sasha's room. Sasha's bed.

And no Sasha.

He untangles himself from the sheets and finds the floor with his feet. He feels kind of sticky, but he's more concerned with how Sasha's feeling. Maybe he's having second thoughts, or maybe it was the bed or something.

He stands in the doorway, listening. Could be Sasha just went for a shower. But then he hears Sasha's voice, pitched low, coming from the kitchen. He comes through the door to see Sasha on the phone, a towel around his waist, his back to Christy. He'd gotten a shower, figures; Christy could use one too. He's about to head up to the bathroom, unaccountably relieved, when he hears what Sasha's saying.

"Yeah, I was just thinking," he's saying, sounding uncomfortable. "He might be better off with you with Luke and Bennie both gone. Kind of stupid to keep him around when you want him and the twins nowhere close to being able to ride."

He listens a few seconds and nods even though he's on the phone and the other person can't possibly see him. "Yeah, I'll just see how it goes when they're older. I'm thinking on breeding Lara or Gracie anyhow."

"No, no, Mr. Pierson, we already agreed on a price and I'm not going to take more. That's not neighbourly. You'd be doing me a favour, I told you."

"Yeah, Saturday'd work. I could bring him - oh. Well, yeah, that would work just great, Mr. Pierson. Much obliged. Much obliged to you."

It takes Christy a few seconds to understand what Sasha's doing, and a few more to figure out why. Selling the horse, a horse, not one of the two they've been using, one of the others. To pay Christy? He's running close to the edge but not over it. Maybe he's worried about the bonus, and maybe Christy ought to set matters straight. He ought to have set matters straight to begin with, he guesses, or at least as soon as he saw Sasha's books.

Sasha hangs up and turns around and sees Christy. And he doesn't look guilty or afraid or even self conscious, so Christy guesses that he's not worried about Christy overhearing him. Which is good. He thinks.

To be honest, he doesn't know what to think.

"We kind of overslept," Alex is saying, coming over closer to Christy, his smile warmer and more intimate than Christy's seen on him. He kind of hates to break the mood, but -

"You're selling one of the horses?"

"Well, yeah," Alex says, frowning a little. "Got to thinking without Luke and Bennie to help out, he's just going to be eating his head off. He's a real nice horse, quiet enough. They asked about him for their grandson and I told them I'd think about it. I thought about it." He shrugs. "It's no big deal."

Christy's unsure but he's got something inside him telling him that there's more to it than Alex is saying and that he, Christy, is at the root of it. "Are you selling the horse to pay me, Alex?"

"No," Alex says, setting his jaw. "I'm selling the horse because they want him and they'll take care of him and it's one less worry off my mind. If I get some extra money to hire help, that's a bonus."

"Sasha, listen," Christy says earnestly. "I don't need the money. Don't need the bonus especially, but it was nice of you to think of it. And -"

"Christy, out there I am the boss, and I can't not pay you -"

"Alex, I have my own money!"

That gets through and Sasha steps back, looking uncertain again… uncertain and even sad, or maybe something more. "You just… this is just… fun?" he asks quietly and as sure as Christy's standing there he can see the wheels turning in Sasha's head, how Christy told him he helped out on a dairy farm and such.

"No," he says firmly, wanting to shake Alex good and hard. "My dad gave me the farm some years ago. When he died, I sold it and lit out. I wasn't staying there another second. I got that money, Sasha, that's all I meant. I'm just… I didn't know what to do after he died, I didn't want that to be my home any more, so I up and sold it. And I knew the harvest, that was something I could do while I was figuring out what I was going to do, where I was gonna go."

"Oh," Alex says, but he's looking Christy in the eye again, and he doesn't look as sad as before.

"And I didn't want - I should have told you but I didn't want you to start thinking on something I couldn't guarantee, but that ammonite we found is worth some money, Alex. Real money. Thirty or forty thousand dollars, maybe more."

"I don't want to sell it," Alex says swiftly, almost like it's a knee-jerk reaction.

"Yeah, but if I can figure out where it came from, there could be more, Sasha. There could be a bed of 'em on your land somewhere. I don't know for sure, I need to look around and read up, but the one we found, that's like money in the bank for you right now."

"I was going to ask you to stay a while," Sasha says after a minute, all quiet, turning so his back's to Christy. "I guess there's… well, I can give you a lift to town -"

"Jesus, Sasha," Christy says exasperatedly. "Look, I told you I'd help you for the harvest, first off. I'm not going anywhere. And I'm not going anywhere after that either, if you don't want me to. And if you do, I might just get a place in town and poach off your fossil bed until you get so tired of me hanging around you give me some chores to do just to get me off your back."

Sasha turns back and looks at him for a long moment, then one corner of his mouth lifts. "Apparently I hired a crazy man."

Christy grins back, almost too relieved for words. "Yeah. You'll never be rid of me now."

It's not true, of course. If Sasha really wanted him gone, he'd go, but he's learning to read him now and he's pretty sure he doesn't. Not yet anyway. Christy's not going to make assumptions this time. But he'll stay as long as he's wanted. And he's hoping right now that that's a long time.

Almost like he read Christy's mind, Sasha puts a hand over Christy's, his expression solemn. "I don't think I'd, uh, mind. That. If you stayed on a while."

Christy's about to respond when the sound of wheels on gravel makes them both jump. Their eyes meet.

"Mama," Alex says.

"Shit!" Christy, realizes he's standing naked in Sasha's kitchen and Sasha's mom is about to walk in. Not only is he naked, but he looks, and smells, like he's been doing exactly what he has been doing. "Shower!" he gasps, dashing for the stairs. Behind him he hears Sasha making a beeline for his bedroom and, most likely, clothes. Which reminds him to duck into his room long enough to grab some clothes before he skitters into the bathroom. He clicks the lock in place just as he hears Mama and the twins calling out for Alex downstairs.

He leans against the door, heart pounding, and glances at himself in the mirror to see he's got three or four hickeys, fortunately in places that won't show if he buttons up his shirt. He snickers, shaking his head. They've been acting like a couple of teenagers- high on hormones, running scared from the parents. While it's fun - well, fantastic, to be honest - what he really wants is something a little quieter, a little surer.

And he thinks it might just be in the cards.

He showers quickly, dresses with care, in pants, not jeans, and his good shirt, and a string tie he made from a trilobite fossil he found. He combs his hair neatly, and dusts off his boots with a damp rag, then finally heads downstairs, feeling like he ought to have flowers or chocolate or some other sort of gift for Sasha's mom, since if Sasha was a girl Christy'd be courting him. Then he remembers the petrified wood, still in the mudroom where he'd left it when they came in, and smiles to himself.

From the front room - he's willing to bet Mrs. Bresnyachuk calls it a parlor - he hears Ilya and Irina chattering on about sailors and scouts and cats and something about a tuxedo, and hears Sasha asking bewildered-sounding questions, so it's not just him being confused. He slips quietly down the hall, not wanting to interrupt their reunion, and goes through the empty kitchen into the mud-room. The lump of petrified wood is right where he left it, on the ledge of the laundry-sink, which is convenient.

A few minutes with soap and a scrub brush and the fossil is clean enough to eat off of, not that you'd want to. Still, he won't feel weird showing it to Mama Bresnyachuk now. He still wants to put a coat of lacquer on it, or, even better, get it polished by a real lapidary, but for now it'll do. He turns around to go back in the kitchen and is a little startled to find Sasha's mother standing there watching him, a towel in her hands, and a thoughtful expression on her face.

"Uh, hi," he says.

"Hello, Christy," she says back.

He's nervous, palms sweaty, and he has to hold the stone carefully so he doesn't drop it. "I, ah, found this . . . it's for you, if you like it." He holds it out, and she bends closer to look. "It's petrified wood. See the rings? Used to be a tree, a few million years ago. Now it's a rock. It's g-got nice colors. I'll get it p-polished up if you don't mind, uh, leaving it with me for a bit."

"For me?" she says, looking up at him, eyes wide.

"Yes. Yeah. For you. All yours. It'll be real pretty once it's polished up. But if you don't like it, I might be able to find a better one." He starts to pull it back, but she stops him with an upheld hand.

"No! No, this is lovely!" She takes it carefully, like it might shatter, and traces the rings of color with a finger. "It was a tree? I did not know a tree could turn to stone."

"Takes a long time, and special circumstances, but yeah, a tree can turn into a rock. We found it in the river today. Sasha's river."

She looks up at him sharply and he feels his face burn. "Many things can become other things over time." The look on her face makes him wonder if she's talking about fossils. Then she reaches out and takes his hand, turns it this way and that. "You have good hands. Capable. Steady."

"Um, thanks?"

She studies him a long moment, and then pats his hand. "When I come tonight, I look at Sasha. He seems different."

Christy tenses, suddenly worried. What did she see? Can people tell just by looking? He was pretty sure they couldn't, but maybe she can, especially with Christy calling her son by her own pet name.

"I see something in him I have not seen in a long time,' she continues, oblivious to his inner turmoil. "He is like he was when he was a boy. He seems… happy. And the only different thing around is you. So I think it must be you who bring this to him." She stops, thinks for a moment, then looks at him again. "It is good he has a friend."

Christy feels his face fire up again, and he can't think of a single thing to say, but he nods. She seems satisfied by that and nods too.

"Come, you set the table, yes?" she asks, turning away.

"Sure." Grateful for something to do, he follows.

Dinner is delicious, beef and mushrooms and onions in some kind of sour-cream gravy, served over thick, homemade noodles. The kids are beginning to lose their shyness around him, and they include him in their deep discussions of what they'd done that day, and a new television show they're very excited about. From what he can gather, it's about some kind of magic princess who thinks she's a schoolgirl and who fights bad guys from another universe. It's a little hard to figure out the details, especially since Irina keeps holding up her spoon and yelling "Moon Prism Power!"

He notices Mama Bresnyachuk watching Sasha when he's not paying attention, an intent, quiet look, but she looks satisfied too.

He also notices that every time Sasha gets up to get more of something or clear a dish, when he sits back down he does it kind of carefully. He sends an apologetic look Sasha's way when Mama B. has her back turned, but Sasha just grins and winks.

After dinner Mama Bresnyachuk seems again in no hurry to rush off and asks if they want coffee. Christy says sure, and Sasha winks at him and then his mama and says he'll get the bottle. Christy's not sure what that means but Mama's grinning just like Sasha so he starts clearing the table and running water to wash up.

"I would have made the coffee myself," she tells Sasha when he comes back from the parlor with a bottle of vodka. "You should tell me before."

"It'll be fine," Sasha says, dropping a kiss on his mama's head. "Just a little celebration, Mama, you can make the real thing on Sunday. I sold Dapper today and Christy's agreed to stay on a while."

"That is good," Mama B. says enthusiastically, taking the bottle from Sasha. "I make the coffee."

Sasha shrugs and grins at Christy, then says to the twins, "You want to help me get the horses in?"

Christy, washing up, watches Mama B. make the coffee. It entails cream and sugar and some of the brewed coffee along with the vodka, and she's cooking it all on the stove. He's not sure what to think about it but he guesses they know what they're doing, even if it's not exactly Irish coffee.

And he grins to think of that. He'll have to get a bottle in town, see what Sasha - and his mom - think about Irish coffee, if they get this excited over some vodka. And while he’s there, he needs to set up a bank account, and get a library card. And find out what he has to do to start becoming officially Canadian. Because whether or not this thing with Sasha is what he thinks it is (and he’s amazingly sure about that, for once) he’s found where he wants to be.

-Fin--

Feedback here or to kelliedru (at) gmail . com and/or comments (at) aukestrel . com

AuK: I have to say thanks to Kellie for agreeing to do this in the first place and then putting up with my PMS (and non PMS) freakouts. She found the heart and soul of this story so we could write it.

Lyrics! Hey, would it be us if it didn't have lyrics?

Wide Open (Paul Durham/Black Lab)
Sleeping on your doorstep is killing me
I was king of the world now it’s killing me
Can you lift me up somehow
Show me what I’m feeling now
In this wide open space
On these wide open faces
In your wide open eyes
I can see
See you all around me
Get myself an island on the sea
Get myself a jetplane to carry me
Can you lift me up somehow
Show me what I’m feeling now
I believe in luck
I believe in fate
I believe that love will find a way

Okay, well, it sounds better as a song. Really.