That Bacon Sandwich Smile

Author Note: This story is a companion piece to 'Misbehaving', but it isn't necessary to have read 'Misbehaving' in order to enjoy it - it can be read as a stand-alone story.

This is a work of fiction. All characters are 18 or over.

-----

Lucas came first, so Lucas went first. That's just the way it was. Lucas got the bikes and the boots and the jackets first, and I got them after he was done with them. Lucas got first say on which channel we might watch that night, what flavour ice-cream we'd eat that week, where both our toothbrushes went, which of our chores he would, or wouldn't, do. He also got dibs on any extras. If there was a chop sitting uneaten on the serving plate after dinner, it was offered to Lucas and then to me if - if - he didn't want it.

I put up with that shit for sixteen and a half years until the glorious day he secured a cadetship on a farm all the way up near Gisborne, and finally fucking left. It was sooo much better with him gone. Not that Mum and Dad suddenly decided that I was actually their favourite son, or anything like that - but I moved up the pecking order on leftovers, I got the bedroom all to myself, and with Lucas unavailable, Warren, the station manager, started offering me the odd jobs around the place that he'd previously given to Lucas.

To be clear, these were universally ratshit tasks, sufficiently bad that he preferred not to even ask a farmhand to do them. Take this and this and go unblock that culvert. Take the old quad bike and a trailer of stone chip and fill in the pot-holes on the main race. Take the knapsack sprayer and go spray gorse in the gullies, in the really steep places where the boom sprayer can't reach. And then do it again next weekend. And the one after that, and the one after that. You can stop when you run out of gullies...ha, ha, ha...But I was in, because unlike all my other sodding chores, these jobs paid.

Then what happened - then what fucking happened? Three things happened. Lucas finished his cadetship, and one of the farmhands, Riley, met some chick online and got all involved, to the extent that he shifted up to Taranaki so they could be together, and Lucas heard about it and put in for Riley's job and of course he got it, so he came back.

I couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. I mean, who does that? Who leaves home, gets qualified, applies for a job with their dad's boss, and then fucking moves back in with their parents? Somebody who knows he'll always be offered the last chop on the plate, I guess. For sure, I wasn't planning to do anything similar. When I left, I was leaving for good. I'd be a speck on the horizon inside of a minute, and a few seconds later, not even that.

It was what I thought about while I was shovelling shingle or inching my way along precipitous slopes kitted up in spray gear - that this crap was my passport to my own life, this was me earning my way to freedom. Hopefully, by the time I finished school, I'd have enough saved to live on for a little while, until I could get the licenses I needed to drive the class of vehicle I wanted. That was the only reason I was finishing out school. You sure don't need higher education to be a truck-driver, but you can't even start the process until you've held a regular license for two whole years, and since you can't sit for that until you're sixteen...by the time I turned eighteen it was July, and I was over halfway through Year 13, and it seemed like I might as well just see it out. Also, I knew that if I attempted leaving school without a solid plan of what to immediately do next, Dad would interpret that as me sitting around with my thumb up my arse and find tasks for me. Unpaid ones.

At least the work I was getting from Warren didn't evaporate when Lucas came back. He had real work now, and these cruddy little jobs were his leavings, his outgrown boots. So my stash of getting-out-of-here money kept building up, even if everything else had gone back to being shite, and then it got a serious boost in early October.

There was some misunderstanding with the shearing contractors, and they ended up being booked for almost a month later than the usual dates, and then when they arrived, there'd been some other misunderstanding and they were short a rouseabout. I only got to know about it because there was a good old yelling match getting started by the yards as I was cycling past on my way to the main gate to catch the bus to school, and when Warren saw me he shouted at me to come over. So I did, and when I got within range he grabbed me by the arm and kinda shoved me forward.

"Here's your rouseabout," he hissed. Then, to me, "Unless you've got anything more important on, that is?"

I shook my arm free. "No. I don't...I mean...I can help out."

"What are you paying?" Warren demanded.

"Eighteen fifty," a guy with ginger dreads said. Actually they were more dags than dreads. Gross.

Warren was unimpressed. "You think I was born yesterday, mate? Stop giving me the bloody run-around!"

The dude shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, before muttering, "Well okay, it's usually twenty-two fifty, but the thing is, Deeks is a known quantity..."

"Not right now he's not," Warren snapped. "So bloody reliable, he can't even manage to show up!" He turned to me. "Twenty-two fifty an hour - three full days. Think you're up for it?"

Hell yes, I was up for it. "Sure," I nodded.

Warren snapped his fingers. "Then go and take that bloody stupid tie off and hop back here on the double, so we can finally crack on with things!"

Finally, I thought, as I got back on my bike. Finally. God, farmers. He was basically frothing at the mouth about how late they were running, and it was only twenty past seven...I was also a bit surprised he'd pushed for me to be paid more, seeing as eighteen fifty was more than he paid me to slave my guts out.

When I 'finally' got back to the woolshed out of my school uniform and dressed for the job, it was twenty to eight and Warren was, if possible, even more twitchy than before, but once things got underway and he'd satisfied himself that it was all running smoothly, he thankfully fucked off to do other things, and the mood in the shed relaxed noticeably.

Not that it slowed down...there was nothing complex about what I had to do, and it wasn't physically demanding either apart from all the bending over, but the pace...god. Of the two guys I was working with, one was very slightly faster than the other, which meant that some of the time they were nicely offset, and I could be pissing about separating the skirt and crutch wool for the first guy, brooming it out of the way while the second guy was working on the the back wool, the long strokes of the main fleece, then I could step over to guy number two, gather the fleece as it fell away, chuck it back toward one of the tables, do the skirt of his next fleece while guy one was doing the main strokes...but when they weren't offset? I just tried to fucking cope, tried not to feel bad about the fact that the other rousie was somehow managing three stands to my two...

It was probably the overriding need to maintain pace that kept me from noticing that I was working in close proximity with five very fit singlet-wearing men. My head was spinning by the time we took a smoko break, but they were sweet as, entirely chill about life, the universe and everything in between, drinking tea and eating oranges and bananas and cold cheese toasties, smoking and joking. I had a banana, and drank some tea as well, but I would've liked a Red Bull. And a plan for how I was gonna get better at this, quickly.

Warren had been so fucking sour about everything that morning that he never even told anyone my name, I found out. But one of them suddenly said;

"He-ey, you're Lucas's little brother, aren't you? Um...Isaac."

Fuck Lucas. Going about calling me Isaac. Fucker. I nodded. "Zac. Yeah."

So they introduced themselves. The guys I was rousieing for were called Blake and Tahi, and they were apparently the only ones who used actual names. The others - the rousie was called 'Toots', the fleece-o was called 'Shagger', and the big guy with dags was called 'Cats' for some reason, while his two buddies were 'Noodle', who was at least quite skinny, and 'Panda', who, like Tahi, was Māori - and had no kind of Panda thing going on at all that I could see...

I think I was probably supposed to be pleased that they gave me a nickname. Probably it was meant to make me feel included or something. Yeah. Great. They called me 'Nipper'.

The spell after smoko was better. I must've started to develop a rhythm. Or maybe I just managed to slot myself into the rhythm already going on, the surroundings sinking into my skin, permeating. There was the gentle clickety hum of the shears, the easy listening music playing on the radio, the stuffy sheepy atmosphere of the shed, warming up fast in the sun...and the men. The men, bent over, working away seamlessly, fluidly, at their almost ritualistic task, fortunately too focused to catch sight of me perving on them whenever I could spare a moment.

I felt like I got the best deal in the world, being paid real money to hang out within spitting distance of the two guys I was rousieing for. I don't know if they were the fastest, but they were definitely the finest of the bunch. And Tahi was the finest of the pair. God, was he fine. He was so. fucking. hot. Even though I mostly couldn't see his face. But his arms, his hands, his shoulders...big but not huge, toned, so toned, everything working perfectly in unison, like a finely tuned machine. No, like a thoroughbred.

He laughed a lot, I noticed at lunchtime. I mean, they all laughed a lot, but it seemed like Tahi laughed the loudest, the most. Or maybe it was just that I always heard it, when it was him. Maybe it was because it reverberated around inside me, lighting things up, when he laughed. Maybe he really did fill every space he was in, or maybe...maybe that was me.

He sure as hell filled every space in my imagination that evening, lying in bed. I undressed him in my mind, I made him stretch, I made him pose, I made him flex, I objectified him in the worst possible way, while Lucas lay five feet away, playing Crossy Road with the fucking sound on...

I fell asleep, and Tahi showed up to occupy that aspect of my consciousness as well. In my dream, I got sick of him trash-talking me - not that he'd done anything of the sort - and made a bet with him that I could get through a pen of ten hoggets faster than him. Of course, I had no idea what to do, and I was distracted by him working right next to me, so that I was still blundering around struggling to handle my first hogget as he pushed his last down the chute and remarked, 'Whoops. Looks like you lost'. Then his hands went to his fly as he said, 'On your knees, Nipper - time to pay up'. Yeah. No prizes for guessing the state of my boxers in the morning...

The second day in the shed, I ached. I don't mean my balls, more...absolutely everything else. I hadn't especially felt like I'd been overexerting myself the previous day, but obviously I had. So once again, the first spell was tough, this time because I was uncramping, re-warming up. Once again, it got better later in the day, easier to handle. Once again, it got more sexual, more explicit, more x-rated in my mind...

At the end of the day, while they were hanging about in a loose huddle, either sitting on the yard rails smoking or chatting with Lucas and the other farmhands as they got ready to swap out the afternoon's mob of sheep for tomorrow morning's, I noticed Tahi detach from the group and quietly slip away. Wanting to know what he was up to, I crept around the back of the woolshed so I had a better vantage point to see where he might be headed.

He trotted about a hundred metres along the driveway, back toward the houses and quarters, then vaulted over the fence on the far side, clearly making for the bush. It was the only decent stand of forest left on the place and it was well preserved, thick with undergrowth, because it ran along the steep sides of a river that'd been the original water source for the homestead, so it'd always been fenced to keep stock from fouling it.

I wondered what he was doing in there. My mind flipped immediately to the idea that he was looking for some cover, some privacy so he could have a little...personal time. He'd likely been on the road with these guys for almost two months, which I could see would get frustrating...despite that, I knew there were a hundred more likely explanations for taking a walk by yourself than wanting an alfresco wank, but I couldn't look at this guy without sex being at the forefront of my mind, overshadowing everything else. I wanted to follow him anyway. I wanted to know. I wanted to see.

I didn't follow him. I'm not that stupid.

Or, I dunno - maybe I am. Because when he broke off from the group the next day, I noticed a towel slung around his shoulders as he strode away, and everything clicked. I realised he must've been here previous seasons, or maybe for crutching, and know about the swimming hole. But he probably didn't know, or hadn't thought about, the fact that there was a bluff overlooking it...

I followed him. Far enough behind that I wasn't obviously making for the bush until he was already in it and unable to feasibly look back, not so far behind that I'd arrive at my viewing platform after he was done - I knew he wouldn't be swimming for long at this time of year. The water in the river was probably only six or seven degrees. Very...um...refreshing.

I reached my spot in time to see him. He was naked in the little pool at the foot of the falls, splashing about like an otter, coming up to gasp, going under again, silvery-quick. I couldn't make out much detail, just flashes of flanks and arms and face and skin, but it was enough...when he moved to the rocks at the side to pull on his clothes again, I leaned against a tree, tucked my t-shirt up, pushed the front of my pants down, shut my eyes and replayed the scene in my mind as I relaxed into stroking myself...that beautiful body of his, doing what came naturally, glorying in the simple fact of its existence...

"If you want to make a habit of spying on people, then you're gonna need to get better at it."

Oh my fucking GOD. I stood frozen, eyes still closed, just falling and falling in my head.

I'd had my hand out of my pants in about a millionth of a second, the instant I heard the voice, but still I knew he saw. I knew it was him, and I knew he saw, and I knew he knew...what it was about.

It's the end, I was thinking. It's the end of everything. He's gonna go straight and tell the others, hey, you wanna know what I just saw? And they're gonna tell Lucas, and he's gonna tell...everyone. And Dad. And Mum, and ohhhh, god...

"For starters, don't do your creeping in bright colours," I heard him say. "That blue sticks out like a sore thumb in here. You wanna be in black or grey or brown, something like that. Y'know, like hunting gear."

This wasn't...panning out quite like I'd imagined. I dared to open my eyes, peeked across at him standing there, regarding me from about five feet away.

He just stared right back. He didn't look angry. He didn't sound angry either, when he started speaking again.

"I knew you were following," he told me in a quiet, steady voice. "I heard you, saw you. But seeing as you didn't come for a swim, I gotta figure you came for a show. Couldn't stay in too long for you, though - it was fuckin' cold. So did you get enough of an eyeful already, or do you need a close-up?"

A close-up...what? Now I was terrified. I stopped mangling my lips with my teeth long enough to blurt, "I'm sorry...I'm sorry!" screwing my eyes shut once more.

"Who's asking for an apology?" I heard him say. "I mean, do I look bothered? Open your eyes, e hoa!"

I opened them.

"Do I look bothered?" he prompted again.

I couldn't understand it, but he didn't. I shook my head, and managed a tiny "No."

I saw the corners of his mouth quirk as he breathed;

"That's right. No." His hand wandered down to his crotch. "Was this what you were wanting to see? 'Cos you know...cold water...it was probably a sad kinda show. I can give you a repeat viewing...if you want."

I couldn't say a word, couldn't move a muscle, nod, shake, back away...anything. I just stood there like a log of wood, like a fucking statue, as he slowly unzipped his fly, spread apart the flaps of black denim and exposed himself. He was commando. He was glorious. And he looked as if he could be...just a little bit...plumped up.

The notion that he might possibly be even slightly into the fact that I was into him obliterated all the terror that was keeping me rigidly rooted to the spot. Instead everything melted and loosened. My whole body felt hot and liquid and drooly and my knees threatened to give out on me.

I could probably have dragged myself away at that point, like some wounded animal, but I didn't. I stayed and stared and stared and stared, drinking in the sight of him. His dick gave a little pulse under my gaze, a tiny twitch, straightened fractionally, sat a little prouder. I tore my eyes away, looked up at his face. He was watching me. Of course he was.

"You want to touch it, don't you?" he breathed, and I didn't try to deny it. It wasn't really a question anyway. He knew.

I took a step forward, and another, and another, stopping a pace or so away from him, reached out, timidly grazed the backs of my fingers along that beautiful dark smoothness, and it jumped again, stretched taller, tauter.

I looked up at him. "Did you do that?"

"No," he told me, smiling. "You did that."

So I did it some more, with increasing boldness and focus, and he grew to full hardness in my encircling palms. I kept my head bowed, watching my hands at work, one over another, as he thrust gently into them, seeing the weeping head of his dick briefly emerge only to be engulfed once more. Fuck, it was like there was a choir of angels in my head singing for all they were worth. I'd never felt so content, so present, so complete.

He caught me a little by surprise when he reached out and manoeuvred my chin so I had to meet his eyes, and I actually quit my stroking. Taking hold of my lips between his thumb and forefinger, he sort of rolled them back and forth. That close to my nose, I got a hefty dose of the pungent scent of his hands, mostly a mixture of raw lanolin and swarfega, his day-job permanently embedded in his skin, and for the first time in my life I didn't mind the smell of sheep.

He was still plying my lips, massaging them not altogether gently, as he murmured, "Hey, if you wanted to take this further, I wouldn't, y'know, have any objections...because these...what a beautiful pair you have on you, e hoa."

I wanted to. Oh god, I wanted to. But I didn't know how.

He let go when he saw I was trying to speak. "I haven't - I never..."

He grinned at me. "There's a first time for everything, eh?" He had nice eyes. Really nice. Now I wanted to do it not just for myself, but for him.

I frowned down at the ground around our feet, at the leaf litter. It was four or five inches deep in here and some kind of damp always, even in the summer, in the hot. No matter how much I wanted it, I wasn't going back up to the house with wet patches on the knees of my jeans.

Tahi figured what I was thinking and tugged the towel off his shoulder, swiftly folding it into a pad, offering it to me. "That should do it."

Yeah, I thought, taking it from him, that'll work. It was a little damp from drying him, but nothing compared to what would wick up from amongst those leaves.