Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 10

went to bed. "Breakfast?"
    Augie shook his head. There was an order to the morning, and he was nowhere near awake enough to eat. "Tea?"
    Shon lifted a cup next to the fire, Augie's favorite kind of green tea already steeping.
    "Of course." A blush crept up Augie's neck. It shocked him that Shon had remembered. They hadn't spoken since Germany when Shon had walked onto the plane bound for Tanzania with five black rhinos bred in captivity—the product of years of research and an ongoing partnership between the Society and the Serengeti National Park—making their way to their new home in the Tanzanian preserve. The number of black rhinos in Tanzania had fallen to dangerous levels. The repatriation project promised to turn the tide, their survival considered so important that the rhinos had their own security force. A security force now led by Shon. The pressure on Shon had to be unending and overwhelming. And yet he remembered Augie's favorite kind of tea.
    Augie couldn't get his head to agree to move his feet. It couldn't be this easy. Could it? Seconds passed, but neither seemed willing to give up ground. Shon's smile didn't fade; he just set the cup down next to him and went back to tending the fire and checking on the contents of the pot. He didn't seem fazed by what most would have considered a brush off.
    Steam lifted off the pot. Shon gave a subtle shudder as he spooned through the thick mixture, and Augie had to assume it was oatmeal. Shon blew on the spoon and took a careful bite. He hated oatmeal unless it was smothered in honey, dates, and almonds. It was the only way Augie could eat it now, too.
    Shon finally turned a questioning eye. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming?"
    His question was light, teasing, and it flustered Augie because he really should have had something better than an answer that was a total cop out. But he was stubbornly sticking to it. "I didn't know how to get a hold of you."
    Shon made a tsk tsk noise and shook his head. "You are a dissertation away from your doctorate at the precocious age of twenty-four. You developed a psychological regiment to prepare black rhinos for repatriation to the wild—a ground breaking method which has brought you international attention. You traveled all the way to Tanzania, procured one of the SRPU's coveted Land Rovers," he motioned to the large vehicle which Augie hadn't bothered to unpack completely when exhaustion overtook him the night before, "remembered to bring a sat phone and a laptop with a solar charger. You probably spent the night watching movies on your iPad. But you couldn't figure out a way to get a hold of me?"
    Augie knew Shon was teasing him and yet he felt the heat deepen in his cheeks. The realization that he was rapidly turning redder under Shon's scrutiny made him blush even more. He cursed that Shon's skin would never give him away like Augie's traitorous native Montana complexion did. He tried to look more casual and almost relaxed his way off the tent pole and onto the red dirt below. "Fair enough," he finally got out. At least he didn't sputter. "I didn't know if you'd want to hear from me. I mean it was only a week, less than that, really. Five days—"
    "Six nights," Shon interjected.
    "Ok, six nights," Augie chuckled. He hoped that meant Shon had been thinking about him, too. Augie knew down to the exact second when Shon had boarded the plane in Germany with those five rhinos. They'd spent each of the six nights before then fucking in positions which proved gravity was just a suggestion. He had tasted every part of Shon at least once, sampling some of his favorite places again and again. The memory was enough to get him painfully hard if he spent too much time exploring it. Luckily, the ill-timed bleat of a water buffalo smothered the urge.
    Shon didn't seem to notice. "What are you doing here?"
    The question should have been straight forward, but Shon hadn't put an emphasis on any of the words. Did he mean, what are you doing here? Or what are you doing here? Or what are you doing here ? Augie shrugged. "Finishing my dissertation."
    Shon chuckled again. "Fair enough," he mimicked Augie's answer. He held out the tin cup of tea again.
    "How did you know I was here?"
    Shon stiffened. It was almost imperceptible. Augie wanted to kick himself for asking the question that way. Of course Shon would interpret it as an examination of his professionalism, even if it wasn't at all what Augie intended. Shon's answer was short,