Awkward Hands on the Farm

The rain had been working at the stone since before Ambrose woke. At fifty-two he knew the sound of it the way other men knew a clock: hard on the slates, softer where it found the gutter and ran down into the yard. He lay a minute with one arm flung over his eyes and listened for the ewes. Nothing frantic. A low complaint from the near pen, the ordinary restlessness of animals that had carried their lambs long enough to be sick of it. His shoulder answered when he sat up, a catch under the blade that had been getting worse since the first of the season. He dressed in the cold, work pants stiff with yesterday's mud, and went down the narrow stairs without turning on the light.

The kitchen smelled of damp wool and the coffee he had left on the stove too long the night before. He poured what was left into a mug and stood at the window while it heated his hands. Beyond the glass the Dale was a gray smear, walls running off into weather, the track from the lane shining like a cut. He had not meant to hire anyone. Three seasons he had managed the lambing alone, sleeping in snatches on a cot in the shed and eating whatever he could heat without tasting it. Then one morning he had stood in the yard with mud to his boot-tops and realized he could not turn the next one by himself. The agency in town had a name and an age and not much else. Dante. Forty-one. Romanian. Seasonal, and used to stock. Ambrose had grunted into the phone and said the room at the top of the stairs was empty if the man did not mind the cold.

Dante had come up the track two days later with a duffel and a face that gave nothing away. He was shorter than Ambrose had pictured and broader through the chest, dark hair gone silver at the temples, a jaw that looked like it had been set against weather for years. He shook once, hard, and looked past Ambrose at the sheds as if the buildings were the thing he had come to meet. "Lambs," he said. His English sat low and careful in his mouth. "I work. You show."

"Aye," Ambrose said, and that was most of the welcome.

They fell into the work because the work did not require talk. Dante learned the pens faster than Ambrose expected. He had good hands, thick through the knuckles, gentle where a man could be rough and waste a lamb. He did not waste them. He spoke to the ewes in a voice Ambrose could not follow, short words, almost a hum, and the animals settled under it. In the shed they moved around each other in the narrow run between the hurdles, shoulders brushing when a ewe went down and both of them had to get to her at once. The first time it happened Ambrose stepped back so fast he caught his hip on the rail. Dante glanced up, mud on his cheek, and said nothing. The second time neither of them stepped back. Their sleeves stuck together with wet. Ambrose felt the heat of the other man's arm through two layers of cloth and kept his eyes on the lamb he was toweling, ears burning like a boy's.

Meals were worse, because there was nowhere to put his hands. They ate at the scarred table under the one good bulb, stew or eggs or bread and cheese, the radio muttering news neither of them listened to. Dante chewed and watched the window. Ambrose watched the table. The silences were not empty. They had weight, the way a gate has weight when you are holding it against a wind and pretending you are only leaning. Once Dante reached for the salt at the same moment Ambrose did. Their fingers met over the cellar and stayed a half-second too long, skin rough on skin, before Dante drew back and said, "Sorry," in that careful voice.

"Nowt to be sorry for," Ambrose said, and heard how rough he sounded, and hated it, and wanted it back in his mouth so he could say it softer.

At night they took turns in the bathroom at the end of the hall, the pipes knocking, the mirror fogged. Ambrose caught himself listening for the other man's step on the landing. He lay in his bed with the door not quite shut and thought about the width of Dante's wrist where the sleeve had ridden up, the way the man rolled his shoulder when he thought no one was looking, the same catch Ambrose had, the same old ache. Forty-one was not young. Fifty-two was not young. They were two men past the age of pretending their bodies were new, sharing a house that had been built for a family and now held only the sound of rain and the tick of the stove cooling. Ambrose turned onto his bad side and told himself he was only tired. He did not believe it. Across the landing Dante's door clicked, and Ambrose held his breath like a fool until the house went quiet again.

By the fourth day the glances had started. Not long ones. Dante would look up from a pen and find Ambrose already looking, and both of them would look away as if the wall had become interesting. In the yard, hosing muck off their boots, Dante's eyes traveled the line of Ambrose's throat and stopped at his mouth and moved on. Ambrose felt it like a hand. He went back to the hose and sprayed his own boot until the water ran clear and his pulse had somewhere to go. He had not wanted a man in years. He had wanted one, once, a long time ago, when he was well past grown and still too proud to do anything but want, and then the farm had taken the wanting and buried it under seasons. It was not buried now. It stood in his kitchen in a borrowed sweater and asked, in broken English, whether the blue pen or the far pen needed checking first, and Ambrose had to clear his throat before he could answer.

The long day came on a Thursday, though the weather made the names of days feel like a town habit. They were out from first light. A ewe in the bottom field had gone down in a ditch and they hauled her up between them, boots sliding, Dante's chest against Ambrose's back for three hard breaths while they got her feet under her. In the shed two lambs came wrong and had to be turned, Dante's arm in to the elbow, Ambrose holding the ewe's head and talking nonsense to keep his own hands steady. Mud worked into every crease. By late afternoon the rain had thickened to a steady cold pour and the track was a river. They came in at dusk smelling of iodine and wet wool, too tired to speak, tracking the yard across the flagstones.

Ambrose stood at the sink and tried to roll his shoulder. It would not roll. The catch had become a knot, hot and stupid, running from the blade down into the meat of his arm. He braced his good hand on the counter and breathed through his teeth.

Dante was at the table, peeling off a soaked sweater, the shirt under it plastered to his ribs. He watched Ambrose fail at the shoulder once, twice. He dried his hands on a towel that had already given up. "Sit," he said.

"I'm all right."

"You are not." Dante's mouth tugged, not quite a smile. "I see all day. Sit. I do shoulders. On the farm at home, my—" He stopped, searched, gave up on the word. "Old men. We fix each other. Sit."

Ambrose almost said no out of habit. The ache won. He pulled a chair out and sat with his back to the room, facing the window where the rain drew lines down the dark glass. He heard Dante come around behind him. He heard the other man breathe. Then two hands settled on the tops of his shoulders, heavy, hesitant, as if Dante were setting down something he was not sure he was allowed to put there.

"Here?" Dante asked.

"Aye. There."

The first pass was clumsy. Too high, then too far out, thumbs digging where the muscle did not want them. Ambrose hissed. Dante muttered something short in Romanian and adjusted, finding the knot by the way Ambrose went still under it. He worked with his thumbs, slow, not skilled so much as stubborn. The heat of his palms soaked through the damp shirt. Ambrose let his head drop forward. His eyes closed. He could smell the man behind him, sweat and rain and the sharp clean of the soap they both used, and under that something warmer that was only skin. Dante's breath moved the hair at the nape of his neck.

"Too hard?" Dante said.

"No." Ambrose's voice came out lower than he meant. "Don't stop."

Dante did not stop. His hands traveled the slope of the shoulder and came back, slower now, less like a fix and more like he was learning the shape. One thumb stroked the side of Ambrose's neck where the collar gaped. It was not a place that hurt. Ambrose felt the stroke all the way down his spine and into his groin, a pull he had been refusing for days. He shifted on the chair. The wood creaked. Behind him Dante's breathing had changed. Not the steady breath of a man doing a job. Shorter. Careful.

"Ambrose." Dante said the name as if he were testing whether it would hold. His hands had gone still on the shoulders, palms flat, fingers spread. They were shaking a little. "I can stop. If you want. Say, and I stop."

Ambrose turned his head. Dante was close enough that Ambrose could see the rain still caught in his lashes, the line between his brows, the way his mouth was parted as if he had more English and could not find it. Their eyes met. It was the same glance they had been throwing away all week, except neither of them threw it. Ambrose felt his own pulse in his throat. He thought of the ditch, the weight of the other man against his back, the salt cellar, the landing at night. He thought that he was fifty-two and tired and lonely enough to be finished with pretending the want was weather that would pass.

He leaned in first.

The kiss was terrible and good. He missed the center of Dante's mouth and caught the corner, stubble scraping his lip, both of them jolting as if the contact had a charge in it. Dante made a small surprised sound. Then his hand came up and cupped the back of Ambrose's head, clumsy, fingers in the short hair, and he turned into the kiss and found it properly. Their mouths opened. It was wet and unpracticed, teeth clicking once, a huff of breath that might have been a laugh if either of them had air for it. Dante tasted of coffee and salt. Ambrose kissed him harder because he did not know a gentler way to say yes, and Dante kissed him back with the same rough honesty, tongue hesitant and then sure, a low sound in his chest that went straight through Ambrose's shirt into his skin.

"Yes," Dante said against his mouth. "Yes. I want. You want?"

"I want," Ambrose said, and it felt like setting down a gate he had been holding for years.

Dante pulled him up out of the chair. They knocked the mug. It rolled and did not break. Ambrose's hip found the edge of the table and Dante followed him into it, crowding close, their bodies lining up with an awkward bump of belt buckles and swollen cocks trapped in wet work pants. Dante's hands went to Ambrose's waist and did not seem to know whether to hold or haul. He hauled. Ambrose groaned into the kiss and got his own hands under the hem of Dante's shirt, palms on hot skin, the ridge of a rib, the soft give above the belt where a working man kept a little warmth. Dante shivered and pressed closer, grinding once, helpless, the friction blunt and not enough.

"Table," Dante managed. "Here. Please."

They turned. Ambrose's back hit the wood. Dante's thigh pushed between his and Ambrose spread without thinking, one boot skidding on the flagstone, a graceless lurch that would have shamed him if he had had any shame left. Dante laughed once, breathless, and kissed the sound into Ambrose's jaw. His hand found the front of Ambrose's pants and cupped him through the cloth, a broad rough press, not a tease. Ambrose's hips jerked into it. He fumbled Dante's belt, got it open on the second try, shoved his hand down and found Dante hard and thick and hot, the head already wet. Dante cursed, a short Romanian crack of a word, and dropped his forehead to Ambrose's shoulder.

"Te vreau," he said, wrecked. "I want you. Upstairs. Bed. This—" He squeezed, and Ambrose's vision went white at the edges. "Not enough. I want all. You say yes?"

"Yes," Ambrose said. His hand was still wrapped around Dante, stroking once, clumsy, learning the weight of him. "Christ. Yes. Come on."

They climbed the stairs badly, stopping on the landing to kiss again because the wanting had gotten ahead of their feet. Dante's shirt came off halfway up and snagged on his elbow. Ambrose helped and made it worse and they both swore and then Dante was bare to the waist in the dim hall, chest hair dark and silvered, a scar along one rib that Ambrose wanted to put his mouth on and did not know how to ask for. He kissed it anyway. Dante's hand tightened in his hair. "Bedroom," Dante said, voice gone hoarse. "Your bed. Mine is small. I fall off. Stupid."

Ambrose's room was cold and narrow, the bed pushed under the eaves, the quilt his mother had left him heavy across the foot. The lamp on the dresser threw a yellow pool and left the corners dark. They stood in it and did not know how to begin taking the rest off. Dante went for his boots and nearly fell. Ambrose caught his elbow. Their eyes met and the absurdity of it cracked something open; Dante huffed a laugh, embarrassed and bright, and Ambrose felt his own mouth pull.

"We are old," Dante said. "And stupid. And I still want you so much I cannot think."

"Get the pants off, then," Ambrose said, and his ears went hot at his own plainness.

They stripped without grace. Buttons fought them. Wet denim clung and had to be peeled, Dante hopping once on one foot, Ambrose sitting to drag his own pants down and getting stuck at the ankle until Dante knelt and yanked. The kneeling put Dante's face level with Ambrose's cock, which had sprung free, thick and flushed, already leaking at the tip. Dante went still. His hand settled on Ambrose's thigh, calloused thumb stroking once, a question.

"Can I," he said. He looked up. His mouth was red from kissing. "I am not— I have not done this many times. I want to. You tell me if bad."

"Won't be bad," Ambrose said, and meant it so hard his voice shook. "Go on. I want your mouth."

Dante leaned in and licked the head, a flat cautious stroke that made Ambrose's stomach drop. He did it again, slower, tasting, and then took him in. It was sloppy from the first. Too much spit, not enough angle, his lips dragging, a scrape of teeth that Ambrose hissed at and Dante corrected with a muttered apology around the shaft. He found a rhythm that was more enthusiasm than skill, bobbing, sucking hard, one hand wrapped at the base because he could not take all of it. Saliva shone on his chin. He moaned when Ambrose's cock hit the back of his throat and he had to pull off, coughing once, eyes wet, and then he went back down with a determination that undid Ambrose more than any practiced trick would have.

"Christ," Ambrose said. His hand found Dante's hair and gripped, not forcing, just holding on. "That's— aye. Like that. Messy. Don't care. Feels—" He lost the sentence when Dante sucked and stroked together, uncoordinated and eager, tongue pressing the underside. Heat climbed Ambrose's spine. He watched the other man's cheeks hollow, watched a drop of spit fall to the rug, watched Dante's own cock stand neglected and dark between his thighs, and the sight of that wanting, amateur and shameless, nearly finished him. He tugged gently at the hair. "Stop. Stop or I'll go. I want— I want inside you. If you'll have it."

Dante pulled off with a wet sound that would have been filthy in any other mouth and was only honest in this one. He wiped his chin with the back of his wrist. "Yes. I have it. I want you fuck me." His English broke further under the need. "Slow. I am not— it has been long. You go slow, I tell you."

"I'll go slow," Ambrose said. "You say stop, I stop. You hear?"

"I hear." Dante stood, knees cracking, and laughed at himself, flushed and gorgeous in the lamplight, cock curving up against his belly. "Bed. Before I fall down like sheep."

They got onto the mattress with more colliding than grace. The quilt bunched. Dante lay back and pulled Ambrose down over him, and for a minute they only kissed, chests together, cocks trapped between their stomachs, grinding in a slow helpless rut that smeared wet between them. Ambrose reached for the drawer in the bedside table and came up with a bottle of lotion he used on his hands in winter and a strip of condoms he had bought in town three winters ago and never opened. His face burned. Dante saw them and his expression softened into something almost tender.

"Good," he said. "You think. I like." He took the bottle, slicked his own fingers, and reached between his legs. Ambrose watched him open himself, two fingers, then a wince, a breath, a quieter, "Așa. Da." It was awkward to witness and impossibly intimate. Ambrose kissed his knee, his thigh, the soft skin beside his cock, and waited until Dante nodded and said, "Now. You. Please."

Ambrose rolled the condom on with fingers that did not want to cooperate. He slicked himself too much and got lotion on the sheet. He settled between Dante's thighs and lined up and missed, the head sliding uselessly, both of them groaning at the tease that was not a tease. Dante reached down and guided him. The second try caught. Ambrose pushed in slow, an inch, another, watching Dante's face for the flinch. It came. He stopped. Dante's hand clamped on his hip.

"Wait," Dante said, breathing hard. "Wait. You are thick. Dumne— wait."

Ambrose held still, shaking with the effort, forehead against Dante's, their breath mixing. He stroked Dante's cock, loose and easy, until the tightness around him eased and Dante's mouth went slack. "All right?"

"Da. More. Slow more."

He sank in the rest of the way. The heat of it stole the air from his lungs. Dante was tight and hot and gripping him in little pulses he did not seem to control, thighs spread wide, one heel dug into the mattress, the other hooked clumsily behind Ambrose's calf. Ambrose stayed deep and did not move until Dante rolled his hips up, a small experimental grind, and gasped, "Move. You can move."

He fucked him slow. Missionary, face to face, because he wanted to see and because he did not trust his knees for anything clever. The rhythm was uneven at first, a farmer's rhythm, more shove than stroke, the bed frame tapping the wall in a knock that would have embarrassed him if anyone else lived within a mile. Dante took it with his mouth open, curses slipping out in both languages, broken English tangled with Romanian until Ambrose could not tell the words apart and did not need to. "Yes. There. Mai— ah, there, do not stop, la dracu, Ambrose—" His hand found Ambrose's shoulder and held the bad one without knowing it was bad, and Ambrose did not care. Sweat gathered at his hairline and dripped onto Dante's chest. He licked it without thinking. Dante laughed, startled, and the laugh turned into a moan when Ambrose changed the angle and found whatever spot made Dante's cock jump against his stomach.

"Good?" Ambrose managed.

"Good. Stupid good. Harder a little. I can take."

He gave him harder, still not fast, deep drives that shoved Dante up the bed until Dante had to brace a hand on the headboard. The sound of it filled the room: skin, breath, the wet noise of the lotion, the rain on the slates above them as if the weather had come inside to listen. Ambrose felt his own edge building too soon and gritted his teeth. He wanted this to last. He wanted to watch Dante come apart under him, this gruff careful man who had massaged his shoulder and asked permission and knelt on a cold rug to suck him like he had been hungry for it.

"Turn over," he said, voice wrecked. "I want you from behind. If you want that."

"I want." Dante was already moving, clumsy with it, Ambrose slipping out and both of them swearing at the loss. Dante got onto his knees and forearms, ass up, face turned sideways on the pillow so he could still see. The position was raw and unpretty and perfect. Ambrose knelt behind him and had to take a second just to look: the broad back, the scar, the thickness of Dante's thighs, the vulnerable clutch of him. He ran a hand down the spine. Dante shivered.

"You are staring," Dante said, muffled and fond. "Put it in. Please. I am— I need."

Ambrose pushed back in. The angle was deeper. Dante shouted into the pillow, a word Ambrose did not know, and pushed back to meet him. They found a rhythm faster than the first, still not smooth, hips smacking, Ambrose's hands gripping Dante's waist hard enough to leave marks they would both see in the morning. He reached under and got a hand on Dante's cock, stroking in a counter-rhythm he kept losing and finding again. Dante fucked his fist and Ambrose's cock at once, greedy, sweating, cursing a blue streak that mixed Mai tare with a broken "fuck me, yes, like farm boy, no, like man, like you—"

"I've got you," Ambrose said, and did not know he was going to say it until it was out. "Come on. I've got you. Let go."

Dante came first. It took him by surprise; Ambrose felt it in the sudden clamp of his body, the stutter of his hips, the spill of hot over Ambrose's fingers and onto the sheet. He groaned Ambrose's name and something longer in Romanian, voice cracking, and kept moving through it, milking it, shaking. The grip of him dragged Ambrose over the edge a few thrusts later. He buried himself and came with a raw sound he would have been ashamed of in daylight, pulsing into the condom, forehead dropped between Dante's shoulder blades, one hand still wrapped around Dante's softening cock because he had forgotten to let go.

They stayed like that until their knees complained. Ambrose pulled out carefully, dealt with the condom with the same lack of elegance he had brought to everything else, and collapsed onto his side. Dante rolled to face him. They were both flushed, streaked with sweat and spend, hair stuck to their foreheads, breathing like men who had run up the fell and not like men who had just had sex in a narrow bed under the eaves. For a moment neither spoke. The rain filled it.

Dante's mouth twitched. A laugh came out of him, quiet and disbelieving, and Ambrose felt an answering one rise in his own chest, awkward as the rest of it had been. They laughed, not loud, shoulders shaking, foreheads nearly touching. Dante reached for the quilt and hauled it up over both of them. The weight of it settled. Under it their legs tangled badly and then better. Ambrose's calloused hand found the center of Dante's chest and stayed. Dante's hand came up and covered it, then slid to rest over Ambrose's heart as if checking the work was still there.

"Long time," Dante said, soft. "I want this long time. Since second day. You look at my mouth and look away. I think, he will never. I think, I am only worker. I still want."

"Since you walked up the track," Ambrose said. The admission sat strangely easy now that his body had told the truth first. "Stood in my yard and would not look at me. I thought I was too old to start wanting a man in my house. Turns out I was only too stubborn."

Dante's thumb moved once over his sternum. Outside, the rain thickened on the roof, a steady hush, the Dale going on without them. The stove downstairs ticked. Somewhere in the shed a ewe called and was answered, ordinary, far away. Dante's eyes were half-closed, the laugh still caught at the corner of his mouth, sleep pulling at both of them and not quite winning. Ambrose drew him closer under the quilt until their chests touched and their hands stayed where they were, two rough palms, two tired hearts, the awkwardness not gone but gentled into something they could keep.

Dante spoke into the small dark between them, voice low, a confession and a question at once. "Then we do not pretend tomorrow, yes? We wake up and we still want. You will let me stay in this bed?"