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Charles’s had a shit fucking day.
He’s spent coming up on three weeks in the steep foothills and jagged peaks around Kananaskis, hunting and trapping with a couple of Métis fellers he’d met in town last July. When they’d rolled by the ranch in mid-October, it’d sounded like a fine idea, and easy money, too; join up with Phillipe and Constantine on a Hudson’s Bay contract, scare up a bunch of fur and be home before the first snowfall, cash in hand.
He should’ve known better.
It hadn’t been terrible, all things considered, but summer had dragged on longer than expected, making October as hot as August and driving the Bighorns and the grizzlies up into the mountains where Charles and the Frenchmen had been forced to follow.
By the end of the first week, Charles had been longing for his soft, shared bed and the warm goose-down duvet that he’d selfishly gifted Arthur, back when he’d still been skinny with sickness and prone to chills. By the end of the second, his gut was aching with homesickness and he’d dreamed of strong, warm, calloused hands that overknead bread and weave through his hair like water around smooth river stones. Now, after three weeks, all Charles wants is a hug and a clean pair of socks.
He’d parted ways with the other fellers early in the morning in Bearspaw, intent on making it back to the ranch by dinner time; with what he’d learned about plans in that long-gone life of his, maybe he should’ve known better.
First comes the snow – if you could even call it snow. It’s early November, but with the unseasonable warmth the shit falls in fat, wet clumps, soaking Charles and Taima to the bone within the hour and turning the road to sticky, stinking mud.
Then there’s the coyotes.
Charles notices them around noon, when the snow has finally started to stick to the ground where it falls. They keep their distance, far enough away to keep Taima from spooking, but drawn to follow by the stench of sweat and blood that clings to Charles’s gear. The sharp bang of Charles’s rifle only serves to drive them away for a few dozen minutes before they’re trailing behind again, yipping and howling excitedly in a way that has a headache pulsing behind Charles’s eyes by three o'clock.
By five, when the sun is low in the sky and Charles and Arthur’s little cabin rises above the horizon, Charles is so exhausted and impatient, and the plume of smoke drifting lazily from the cabin’s chimney so inviting that Charles urges Taima on into a canter in spite of the way she tosses her head and huffs in protest.
He doesn’t make it through the door for another hour and half, but when he does, Arthur has just sat down to dinner; Charles walks through the door and their eyes meet and it feels like the burst of kindling into flame, the wash of overwhelming warmth filling him so full he squeezes the air from Arthur’s lungs when they embrace.
For a long moment, they don’t speak, don’t even move, and Charles holds tight to the moment – taking in the steady, sturdy feeling of Arthur in his arms and the warmth that drives back the sharp, cold teeth that have been chewing through his nerves since the snow'd begin to fall. Feels the tickle of Arthur’s damp hair on his cheek and inhales the mild, milky scent of soap and skin.
He doesn’t even need to ask before Arthur answers, in a mumble against his neck;
“Bathwater might still be warm.”
By the time Charles is fed and bathed and shaved – Arthur following behind like a boy’s eager pup, reticent to spend even a moment apart now that they’re together again – the sun’s long set and the fire in the hearth has burned down to coals. When Arthur gets settled into bed, stripped down to his union suit and tucked up right against Charles in the way he knows will have them both sweating under their heavy duvet, Charles is already snoring; the noise only pauses momentarily when Charles shifts to, in his sleep, throw a heavy arm over Arthur’s side.
Charles wakes up, soft and quiet, somewhere in the middle of the night. The snow that had begun that afternoon is still falling in big fluffy chunks and pattering against the bedroom window; the sound underscores Arthur’s familiar snuffling snores and the distinct rumbling purr of a happy cat.
Charles doesn’t remember having a cat.
As Charles shifts to withdraw his numb arm from where it’s tucked beneath Arthur, the room falls silent; Arthur stirs, and so does the silhouette at the foot of the bed. The shadow, which Charles can only assume to be a cat, scampers across the floor and out the bedroom door.
“Cheater,” Arthur mumbles from where he’s still pressed up against Charles, his bare hairy ass – he must’ve gotten hot, stripped off his union suit in the night – pressed up tight against Charles’s groin. Against Charles’s dick, still half-hard from sleepy comfort and tucked up into the waistband of the newfangled long johns Arthur’d teased him about.
“Excuse me?”
“The cat.” Arthur’s voice is thick with sleep, nearly nonsense, and the sound makes Charles smile in the darkness. “Name’s Cheater.”
“When did we get a cat?” Charles asks as he settles down, shifting to press his bare chest to Arthur’s naked back, the both of them slightly sticky and slick with sweat – It’s a good duvet, worth every penny.
He leans in to hook his chin over Arthur’s shoulder, pressing a gentle kiss to the soft spot below Arthur’s ear and wrapping an arm around his broad chest to splay a hand over the swell of muscle there – not pushing or provoking, only suggesting. Asking permission, in the wordless way they have always understood one another.
In response, Arthur groans, just a soft, happy sound, grinding his ass back against Charles’s crotch; the hard ridge of his erection fits snugly between the round cheeks of Arthur’s ass.
“Three weeks ago, nearly. I g-got – got lonesome.”
Arthur stutters when Charles pinches one of his nipples, rolls it idly between his finger and thumb, as if he’s oblivious to the way his touch has Arthur’s breath hitching. After all, he don’t need to let on – there’s evidence enough in the way Charles’s begun to roll his hips, a slow, languid grind like an easy trail ride. He’s too tired, missed Arthur too much to put much effort into pretending he didn’t.
“What about the kids, nîwah? Pumpkin and Pistachio and…“
“And Pasketti,” Arthur supplies, reaching back to lay a big palm on Charles’s hip, holding him close as they begin to rock together lazily, though not without purpose.
Charles knows without seeing that Arthur is flushed now, cheeks pink and hot the way they always get when Charles bites at his neck like this; when he laves his tongue over the hard line of Arthur’s jaw, he half expects the room to light up with the glow of Arthur’s blush.
“And Pasketti,” Charles agrees, lips travelling down Arthur’s neck to his pale shoulder; freckled as it was from the summer sun, his skin is white and bare now, Charles can tell, even in the dark.
“’No goats in the house, knee-wah,'” Arthur mocks in return, low voice pitched lower and vowels forced round to compensate for his own awful accent. It’s a terrible impression of Charles, and one he does all together too often to be truly funny.
Charles has to laugh anyway.
“You’re lucky I even let you in the house, moniyasis.”
The way Arthur moans at the insult, aroused and unabashed, has Charles’s laughter carrying on.
For a while, they just lie like that, lazily rutting against one another and kissing soft and quiet in the dark. Charles is freshly shaven, but Arthur’s chin is rough with stubble – after three long weeks, the burn of it is as comfortingly familiar as the gentle press of Arthur’s lips to his own.
“I missed you so bad, pêpîsis,” Charles murmurs when he draws back. “I barely went a day without thinking of you.”
His hand skates downwards, over the swell of Arthur’s tits and down his firm stomach – he’s begun to accumulate winter weight, but beneath it Arthur is still hard-packed, tight-coiled muscle – to the apex of his thighs, where his cock is hot and hard. It feels good in Charles’s fist, firm and full, and he lets Arthur gently thrust into the tight circle of his fingers just to enjoy the way it makes Arthur throw his head back and groan, long and low and unrestrained.
“Barely went a day without touching myself, thinking about you. About this.”
As if for emphasis, Charles twists his hand, applies pressure on the downstroke to have Arthur gasping, reaching back to dig his fingers into the meat of Charles’s thigh once again.
“Did you miss me, nîwah? Did you think about me?”
“Yeah,” Arthur admits, voice low and breathy between moans, as if it were a secret. “Always thinking of you.”
Clumsily, Arthur pushes at the waistband of Charles’s long johns – not so ridiculous, now, not when they slide easily down his thighs to expose his thick cock and he can press the hot, hard length of it up against the curve of Arthur’s ass.
“Did you touch yourself, thinking of me? Fuck yourself on your fingers, missing me inside you, trying to fill yourself up the way I do for you?”
“Christ yes, I missed you. Missed your cock in my ass, missed sitting on it and letting you fuck my guts ‘til they felt fit to fall out. Thought about you near on every time I bent over, wishin' you was there to shove it in me, to, to blow your fuckin' load in my ass and fingerfuck it out again.”
The way Arthur is running his mouth in the hungry, vulgar way he knows gets Charles fired up, the way he’s jerking his hips with an unrestrained desperation, the way his chewed-short fingernails dig into the flesh of Charles’s forearm; it’s easy to read his desperation, already so close to going off in the palm of Charles’s hand, as if he’s followed the rules for once.
As if he hasn’t come in weeks.
“You’re so good for me, aren’t you, nîwah?” Charles coos softly, rocking his hips to let his cock slide over Arthur’s bare ass. “You waited all that time for me, fucked yourself for me, but you didn’t go off even once, did you?”
Arthur’s groan – nearly a whine, as plaintive as it is – and the way he pushes into Charles’s fist are enough of an answer.
“But you wanted to, didn’t you? Riding your own fingers like a whore, wishing they were mine, waiting for your man to come home and fuck you right; it made you want to come, didn’t it?”
Arthur’s response is nothing but a nod, his stubble rubbing roughly against Charles’s cheek, and that’s not enough for Charles; he tightens the grip of his fist around Arthur’s cock, just enough to have him hissing in pain through his teeth.
“Tell me, nîwah.”
Squeezes tighter still, until Arthur is trapped, immobilized, caught in a hunter’s snare lest he risk losing his dick.
“Christ, yes, I wanted to. So bad.”
He makes an attempt to roll his hips, to gain back the friction of Charles’s fist, but he gets nothing for his efforts; Charles’s grip is iron, and when Arthur moves, he stiffens his arm, brings them closer, tighter together, if that were possible. His cock fits nicely in the valley of Arthur’s ass, and the pressure has Charles inhaling a deep, trembling breath through his nose at the same time Arthur does.
“Hated every damn minute of it, f-fuck – fingerin’ myself for you. Felt so good, missed you so bad, I wanted to, to go off, but I didn’t. Laid in bed every night, just, just rubbing myself ‘til I was nearly there and Christ, did I want it.
“But I waited. I was good.”
The idea of it – Arthur tucked up safe and warm in the bed they share, touching himself gentle and tender the way Charles loves to watch, just enough to feel good but not too good – the image of it breaks Charles in the best way, has his heart spilling over its banks like a river flooded in springtime; full and unrelenting.
Charles withdraws his hand then, uses it to instead draw Arthur in so they can kiss over his shoulder, slow and clumsy and calming. Arthur’s frustration is evident, his hips snapping anxiously, rutting against nothing as they kiss – he’s desperate for relief already, and that too has warmth pulsing through Charles’s tired body and throbbing in his cock.
“God only knows what I did to deserve such an obedient little wife,” Charles teases between kisses, warm and indulgent.
“You ain’t deserve it,” Arthur grunts back, all mock-indignance and real frustration. “That’s why you got me, instead.”
When Charles digs his fingers into the meat of Arthur’s thigh to coax him into lifting a leg, just slightly, his touch is reverent but demanding; once Arthur complies, it’s easy for Charles to guide his hard cock between Arthur’s thighs, slick as they are with sweat. The slide is easy as anything, and Charles can only imagine that this must be what it’s like to fuck a woman, soft and slippery and wet.
Less so when the tip of his cock rubs up against that soft, special spot behind Arthur’s balls in a way that has him groaning long and low and distinctly unwomanly from somewhere deep in his chest.
With his fingers digging into the soft flesh of Arthur’s hip – there will be bruises there tomorrow, pale blue and tender – Charles sets a slow, smooth pace and they rock together sleepily as the creaky old bedframe complains in the familiar way it always does when they make love there. The kitchen table has begun to complain in the same way of late, and Charles’s big wing-back chair in the parlour had groaned nearly as loud as Arthur had the last time they’d sat there together.
“I’m going to build us a new table this winter,” Charles says over the creak of the bedframe, voice pitched low and sultry.
The statement has the effect he’d intended; Arthur chokes out a startled laugh mid-gasp, and the thick muscles of his thighs go taut when he twists to give Charles a look over his shoulder.
“What’s wrong with – ah, fuck, Charles, please –“ Charles has again wrapped his hand around the base of Arthur’s cock to hold him close and, perhaps, to torture him a little “ – What’s wrong with the, the old table?”
“Omiyosiw, sîwanos, âmômey, nîwah,” Charles coos, condescending, each name punctuated with a nipping bite to the soft skin of Arthur’s neck. “That table’s fit to collapse. It can’t take another one of your sourdoughs.”
“My sourdough is fine.”
Impatient as ever – and rightfully so – Arthur lays his hand atop Charles’s forearm, another plea in their shared, silent language. A plea Charles, inwardly gleeful, chooses to ignore.
“And that table’d be, too, if you – ah, if you stopped, stopped fuckin’ me on it all the time.”
Really, for giving such lip Charles should give him the belt, or at least the back of his hand, but the homesickness of past weeks has made him soft and forgiving. Tonight, all Arthur gets is the sharp twist of his nipple, painful and precise, to make him cry out in pain and tense up delightfully all over again.
“Show me how you touched yourself,” Charles demands once Arthur has quieted, nipple still pinched right between forefinger and thumb. “Show me how you missed me.”
Ever obedient, Arthur takes his own cock in hand; as close as he is though, he strokes slow and languid in time with Charles’s own lazy thrusts, more a gentle grazing grasp than anything substantial. Not enough to get him off, not usually, but –
“God, Charles, please, I can’t,” Arthur is gasping after mere minutes as Charles presses kisses to the hot, sweat-damp back of his neck. “I wanna – missed you so bad, Charles, I’m gonna, I gotta, Christ, I can’t, I can’t, please, fucking, I’m gonna fucking –“
By the time Charles murmurs the only permission Arthur will get – “Nîwah,” cooed soft and low and indulgent – Arthur is already groaning through his own long, pulsing release, sounding gut-punched and satisfied as his spend spills over his still stroking fist.
And God, because Arthur is good, because he’s so good in the way they’re good for one another, the very next moment he’s reaching between his thighs, hand still sticky with his own spend. Uses it to slick up Charles’s cock, make the already wet slide wetter, all on instinct and Charles is sure he’s never been more in love than he has been in this moment.
It’s with this love that he reaches around to stroke Arthur’s spent cock, already softening, to having him crying out and bucking like an unbroke bronco through Charles’s own orgasm.
Only when Charles is fully spent and satisfied, his seed spilled between Arthur’s thick thighs to blend there with Arthur’s own, does he let go; lets a breathless chuckle escape as Arthur curses him in stilted, gasping bursts, still writhing and whimpering from the overstimulation.
“You – you’re, you’re a miserable bastard, you know that, Charles?”
Charles presses his smile into Arthur’s shaking shoulder, eyelids already heavy with the return of sleep.
“Still missed me?”
He can almost hear Arthur’s eyes roll in the dark.
“Always.”
When Charles wakes in the morning, sunlight is already spilling through the bedroom window, blinding as it bounces off the heavy blanket of untouched snow that settled overnight. He feels grimy with dried sweat and semen, he’s hungry as hell, and his hair is a rat’s nest of tangles that he knows will take the better part of an hour to sort out, but he can’t find it in himself to be anything other than comfortably content.
Not when, over the purring of the cat settled happily on his chest, he can hear Arthur’s warbly, off-tune singing wafting in from the kitchen alongside the smell of frying bacon and fresh-brewed coffee.