The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters (4 page)

Jeremy, in a surprising burst of sincerity, had said no, because he’d never had an honest boss in his life.

“You think I’m honest?” Craw had asked curiously, and Jeremy’s shoulders had shaken.

“I think if you weren’t such an ass sometimes, a decent con man would have screwed you six ways to Sunday,” Jeremy had replied, enjoying his third dinner on Craw’s dime.

“Then come work for me. I’ve got a full-time employee and a kid coming by after school, but it’s getting too big for us.”

Jeremy had arrived then, and once he got the hang of working with his muscles instead of his quick wits and liar’s tongue, he did a pretty good job. Aiden had spent a day with him in the mill and then one with him on a supply run and had come back saying that it was a good thing they had to wear earplugs most of the time, or Jeremy would drive him to murder. But they
did
have to wear earplugs most of the time, so Jeremy was safe and Aiden could retain his own sunny personality.

But setting up the spinners was not a loud job, and on this day, neither of the boys was leaving Craw the holy fuck alone.

“Hey, Jer!” Aiden called, and Jeremy looked up from where he was running a hand-spun end through the machine to the spool. “Craw says it wasn’t a date!”

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Did you bring him a gift?” he asked, and Craw blinked. That hat had looked awfully pretty perched on Ben’s head, but it hadn’t really been a… well, it wasn’t flowers. Did gay men do flowers? More importantly, would
Craw
do flowers if he had the chance? The thought made him itch. Christ, no.

Jeremy’s customary laughter crinkled his eyes, making him look younger than early thirtysomething. “So there was a gift. How about food?”

“Coffee,” Craw grunted, aligning his own spinner so it was in the same spot as the last one and ready to begin.

Jeremy laughed. “Well, there was food, a gift, and you spent your time shopping. I’d say it was a date!”

Aiden squinted at Jeremy. “That’s all we did last Saturday!” he said, a little bit of surprise in his voice. “I thought you weren’t gay!”

Jeremy widened his eyes big enough to look shocked. “Well, I didn’t know you were!”

“God, what a dumbass!” Aiden shook his head. “Jesus, how can you give advice on two guys dating if you don’t even know what two guys do if they’re
not
on a date.”

Craw looked at the two of them helplessly. The spinner was ready, the day’s millwork was about to begin, and suddenly Ariadne seemed like better company.

“I want four hundred hanks, 420 yards,” he said. “Make sure the roving stays consistent. It’s for socks.”

“We going to dye today?” Aiden asked, and Craw figured they could.

“You’ve got a plan?” he asked, and Aiden brought up a color scale sampler that he’d put together with pastels on a piece of nice artist’s parchment. Craw looked at it, surprised. Peach, pink, fuschia, with an overdye of red.

“This is real pretty,” Craw said, and looked at it critically. “But it’s sort of girly—you want to throw together another sampler with some blue or some brown in it, so we can do two batches?”

“Womanly?” Aiden asked with raised eyebrows and a leer.

Crawford grimaced. “Yeah, whatever. Show me what you got, and we’ll do some roving like this. I’ve got some yarn stores who’ve got hand-spinners and are asking me if I’ve got any product. I like this—would like it better with some blues or neutrals, but I like it. It’s as good a place as any to start.”

Aiden grinned. “And maybe we can try spinning up the dyed roving and then overdying, you think?”

Oooh…. Visions of the color, saturated, shifting, like a river of visual emotion, moved behind Craw’s eyes like running water over a streambed. “Yeah,” Craw said dreamily. “Do that. I want to see.”

He snapped out of it, which was hard, because Aiden’s color visions were usually
so
seductive, and his best sellers, and then pulled out his own chromatic scale. “Here, for the people with testicles,” he said.

Aiden looked at it approvingly. “Oooh, boss, I like—and not just ’cause you’re the boss, either!”

Rust and teal—but not a teal that sat by itself. It started so dark it was almost green-black and then slid up and down the tint and hue scale until it reached sea-foam green. It had been the last thing Crawford had done after he’d finished Ben’s hat—the hat had inspired him, sort of, and he liked where it had led.

“Maybe not quite so extreme on the dark end of it,” Aiden murmured to himself. “It’s sort of retro… if we keep it a little lighter here….” He wandered off murmuring to himself, and Crawford knew that whatever he came up with, it would be good.

“I’ll be back to put what’s on the bobbins on the hanks and help with the dying,” Crawford said to no one in particular. “I’m going to go check on Ariadne.”

As he walked away, he heard Jeremy saying, “Oh God, what kinds of rainbow wooly madness are the two of you going to put me through today? C’mon… lemme see the magic paper… c’mon, Aiden, you know you wanna let me see it!” and he had to laugh. God, Jeremy was a pain in the ass sometimes—but Aiden seemed to like him.

As he walked in to talk to Ariadne, he was thinking about that color scale, thinking about the leftover yarn he had, and, for no reason at all, thinking about Ben’s statement about not having to worry, ever, about where Craw stood. Craw had to fight not to go find more of the yarn he’d used on Ben’s hat and start him another project.

The next day, he was still fighting that urge when he drove into Boulder, the better to deliver shipments personally to the three local yarn stores there.

He had hired a rep who worked with a couple of different companies for much of his business, but Boulder was special because he had to go there anyway and because local business was good business.

Besides, his steady lay was in Boulder, and usually that would be a cause for some special treatment right there, wouldn’t it?

But as Craw actually went about shaving that morning, he looked at himself in the mirror, saw the square jaw under the stubble, the rectangular face, the brown eyes and the bold nose, he couldn’t help hearing Ben’s words too.

I just don’t know how anybody could get a mixed signal with you, one way or another.

He’d made the hat. They’d gone out for coffee. They’d spent time shopping. He’d been thinking about maybe nosing about the boy and showing his interest.

Maybe going to get his pole polished out of habit was not such a good thing to do at the moment.

“Hel
lo
,
handsome!” Stanley said as Craw balanced a couple of really big boxes and came through the door. He raised his plucked eyebrows theatrically and held his hand to his chest. His hair plugs were working, and his straw-blond hair was coming in thicker over his pink scalp. Craw was glad for his sake. Stanley was vain, and he’d been worried about that the last time Craw had come by.

Stanley was also unapologetically gay, as opposed to Craw, who was mind-your-own-fucking-business gay. “Hiya, Stan,” he said gruffly. “Hang on a minute. I’ve got another load.”

Stanley managed one of the larger yarn boutiques in Boulder, and the owner specialized in local yarns. Craw had been, uhm, making deliveries at Ewe’ll Love This! for about five years, and to Stanley for about that time too. Stanley possessed no scruples about seduction, or about monogamy, and the first time Craw had brought a delivery by, he’d followed Craw into the bathroom and bent over the sink with a wrapped condom sticking out of his plumber’s crack. Craw had been pretty fucking horny right then and had taken him up on that. He’d continued to take him up on that for the last five years, and he’d been planning on doing it today, too, it was just that….

Well, maybe a guy like Ben would think that was giving out mixed signals.

Craw sighed. Stanley was not the type to take this well.

“Here, baby,” Stanley chattered, “let me show you where we’re putting those today.” He led Craw to the back room, talking the entire time about supply, demand, and the irritating ability of little old ladies to come in and ask for cheap acrylic yarn. Craw usually listened politely, because, well, Stanley was planning to bend over for him in the bathroom, and it only seemed fair. But today, he was wondering how to break it to Stanley that he wasn’t planning on going to the bathroom, not even to pee. He’d actually stopped before this particular delivery, because usually his morning coffee hit him as soon as he rounded the corner for the store.

So he grunted in response to shit he probably should have spoken in response to, and Stanley didn’t notice until Craw had all the boxes stacked and was pulling out the literature for the new colorways and fiber lines that he’d started since his last delivery, nearly three months earlier.

Stanley waved those away. “I can read that
later
,
Craw. Now it’s been forever—I don’t expect you to dish, big guy, but, you know… the least we could do is… dish?” He darted his eyes to the front door, where the open sign had been turned closed side out, and raised his eyebrows.

Crawford flushed. “Uhm,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Receding hairline or not, Stanley had
the
sweetest little bubble-ass, and it was usually tight and very often lubed and stretched soft around the rim if he knew Craw was stopping by. Even though Craw wanted an actual partner, like pretty much any other man in the world, a little bit of mindless bouncing off that bubble-butt had given him a whole lot of joy—and Stanley, too, he hoped.

Stanley raised his eyebrows. “Uhm?”

Craw looked away and flushed. “I’ve got a new neighbor,” he said unhappily, knowing he was going to fuck this up like a stud critter’s crushed testicle. “He’s… he’s nice.”

Stanley rolled his eyes. “Well, bring him by and I’ll blow him! But first, c’mon—I’ve got about fifteen minutes before the aqua class gets out across the street, and I’m swamped!”

Craw grimaced and tried to imagine Ben just bending over the bathroom sink while looking over his shoulder and hissing, “Hurry, dammit, I’m on a schedule!” Somehow, he thought sex with Ben would involve a lot more kissing. His lips were the softest pink under the fuzz of that trendy beard. Craw sure would like to kiss them.

“He’s not that kind of nice,” Craw said, his voice firming, and he tried to do right by this man who certainly had been happy to do
him.
“But you have been. I’ll… uhm. You know. I’ll miss doing that. But maybe next time, I should just bring you coffee, okay?”

Stanley let out an irritating little passive-aggressive whine-sigh. “Oh,
fine.
But if you want a piece of ass the next time you come by, you’d better bring the fucking lube, Craw. Honestly—I’ve been looking forward to this all day, and you’re going to blow me off for some guy who’s ‘not that kind of nice’?”

Crawford did something a little out of character then and leaned forward and kissed Stanley’s cheek.

Stanley stopped his tirade and looked back, bewilderment clearly written on his fashionable little oval of a face. It was, after five years of fucking in the bathroom a few times a year, probably the only time they’d ever kissed.

“I’m ready for someone that kind of nice,” Craw said gently. “I think he’s that kind of nice.”

Some of the bitchiness pranced out of the room. “Well, Craw, I never knew that’s what you were looking for.”

Oh. Well, Craw hadn’t known Stanley would have offered him that. “Neither did I,” Craw said. “Until I saw him.”

Stanley sighed and rolled his eyes. “Jesus. Could you at least get me a fucking coffee
today
,
and then come back and mind the register while I go pull out the butt plug? Those things aren’t made for long wear, you know?”

Crawford’s eyebrows about hit his hairline. “So
that’s
how you’re always ready.” Well hell—that was good to know.

“Well yeah, Craw—you’re hung like a fucking bear. A boy’s got to have some prep, right?”

Crawford nodded, although he was a little bit flattered by the belated compliment, and walked toward the front door to get that coffee. “Pumpkin latte?” he asked. There was a Starbucks two doors down in the strip mall.

“As if!” Stanley sniffed. “There’s not enough sit-ups in the
world.
Venti, black, two Splendas, no cream. And hurry. Those women don’t fuck around after aqua class.”

Craw did hurry, not wanting to think about what Stanley was going to be doing in the bathroom during his absence. But even as he walked over and placed the order, he was thinking about something completely different. He was thinking about that colorway he’d just had Aiden dye, and how there was some worsted weight that rust color to complement it, and how good the sea foam green blended with the teal would look with Ben’s green eyes.

And he was thinking about maybe Ben being that kind of nice.

Chapter 4
Carding

So there were a fuckton of things to do to alpaca and sheep fur before you sat down in your soft lounging chair to knit.

There was the shearing first, but that usually happened in the spring, and then there was washing and carding and carding some more to combine the fibers, and then pulling it through the carder to make roving, and then spinning it from the roving into yarn, and then dying it after designing the colorway, and then picking out a pattern that would complement the fiber and the color and the thickness, and then….

Then, there was making something lovely.

If pressed, Crawford would refer to the next few weeks as carding.

It started the day after the visit to Boulder and the unexpectedly painful moment with Stanley. That felt like a cutting of the old to make way for the new. A shearing, of sorts.

So Craw had his fleece, his original fiber materials—him and Ben. They would be the alpaca and the merino wool, spun together. He bathed regularly, and he assumed Ben did, too, so he figured they could skip that step in their analogy and move on to carding.

Carding got rid of the brambles, the stickers, and the random bits of flotsam in the wool, and aligned all the fibers so they were in the same direction. It also got the two different fibers used to each other so they could be spun together equally.