Tom’s jaw dropped a little. “Adventures in Shit?”
Ollie laughed. “It was tempting, trust me.”
“Wow.” Then Tom’s face darkened, and he turned away, ostensively straightening his business cards, which, Ollie noted with a stab of such fondness that he thought his heart would break, had a misplaced apostrophe. Ollie came closer, standing so tight behind Tom’s back that when he blew lightly, Tom’s hand flicked up to his neck in annoyance. “It’s a
children’s
book. No gay dates whatsoever. No one gay at all. Although the bear might be slightly suspect.”
Tom appeared suitably chastised, but having someone genuinely jealous about him was so delightful Ollie found even the suspicion made him want to kiss Tom some more.
“Is it in shops yet? Can I buy it?”
Ollie huffed. “Editing first. I’m thinking the young teacher who saves Freddie’s life needs to grow his hair back. I made him bald for some reason I can’t possibly fathom.” Tom clearly didn’t get it and only absentmindedly ran his hand over his own newly short hair.
Ollie smiled inwardly and wondered if he could be any happier. It wasn’t an emotion he was entirely familiar with. He’d always thought some people could feel happiness easily but it eluded others their whole lives, regardless of how much money or success they had. It almost seemed disproportionate to the attaining of those, but nevertheless that’s what most people, himself included, focused on. The book brought happiness, sure. It also brought confidence, and a sense of self-worth. But it was nothing in comparison to enjoying seeing Tom frowning with a pen in the corner of his mouth, as he struggled to read someone’s handwriting on an order form.
So this is love
, Ollie reflected.
He was exploding with feelings he had no name for, but could only assume that they were all actually one, disguised.
He even helped Tom pack up his rickety van at the end of the day. It was one of the most uncharacteristic things he’d ever done, and if he was totally honest with himself, which was still a bit of a step too far, he’d admit it was only because he saw the little old lady from the next tent put down her knitting and attempt to heft an Adirondack chair onto her back. Tom, he’d have sat and watched work. He had a feeling he could watch Tom watch paint dry and never grow tired of the sight.
Bartleby suddenly discovered just how badly injured he was, how terrible his balance was, and kept falling over until the van was packed, at which time the dog hopped nimbly into the front seat next to Tom and stuck his head out of the window, good to go.
Tom began to tap a beat on the steering wheel, glancing between Ollie and his hire car.
“Come with me?”
Ollie kept his, “
I’m hoping to
,” inside.
§§§
Jammed against the passenger door, tempted to hang his own head out and feel the warm air rushing past, Ollie was surprised when they turned right toward Queenstown, not left to Wanaka, where he’d assumed James’s farmer friend lived. He was extremely impressed and pleased to discover that the station was on this side of the mountain pass and thus very close to his mother’s place. To him.
They veered off onto a dirt track and began to climb. The van slowed to almost a crawl, struggling to negotiate the bumps, overloaded as it was.
A bit like life
, Ollie reflected. He was about to attempt this small observation to break the very noticeable silence when they rounded the edge of a small forestry plantation and arrived at the shed.
Conversation was conveniently then restricted to such things as
twist the other way, got it, fuck
, and other such moving-of-furniture essentials. Eventually all the chairs and the coffee table were standing on the grass outside the shed, and Tom was rummaging for some keys.
Ollie hadn’t known what to expect. Although he lived on a hill station, the only sheep he knew came with mint sauce and gravy. He had a vague idea that the cashmere he liked to wear had once moved around on four legs, but he wasn’t even all that sure that had anything to do with sheep.
One thing Ollie was very familiar with, however, was YouTube. Although he had not checked on the progress of Standing Cat for the whole time Bartleby and Freddie were in danger, procrastination had once been his middle name. He stepped over the lip of the ill-fitting door and into season one, episode who-the-fuck-cares, of Hoarders—Buried Alive. His lip curled back, his hand flew to his mouth, and he felt his nuts churn unpleasantly, and not the ones he’d shared with Tom. The ones he had planned on sharing with him later. But not in here, apparently.
There were fleeces hung on racks and discarded shearing tools and flies and maggots, and the stink was appalling.
Tom appeared to see things for the first time from Ollie’s point of view and colour rose upon his cheeks. Ollie was fairly sure it was embarrassment, and he removed his hand and smiled wanly. Tom pushed past some detritus of sheep and disappeared through another door.
The back of the shed was divided off, and this is where Tom had been generously allowed to live and work.
It was a marginal improvement on the welcome-to-Chez-Tom front of shed, but not by much.
In one corner, Tom had wedged a camp bed. It was the sort of bed grannies produced for grandchildren coming to stay for the first time, the kind that made you lie awake all night terrified it might spring shut in the middle and trap you helpless and crying for rescue while she tutted and called your soul-scarring horror all stuff and nonsense. The Z-bed had a couple of neatly folded grey blankets on top of it. The mattress was thinner than Ollie’s wallet.
Tom’s clothes were neatly folded on top of a wooden box. He had a small blue stove, which made Ollie shiver. It screamed Scout Camp at him, and he’d never even been a Scout. But he’d possibly had an unfortunate run-in with a Scout Master once. The rest of the area was taken up with tools—large ones, which Ollie assumed—with the same level of knowledge that he had about sheep—were for cutting things, and smaller ones for putting the pieces back together again.
Like the tiny living space, the work area was spotlessly clean, but…Ollie despaired but said cheerfully, “This is incredible.”
Tom was observing him carefully, and at this encouragement something seemed to release inside him. He grinned and began proudly showing Ollie what everything did and telling him what it was called at the same time as finding a bowl for the dog and pouring him some water from an ex-milk carton.
Ollie searched around for a tap.
Then he tried to find a sink.
Shower?
He swallowed. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Tom winced. “I’ve got lecky—need it for the lathe and shit, but I have to get water from the rain barrel. I’m acclimatizing. Kiwi now.”
Ollie nodded. He had emigrated, too, but he wore shoes and knew where Prague was. He desperately wanted to ask how Tom took a shit, but given what he assumed was also running through Tom’s mind about what might happen between them, it seemed slightly forward. One thing was for sure, Z-beds weren’t made for two. Maybe that was why grandmothers liked them so much.
It was cold in the shed. As with everywhere in New Zealand, step out of the sun and you risked hypothermia if you didn’t wear a knitted hat with flaps that made you look like a girl called Pippa. He wrapped his arms around himself and watched with fascination as Tom got some water to heat on the little stove and busied himself with teabags. There was nowhere to sit, so Ollie boosted himself up onto the edge of one of the tool benches, being mindful of cutting blades. Not that his bits and pieces were going to be needed any time soon, apparently.
Now the stress and worn care on Tom’s features became a little more understandable.
He was trying—he’d joined the army for a home. He’d married for a house. He’d lied and cheated and broken Ollie’s heart for a job. This, he was doing all on his own, as best he knew how.
Ollie grinned and said to Tom’s back, “I’m really proud of you. You know that, yeah? I think you’re my hero.”
He could feel the warmth of Tom’s delight all the way over on the other side of the freezing shed.
Tom appeared to think Ollie needed to share a little more of that new heat and threaded his way through the old junky items to where Ollie perched, and leant between his open thighs. Thinking back to a previous exchange in a kitchen, when everything they had said to each other had contained hidden meaning, Ollie said with sly amusement, “Don’t worry, I know where my backside’s been.” He waited a beat and added, “Nowhere. Ever.”
Tom’s brows rose a little. Ollie didn’t want to get into his lack of sexual experience at twenty-seven. He wanted to improve it a little. He cupped Tom behind the neck, waited a beat for permission and then bent into a kiss. It was the first one they’d shared that was planned and deliberate, not born on the urgency of the moment, or on fear and desperation. He crossed his legs behind Tom’s broad back, trapping him entirely. Tom made no effort whatsoever to escape.
They explored each other’s mouths, testing gently for fit and preference, all the while watching and assessing with wide-open eyes. They connected as much in thought as they did with lips and tongues, and this turned chaste into a growing necessity neither of them could ignore. Inch by inch, Ollie slid off the edge he was on, more and more held up by Tom’s weight, leaning into him and the wraparound of his own legs, and this, inevitably, brought them together where no tender teasing and testing was occurring at all. Down below, they were both past the point of no return—until Tom wrenched away, almost dropping Ollie, and looked wildly around. “Fucking hell! I don’t have anything! I wasn’t expecting…”
Apparently, return was very possible. Ollie felt a distinct flagging, and not from what had probably been the intent of Tom’s words—that they couldn’t proceed without supplies. It was the proceeding
at all
thing he took issue with.
Had he not deliberately just dropped an exceedingly strong hint to the other man that, despite his namesake’s infamy, he, Ollie, was…less experienced? Almost none at all, in fact, except in theoretical terms through reading a great deal, which was pretty much the story of his whole life when he thought about it.
So how they had jumped from
be gentle I’m a virgin
to
where’s the fucking lube and condom
defeated him.
Tom was staring at him. Ollie shook himself a little. Tom quirked a smile. “One day, I’ll get you to stay here with me when we kiss.”
Ollie’s brows rose. “Maybe one day I’ll take you and show you where I go.”
Tom chuckled and pulled Ollie into a tight hug. “Sorry.”
“What for this time? Remember, you have a long list of sins yet to be forgiven. I’ll cross one off at random if you don’t tell me explicitly every time you apologise.”
“Cross off the one that says I’m a git.”
“There’s more than one entry for that. You only get one expunged.”
Tom sighed, still hugging Ollie, but now also kissing lightly around his ear, which Ollie was privately allowing to be very effective toward getting a few more sins erased. “This isn’t how I pictured our first time. Sorry.”
Ollie perked up—Tom had been imagining their first time too—and began to return the favour, exploring Tom’s chin with light kisses. “Did it involve…a hot tub? I love hot tubs.”
He felt more than saw a scrunch of confusion. “Not really.”
“Oh. Okay. A gorgeous bedroom with swathes of decadent drapery?”
Tom swallowed, but he did tip his head back a little to allow Ollie’s lips to investigate this interesting new phenomenon of throat. “I don’t know what any of that means. And Ollie?”
“Hmm?”
“Men don’t use the word gorgeous.”
Ollie chuckled against Tom’s throat, which produced a rumble of pleasure, so he did it again. “You should come to one of my parties next time.”
That comment, thoughtlessly thrown out, rather ruined the mood, because Tom immediately apologised again, and, this time, Ollie knew exactly what it was for.
He straightened and leant back against his previous perch, studying Tom. “Was it true? What—Jesus, do I really have to call him that—what
Sicknote
said…was it true what he told me?” He carefully avoided being at all specific or mentioning the denials and explanations he’d already had from his mother’s letter.
Tom appeared to find it extremely stressful remembering this incident, for which Ollie was particularly grateful. It hadn’t been a barrel of laughs for him, either. “Yes. She was going to sign it over to me when you returned to England with her.”
Ollie narrowed his eyes, pondering this. Clearly, Sicknote had been less than truthful with Tom when he’d returned from his supplies run. Ollie didn’t entirely blame the guy—when Tom had run into the departures lounge at Dunedin Airport, trying to prevent him from leaving, Ollie had seen a level of fury that had scared him. Even then, he’d not wanted to be in Tom’s friend’s shoes. He asked with a resigned slump, “What did he tell you he’d told me?”
Tom tilted his head to one side, apparently reading something in Ollie’s dejected capitulation. “That I took the job for the house—again, like the army. They all loved that story…Was he lying to me? Bloody hell, Ollie! What
did
he tell you?”
“He didn’t know it
was
me. So he told me my mother had not only paid you to be my minder and all round annoying git, and about the house, he added that she’d ordered you to fuck me until I turned gay…”
Tom actually staggered back a little and looked wildly around as if seeking out his friend. “I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll
kill
him. I’ll eat his fucking—”
“Less with the threats of cannibalism and more with the explanations?”
Tom shut his eyes as if for strength. “Of course he fucking knew who you were.”
Ollie’s brows shot up. That explanation had never occurred to him before.
“Jesus, Ollie, you’re not exactly difficult to miss! I’d told him—described you…” Tom trailed off and scratched the back of his neck. “Not in detail. I mean, I never noticed…I wasn’t
thinking
about you…I actually said tall, and—stop laughing at me all the time!”