OCTOBER 13

TITLE: "Horse"
NOTES: Another story sketch - this one
could go somewhere, if I get some direction
and the balls to hand it in. Still very rough. No, really.

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The night was colder than he’d expected; John could feel his dick shrinking even as he sprinted through the field towards the fence. His stomach was tight with anticipation, coiling speed into the tops of his thighs to expel the lactic acid already beginning to build there. He was going to pay for it tomorrow; he should have stretched. But the thought of seeing Rocky sent liquid fire snaking down to his groin, fingers of heat stroking what lay between his legs and pushing him faster through the shadows. He fell but once, when the toe of his workboots caught in a gopher hole, sending him sprawling out in the high grass like a felled elk. The wind escaped him in a single grunt to echo the sudden ache in his elbows and knees, but he was up and away again within moments. Shadows clung to the grass like a heavy morning fog, dampening his socks and sending the shivers of a chill up the back of his legs, beneath the flannel-lined denim of his jeans.

Then, he was there, eye-level with the highest strand of thin wire. It seemed to crackle and glow blue with the threat of electrical shock, but John’s attention was elsewhere: Rocky was looking at him from across the field. Even in the dark, John could see the recognition in those wide, watery eyes, and smiled, clicking his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Rocky.” His voice wavered slightly, too weak to bear the strain of all the love it was expected to convey. There were no words. John felt his heart flutter as Rocky approached, and pistoned his arm out from the barrier between them, closing his eyes and holding his breath in anticipation of the pending contact.

The calloused flesh of his fingers met solid body and the short, sleek hairs of skin; Rocky shivered once, sending waves out across his body that made John’s heart fluttered in adoration. Oh, how he loved the horse. Everything about him was perfect, from the gentle arc and slope of his profile to the delicate hollows at the base of his hocks—it was aesthetic perfection on every level, and John still couldn’t believe he was touching it. Drunk on the rich, tangy smell of horse, he thrust his arm out farther, as far as the fence would let him, running his fingers over the contours of his obsession, memorizing every dip and rise, every pockmark and dimple. The undulating ridges of ribs, the wide, smooth expanse of a flank.

Presently, Rocky turned towards John and snorted, bathing the latter’s hand with warm, oat-scented breath that caused his testicles to pucker and tighten (pronoun disagreement). His breath held captive in his throat, John stroked the velvet muzzle, allowing his fingers to dip into the hollows of the nostrils and find the moisture collected there. He shuddered blissfully, then brought his hand back through the fence to his cold world on the other side. Quickly, before the living warmth could escape the glistening tips of his fingers, he unzipped his fly and dropped his hand beyond and down past the denim swaddling him from waist to ankle. The other dipped into a back pocket, leaving him fumbling in his pants with both hands until he found the pink packets of SweetN’ Low where they’d been flattened for hours against the gentle curve of his hip. He’d saved them since his afternoon shift at the diner, bemoaning the lack of real sugar as he did thirty hours a week, every day except Tuesdays and Thursdays. Using his teeth to rip open the miniature package, he emptied the contents into his palm and held it out to the horse, flat, as he’d been taught the first time he’d ever had contact with the animals, back before the sight of their svelte figures and intelligent eyes gave him an instant boner (word choice). Back before his mother had hung herself in their garage; back before his father had withered into anonymity; back when he still believed in God.

Now he believed in horses.

As Rocky’s tongue, large and slippery like a frog but so much warmer, drew across his palm, catching so slightly on the callouses, John worked more intently on the interior of his tented fly. His pace became as frantic as his pulse, causing beads of sweat to form a martyr’s crown upon his brow, and the speed with which he began to stroke the place between the horse’s eyes soon matched that with which he stroked the place between his own legs.