Remix: Not Wrong
Title: Not Wrong
Author: aleathiel
Pairing: Matt/Ben
Rating: R/NC17
Disclaimer: not only do the characters not belong to me, the plot doesn't either. not real.

Notes: Written for the Afflection Remix 2005. A remix of rsadelle's Eleven Days at the Rocking M
I've never written a remix before - I hope this is the kind of thing you are looking for!


Ben doesn’t particularly look at the cars in the yard as he approaches the house. There are always several, depending on who is here and driving what. Most of them have a thin layer of sandy dust muting their patina, the legacy of being driven on a ranch. The dog is bouncing at his heels and the sun is warm on the back of his neck and Ben is thirsty. He isn’t thinking much and what thoughts he does have are about the new bay foal and whether the west fence of the corral will stand up to another winter. He isn’t thinking about Matt.

The paint has faded on the back door, worn from fingers and shoulders and boots pushing it open. The hinges have a low creak, a familiar sound, then the reassuring thud as it swings closed behind him.

There is a newspaper on the kitchen table that Ben hasn’t bought and it is open to the finance section, which Ben never reads. There are boots beside the door that Ben doesn’t recognise, boots that lack the mud and dust caking that coat the ranch hands’ boots.

Sunlight streams through the window, across the floorboards and the honey coloured wood of the table, catching the spinning dust motes and reminding Ben that the windows needed washing. A glass of water on the table reflects the light, gleaming white.

Ben’s mouth is dry and he licks his lips, trying to moisten them.

“I’m not a rancher,” Matt says, pushing back his chair and standing…

…city boy standing at the garage looking lost and frustrated. His sandy brown hair curling slightly at the nape of his neck with sweat. “No one’s going anywhere,” the mechanic told him. And “can’t get the parts” and “rodeo’s in town”. Something had made Ben step forward, something had made him offer his spare room. Maybe it was kindness, maybe the irritated flush on the city boy’s face. Maybe it was a challenge. There was a flash of relief and thanks in the man’s face. “Matt Damon. I’d appreciate that.” And easy as that, Matt had walked into Ben’s life…

“I’m not a rancher,” Mat says, pushing back his chair and standing. “I’ll never be a rancher. I have my own job, and I’m good at it…”

Ben leaned in the doorway, watching the man his borrowed T-shirt (too tight across the chest) and jeans (frayed at the ends, long enough that they hung across the bridges of his feet, flapping loose and casting dark shadows on his toes) surrounded by papers and a couple of envelopes of CDs. Matt was concentrating; he hadn’t yet seen Ben. He had a pencil in his hand which he was absentmindedly tapping against his knee, reading something on his laptop and checking it against a page resting on the coffee table. The curve of his spine was very visible through the too-tight T-shirt, individual bones pressed against the thin cotton. The arch of his neck kept his head turned away from his observer and bared the skin above the shirt’s collar, pinkened from the sun.

Matt shifted, awkwardly settling in a slightly different position on the sofa, and Ben almost withdrew. He smiled to himself, recognising the other man’s discomfort as the after-effect of his first time on a horse. “Working hard?” he said, almost loath to interrupt, carefully casual about his inflection so as to give the impression he had just arrived.

Matt looked up, blinking. “Oh, yeah…” He gestured to his piles of papers and files as if not seeing them. “They sent me a whole bunch of stuff to get started on…”


“I have my own job and I’m good at it. I can telecommute, but I’d still have to travel, sometimes for weeks at a time. When I come home, I want to come home to you.”

Ben supposes the grin on his face is idiotic. He takes a step forward, reaching out in disbelief. “I never thought I’d see you…

“Matt, I…” He’d failed to realise it would only be eleven days. The mechanic’s announcement of success had shaken him, pulling back to the front of his mind that which he’d buried. Matt had packed in silence, then spent the night pliant and willing beneath Ben. They’d not gotten up in the morning, Ben leaving the chores to the competent ranch hands.

Love with a foreseeable end becomes frantic, desperate and their coupling in the morning was urgent and exhausting. Ben was determined each kiss would not be the last one. He found himself mentally recording Matt’s exhalations, his unconscious gasps, the press of his fingers, his lips, his cock.

And when they put the bags in the car, Ben had stroked his hand down Matt’s cheek, a goodbye, although he couldn’t form the words. The end of the haphazard coincidence that had thrown them together so briefly.

Matt drove away with Ben’s cowboy hat on his head, alien against the dark suit and shiny leather shoes…


“I never thought I’d see you. Every time the phone rang…” Ben tries to recall the low hum of hope, the not-really-anticipation, the half lies that he told himself each time it wasn’t Matt at the other end of the line. It’s difficult now, because they seem so unnecessary, so pointless, because here is Matt, dressed this time in light jeans that were bought to fit him, hugging his thighs and drawing Ben’s eyes to his groin, a faded red T-shirt with a Red Sox logo, bare feet that look at home on Ben’s kitchen floor. And it is Matt. Really Matt, smiling slightly bashfully, laughing slightly hollowly…

“I know,” Matt’s grin is broadening, becoming as amazed as Ben’s own. “I thought it was because I was stuck here…

…I can’t get the parts until next week… find a hotel… everything booked up for the rodeo…

…or a cowboy thing…

… Matt laughing… spinning around at the dance… eyes catching Ben’s over his bottle of beer…

… I even went to a cowboy bar…

… Matt clinging to the reins of his black mare, eyes squeezed tightly closed, feet planted apart in the dirt, coming in Ben’s mouth…

…The whole time all I could think about was you…

…Ben’s hand on Matt’s back as they climbed the stairs, eyes dark as he turned towards Ben. Ben’s heart in his mouth. Whispered words. “You can tell me if I’m wrong.”

Matt’s warm lips. “You’re not wrong.”