alexdraven | Rick and Oli

The A's and the C's were a tie, so I flipped a coin - you all are angst-hungry bunnies, aren't you? ;p

The quiet still hours between one and three were meant to be down time – the morning's tasks done, no one due down to yard till after school let out. The looseboxes were a row of empty blanks as the ponies all mouthed and chewed their way through their lunch time hay. Even Dexter, the yard terrier, slept, sprawled out on sun warmed concrete. Down time, maybe, but Rick didn't stop working.

Oh, he sat, for a spell, on the low wall, over by the water taps, but his hands were never still. Broad, strong hands, with dirt worked into the nail beds and hoof oil grimed into the lines of his knuckles and joints. Broad, strong, hands that were like magic, calming and steadying the ponies and the kids alike, deft and sure, whether he was braiding a pony's mane for a show, or, as he was now, rough, orange baler twine. Little bits of rubbish being turned into something neat and clean and useful – tie loops for the yard, a new lead for Dexter.

Rick didn't stop working, and Oli didn't stop watching. He'd come up from the outdoor school, where he'd been setting up for the afternoon's classes, thinking to run his head under the tap, and swallow down a few mouthfuls of metal-tanged water to chase the dust out of his throat, and now he was trapped, leaning against the corner of the stable block, watching.

Oh, but that man was fine. From this angle, all Oli could really see was the breadth of Rick's shoulders – not massive, but strong for his size, his skinny build – and the tanned, exposed nape of his neck, as he ducked his head over his work. His mousey hair was shingled short up his neck, starting to turn blond in the sun they'd been getting, and his skin was gleaming, bronze flecked with golden stubble, the hollow at the bottom of his skull a smudge of shadow. Rick wouldn't take off his shirts until it got far hotter than this mild May sunshine – he was as eager as any of them to loose his jacket at the first opportunity, but he didn't like the informality of t-shirts, he said. Those faded, checked, short sleeved shirts with their open collars would be around till June, maybe July, and Oli wasn't sure what he was going to do, come the heat wave, when he'd be faced ten times a day by Rick's farmer's tan and t-shirts which would stick to damp skin and long muscles.

It only made it worse that Oli knew what that skin tasted like, how it felt to have Rick's calloused hands touching him, how those muscles could move like liquid power, and not just when they were in tune with a horse. That and that through Oli's own stupid fear he'd made quite sure that he'd never get to feel and see and taste those things again. Oli was an idiot.

He'd come to realise that over the past weeks. Working alongside Rick had worn away at the blind panic that had possessed Oli when he'd scrambled away from Rick, spitting hate and lies, and the more they had to work together the more Oli came to respect the mad. He'd been wrong. So very very wrong. He'd called Rick weak, amongst the other abuse, and the memory of that curdled in his stomach. If they ever had a conversation more personal than which ponies needed their feed adjusting, he figured he owed Rick an apology or ten.

Of course, Rick had made quietly sure that they never would have that conversation. There was no fuss, no drama, nothing that could cause ructions at work, but there was a tightness about the man's eyes that added guilt to Oli's regrets, and their conversations always were brief and to the point. Like now, when Oli pulled himself from the wall, and ducked into Prince's box to collect his water buckets, and between the time Oli turned his back to work the bolt, and the moment he was standing looking out over the half door with the scuffed plastic roller of a bucket-handle pressing into his fingers, Rick had tied off his project and was strolling towards the tack room.

Oli sighed, and let himself out of the box. He sluiced the dusty water towards the drain, and then scrubbed his blunt finger nails up under Prince's forelock when the bossy little bay nudged at his shoulder.

Oli was an idiot, and he'd screwed up a friendship as well as an opportunity for more.

The hose water was blessedly cool, running over his hands and for arms, cold enough that he could feel it hit the bottom of his stomach when he turned the hose into a water fountain for a few long gulps, and when he rubbed a hand over his chin, the cling of his newly-wet neckline was a relief from the sticky sweaty damp. Returning across the yard Oli focussed on the pull in his shoulders from the full buckets, trying not to think about who might be watching, or, more likely, wasn't. The first afternoon class – children with leaning difficulties, but fewer physical problems than some of their peers – was due in twenty minutes. If Oli hurried he could have all the pony's water buckets done before it was time to start tacking up, and he'd bet any money that before he got as far as Bella's box, Rick would be working on Prince or Punky, and their paths would somehow not cross, yet again.

So - the choice to be made. The next scene should be :

A - the riding lesson
B - Oli at home that evening
C - the stable yard late that evening.

Ladies and gentlemen - you decide :)