Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I will be back on Wednesday,” Gheorghe said, the night before he flew home to Bucharest.

“I know,” Johnny said. It was cold in their bedroom, which was the only reason he moved a couple centimetres closer to Gheorghe.

“Deirdre can handle the milking,” Gheorghe said.

“I know,” Johnny repeated. “Her cheese’s not as good as yours.” He didn’t mean to sound sulky, but sometimes it happened.

“That’s because she won’t use the right tea towel for it,” Gheorghe said fondly. “It adds to the flavour.”

“It’s her best, that is,” Johnny said, an old argument between Nan and Gheorghe that he had no stakes in.

“Hm.” Gheorghe shifted, putting his arm under Johnny’s back and his shoulders. “My sister is sorry you cannot come, but she understands the farm must come first.”

Georghe’s sister’s kid was getting baptised and he was going to be godfather, so he had to be there, even though they were a week off Easter and the lambs were coming thick and fast.

They didn’t have the same Easter in Romania, Johnny had learnt, so Gheorghe hadn’t realised when he’d booked his tickets.

“They know about me, then?” Johnny asked, trying not to sound surprised.

Gheorghe kept looking up at the ceiling, kept stroking Johnny’s bare shoulder with two fingers. “They know about you.”

“Huh. What d’you tell ‘em about me?”

He could feel Gheorghe smile without looking at him, knew he was about to get teased. “I have told them that you are very handsome. That you are strong and brave. That you fuck like a, a râs.”

Johnny spluttered, even though he knew Gheorghe was talking shite. “A fucking what now?”

Gheorghe went silent the way he always did when he was searching for a word in English. It didn’t happen much; if he didn’t know a word, he tended to talk around it, so no one would ever know. It made Johnny feel good that Gheorghe didn’t do that with him.

“A big cat,” he said at last. “Not one who lives in a house.”

“A fucking wild cat?” Johnny demanded in mock outrage. He rolled on top of Gheorghe, catching his hands and pinning them down against the mattress on either side of his head. “I’ll show you a fucking wild cat.”

Gheorghe grinned, all big and smug. “I know you will,” he said, and grabbed Johnny’s arse.

Later, once Johnny had accidentally proven Gheorghe’s point for him and was feeling very good about the proving, Gheorghe curled up behind him, pulled the sheet up over both of them and kissed the back of Johnny’s neck.

“I have told them that you love your family,” he murmured softly into Johnny’s neck. “That you love your farm too, and that you must love me, because you’ve trusted me with both.”

Of course I love you, you daft sod, Johnny thought, but words like that just weren’t in the vocabulary that he could say out loud.

“Shut up and go to sleep,” he said instead, and pressed backwards, deeper into Gheorghe’s arms.

Their sheep’s milk cheese had taken off last summer. The local shop was stocking it alongside the regular stuff, and they sent orders out to fancy gourmet places as far afield as York and Leeds.

There was even talk of a place in London wanting some, but Johnny had never been to London and had a feeling folks there were fickle. He didn’t want Gheorghe getting disappointed.

Robyn had tried some last time she visited and she’d taken back a whole wheel to impress her uni mates. She’d also dared Gheorghe to try making chocolate with it, which he’d accepted with a shrug then stayed up half the night to get it done before she left.

Johnny thought it was too bitter, but Gheorghe liked it and so did Nan so they’d bunged that up on the website that Robyn said they had to have.

Dad thought it was bullshit, them having a website when they couldn’t even get a phone signal, but it didn’t get in the way of proper farm work, so he left it be.

This year, Gheorghe said, they were going to try making ice cream. He’d said it with a secret, sideways look at Johnny, like he somehow knew Johnny loved his puddings, even though Johnny knew he’d never said owt.

Johnny blamed Nan.

He was elbow deep in curds, out in the far barn that they’d converted, when the door banged open then shut. He looked over his shoulder when no one spoke, expecting to find Dad. But it wasn’t Dad, it was Gheorghe, looking rumpled and travel-tired and really fucking gorgeous.

“It’s Tuesday,” Johnny said stupidly.

Gheorghe shrugged and dropped his bags onto the ground.

Johnny peeled off his gloves, careful not to fuck anything up, and stood up. “Everything okay?”

“Five days was too long to be away from the farm,” said Gheorge, roughly. “A stupid idea this time of year.”

“It’s fine?” Johnny said slowly. “We’ve managed. You didn’t have to leave your - ”

He stopped because Gheorghe had crossed the barn in three long strides and jerked Johnny forward into his arms.

Johnny wrapped both arms around him, feeling Gheorghe make fists in the back of Johnny’s jumper, the tension rolling out of his shoulders the longer they held onto each other.

“Everything okay?” Johnny asked again.

“My parents,” Gheorghe said and for a frightening second, Johnny thought maybe something had happened to ‘em, or maybe they’d become homophobic pricks in the time Gheorghe had been away. Instead, Gheorghe said, “They were not meant to live in a house in a city. They were meant to live on a farm, our farm, they should have lived all their days there.”

Johnny didn’t have an answer to that. He tried to imagine Dad and Nan transplanted to a house on a street full of identically built houses and no space around them. He couldn’t do it.

“They should come here sometime.” He said it without thinking, because if he’d thought about it, he never would have said it. Once it was out of his mouth though, it felt right. “Nan loves a houseful.”

Gheorge’s muscles flexed as he tried to hold Johnny tighter, only that wasn’t possible. “Really?”

“Course,” Johnny said, shrugging as best he could while being strangled by the Romanian version of one of them squeezy snakes off the telly.

Gheorghe kissed him and they didn’t get any more cheese made that afternoon.

Eventually, they made it back into the house, where Nan rolled her eyes at them, Dad huffed something that might have been a welcome, and Gheorghe went upstairs to unpack.

He came back down with two boxes of some chocolate salami shit for Nan and Johnny, and a packet of chewing tobacco for Dad.

“He’s definitely not allowed that,” Nan scolded, but she didn’t try to take it away. Johnny wondered if she was thinking what he was thinking: what was the harm in Dad having something he’d enjoy, when his body was doing its best to kill him anyway?

Gheorghe nodded his head to her, respectful and stubborn in a way that shouldn’t have been sexy but always fucking was. “He told me that he missed smoking.”

“We all miss smoking,” Nan said archly. “Well, those of us who’ve given it up do, anyroad.”

Both Johnny and Gheorghe found a need to look anywhere but at her. When they realised what they were doing, they caught each other’s eyes and grinned. Nan rolled her eyes.

Later, after Nan had gone out to hang up the washing and Dad had gone with her for some fresh air, Gheorghe caught Johnny’s wrist and turned his hand palm upwards.

“What?” Johnny asked, body remembering the way Gheorghe had licked him there once, right where there was nothing but a faint scar. “We’ve not got time for any of that; the cows need their tea.”

Gheorghe looked up at him, His breath sped up, but instead of slobbering all over him, Gheorghe just pulled him closer.

Johnny didn’t bother to ask what? again because Gheorghe would tell him or he wouldn’t. He watched as Gheorghe reached into his pocket, pulled something out and reached up to fix it to Johnny’s coat.

“What’s this?” Johnny asked, looking down at the red and white twist of string pinned to his chest. It was tied into a bow, a small silver coin dangling from the middle. It looked ridiculously delicate next to his dirty, ancient jacket.

“Mărțișor,” said Gheorghe, rifling around in the cupboard under the sink.

“Mărțișor?” Johnny echoed. He thought he was getting pretty good at mimicking the way Gheorghe pronounced things, but remembering them later was more difficult. He was pretty determined to learn, though. “What’s that, then?”

Gheorghe stood up from the cupboard, a hammer and a little brass tack in his hands. He looked triumphant.

“One minute,” he said, striding to the door and whacking the tack into the lintel above it with a couple of sharp taps. When he was done, he pulled something out of his pocket, and hung it up on the tack.

It was another of those Mărțișor thingies, Johnny realised. Now both him and the house were wearing one.

“It is a symbol of spring,” Gheorghe explained, looking at Johnny’s jacket then looking at the door and nodding in satisfaction. “It will keep you strong and healthy, make sure you have a good spring.”

“Oh. Well.” Johnny flicked the one he was wearing. “It looks daft.”

“You’re welcome,” Gheorghe said.

By the end of the day, Nan had her own Mărțișor, pinned to the front of her favourite white cardigan, and even Dad was wearing one, though whether he’d have quietly lost it, if he could have, Johnny wasn’t sure.

“Why don’t you have one, then?” Johnny asked Gheorghe, when they were getting ready for bed that night. “We’ve all got to look daft, but you don’t?”

Gheorghe just shook his head. He was already in bed, lying shirtless on his back, with the top sheet low on his hips. He knew what he looked like; he was a fucking tease. “The good luck will only work, if you are given it. I cannot give one to myself. It will not work.”

“Mărțișor,” Johnny said carefully. He’d been keeping it on his tongue all day, practicing it to the beasts at their tea time.

“Yes,” Gheorghe said softly and pulled him down to kiss it right back into his mouth.

There was a haberdashers in town that Johnny’s mam used to drag him into sometimes when he was small. He remembered liking the shiny buttons all lined up in tubes against the wall, but he wasn’t expecting them to still be there, exactly where they always were. It made him feel like Mam might be just around the corner, looking at knitting patterns.

“Can I help you, love?” asked the old lady behind the counter. She was the same too; he wondered if she’d remember his mam, if he asked.

Stupid, he told himself. Coming in here was stupid and reminscing was stupid. Neither of them were going to help anything.

Belatedly, Johnny pulled off his dirty beanie hat. There wasn’t anything he could do about his muddy boots, so he just tried to stand still and not stomp about too much.

“You got any like, cotton stuff?” he asked. “Thread, like?”

“What kind?” she asked, stepping around the counter and pulling open a drawer. It was full of threads in all different sorts of colours. Johnny liked colours from nature, not all this bright shit, but he was on a mission.

“Like this,” he said, pointing at his Mărțișor.

She came over and peered at it then nodded twice and went back to her drawer. In a couple of seconds, she’d found some white string-like stuff, and some more in pretty much exactly the same shade of red.

Johnny took them both and pushed them deep into his pocket, where they wouldn’t get dirty. “Perfect, thanks.”

He paid up and left the shop as quick as he could, breathing a sigh of relief that he hadn’t made anything mucky and that no one seemed to have seen him coming out of there. It was one thing to have people know he was shacked up with Gheorghe, but another to have ‘em thinking he did embroidery or whatever.

Back home, he checked Gheorghe was still out on the bike then spread everything out across the kitchen table.

Johnny had always felt cackhanded with scissors. He knew they made left-handed ones - they’d had a pair when he was at primary school - but he’d never bought them for home. Maybe he should.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Nan asked, walking in on him just as he was tying the bow for a painstaking fifth time.

Johnny held it up without answer, trying to see if both loops were somewhere near even. Nan tipped her head, looking too. Eventually she nodded.

Johnny grinned. Thank God for that.

“Got 5p?” he asked her.

The problem with having made the Mărțișor was that he had to give it to Gheorghe. He couldn’t just go up to him and stick it on him like Gheorghe had done to him, he’d die of mortification.

He thought about leaving it on Gheorghe’s pillow, but some nights they didn’t get around to turning on the lights before they shoved each other into bed, and Johnny didn’t fancy getting a safety pin anywhere private.

In the end, he snuck into the cattle shed and pinned it to Gheorghe’s green overalls, which were hanging from the wall on their usual peg.

Across the shed, Bessie looked up at him and cocked her head. “Shh,” he told her then went over to say hey to her and her brand new bull calf.

He was around her other side, giving her a brush down, when Gheorge came into the shed. Johnny kept his head down, very very focused on his task, and didn’t look up, not even when he heard Gheorghe stop and make a sound of surprise.

“John?” Gheorghe asked quietly.

Johnny was busy. Really busy.

“John,” Gheorghe repeated, from up close this time. He put one of his hands on Johnny’s shoulders and turned him around.

“Yeah?” Johnny asked, tipping up his chin.

Gheorghe was clutching his overalls, the Mărțișor front and centre. His eyes were bright. “Who did this?”

Johnny shrugged. “Maybe we got some fairies floating around.”

Gheorghe’s lips twitched. “You did this.”

Johnny couldn’t think of anything to say. Denying it would be stupid, but admitting it suddenly felt like a bigger deal than he’d meant it to be. In the end, he just stared into Gheorghe’s happy eyes and hoped he’d understand.

“Thank you, iubițel.” Gheorghe sounded hoarse.

He didn’t kiss Johnny, which Johnny had kind of been expecting. Instead, he hugged him so hard that Johnny heard himself make an oof noise, and he didn’t let go until Bessie’s calf got curious and tried to eat his shoes.

Whenever they had need to drive down into town, Gheorghe would take a minute to pull out his mostly-useless mobile and stay in the car to Skype his parents. Johnny always left him to it, because it was none of his business, and he wouldn’t understand what they were saying, anyway.

One day though, when lambing was quietening down and they had a bit of time, Gheorghe caught his hand, before he could climb out of the car.

Johnny raised his eyebrows at him. Gheorghe shrugged. “They think I make you up,” was all he said, before he hit the call button.

Johnny wasn’t nervous.

Johnny was fine.

Johnny moved slightly toward the door, hoping he’d be out of shot, when Gheorghe’s parents picked up the phone. Gheorghe rolled his eyes at him, but his mam answered, before he could call Johnny a coward or whatever.

“Mamă, Johnny is here, he would like to meet you,” said Gheorghe in English after a while where they’d chatted happily in Romanian.

Johnny felt nerves shoot up his throat, making his tongue thick and his mind go blank. He took a deep breath, leant in so he could see the screen, and said, “Salut, doamnă Ionescu.”

He didn’t stumble. He could have yelled in relief, if he was a yeller.

Mrs Ionescu looked just like Gheorghe, which Johnny had known from pictures, but it was still kind of a shock to see it on the screen right in front of him. It meant that when she smiled, he knew she meant it.

“Salut, Johnny.”

“Um. Cum te simți azi?”

Gheorghe was looking at him all surprised now, which was bullshit since he was the one who’d been teaching Johnny. Maybe he hadn’t realised Johnny cared enough to remember it. Johnny would have to give him a piece of his mind later.

They stumbled through the basics, Mrs Ionescue looking charmed and patient, pretty much exactly how Gheorghe tended to look at him. When they were done, Johnny flopped back into his seat and waited while Gheorghe said his goodbyes.

“What?” he asked, once Gheorghe had ended the call. Without looking, he knew Gheorghe was watching him.

“Do you miss your mother?” Gheorghe asked, which hadn’t been what Johnny was expecting him to say.

“What?” Johnny asked. “Why would I?”

“Because she’s your mother?” Gheorghe said, like it was as simple as that. “Have you ever tried to find her?”

“No point in a mam what doesn’t want you,” Johnny said, shrugging. “Besides, I’ve got enough family to deal with, don’t I?”

Gheorghe caught his eye and kept it. “You have as much family as you want,” he said earnestly. “My mother liked you.”

Johnny couldn’t deal with that. His breath caught in his chest and he had to swallow a couple of time. He reached out and opened the car door. “Come on. We gonna do anything useful today or what?”

“Or what,” Gheorghe said, but he followed Johnny out of the car and didn’t try to say anything else sappy for the rest of the day.

It was a Sunday and it wasn’t planned.

Johnny and Gheorghe were standing at the top of the north field, looking out over the moors and the sun was setting, hitting Gheorghe’s dark hair and his golden skin just so. He was the most handsome man in the world and somehow he was Johnny’s.

Johnny didn’t believe in signs, but even he could read this one, and he wanted to do something about it.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the last dregs of the thread he’d used to make the Mărțișor Gheorghe had transferred onto his coat and was still wearing every day.

“Hey,” he said and came to stand in front of Gheorghe.

“Hey,” Gheorghe said, reaching out like he wanted to pull Johnny to him. Johnny caught his hands instead and spent a minute staring down at them. They were good hands. Strong. Gentle. They knew how to look after Johnny and his farm, both.

Gheorghe didn’t ask him what he was doing, because Gheorghe had infinite patience for him. Johnny was fucking lucky to have found him and he wasn’t going to let him go, no matter what those fuckers in Westminster thought about it.

Johnny dropped Gheorghe’s right hand but kept his left between both of his own. Freed, Gheorghe’s right hand curled around Johnny’s elbow, supporting him like he always did.

Without looking at him, Johnny started to wind the last of the white thread around the base of the second to last finger on Gheorghe’s hand. There wasn’t that much string, but it felt like it took forever, because Gheorghe was looking at him and Johnny could feel his face getting hotter and hotter until he wanted to evaporate clean away.

“John?” Gheorghe asked, very quietly.

Johnny tied the string into a knot then tucked the short edges away under the rest. He couldn’t think of one thing to say, so he did what he did best; stepped away, back to Gheorghe’s side, and stared out over the rolling fields of home.

“Yes,” said Gheorghe, just as quiet as before.

Johnny had to clear his throat. “Didn’t ask you anything.”

“I know. Yes, anyway.” When Gheorghe took Johnny’s hand, Johnny could feel the soft rub of his new cotton ring against his palm.

Johnny squeezed.

Gheorghe squeezed back.