Author's Note: You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; – Daniel 5:27, Holy Bible (ESV)
Disclaimer: If I owned any of this, I wouldn't hardly be writing fanfiction about it.
The other hands did not know what to make of him.
"Fer shure the sassiest boy we ever had on the place," they said.
"What about Buckskin Jim?" someone suggested. "'Member him?"
"Old Jock near to fired him off'n the place about a dozen times, exactly for his sass."
"Was a wonder with the stock though."
"Shore was."
New hands at Southfork tended to be one of three distinct types: ranch people, meaning kids from ranching families who'd been raised knowing what to do, experienced hands already broken in elsewhere, or 'true believers,' greenhorns who had learned about cattle and horses from books, thought the life was 'romantic,' and talked a good game in an interview. These last mostly didn't stay, finding the work too hard, or too dirty, or dealing with animals not what they'd expected, or found themselves unpleasantly surprised to learn that they actually knew nothing for all their book-learning, though now and again one did in fact show up who actually suited the place.
Mickey was none of these.
Ray insisted he knew nothing, and for certain, the boy never claimed any knowledge. He listened gravely to simplified explanations of the most routine matters, sometimes asking questions that would have made the men shout with laughter if he hadn't been the foreman's cousin. Likewise, they resisted the urge to haze him as they might have done had he been anyone else. You never knew how Ray might take it if you messed with his kin. Yet Ray, beyond having a look-see once in a while to make sure the boy was where he was expected to be and working, seemed to take no real interest in him.
Not even enough to see him safely kitted out.
"You know what he said when I told him I'd bet his pretty pink toes waz gonna get stomped black if he keeps on wearing them sneakers in the horse barn?"
"What?" Hank asked, curious.
"First he asked how much I'd bet, then said if any of 'em was so careless as to step on his toes, he just wouldn't ask 'em to dance agin!"
The other men standing around roared with laughter at the absurdity of it, but Hank knew the only other footwear the boy possessed was a pair of rather snazzy dress shoes. He should have had heavy work boots, but he didn't, and Ray did not seem to care any more than anyone else did.
Yet there was something odd about Mickey's manner with the animals. He was no true believer: he did not regard the animals with whom he now worked in any romantic light. But he was unafraid of them. He seemed to regard them as merely large nuisances with which he had resigned himself to deal.
And Hank wasn't the only one who noticed.
"You shoulda seen that Mickey kid helping Billy bring the cattle in from the south 30. Slid 'em through the gate easy as you please, right behind the boss cow's shoulder like he'd done nothin' else in all his born days. When I told him 'good job,' he said the last thing he needed was an 'excited queue of cows.'"
"A what?! And how'd he know what to do?"
"Beats me. That's what he said. And I do not know how he knew. You cannot get a straight answer outta that kid."
"You ask him?"
"Darn straight."
"Whad he say?"
"Said it must be 'beginner's luck.'"
"But what about the—"
Yet another hand cut in. "You know what he said to me?"
"No, what?"
"Caught him staring over the fence at this here steer, and he looked kinda funny, you know? So I says to him, 'Whaddya see there, Mickey?' and he said—I swear to God I ain't makin' this up—he said, 'I see eight hunnerd pounds a hanging meat, thirty pounds a 'meat products', twenty-six pounds a blood, fifty pounds a pauch, seventy pounds a hide, and two hunnerd pounds a drop.'" The man snorted in disbelief. "What the heck is 'drop'?"
Hank, who had worked many jobs in his long and varied career, nodded. Drop. Well, that explained where the boy had been.
But it didn't explain what he was doing here.
Mickey, staring into the shadows beyond the reach of the feeble pool of light in front of the door opening onto the little concrete courtyard, didn't turn when he heard the door open.
He knew it would be Olivia, even before he heard her liquid alto break over the buzzing of the insects investigating the single bulb. Her voice was as low as a whisper. "I'm sorry, Mickey. Did I hurt you?"
The pale hands gripping the two inch pipe that formed the railing were slick with sweat. "Yes. No. Yes," he admitted. He continued to face away from her, into the midnight blackness of the lawn surrounding the packing plant, waiting for her to smack his rear again as she had done that night, as she had done not ten minutes since inside the plant, laughingly inquiring if he was 'ready to give it another go'?"
He wasn't.
The muscles in his buttocks tightened, perhaps in dread or maybe in anticipation, even he wasn't sure which. It had been so good— and yet—
And yet he was so ashamed.
She didn't hit him. She moved towards him, but only to lean against the railing at his side, her strong dark hands gripping the rail next to his own. The shadows were kinder to her than to him: his own frightened white claws stood out glaringly against the darkness, where her supple fingers blended into the warm night.
"I'm sorry, baby," she said again. "I thought—" she paused, seemingly uncertain how to proceed.
Uncertain how to let him know he was letting her down. At thirty, she was the oldest woman he'd ever made love to, as well as the most beautiful. Hot coffee black eyes, and skin the color of milk chocolate, wide brown lips, soft and firm and innocent of lipstick, she was so beautiful to him, he'd hardly known how to speak to her at first.
She was one of only two women tough enough to work the killing floor, and he knew she'd chosen to take him home with her because, after a full shift followed by six hours of mandatory overtime, she'd needed to 'reaffirm her belief in life' in the most elemental way possible.
And had she ever.
But for all his cocky assurance that he was 'ready for anything,' in reality 'anything' had been… a little overpowering. His hands moved on the pipe, as if he could twist it like a pipe-cleaner.
He couldn't. It was immovable. Strong, as the woman beside him was strong. "No, I'm sorry," he gasped miserably. "If I were—" his breath caught on what was almost a sob. God, he never cried! Or at least he hadn't. Not since Pa died. And before that not since the age of five when he'd learned that crying made things worse, not better.
Until the other night, when she had taken him over her—
He listened to his breathing, harsh and fast. Waiting for her to say it was his fault, because he hadn't told her to stop, hadn't said… what she'd told him to say if it got to be too much.
It was his fault. She had told him she wouldn't do anything he didn't want.
"I never meant to hurt you," she said softly. She let go of the railing and turned to look at him. "May I touch you?" she asked.
"Yes," but he breathed his assent to the darkness that surrounded them, not to the woman at his side.
A gentle finger reached up to his chin, and pressed against his jaw, to move his face towards her. "I wanted to give you pleasure," she said.
"You did!" Frustration edged his tone. Their lovemaking had been right up there with the best of his experience. Certainly it had been the most exhilarating. And the most terrifying. Pleasure and pain commingled. "It's not you, Liv, it's me! I'm—"
"Shh!" She laid a finger across his lips to still his self-reproach. "Not everyone is into that," she reminded him. "It's no shame if you're not. I told you." She looked into his frightened eyes a moment in silence. "I was supposed to take care of you," she said.
"And I was supposed to tell you…" his voice trailed off. He was supposed to tell her to stop, if he didn't like it.
But he hadn't said anything.
He hadn't told her to stop.
He'd only cried like a baby. Terrible, howling, uncontrollable sobs.
He'd known how to stop her, but he hadn't done it.
Did that mean he had liked it?
He had certainly liked the climax, a mind blowing explosion that had left him lying spent, empty, and exhausted on her canopied bed.
Had he liked it?
He shuddered. God help him. He had. He shouldn't have, because lovemaking was supposed to be gentle.
His backside had been as sore as the time Pa caught him smoking.
He couldn't like something like that, could he?
Except he knew some people did.
She'd gripped his sore behind as they'd come together, and he didn't know if his gasps then had been of pleasure or pain. The coming together had felt good, he was sure.
But he couldn't do it again.
Not ever.
He was shivering.
"Come back inside," she urged him. She looked worriedly at the door. "If we don't get back to work soon, we'll get in trouble."
"Olivia, wait."
She looked back at him curiously, and in the darkness, his eyes held a wet sheen that might or might not have been tears.
"Thank you," he said, and his voice and his look were suddenly full of gratitude, and indeed his whole little normally-cocky self was unbelievably sweet to her. "Thank you for getting close to me."
Mickey stared off into the darkness of the paddock where the 'rogue' horse cowered in a nameless fear of its own.
In memory, he felt the pull of cloth against his neck as his cousin had grabbed his shirt. I'm gonna teach you respect. And I'm just the guy to do it.
He'd been wearing the very shirt he was wearing now.
He could have said 'no' when Ray asked him to come to Southfork.
Why hadn't he said it?
Why had he come here?
Did he like this? He shivered. He'd barely seen Ray since he'd been here.
The flat empty vastness that was Southfork Ranch spooked him.
If he'd had his bike, he could have gone and lost himself in the nightlife of Braddock. (Always assuming it had a night life.)
But his bike was back in Emporia, and he was stranded here.
Alone.
Alone with forty-nine other ranch hands.
Who had no idea.
It was a test.
He hoped it was a test.
Mickey believed in testing people. He'd tested Ray, and even Donna, when they'd come to the funeral.
And they had both passed his test.
Could he pass theirs?
Mickey exhaled.
It wasn't a test.
Ray just didn't care about him.
Why should he?
Mickey moved his head to ease the crick in his neck, and breathed in the sweet grassy scent of the pasture.
Fine.
He'd just have to make his own fun.