“That was fun, eh, fellows?” he asked, genially, going into good-natured boss mode.
“Sure was, boss,” said Wayne, swinging himself out of the truck.
Wayne might have been about to brag about how he’d stuck to his self-imposed two-beer limit, but Blaze didn’t have the energy to pretend to be interested, so he tugged on Gabe’s shirt and pulled him through the darkness to Gabe’s tent.
“Go on,” he said, urging Gabe to enter the fully dark tent. “Can you light it?”
Silently, Gabe turned on the overhead bulb, but just long enough to light the Coleman lantern.
When the familiar low hiss sank into Blaze’s skin, and the golden glow, turned low, began to soothe him all over, he undressed Gabe. Button by button, cloth from skin, he drew Gabe’s clothes off him, and Gabe let him, curving into Blaze’s touch, sighing when Blaze drew a hand across his chest, clasping Blaze’s hand to him, as though branding himself with the width of Blaze’s palm.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” asked Gabe when Blaze pushed him to sit down so he could draw off his cowboy boots. “You seem awful quiet.”
Blaze made a split decision in his head, resolving that maybe they needed to talk, but right now he wanted silence, the silkiness of touch, the velvet of night drawing all around them, shielding them from the world.
Tonight he wanted what was being offered, so he took it with kisses to Gabe’s shoulder, the strong line warm beneath his hands, and with touches to Gabe’s hips as he drew off Gabe’s jeans. Then he pulled off his own clothes, not giving Gabe a chance, and settled with him beneath the sheet on the cot meant for only one man, but which now held two.
“I’m good,” he said, draping his arms around Gabe’s neck before kissing him hard, the urge to burrow into Gabe’s body tugging at him, an insistent thing.
Next to him beneath the sheets, Gabe was all muscle and warmth, his long legs twined with Blaze’s, the scratchy hair of his groin, the dusk of his tan where it vanished halfway down his neck. All of this belonged to Blaze, at least for now. Maybe in the morning they’d talk or maybe they wouldn’t. But for now, Blaze scooted down, trammeling his hands along Gabe’s hips as he sank into the shadow of the bedclothes.
“Hey, now,” said Gabe, lifting the sheet. “Who are you hiding from?” he asked.
“From the night,” said Blaze without thinking, knowing that what he meant to say was that he was hiding from the world that would, with utmost certainty, take them apart from each other. Gabe to return to his regular, ordinary life, and Blaze to be spat out into that world with nothing to take with him but his empty heart.
“From nothing,” he said, smiling up at Gabe, limned in golden light, like he was laughing at himself and some private joke. “Now, will you hush and just enjoy?”
With a grunt, albeit a happy one, sounding suffused with anticipation, Gabe did as he was told for once.
Blaze, his mouth already watering, took Gabe’s cock in his mouth and loved on it with kisses and strokes, and throat-strong swallows when Gabe came. Then he crawled into Gabe’s arms and let Gabe do the same right back to him, pleasure mixing with darkness, his head thrown back on the pillow, not content until Gabe held him again in those strong arms and curved around him as though protecting Blaze from his own fears.
On Monday morning, Gabe and Blaze took a quick shower together. Then, when the three of them sat down together in the mess tent for breakfast, Blaze ignored Wayne’s arch looks.
When Gabe’s cellphone rang in his back pocket, he took the call, standing up to go a few feet out of the mess tent, smiling and chatting with whoever was on the other end. When he came back, he was still smiling, though he had an expression on his face that told Blaze he needed to get things done.
“That was Leland,” he said, sitting down, pouring himself some more coffee from the metal carafe. “I need to meet with Royce, the new team lead who’s coming in this week. You fellows are on your own, so just carry on with what we’ve been working on. I should be back this afternoon.”
“What about the horses?” asked Blaze.
“We’ll take care of them now,” said Gabe. “Then I need to change and go up to the ranch for this meeting.”
They fed and watered the horses, and then Blaze, quite simply, had to watch while Gabe drove off in the truck, leaving Blaze in the quiet that fell as the sound of the powerful engine faded.
Wayne was in his tent, probably jacking off, and the two cooks were in the back of the kitchen. Which left Blaze alone, thinking about how he should get his gloves and his cowboy hat and, at the very least, pretend to work. But he found himself in the mess tent, looking at the landline, which sat there, silently beige, looking right back at him.
Maybe what he needed to do was to call home again. Maybe at the end of summer, they’d let him come home, even if just for a visit. It’d be nice to have the familiar edges of his bunk in the Butterworth trailer brushing up against his shoulders. To hear the familiar sounds of the grind and whoosh of the Tilt-a-Whirl in his ears, the smell of boiled peanuts and wet sawdust in his lungs.
And then the phone rang, like a conjurer’s trick. Like it knew what he was thinking.
He picked the receiver up, his heart thudding in his chest.
“Hello?” he asked.
“Hello, Blaze?” his mom said in a tone that told Blaze she was busy and irritated, even before she said another word.
“Hey, Mom,” he said, holding onto the receiver with both hands. “How’d you get this number?”
“You gave it to me when you were begging us to come visit you,” she said, terse. “Where are you now?” she asked.
