Middle Cut
The spirit was still coming off the foreshots when the headlights swept across the still house windows, and Dougie Macrae didn’t need to look to know whose car it was.
He looked anyway. A little grey hire car was parking itself very carefully between the puddles by the malt barn, and a man was getting out of it with a leather bag over one shoulder and a waxed jacket zipped up to his chin against the rain. The man stood a moment in the yard light, looking up at the pagoda roof like it might have changed since August. Then he put his head down and ran for the door.
“Aye, here he comes,” Dougie said to the stills. “Doctor Innes. Come to tell me my business.”
The still house door banged. Cold air rolled in and hit the heat and made a wee fog on the glass of the spirit safe. Fraser Innes stood dripping on the mat, wiping rain off his glasses with the corner of a hanky, and Dougie watched him do it and felt the same thing he’d felt in the blending room in Edinburgh, and again at the sherry cask tasting in August, a tightness under the breastbone that had no business in a man three weeks past his fifty-sixth birthday.
“Mr Macrae.” Fraser put the glasses back on and shook the rain off shoulders that had clearly played rugby once, before fifteen years at a lab bench had gone to his middle. He’d trimmed his dark beard close as a hedge for the occasion. “I’m sorry I’m late. The A9 was a river past Pitlochry.”
“You’re no late. You’re early. Foreshots have got twenty minutes yet.” Dougie jerked his chin at the safe. “Take your coat off before you cook in it. It’s twenty-nine degrees in here.”
Fraser took his coat off. Under it he had on a navy jumper, and when he pushed the sleeves up he had forearms thick with dark hair, and Dougie made himself look at the hydrometer.
The run was a new one. Heavy peat, eighty parts per million, on a distillery that had made soft light whisky for a hundred and forty years. Head office wanted to try it, and head office had sent their man with the nose to decide where the heart of it started and where it stopped. Get the cut wrong and you either let the harsh volatile stuff in with the good or stood there watching it go dull and oily on you. For thirty-one years the cuts in this still house had been Dougie’s call, made by the book and the clock and his own nose, and now there was a lab man from Edinburgh standing at his elbow with a notebook.
“I’ve read your August notes,” Fraser said. “You’d cut to heart at seventy-two percent.”
“Aye.”
“I think it wants to go earlier. Seventy-four. Catch more of the fruit before the peat takes over.”
“You’ll catch more of the solvent, is what you’ll catch.”
Fraser smiled. It was a small, pleased smile, like a man finding a good argument in a boring meeting. “Then we’ll nose it and see.”
They nosed it. That was the next hour, the two of them bent over the safe with the brass warm under their hands and the spirit running clear through the box, and Dougie drawing off a little in a copita every few minutes and passing it across. Fraser nosed like it was surgery. He closed his eyes and breathed it in short and then long, and his lips moved a little while he thought.
“Pear drops,” Fraser said. “Nail varnish. Still too sharp.”
“Told you.”
“You told me it was sharp at seventy-four. It’s seventy-six.” He passed the glass back. Their fingers touched on the stem and neither of them moved for a second. “Give it ten minutes.”
It was the heat, Dougie told himself, eight hours between those big copper pots with the sweat running down his back. It had nothing to do with the way Fraser had to lean in close to the safe so his shoulder pressed Dougie’s arm, or the smell of him, rain and wool and something like cloves.
At seventy-four percent Fraser nosed the glass and went very still. Then he held it out without a word. Dougie put his nose in it, and there it was under the peat smoke, green apple and something sweet as tablet. He hadn’t expected it. He’d been ready to be right.
“Well,” Dougie said.
“Well?” Fraser’s eyes were bright behind the glasses.
“It’s no bad.”
“It’s lovely, and you know it’s lovely.” Fraser was grinning now, properly. “Say it.”
“I’ll say it’s no bad.” Dougie reached past him and swung the spout of the safe over to the spirit receiver, and the heart started running. The clock on the wall said twelve minutes past eleven. “There. It’s cut. You’ve got your way, Doctor. Happy?”
“Very.”
“Good. Now we’ve two hours and more of this before it turns.” Dougie wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. His T-shirt was stuck to him. “Two hours of standing here watching it run.”
Fraser looked at him. At the wet shirt, the big gut under it and the grey hair at the collar. His eyes went down and came back up slowly, and he didn’t pretend he wasn’t doing it.
“We don’t have to stand,” Fraser said.
Afterwards, Dougie couldn’t have said who went first. One minute they were at the safe, and the next Fraser had his back against the warm curve of the number two spirit still, and Dougie had both hands in that navy jumper and his mouth on Fraser’s. The copper was hot enough to make Fraser gasp even through the wool. Dougie felt the gasp go into his own mouth and pushed harder. Fraser grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him like he’d been waiting to do it since August, and maybe he had.
“This is a terrible idea,” Fraser said against his mouth.
“Aye, it is.”
“You’re the stillman. I’m head office.”
“You want me to stop?”
“God, no.” Fraser dragged the jumper off over his head and flung it somewhere. The shirt under it was already dark with sweat. “Don’t even think about it.”
Dougie got the shirt open. His fingers were too thick for the buttons and he tore one clean off and it pinged away across the floor, and Fraser laughed breathlessly and then stopped laughing, because Dougie had his hands on him. He was soft, gorgeous and soft, broad chest furred dark and a belly that curved warm into Dougie’s palms. Dougie bent his head and sucked one nipple hard, and Fraser’s head thumped back against the copper.
“Jesus. Dougie.”
“You taste of the still house already.”
“It’s like a sauna in here.” Fraser’s hands were fumbling at the hem of Dougie’s T-shirt. “Take that off. I want to see you. I’ve been wanting to see you for months.”
Dougie pulled it off over his head and stood there in the heat of his stills, never a pretty man and too old to start pretending, and let the man from Edinburgh stare. Fraser’s eyes went over the belly first, thick as a cask, then the grey hair matted across his chest, then the shiny scar on his shoulder where a steam valve had got him in 1998, and Dougie watched his face change.
“Oh,” Fraser said quietly. “Oh, Dougie. Months I’ve been wondering, and it’s better.”
He put both hands flat on Dougie’s belly and pushed them up through the hair to his chest, slow, like he was feeling for a crack in a cask. Then he went down on his knees on the grating.
“The floor’s hot,” Dougie said. His voice didn’t sound like his own.
“I’m aware.” Fraser was undoing his belt, quick and precise, the way he’d been with the glasses. He got the jeans open and down Dougie’s hips and pulled the shorts after them, and Dougie’s cock came out heavy and hard and nodding in the heat, and Fraser sat back on his heels and made a small sound.
“Christ, man.”
“It’s just a cock.”
“It is not just anything.” Fraser wrapped his hand around it. He could barely close his fingers. He leaned in and breathed in with his eyes closed, exactly the way he’d nosed the spirit, and Dougie had to grit his teeth. “Copper,” Fraser said, and looked up. “And a lot of sweat.”
“You’re no going to nose it all night, are you?”
“No,” Fraser said, and opened his mouth and took him in.
Dougie had to grab the rail of the still behind Fraser’s head. The metal was hot enough to hurt and he didn’t let go. Fraser sucked him slow and deep, tongue working, his beard rough on Dougie’s balls. Every so often he pulled off and licked the length of it and looked up with his glasses fogged, and Dougie couldn’t stand it and took them off him and set them on the ledge of the safe.
“I can’t see now,” Fraser said, laughing, lips wet.
“You don’t need to see. You’re doing fine by feel.”
Fraser took him deeper. He choked a little and kept going, and the sound of him gagging on Dougie’s cock between the copper stills with the spirit running quiet through the safe went through Dougie like steam through a split gasket. He put a hand in Fraser’s hair and held on.
“Easy,” he groaned. “Christ, man, easy. I’ll no last if you keep that up.”
Fraser pulled off, gasping. “I don’t want you to last. Not this time.”
“No?”
“No.” Fraser stood up, a bit unsteady, and pressed himself against Dougie, and Dougie felt him hard in his trousers. “Come on me. Then take me somewhere I can lie down and fuck me properly for the next two hours, while your heart runs.”
Dougie stared at him. “Is that how you talk in Edinburgh?”
“Only when I want something.” Fraser dropped his eyes, suddenly shy, which was ridiculous with his shirt hanging open and his mouth red. “I’ve wanted it since August.”
Dougie got Fraser’s trousers open and his hand on him. Fraser’s cock was thick and flushed, the foreskin already sliding back wet, and Dougie wrapped his fist around both of them together and pulled Fraser in close with his other hand at the small of his back. They rocked together against the warm copper, slick with sweat all the way down, grunting into each other’s mouths.
“Aye,” Dougie muttered. “Like that, Doctor. Rub on me.”
“Don’t call me Doctor while you’ve got your hand on my cock.”
“What’ll I call you, then?”
“Anything. Fraser. God.”
“Fraser.” Dougie jerked them faster. “Bonnie man. Come on. Give it me.”
Fraser came first. He cried out sharp and spilled over Dougie’s knuckles in hot pulses, and he sagged. Dougie held him up with one arm, still rutting against him, and three strokes later he groaned from somewhere deep in his belly and came across Fraser’s stomach and the open flap of his shirt, a lot of it. He’d been saving it up, he supposed. For about six years.
They stood there against the copper panting, gummed together.
“The spirit,” Fraser said eventually, into his neck.
Dougie turned his head. The heart was running clear and steady through the glass. The hydrometer said seventy-one and a half. The clock said twenty to midnight.
“It’ll run two hours yet,” he said. “I’ll check it every twenty minutes.”
Fraser’s mouth curved against his skin. “And in between?”
The manager’s office was up the mash-house stair, and it had a leather couch that Hamish Munro, God rest him, had bought in 1987 and slept on through every bad night of every season since. It was cracked and saggy and smelled of old pipe smoke, and it was the only thing in the distillery longer than six feet. Dougie hitched his jeans up for the stair, shut the office door behind them and put the lamp on low. Fraser had toed his shoes off at the foot of the stair. He stood in the middle of the room in his socks, shirt open and trousers undone, and waited.
“Clothes off,” Dougie said. “All of them.”
Fraser took them off, socks and all, while Dougie sat on the couch and watched. Fraser straightened up with his cock already thickening again against the dark hair of his thigh, pale where the lab had kept him indoors, and Dougie had to breathe out slowly.
“Come here.”
Fraser came. Dougie pulled him down across his lap, face down over his knees, with that big soft arse right there, and ran both hands over it. Fraser shivered. Dougie gave one cheek a slap and felt him jolt. Then he tipped him forward off his knees onto the couch, knees on the cushions and face in the leather, and got down on the floor behind him and spread him with his thumbs and licked him, long and slow.
“Oh, God,” Fraser said into the cushion. “Oh. Oh, fuck, your tongue.”
Dougie ate him until he was squirming and shoving back onto his tongue. Then Dougie reached over into the drawer of Hamish’s desk, where there was a tube of lube next to the stapler, and Dougie decided he didn’t want to know. He worked it into two fingers and pushed one into Fraser slowly.
Fraser went rigid. “Oh, fuck.”
“All right?”
“Yes. Keep going. Stop now and I’ll report you.”
He kept going. One finger, and then two, slow and deep and patient, the way he’d bring a still up to heat. His breath came short and broken, and his fingers dug into the leather. When Dougie crooked his fingers and found the spot, Fraser yelped like he’d been shot and bucked back hard against his hand.
“There,” Fraser gasped. “There, there, there.”
“I ken where it is now.” Dougie did it again, slower. “I’ll no forget.”
He shoved his jeans and shorts down and off and turned Fraser over onto his back on the couch. Fraser’s legs fell open. He lay there flushed and wet-eyed and panting with his cock hard on his belly, and reached for Dougie with both arms.
“Please. Now. Before I lose my mind.”
Dougie had a condom in his wallet that was probably older than was wise. He checked the date by the lamp, and it was fine, just, and Fraser laughed at him for checking and then stopped laughing when Dougie rolled it on. He slicked himself and knelt on the couch between Fraser’s thighs. He hooked Fraser’s knees over his forearms.
“Let go for me,” he said. “Slow.”
Fraser let his breath go, and Dougie pushed in.
It had to be slow. Fraser was tight and Dougie was thick, and it took a long minute of breathing and Fraser’s hands clutching his arms before the head slid past and Fraser cried out. He held still.
“Christ alive,” Fraser whispered. “You’re stretching me to bits. Fuck, the girth on you.”
“You’re doing grand.”
“I’m not doing anything. I’m lying here being split in two.” Fraser laughed, shaky. “Don’t stop. Give me all of it.”
Dougie gave him all of it. He sank in inch by inch until his heavy belly sat snug in the cradle of Fraser’s thighs, and they both groaned. Then he started to move.
He fucked Fraser slow at first, long heavy strokes, pulling most of the way out and pressing back in deep. Fraser’s hands went up over his head and grabbed the arm of the couch. Every time Dougie bottomed out a little moan got pushed out of him, and Dougie started to chase them, going harder each time to hear them get louder.
“You like that,” Dougie said. “Tell me you like it.”
“I love it. God, I love your cock. Harder.”
Dougie went harder. The couch started to thump against the wall, and Hamish’s framed photograph of the 1992 Speyside cooperage football team rattled on its nail. Dougie leaned down and folded him up and drove into him with his whole weight, short hard thrusts, sweat dripping off his chest onto Fraser’s. Fraser wrapped his legs round Dougie’s back and his arms round his neck and hung on and yelled.
“Fuck me, Dougie. Fuck me, fuck me, don’t stop. Oh God, you’re so deep. You’re right in me.”
“Aye, I’m in you. Right to the hilt.” Dougie bit his neck. “Feel that?”
“I feel it everywhere.”
Dougie looked at the clock over Fraser’s head and swore.
“What? What is it?” Fraser gasped.
“Twenty minutes.” Dougie didn’t stop moving. “I’ve to check the safe.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m the stillman,” Dougie said, and pulled out and stood, and Fraser made a sound of pure outrage. Dougie grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him up off the couch. “You’re coming with me.”
He fucked him against the spirit safe.
He hadn’t planned it. But Fraser went down the stair naked and bent right over the brass rail with his nose nearly on the glass, squinting at the hydrometer without his glasses, while Dougie stood behind him with his cock still hard and slick in the rubber. Fraser read out sixty-nine point eight, it’s still good, it’s still heart, and something in Dougie snapped. He put one hand on the back of Fraser’s neck and the other on his hip and pushed back into him in one long stroke. Fraser shouted and grabbed the brass.
“Is this all right?” Dougie said into his ear. “Tell me.”
“Yes. Christ, yes. Do it. Fuck me on your safe.”
Dougie did it. He fucked Fraser hard over the spirit safe with the stills hissing around them and the heart of the new spirit running clear through the glass under Fraser’s nose. The brass rattled. Fraser’s breath fogged the glass. Dougie held him by the hips and slammed into him until his balls ached, and Fraser was babbling now, shoving back onto every thrust.
“Don’t stop. Oh God, harder, I’m nearly, Dougie, I’m nearly there.”
“Get your hand on it,” Dougie said. “Go on. I want you to come on my floor.”
Fraser got a hand on his cock. He only needed a few strokes. He came with his forehead against the glass of the safe and Dougie’s name in his mouth, spilling onto the grating, and he clenched so hard around Dougie that Dougie saw stars. Dougie drove into him twice more, deep, and held there and came, groaning low and long like the steam going out of a still, with his face pressed between Fraser’s shoulder blades and both arms locked around that soft wet belly.
They stayed like that a long time. The spirit ran on through the safe.
At a quarter to two the heart started to turn. Fraser had been back up the stair for his shirt and socks, and he nosed it with the shirt hanging open, glasses back on, hair wrecked, and wrinkled his nose.
“There. Feinty. It’s going dull.”
Dougie nosed it. Wet cardboard, just a breath of it, under the smoke. He’d have called it at the same moment on his own. He swung the spout back to the feints receiver and wrote the time and the strength in the spirit book in his square careful hand.
Then he held the pen out.
Fraser looked at it. “What?”
“You made the first cut. Sign for it.”
Fraser took the pen. He wrote his name under Dougie’s on the page, small and precise, and then he stood and looked at the two names together. Dougie watched his throat move.
“Head office’ll want it logged as an experimental run,” Fraser said. “They’ll want a name for the cut.”
“Call it what you like.”
“I’ll call it the Macrae cut.”
“You’ll call it the Innes cut,” Dougie said, “because you were right and I was wrong, and I’ll no be saying that twice.” He took the pen back and put it behind his ear. “Next run’s the twenty-fourth. Will they send you?”
“They’ll send whoever asks to go.”
“And will you ask?”
Fraser stepped in close, close enough that the heat of the stills seemed to come off both of them at once, and pressed his mouth to the corner of Dougie’s.
“I’ll book the room at the hotel in Aberlour,” he said. “And then I’ll never use it.”