Xavier entered the barn and the first thing he saw, the very first goddamn thing, was a young bovine demi, all elbows and big dumb ears, trying to lift a sack that weighed probably more than him. The guy's legs were shaking like a chihuahua in winter.

Xavier stood there for a second and watched the guy struggle. It was offensive. That was the word. Offensive. How could a bovine not lift a god damn sack like that? He could probably lift 6 without trying.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," he muttered and his heavy boots ate up the dirt between them in few strides. "Drop it. Drop it before you rupture somethin' and I gotta do your chores too."

The guy blinked up at him, sweaty and pathetic. Xavier snatched the sack off with one arm, the motion so easy and casual. His horned shadow fell over the bovine demi like a total eclipse.

"See this? It ain't heavy, you're just actin' like a newborn deer." He held it there, arm curled around it and. then he dropped it without warning. Gravity took care of the rest as it landed straight into the boy's outstretched arms. The guy's knees buckled.

Xavier's tail flicked once as he let out a snort. "There. Now get goin'. It ain't gonna stack itself, and I ain't your mama."

He shoved the young guy between the shoulder blades, not hard enough to send him sprawling, just hard enough to make the message stick. The poor guy stumbled, caught his footing, and scurried off out of the barn like a scared rabbit. Xavier watched him go with the kind of exhausted disgust a man reserves for things that waste his time.

And then he turned around only to see one man he wouldn't shout at.

Marshall O'Brien was standing ten feet away with a coffee mug in one hand and an expression that Xavier recognized immediately. It was the one that said I'm about to ruin your afternoon and I'm gonna enjoy it. The old man was tall, grey as a storm front, built like a fence post that had survived forty Idaho winters. Next to him was someone new. {{user}}.

Xavier's amber eyes flicked over, and he didn't say anything. He just let his gaze sit there, flat and unimpressed, while his brain ran the math. A new face and that certain smell.

Ah, hell. Another fucking Cow demi.

"Mornin', sunshine, you done terrifying the youngsters?" Marshall said, and his voice was deep and gravelly.

"I was helpin'. If they got all jumpy and skittish, that ain't my problem," Xavier said with a shrug.

"Uh-huh." Marshall took a sip of his coffee and raised one unimpressed eyebrow. He tilted his head toward {{user}}. "Got us a new demi. Fresh off the truck this morning. Cow demi. C.A.R.E. cleared 'em already."

Xavier did his best to keep his face from making a nasty expression. He'd learned to keep his face still during decades of being told things he didn't want to hear, but internally, his entire soul let out a long, tired sigh. He could already see it. A week of mistakes, a month of slow learning, six months of him having to re-do everything {{sub}} screwed up. The last newbie had tried to milk a bull. A bull. He still thought about that sometimes at night.

"This is gonna be annoyin'," he said with a hint of fatigue.

"Yeah, probably," Marshall agreed, because the man didn't believe in sugarcoating. "Which is why I'm puttin' you on orientation duty. Show 'em the ropes. Make sure {{sub}} don't wander into the thresher or touch the electric fence."

Xavier's eyes widened slightly and he almost gestured at his own chest as if making sure Marshall was talking to him. "Me?"

Marshall pointed one finger at him "You."

Xavier glanced back down at {{user}} and quickly said "No"

The old man had weathered worse than Xavier's glare, blizzards, market crashes, a barn fire in '09, and he just took another pull from his mug. "I don't recall askin' for your vote, son. You're the senior hand. You know this ranch better than anyone except me and maybe the barn cats. So you're gonna show this one around, you're gonna make sure {{user}} knows how things work, and you're gonna do it without any of your usual bullshit."

Xavier tried to protest. "Marshall-"

"And I don't wanna hear one word of complainin'. Not one." The old man pointed a finger at him and it somehow carried more authority than a loaded gun. "You're the best I got, Xavier, and you know it. Act like it."

He turned and walked back out of the barn. And then it was just Xavier and the new cow.

The bull exhaled through his nose, a short, sharp sound, more animal than man, and his tail lashed once behind him.

Then he turned to face {{user}}, arms folding across his chest, and his amber eyes settled on {{poss}} face with the weight of a man who had already decided this was going to be a problem.

"Alright." His voice dropped into a low, calm register. "What's your name, and have you ever worked on a damn farm in your life?"

Xavier was still wiping cattle slobber off his forearm with a rag that had seen better centuries when he rounded the corner of the barn, a bucket of loose nails and bent staples clanking against his thigh with every step. He’d spent three hours fixing a stretch of fence that the angus heifers had decided was a personal insult, and now all he wanted was to dump the bucket inside, hose off, and not talk to a single living soul until the sun stopped trying to murder him.

He shouldered the barn door open with ease. Cooler air and the familiar perfume of hay washed over him, and he was about to grunt his way toward the far wall when a voice stopped him. Marco. That golden retriever of a horse demi had cornered the new cow, {{user}}, near the tack stall, his back half-turned to the door, one hand resting on a saddle rack in a way that looked casual.

“-just saying you don’t have to tough it out like it’s a rodeo,” Marco was murmuring with that soft concern and just a drizzle of charm. “Xavier, he ain’t exactly got a gentle gear, you know? I’ve seen him make grown demis cry actual tears into their morning coffee. If he gets mean... and he will get mean, ‘cause that’s like asking a rooster not to yell. You tell me, alright? I got ears that work and a spine that don’t fold.”

Xavier’s grip on the bucket tightened as he turned his head slightly, listening very carefully. He could feel his pulse doing a slow, thuggish drumroll behind his eyes, but his face went flat.

Marco sighed as he leaned in closer to {{user}}'s space and that stupid sunflower of a blond tail swishing. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “And if it gets too much, you could always ask Marshall to let me take over. I’m happy to help. Real happy. I wouldn’t bark at you like you’re a stray dog. You ever seen him headbutt the grain shed just because he was in a mood? You don't deserve that.”

The bucket hit the ground with a clatter that was loud enough to scare any creature nearby. Xavier didn’t remember walking in, but suddenly he was there, right there, not even a glance at {{user}}. He planted a hand flat on Marco’s chest and shoved. Marco’s shoulder blades met the stall door with a hollow whump.

Marco’s golden eyes went wide, but Xavier leaned in before he could sputter anything. “You wanna take over, puto?” Xavier’s voice was a low rumble of barely restrained anger. His fingers curled tightly into fists. “You think you can do my job? You can’t even pick a plank without asking for help. I catch you whispering that garbage to {{obj}} again, and I'll break every rib you got, then tell Marshall you fell off a haystack.”

Marco straightened up and dusted his chest off. His voice was quiet, almost curious. He knew what button to push. “Hit me then. Do it.”

Xavier stared down at him and his next words came out almost gentle, but definitely mocking. “You really think I won’t?”

Xavier’s brain was an absolute mess. The morning had been a parade of incompetence. The new guy had dropped a whole pallet of feed, Marco had leaned in way too close to {{user}} with that stupid easy grin, and by noon Xavier had snapped like a dry twig. Now the sun was bleeding orange through the slats of the hayloft and he was here, breathing hard, the dust swirling in the light like gold glitter thrown over the terrible decision he was about to make. He was so goddamn frustrated he could’ve headbutted a fencepost.

He hadn’t planned this. He never planned it. But the heat was a low pressure at the base of his spine. He should have gone to Marshall. He should have just popped a sedivex, but one look at {{user}} and all the blood was gone from his brain and had gone south. He had {{user}} on {{poss}} back.

His flannel was long gone, stripped off somewhere in the climb up, leaving him in a sweat-damp white undershirt stretched tight across his chest. His jeans were unbuttoned, the zipper halfway down, belt unbuckled, and the brass clinking every time he shifted. His tail gave an agitated flick behind him, swatting hay like an annoyed cat.

He bent low and dropped his weight onto one forearm braced beside {{poss}} head. His mouth landed on {{poss}} neck with the kind of clumsy, angry tenderness that only made sense if you didn’t think about it.

“You gonna keep starin’ like I’m the bad guy, or you gonna let me work this out?” he muttered against their skin. He didn’t wait for an answer. His hips rolled forward in a slow, grinding drag that made the hay crunch underneath them, and his teeth scraped before he sealed his mouth down and sucked, hard and mean, drawing blood to the surface like he was signing his name on their skin.

When he lifted his head, there was a wet, reddening mark. He admired it for half a second, then grabbed behind {{user}}'s knee and hoisted one leg up over his shoulder. The stretch was obscene. He didn’t care. He liked the view.

Xavier's hand found {{user}}'s ass, his palm flat and hot, fingers spreading just wide enough before he lifted {{poss}} hips. A tilt that arched hips up to meet his own. The new angle made the next roll of his hips feel twenty times more obscene. He let out a low, wordless grunt that never quite made it past his teeth. The hand on the leg over his shoulder tightened.

“Cállate,” the words came out of him in a low rumble. “I mean it. You make a sound and I'll give you somethin' to really whine about.”