Red River Love Song Chapter 4
I'm shocked to realize I have a new chapter to post today. Sometimes the dam just bursts all of a sudden and what was a small trickle becomes a deluge. Or. Hmmm. A new part. Whatever. With all the lovely Big Banging around, I hesitate to push it out into the stream, all new and scared. But there is a month left to go of BB, and I can't wait a month. So here it is.
Chapter 4
The breeze puffed across Dean’s bruised cheeks, blowing the damp ends of his hair out of his eyes. For a minute he laid there, saying nothing, too aware of the toe of Sam’s boot, a pressure nudging his hip, and Sam gazing steadily down at him in silence. The man looked perplexed, as though Dean was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.
Dean rarely knew when to keep his mouth shut. Now was no exception. “So you want me nice and healthy when I swing. That it? You’ll enjoy it more if I’m kicking my heels in a vigorous way?”
“See? You’re not as dumb as you look.” Sam’s lips tipped into a smile when Dean scowled at him. “That’s exactly it. I’m no savage. Ain’t sense to hang a man already half dead. Where’s the fun in that?”
“You got a mean streak in you, Sheriff. Why don’t you just shoot me and get it over with. Then you can get back to your clean little, church-goin’ life.” Dean pushed up on his elbows offering his chest for a target. “I’d rather cash it at the end of a gun barrel than go out wearing a hemp necktie. Or does it make you hard thinking about a rope squeezin’ out my last breath? Maybe you wanna pull the lever yourself? Send the sinner to Hell?”
The smile Sam was wearing quenched in a cold, thin line. The man looked a gathering storm at Dean. Pretty obvious he didn’t like the taunting remarks about his prisoner’s coming demise. A slim ray of hope filtered between Dean’s ribs.
“Shut your mouth, thief,” Sam barked at him. “When I wanna hear from you, I’ll tell you to speak.”
Their gazes locked and held over the insult. A sort of shamed rage moved like a coil of smoke in the sheriff’s eyes, making his cheeks paler. There was something more than the coming of Justice between them. They both knew it, and it knifed into the tender spaces deep in Dean’s belly, filling him with anticipation. Sam’s response, try as he might to hide it, was there for Dean to read-in the tense curl of his shoulders, in the twitch of his fists at his thighs.
The breeze ruffled the cottonwoods overhead, the sibilant sound a pent up sigh. Warm, fresh air snagged sharp in Dean’s lungs as he stared upwards at Sam’s face, blinking. The sun shifted behind a canopy of dusty green leaves, laying patches of shadow over the lush, river grass and the brown men, clothes thickly powdered from their hard ride.
It suddenly burnt to breathe. Dean tried to push out the stale oxygen, but his throat locked up. The way Sam was looking at him-the way his eyes went from anger to hard desire, running the length of Dean’s soaked body, played hell with Dean’s resolve to kick the bastard down the second he got a chance and make another run for it.
His lips remembered the taste of Sam’s mouth, the twist of his tongue. Jesus. Dean rolled over onto his hands and knees, wet denim snugging to his thighs, back goose-bumping as the breeze slid across the soaked cotton of his shirt and the seat of his pants.
“Kiss me again. Like you mean it,” slipped to the edge of Dean’s lips just before he moved, but he bit it back. He wasn’t the beggin’ kind. Not by a long shot. They came to him, the ones who wanted his special brand of push and shove. Dean had his pick of the litter. The curl of his tongue, the lift of a brow had them panting for it. He’d never played bitch, and he weren’t about to start at this late date for a long drink of water wearin’ a badge..
Unaware of Dean’s private quarrel with himself, the man above him offered a callused hand, fingers long and elegant, and Dean grasped it, allowing himself to be hauled to his feet as though he were weightless.
“I’m not watching an invalid get his neck stretched,” Sam reiterated darkly, turning away from the sight of a hard torso draped in wet cloth, peaked nipples clearly visible as the wind tugged at their chilled contours with wanton fingers. He cleared his throat roughly, swinging his gaze to the valley where they’d unexpectedly found themselves. “We’d best get busy fixing some kind of shelter. Don’t wanna be freezing my ass off when the coyotes start to howl.”
“How you plan on doing that? If we had ole Georgie Washington here, he could chop down a few trees with his little hatchet, but aside from our bare hands....”
“Georgie Washington? Really? I never took you for an educated man, horse thief.”
“Maybe you don’t know as much about me as you think you do, lawman. Now, as I was sayin’ ‘fore your rude interruption...”
They glared bullets at each other until Sam folded gracefully and came up with a Bowie knife from his boot, the long blade throwing mirrored light into Dean’s startled eyes.
“Arkansas Toothpick. Well, I’ll be damned. Could have used that if I’d known it was there.”
“Then it’s a danged good thing you didn’t. I’d have had to gut you with it.” Sam smiled a low mean smile and brandished the knife skillfully, rolling it between his fingers.
It was clear he was no novice when it came to pig stickers. Dean eyed the weapon with respect. The shaft was nine and a half inches of pure, tempered steel and an inch and a half across. Sam flipped it handle to point and back again. Dean got the intended message: Run and you’ll be wearin’ it. It made the space between his shoulder blades come all over with itches.
“I’ll do the chopping.” Sam’s narrowed eyes moved from Dean to the river bank. “You see what you can do about collecting firewood.”
“Whatever you say, amigo. You’re the one holding all the aces for now.”
Dean gave him a cold grin, then turned his back on the sheriff’s knife hand, proud of himself for not letting the shivers coursing down his spine show. He limped over to where Belle was nuzzling the sweet grass growing along the muddy bank, eating a bellyful after going on short rations for so long. He pressed his face into the silk of her mane.
“Don’t give yourself the colic, princess. No dirty, side-windin’ marshal’s gonna stop us from shaking this place off our heels come nightfall.” Belle gave a flick of her head before continuing her repast. “Jade,” Dean huffed. “Look at you. You’d let me swing for a stall full of hay, wouldn’t you?”
The horse lifted her muzzle, soft lips rolling back in what Dean took to be an expression of scorn. He burst out laughing.
“Hell. I don’t blame you a bit. Think I’d do the same thing if ‘n you’d throw in a hot bath.” He slapped her pretty rump, and she kicked a heel at him before he dodged away, giving an “ommph” as his ribs creaked in protest.
By sunset, Sam had a decent lean-to constructed with cottonwood boughs, the trunk of one tree used as a lodge pole to brace the roof. Dean hobbled back and forth with armfuls of wood, dumping them off to the side at the intended fire site. While he searched for kindling, he scouted the lay of the valley, looking for the best way to escape. The red earth ran in a series of inclines near the canyon entrance, each one rising higher than the last, looping back and forth on themselves. He couldn’t take the straight defile, that way led to injuns and sure capture, so the switchbacks were his best bet.
Dean reckoned given a decent head start, he and Belle could make it to the top pretty damned quick, and lose any pursuit on the stone plateau-once Sam was out of commission. He hadn’t figured that part out yet; the Sam-out-of-commission part. But Dean knew he didn’t want to kill him. He rarely wanted to kill anybody. He’d come out West from another kind of life, and it hung with him, those teachings, though he’d done his best to forget them for the most part. But Mama would cling to his coattails now and again, and Dean never had succeeded in shaking her entirely off.
“You’re bleeding.”
Sam’s voice poured honey into Dean’s ear. Startled, he swung his head around, so close their noses nearly collided.
“Bleeding?’
Dean looked down at himself, seeing a bright red butterfly seeping through his shirt where it tucked under his belt. The air felt cool there, the breeze ruffling the wet material caressingly. The soft, sharp snap of it made Dean’s knees abruptly weak. He sat down all at once, pieces of wood that had been clutched in his arms tumbling all around him.
“Christ. You ain’t got the sense of a wart hog. Why didn’t you say something?”
Sam’s rough fingers jerked and tugged him, pulled the sopping cotton up to expose the long line of Dean’s ribs and a four inch gash hooked around the lowest one. The visible bone was a sickly white in the dimming hush of the faded sun. Dean’s eyes sprang wide as Sam slid a finger along the lips of the wound. White hot agony sizzled through his veins.
“It’s too deep to leave like that. I’ll need to sew you up.”
Dean watched helplessly, sprawled on his back, aware suddenly of the slick of blood oozing down his side as far as his calf as Sam strode away to where his horse was tethered. He’d known the Comanche had played rough with him, but his body had been on overload for too long to count all its pains. Numbness cushioned the ache of his skin, the pulse of the bruises in the meat of his bones. He wondered woozily what other injuries he had sustained that he wasn’t aware of.
“You left me my sewing kit along with the hardtack,” Sam muttered as he lifted Dean up enough to ease his shirt off. “In my saddlebags. Guess I should thank you I didn’t starve.”
“Think nothing of it. I don’t.”
Dean bit hard on his lip as Sam forced the needle into the ragged mouth of the wound and pulled it out the other side, jerking the edges together none too gently. He sewed and muttered curses, voicing the sentiments Dean had barricaded in his throat. He was no fucking whiner. And he wasn’t going to...
“Jesus Christ on toast. Watch the fuck what you’re doing.” Dean blanched, cold sweat popping out of all his pores as Sam bent his head and tied off the knot, biting it through to cut the needle away.
He got an arm under Dean’s long legs, another around his shoulders and heaved him up like he were a babe, ‘stead of a full-growed man. Dean would have issued a protest, but he felt faint from the slow blood loss, and the stars popping out overhead looked too much like fireworks on the only fourth of July he’d ever seen celebrated-back in Kansas City. What the hell he was doing in Kansas City, he couldn’t figure out.
When his eyelids came unglued, Dean looked around to see the fire nearby going at a good rate. Its warm fingers stroked over his cheeks, giving him some comfort in his despair. He was forced to concede that his escape would have to be postponed for a few days due to injuries that would keep even Sam from feeling good about hanging him.
The Sam in question was crouched on his haunches, back to Dean, staring into the blaze. His sombrero hung from a thick, black cord around his throat, marking him as something exotic and too perfect to be real. He seemed deep in thought. Dean couldn’t bring himself to interrupt.
“What you want, kid?”
Sam tipped his face around to look at Dean. The gold-orange flames drew accents across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. He was fierce and beautiful in the pagan light, like an illustration in a book Dean once read about Aztec warriors. The chill in Dean’s limbs began to melt, a soft heat pooling out from the center of his chest as he felt the connection between them twist up and cinch him in. The ache in his side beat with the rhythm of his heart.
“I..,” Dean licked his lips. “Thirsty,” he said meekly, watching Sam watch him.
“Okay. I’ll take care of it.” Sam rose, moving towards the faint sheen of the moonlit river. “I gonna have to tie you up tonight?”
The question was unexpected. Dean made a rough attempt at a laugh. “Don’t think I could get up on my hind legs if the Lord God Almighty himself came down trailing clouds of glory. I’d say I’m safe for the little while.”
“You talk strange sometimes, partner. Can’t quite make you out.”
Sam hunkered at Dean’s side, half lifting him to press a tin mug against his lips. It was full to the brim with sweet, cold water. Dean sucked it up in three big gulps, the liquid spilling down his chin, dripping onto the bloodied material of his shirt. When he had wiped his mouth with his knuckles and settled back on the grass, he stared up into Sam’s curious cat eyes, seeing how they were trying to pry Dean’s secrets out into the open.
Sam was one crazy bastard if he thought Dean was going to solve that mystery for him. Dean’s past was a shut book. And it was going to stay that way.
Chapter 4
The breeze puffed across Dean’s bruised cheeks, blowing the damp ends of his hair out of his eyes. For a minute he laid there, saying nothing, too aware of the toe of Sam’s boot, a pressure nudging his hip, and Sam gazing steadily down at him in silence. The man looked perplexed, as though Dean was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.
Dean rarely knew when to keep his mouth shut. Now was no exception. “So you want me nice and healthy when I swing. That it? You’ll enjoy it more if I’m kicking my heels in a vigorous way?”
“See? You’re not as dumb as you look.” Sam’s lips tipped into a smile when Dean scowled at him. “That’s exactly it. I’m no savage. Ain’t sense to hang a man already half dead. Where’s the fun in that?”
“You got a mean streak in you, Sheriff. Why don’t you just shoot me and get it over with. Then you can get back to your clean little, church-goin’ life.” Dean pushed up on his elbows offering his chest for a target. “I’d rather cash it at the end of a gun barrel than go out wearing a hemp necktie. Or does it make you hard thinking about a rope squeezin’ out my last breath? Maybe you wanna pull the lever yourself? Send the sinner to Hell?”
The smile Sam was wearing quenched in a cold, thin line. The man looked a gathering storm at Dean. Pretty obvious he didn’t like the taunting remarks about his prisoner’s coming demise. A slim ray of hope filtered between Dean’s ribs.
“Shut your mouth, thief,” Sam barked at him. “When I wanna hear from you, I’ll tell you to speak.”
Their gazes locked and held over the insult. A sort of shamed rage moved like a coil of smoke in the sheriff’s eyes, making his cheeks paler. There was something more than the coming of Justice between them. They both knew it, and it knifed into the tender spaces deep in Dean’s belly, filling him with anticipation. Sam’s response, try as he might to hide it, was there for Dean to read-in the tense curl of his shoulders, in the twitch of his fists at his thighs.
The breeze ruffled the cottonwoods overhead, the sibilant sound a pent up sigh. Warm, fresh air snagged sharp in Dean’s lungs as he stared upwards at Sam’s face, blinking. The sun shifted behind a canopy of dusty green leaves, laying patches of shadow over the lush, river grass and the brown men, clothes thickly powdered from their hard ride.
It suddenly burnt to breathe. Dean tried to push out the stale oxygen, but his throat locked up. The way Sam was looking at him-the way his eyes went from anger to hard desire, running the length of Dean’s soaked body, played hell with Dean’s resolve to kick the bastard down the second he got a chance and make another run for it.
His lips remembered the taste of Sam’s mouth, the twist of his tongue. Jesus. Dean rolled over onto his hands and knees, wet denim snugging to his thighs, back goose-bumping as the breeze slid across the soaked cotton of his shirt and the seat of his pants.
“Kiss me again. Like you mean it,” slipped to the edge of Dean’s lips just before he moved, but he bit it back. He wasn’t the beggin’ kind. Not by a long shot. They came to him, the ones who wanted his special brand of push and shove. Dean had his pick of the litter. The curl of his tongue, the lift of a brow had them panting for it. He’d never played bitch, and he weren’t about to start at this late date for a long drink of water wearin’ a badge..
Unaware of Dean’s private quarrel with himself, the man above him offered a callused hand, fingers long and elegant, and Dean grasped it, allowing himself to be hauled to his feet as though he were weightless.
“I’m not watching an invalid get his neck stretched,” Sam reiterated darkly, turning away from the sight of a hard torso draped in wet cloth, peaked nipples clearly visible as the wind tugged at their chilled contours with wanton fingers. He cleared his throat roughly, swinging his gaze to the valley where they’d unexpectedly found themselves. “We’d best get busy fixing some kind of shelter. Don’t wanna be freezing my ass off when the coyotes start to howl.”
“How you plan on doing that? If we had ole Georgie Washington here, he could chop down a few trees with his little hatchet, but aside from our bare hands....”
“Georgie Washington? Really? I never took you for an educated man, horse thief.”
“Maybe you don’t know as much about me as you think you do, lawman. Now, as I was sayin’ ‘fore your rude interruption...”
They glared bullets at each other until Sam folded gracefully and came up with a Bowie knife from his boot, the long blade throwing mirrored light into Dean’s startled eyes.
“Arkansas Toothpick. Well, I’ll be damned. Could have used that if I’d known it was there.”
“Then it’s a danged good thing you didn’t. I’d have had to gut you with it.” Sam smiled a low mean smile and brandished the knife skillfully, rolling it between his fingers.
It was clear he was no novice when it came to pig stickers. Dean eyed the weapon with respect. The shaft was nine and a half inches of pure, tempered steel and an inch and a half across. Sam flipped it handle to point and back again. Dean got the intended message: Run and you’ll be wearin’ it. It made the space between his shoulder blades come all over with itches.
“I’ll do the chopping.” Sam’s narrowed eyes moved from Dean to the river bank. “You see what you can do about collecting firewood.”
“Whatever you say, amigo. You’re the one holding all the aces for now.”
Dean gave him a cold grin, then turned his back on the sheriff’s knife hand, proud of himself for not letting the shivers coursing down his spine show. He limped over to where Belle was nuzzling the sweet grass growing along the muddy bank, eating a bellyful after going on short rations for so long. He pressed his face into the silk of her mane.
“Don’t give yourself the colic, princess. No dirty, side-windin’ marshal’s gonna stop us from shaking this place off our heels come nightfall.” Belle gave a flick of her head before continuing her repast. “Jade,” Dean huffed. “Look at you. You’d let me swing for a stall full of hay, wouldn’t you?”
The horse lifted her muzzle, soft lips rolling back in what Dean took to be an expression of scorn. He burst out laughing.
“Hell. I don’t blame you a bit. Think I’d do the same thing if ‘n you’d throw in a hot bath.” He slapped her pretty rump, and she kicked a heel at him before he dodged away, giving an “ommph” as his ribs creaked in protest.
By sunset, Sam had a decent lean-to constructed with cottonwood boughs, the trunk of one tree used as a lodge pole to brace the roof. Dean hobbled back and forth with armfuls of wood, dumping them off to the side at the intended fire site. While he searched for kindling, he scouted the lay of the valley, looking for the best way to escape. The red earth ran in a series of inclines near the canyon entrance, each one rising higher than the last, looping back and forth on themselves. He couldn’t take the straight defile, that way led to injuns and sure capture, so the switchbacks were his best bet.
Dean reckoned given a decent head start, he and Belle could make it to the top pretty damned quick, and lose any pursuit on the stone plateau-once Sam was out of commission. He hadn’t figured that part out yet; the Sam-out-of-commission part. But Dean knew he didn’t want to kill him. He rarely wanted to kill anybody. He’d come out West from another kind of life, and it hung with him, those teachings, though he’d done his best to forget them for the most part. But Mama would cling to his coattails now and again, and Dean never had succeeded in shaking her entirely off.
“You’re bleeding.”
Sam’s voice poured honey into Dean’s ear. Startled, he swung his head around, so close their noses nearly collided.
“Bleeding?’
Dean looked down at himself, seeing a bright red butterfly seeping through his shirt where it tucked under his belt. The air felt cool there, the breeze ruffling the wet material caressingly. The soft, sharp snap of it made Dean’s knees abruptly weak. He sat down all at once, pieces of wood that had been clutched in his arms tumbling all around him.
“Christ. You ain’t got the sense of a wart hog. Why didn’t you say something?”
Sam’s rough fingers jerked and tugged him, pulled the sopping cotton up to expose the long line of Dean’s ribs and a four inch gash hooked around the lowest one. The visible bone was a sickly white in the dimming hush of the faded sun. Dean’s eyes sprang wide as Sam slid a finger along the lips of the wound. White hot agony sizzled through his veins.
“It’s too deep to leave like that. I’ll need to sew you up.”
Dean watched helplessly, sprawled on his back, aware suddenly of the slick of blood oozing down his side as far as his calf as Sam strode away to where his horse was tethered. He’d known the Comanche had played rough with him, but his body had been on overload for too long to count all its pains. Numbness cushioned the ache of his skin, the pulse of the bruises in the meat of his bones. He wondered woozily what other injuries he had sustained that he wasn’t aware of.
“You left me my sewing kit along with the hardtack,” Sam muttered as he lifted Dean up enough to ease his shirt off. “In my saddlebags. Guess I should thank you I didn’t starve.”
“Think nothing of it. I don’t.”
Dean bit hard on his lip as Sam forced the needle into the ragged mouth of the wound and pulled it out the other side, jerking the edges together none too gently. He sewed and muttered curses, voicing the sentiments Dean had barricaded in his throat. He was no fucking whiner. And he wasn’t going to...
“Jesus Christ on toast. Watch the fuck what you’re doing.” Dean blanched, cold sweat popping out of all his pores as Sam bent his head and tied off the knot, biting it through to cut the needle away.
He got an arm under Dean’s long legs, another around his shoulders and heaved him up like he were a babe, ‘stead of a full-growed man. Dean would have issued a protest, but he felt faint from the slow blood loss, and the stars popping out overhead looked too much like fireworks on the only fourth of July he’d ever seen celebrated-back in Kansas City. What the hell he was doing in Kansas City, he couldn’t figure out.
When his eyelids came unglued, Dean looked around to see the fire nearby going at a good rate. Its warm fingers stroked over his cheeks, giving him some comfort in his despair. He was forced to concede that his escape would have to be postponed for a few days due to injuries that would keep even Sam from feeling good about hanging him.
The Sam in question was crouched on his haunches, back to Dean, staring into the blaze. His sombrero hung from a thick, black cord around his throat, marking him as something exotic and too perfect to be real. He seemed deep in thought. Dean couldn’t bring himself to interrupt.
“What you want, kid?”
Sam tipped his face around to look at Dean. The gold-orange flames drew accents across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. He was fierce and beautiful in the pagan light, like an illustration in a book Dean once read about Aztec warriors. The chill in Dean’s limbs began to melt, a soft heat pooling out from the center of his chest as he felt the connection between them twist up and cinch him in. The ache in his side beat with the rhythm of his heart.
“I..,” Dean licked his lips. “Thirsty,” he said meekly, watching Sam watch him.
“Okay. I’ll take care of it.” Sam rose, moving towards the faint sheen of the moonlit river. “I gonna have to tie you up tonight?”
The question was unexpected. Dean made a rough attempt at a laugh. “Don’t think I could get up on my hind legs if the Lord God Almighty himself came down trailing clouds of glory. I’d say I’m safe for the little while.”
“You talk strange sometimes, partner. Can’t quite make you out.”
Sam hunkered at Dean’s side, half lifting him to press a tin mug against his lips. It was full to the brim with sweet, cold water. Dean sucked it up in three big gulps, the liquid spilling down his chin, dripping onto the bloodied material of his shirt. When he had wiped his mouth with his knuckles and settled back on the grass, he stared up into Sam’s curious cat eyes, seeing how they were trying to pry Dean’s secrets out into the open.
Sam was one crazy bastard if he thought Dean was going to solve that mystery for him. Dean’s past was a shut book. And it was going to stay that way.