Chapter Text
Stars above the coop fat and yellow, oscillating slowly across the black. Inside now, Ira, the newest rabbit, runs circles around your legs. A dewy Thursday evening, late spring, bled out now into night, and you’re here, mucking chicken shit and trying to quiet your mind. It smells like home now. A year ago it wouldn’t have. Also a year ago: heels over steel-toed boots, a clipboard over a scythe, performing alphabet acrobatics on a keyboard all day before trudging home to ready-made lasagna. Sleeping with strangers. Crying in your cubicle. Here’s a raise – enjoy one and a half Joja Colas on us, and don’t forget the trademark! Now, chickenshit. Now, fat yellow stars, no longer shivering out of existence behind a dense curtain of smog. Now, a phone which lights up: hey, bar tonight?? Sleeping with non-strangers, and crying in your own house.
So, bar tonight? wouldn’t hurt. Of course it’s code. Back to the house, lit up like a beacon, the fireplace still crackling. Slip off the boots, slip on the low-cut top. Think briefly about the general topic of ethics. When you first met him he told you plainly to fuck off, and passed out ten minutes later, warm and drooling on the bar. Still claims he can’t remember that. It put you off him for months nonetheless. All the ways you found to walk around him, shift your eyes, pretend he wasn’t there. You felt proud of your dismissal, but later you would learn it was nothing new to him – the whole town were expert practitioners in this particular brand of cruelty. Slumped over on a park bench, nothing new. There he is again in the corner of the saloon, ten beers deep on a Tuesday, better pretend we have more pressing things to look at, like that spot just behind his head on the wall there. While he attempted to drink himself to death, you tunnelled your own way to self-destruction via chasing after a man who never wanted you in the first place. Pickles and coffee and getting yourself off to the thought of his moustache and five o’clock shadow, the bashful smile it tucked away. Long fingers, doctorly fingers, skating expertly over your wounds (which was never where you needed them to be). Ethics, you thought, sure was something. Shove it away for later. Phone dings. awesome, c u soon.
Sans emoji. So, not quite drunk yet.
You used to find Gus’ saloon repulsive. Nothing at all like the bars of the city, your usual hunting grounds. Loud and ugly and sweaty. No kids chasing each other around by a fireplace, old couples swaying to songs on the jukebox. The whole thing was ridiculous. But when it’s the only place for miles, you take what you can get. Your stark refusal to step back inside (“Elliott, I’d rather die”) withered after only a month. Tonight Shane is already at the usual spot, tucked away on the left side of the bar, leaning against the wall. He can keep himself upright, at least. But when he calls your name, the edges of his voice curl with tipsiness. Take your seat beside him, knees briefly touching. His skin, furred and warm to the touch. Slides you his glass. The town drunks, together again. He smiles lazily as you sip. You know it’s one of his bad nights when he gets like this, too eager to see you, to please you. It means he’s spent the hours before you got there staring at Emily. Now as he looks at you with his eyes all soft and doughy, you know the sight of her is flickering like a film over his vision, and you’ve been transfigured.
“Good day for the harvests?” Sober enough for small talk. You hum in assent. “And the chickens?”
They’re his favourite, of course. Not least because the first time you fucked, it was behind the coop. Pressing you against the slats, hands splayed on the wood, dress hiked to your waist, Flower Queen crown discarded somewhere over by the pond. (You would find the remnants the next day, translucent petals floating atop the surface of the water.) The air that night, you remember, was thick and soupy. Grass wet and glittery with dew. He came fast and kissed a trail across your shoulders to make up for it. All the time you were thinking of Harvey. There was no guilt in it. In the night, you were sure your hair could pass for blue. Wish fulfillment done right.
“Romeo breached the fence again.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to think he’s not meant for a life of containment.”
Shane snorts. Gus sidles over without a word and deposits a beer on the bar for you, foam sloshing over the lip. Silent thanks.
“Maybe it’s time to set him free,” Shane says.
“And where’ll he go?”
“The big city, place of dreams.”
Your turn to laugh. Those doughy eyes again, and now a hand on your thigh, high enough to raise questions, if there were any left to raise. Small towns talk, the old cliche. But by now you’re sure it’s more than evident what the two of you get up to in the night. Harvey can’t quite meet your eye, which irritates you more than it upsets you. After all, you’re meant to be the scorned one, not him. Plus, at least your lover is age-appropriate. I mean, a nineteen year-old, for Christsakes, have some decorum! But of course, you never said that. No siree. ‘Maru and I are…’ ‘Oh!’ A tight smile, threatening to break and tremble. ‘Sorry, I’m so stupid, I just thought…’ ‘Well, we only shared the one night.’ Yes, the one night. Half-drunk in his apartment, legs slung over his lap, laughing into the radio. This is your captain speaking! No, no, they don’t say that; wrestling the thing from your hands. Sinking to your knees on the plush carpet. Taking him into your mouth, thinking, dumbly, I could do this every day. But no, it was just the once. Only once.
“You haven’t even noticed my hands are in your underwear.” Shane says this quietly, words warm against the shell of your ear. And he’s right, you haven’t. It feels nice, though. His fingers are thicker than Harvey’s, and the calluses crag in different places, but they are just as warm, and – if it were possible – even more eager to please. Especially now, as they sketch slow, lazy circles around your clit. He’s testing your poker face, you know.
“Here, of all places?”
The circles tighten, closing in. “Where else?”
“My bed. Your bed. My couch. The kitchen counter. All good suggestions, if I may say so my-self.” Your breath hitches on the last. One finger slips in, then out. The shock of it – your teeth snag your bottom lip, your throat trembles.
“Been there, done that.”
Gus descends to sweep your glass away with a cursory smile. Great service. Beer after beer after beer without question. Shane lets up temporarily before trying to resume his pace, but you wrench his wrist away. He never usually gets this handsy when Emily is working. Something must have riled him up. Clint in the far corner, maybe, with an unexpected success — Emily’s number? Or maybe he pregamed the saloon and is drunker than he seems. Another beer comes, dispensed just for you.
“You’re in a mood,” he remarks. “I piss you off or something?” He says it with his glass raised to his lips, so you don’t get to see his expression. Is he embarrassed? Delicious, if so.
“I’m just helping you out. Don’t want Emily to see you fingering the farmer, do you?”
Glass drops to the table, face drops lower. “Fuck you.”
Your smile is sardonic. “I’m just being a pal.”
“Like fuck you are.”
He angles his body away from you then, practically tossing himself to the side. Slumped over the bar, arms crossed, lifting his glass to his lips. You realise only then that you’re feeling mean tonight, which is never good with Shane. From strangers, he takes hostility just fine, but with you he usually prefers to have the monopoly.
Tongue between your lips now, grinning. Prod him with your elbow. The sharp point of it, needle-like. “No need to be such a bitch about it.”
Shane’s head snaps up. Always a live-wire. Perhaps it’s the only difference between him and Harvey that pleases you. How easy he is to push to anger, to hatred, to desire.
–
You don’t even make it to the farm before he has you. Tree by the bus stop, pushed down, knees studded with pine needles. Then he hoists you up, spins you around. Greedy. To feel his hands all over you: your back, your tits, tugging and caressing unrelentingly as if fused to you. With Harvey it was just the once. But Shane gives it to you again, and again, and again. So many times you think it would disperse that first memory from your mind, scramble up the parts so that you couldn’t tell reality from fantasy, Shane from Harvey. Where does one night end and another begin? You wish it worked that way. H on your breath; you let it roll on, play it off as a pant. Still, Shane’s hips stutter. The moment stretches and snaps back. Like a rubber band, it stings. Of course he knows.
You feel so bad that afterwards, as he’s cleaning you both off with the hem of his shirt, you ask him back to the farm. It’s getting late. Neither of you know why he accepts.