Triumphant return (with fic, no less)
I'm back! And I'm actually tanned. It's true, I have tan lines and everything. Didn't burn, really, except for this tiny little patch of scalp that somehow got the brunt of the sunshine in between my (classy, yo) blue-string-hat-with-flower-on-it, and ginormous-sunglasses-for-protection-of-delicate-eye-area. I also freckled. No one else can see the freckles, but this is because they didn't spend half an hour staring at my face to check. Fools.
queenspanky's dad provided us with a penthouse apartment on the Spanish coast, full of food, air conditioning, OH, AND A POOL. I nearly drowned a few times getting over-excited about the proximity to water, but that's ok. I mentioned the tanning, right?
I got back at Horrendous O'clock (TM) last night, tired and sleep-deprived (wingsmith DOES. NOT. SLEEP. I, on the other hand, am the world's lightest sleeper. = not a good combination. Did I take my siestas seriously? Why yes, Ethel, I did.), and rolled out of bed at Stupid O'Clock (TM) this morning to go to a job interview. Yes, yes, I got the interview at the Refugee Council, everyone hop around and rejoice. I will in all likelihood not get the job (in all certainty, in fact) as I was massively sleep-deprived and unprepared for the questions, but I feel better nonetheless. Like I've actually started the job-hunting process. Yay, woot.
Oh, and I wrote porn. Yes, actual porn, with actual man-bits in it. The icon bears no resemblance to what's in the porn, but as 3:10 to Yuma icons are few and far between, you'll just have to put up with my generic 'Westerns' icon, which is a naked Casey Affleck.
Life can be greatly improved by the addition of naked Casey Affleck, I've found. However, my life is currently being improved by the addition of naked Christian Bale and naked Russell Crowe.
ETA: Success! I now have a 3:10 to Yuma icon. W00t!
In conclusion, I read a bazillion books. Feel proud of my mad multitasking skillz.
*
Title: Hands, or something like it
Fandom: 3:10 to Yuma
Summary: Killing time. 100fandoms #76, scratch.
Rating: hard R (or maybe even an NC-17. Anyway, man-naked-things. Yes.)
Notes: This still needs a going over with a fine-toothed comb. I'm ok with it, but only in a WIP sense. If anyone fancies dissecting it, I will gift you virtual cookies.
1:25
Wade’s stomach was making its displeasure known. He hadn’t had a bite to eat since supper the prior evening - hot beans and dry bread at the campsite, eyes skittish across the landscape for Apache warriors - and riding through the night took it out of him. The wet, ragged wounds on his belly ached, slick and pink from the burns McElroy's posse had inflicted with that thrice-damned machine. Wade was tired. Didn’t used to be. Used to be, he could ride a tenday with a bullet in him on beef jerky and water, and not feel it afterward. Charlie kidded him about his cast-iron stomach, saying it was made of sterner stuff than the Hand of God. They should write legends about that, he’d laughed, watching Wade tear his way through the tough strips of meat.
A good man, his Charlie, always there to watch his back like his own guardian angel, all scrawny bones and whipcord muscle and this look in his eyes whenever he turned to Wade. It was a wild, familiar look: a child staring up at a harvest moon that seemed to encompass the entire sky. Wade had looked like that himself once, or thinks that he might have done, a boy of eight with a Bible spread open on his lap, watching his life disintegrate across the train tracks, a mile at a time.
He remembers a kind older woman coming to sit with him on the last leg of the journey to nowhere in particular, patting his combed hair and holding his hands when he wouldn’t look at her.
His stomach rumbled. That was enough of that - more than enough - far too much, in fact. With all this running, he was turning maudlin, and that would never do. He stretched carefully across the bed, sliding a look to where Dan Evans was pulling the net curtains closed. Charlie’d be here any minute, now, the crew in tow. Wade didn’t even have to think on this; didn’t have to wonder. It was just the way it was: he’d get away, no problems, no issues, and Charlie would make it all easier by being here, a good man with a wild look in his eyes and Wade’s pistol strapped to his hip.
Wade had more than one Hand at his disposal.
***
1:30
The ceiling had an amazing array of cracks and crevices, not so much a surface as a pockmarked face staring down at the dirty eiderdown of the bridal bed.
Evans, hidden from the outside by the net curtain, shifted his gun in his grip, his attention for the goings on below. Wade didn’t like that very much; didn’t much like anyone thinking they could afford to spare their attention for anyone else, despite his current situation. Even in irons, you’d think the rancher not so big a fool as to turn his face away.
“So this is the bridal suite. Now, I wonder how many brides have taken in this view.” Wade mused. “What are you gonna do with your $200 now, Dan? Now that the rains are coming?”
Evans’s gaze flickered to him, uninterested. “I owe people money, Wade.” He sounded almost apologetic.
***
His stomach wasn’t the only part of his body demanding his attention. The bar matron had barely scratched his itch before Evans had barrelled back in Wade’s way, queer limp and queerer eyes in the gloom, sold to the lowest bidder. He was an odd sort for a rancher out here, as odd as his lovely wife, certainly. Neither one of them fit for the life, that Wade could plainly see, their skins too pale, their hides too vulnerable for homesteading. It weren’t out of love of cattle they were stuck in that little backwater, scraping pennies and selling themselves cheap to keep every dust-ridden acre of parched dirt. One and a half legs were no better than no legs at all, out there. Sure, he could ride and shoot, but that counted for nothing against the brute strength needed to run a ranch, even one as ramshackle as that. No wonder he’d been rabid to see his boy on the line like that, leaving house and mother unprotected. If Evans had had the strength, Wade had no doubt that William would have been over his daddy’s knee, and sore for a week.
Or - maybe not. Wade looked over at the man leaned against the windowsill, calculating. Evans’s face was all pinks and golds, set in relaxed lines over the clenched curve of his jaw. A preacher’s face under all that dirt; the face of a righteous man.
Maybe not.
No, Wade’s hunger was definitely not the only appetite making itself known.
Butterfield would be gone for a while yet, he decided. Lawmen drove a hard bargain in these parts.
And if he wasn’t going to get fed -
***
1:35
It took the rancher a few minutes to work out what Wade was doing. No doubt a good, God-fearing, church-going man wouldn’t even dream of indulging himself; no, of course, he wouldn’t recognise the motion.
“You’d best stop with that right now,” Evans warned, his voice rough. His jaw clenched spasmodically, his whole face hardening into opacity. The anger Wade was sure was there was locked away beneath that calm surface. “I’m not so easily distracted.”
Except, he was, wasn’t he? It was so easy to provoke him, to roust furious emotion out of him in waves that it was almost not worth the bother.
“And I’m not so easily sated, if you think one quick tumble two days previous is enough,” Wade retorted. He grinned, baring his teeth in invitation. Careful, careful… “Since I suspect that you would have objected to me enjoying myself with your lovely wife -“
The rancher tensed all over, visibly restraining himself. “Stop talking,” he said, flat and hard. “Stop talking right now.”
Wade shrugged; a clipped awkward motion, curtailed by the shackles. He did not lift his gloved hands from where they lay against the buttons of his trouser placket. “Or your lovely William, for that matter.” His voice dipped low as he smiled, watching the outrage light the rancher’s eyes.
Evans tensed even more at that comment, gripping the gun to his chest as if barring himself against the chair to stop himself from bashing Wade’s head in. All he’d have to do was come a little closer, his fists uselessly tight against the shotgun, both out of commission in close quarters.
Wade closed his eyes briefly against the fury radiating from the shadowed form, waiting for the clumsy, inexpert attack, before - abruptly, unexpectedly - it was suddenly gone.
Evans leaned forward into the light as he laughed. “And I am not that easy to provoke, either.” He leaned back in his chair, back into shadow, the tension draining from him. “You’re better off sleeping for a while. The train-ride is long, I’m told, and there are no sleeper berths in the prison car.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled.
“No privacy, either,” Wade reminded him gently. “Shouldn’t I make the most out of the bridal suite, Dan?”
There was a flicker of - something - in the rancher’s gaze before another lopsided grin tugged on the scar high up on the burned face. “Are you asking my permission?”
Ah. Wade’s prick filled at the words, thickening inside his trousers. His fingers eased open the top button of the placket, his smile a little strained. “Do I look like the sort of man to ask permission for anything?” Not anymore, he wasn’t, not for a long time. Even with Charlie he hadn’t asked permission - he had simply taken him along, dragging his love unwillingly from a local girl to himself, the young Charlie’s infatuation with this new life more than enough to erase the memories of what might have been. No, Wade had never had to ask people to love him, from afar or up close, their hands clenched in fear and arousal whenever he walked into the room.
Another button, pushed through the rough fabric. He rucked his shirt up a little, so he could feel the cold edge of his shackles against his belly. The fabric dragged across the small round wounds left by McElroy’s ministrations, making him hiss at the grossly wet, squalid discomfort the motion produced. Not like a cut, or the burn from a bullet graze, that ached and throbbed in sharp, radiating waves across his body, painful and sweetly triumphant with every pulse; no, these wounds merely hurt.
He wished he’d killed the piss-slick bastards twice.
“I don’t know. You’re asking an awful lot of questions for someone so - independent.” The rancher did not look away, his disapproving, God-fearing eyes fixed on Wade’s. He had not flinched at the brief flicker of pain across Wade’s face; indeed, he almost seemed to relish it. Perverse bastard, Wade thought, strangely amused. He wouldn’t abandon Wade to torture beneath the mountain, but could take pleasure in its after-effects. Well, perhaps he thought the discomfort well-deserved. Unbending, fixed moral fibre. Weren’t all heroes made of the same brittle stuff?
“Ah,” he reached his hands up and tugged his gloves off with his teeth, “but an outlaw’s not gonna last long on his own, Dan.” He reached back down. “I thought you knew that.” The last button slid through the loop of fabric; Wade eased one hand inside the opening. His prick felt heavy and swollen inside his clothes, still sore after riding in a shoddy saddle all this way. The pain in Wade’s belly did nothing to detumesce it, his blood beating a tattoo against his hand as he stroked it carefully. Wade nodded towards the window. “I thought you understood that.”
The rancher’s mouth quirked into half a smile. “Is that something else your boys do for you?”
Wade drew his prick out, awkward and one-handed, hissing as it met the humid, warm afternoon air. Evans made no move to look away, staring frankly with that same flat, calculating look he’d been sporting the whole trip. Wade’s prick throbbed, hot and wet, liking the attention. Too damn pretty for a rancher, Wade thought, oddly reminded of his - lost, lamented - pistol, engraved and bejewelled so as to be almost too beautiful to use for killing. Almost, almost. Too damn pretty for a rancher, and would have been intending to get schooling before the war, maybe; maybe he’d had it. The calluses on his hands were too fresh, too raw for him to have grown up on the land, still ragged around the tender edges. Wade thought about how they’d felt around his neck, about how they’d feel elsewhere on his body, on thinner, more tender skin.
His fingers traced over his prick, right hand cupping the thick head while his left gripped the base. He only had a few inches’ worth of movement across the steel chain, but it was enough. Better, even, each movement stopped jerkily as the chains stretched taut. “And what if it was? Do you think I’m going to hell for that, Dan?” The chain rasped across his flesh, pleasant and painful all at once, and Wade grimaced in response.
Evans’s gaze did not waver. “Not for that. You have crimes that take precedence.”
Wade could not contain his bark of laughter at that unprepossessing righteousness. Ah, heroes. “Well said! A man as damned as I has little else to fear on this earth, for whatever time I have left.” He raised an eyebrow, his hands stilling their movement. His prick throbbed above his grip, the head an angry, liquid flush. “But I wouldn’t want to damn a God-fearing man such as yourself, Dan Evans, nor to mark such an unblemished -“ his eyes flickered over Evans’s scar; down, across the wooden leg - “life. I will stop, if you would prefer.” He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He kept his hands still over his prick, ceasing the pleasant motion, but did not relinquish his hold. He wouldn’t. He was almost painfully rigid, now, the head leaking liberally over his fingers, easing the way. He wouldn’t.
Well. Maybe.
At the window, the rancher was silent. Then, “I would not deny a condemned man a last meal, Wade. As I have no food to offer, I hope that privacy will suffice.” Slowly, deliberately, he turned his face away - away from Wade, splayed out grotesquely on the bridal bed, his trousers undone and his leaking prick in his shackled hands. He turned his face towards the window.
Ah, that wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. That took all the sweetness out of it, all the triumph. That made it all about the rancher’s goodness, his thrice-damned honour, the same weasel streak that kept him from taking Wade’s money. He could face the window and listen to Wade touch himself, and feel disgusted and righteous all in equal parts, and take his pleasure in the thought, given as if in gift.
Wade did not give gifts.
He shifted back on the bed, scooting up until he was propped up against the headboard, on full display. “You can look at me, you know,” he said, low and quiet. Evans’s eyes flickered over to his, startled, and flickered away again. “I want you to look at me.” He reached down again, adjusting himself, easing his sac free of the cut of his placket, cupping it and rolling it in his palm. “Dan,” he said. He could see the sudden bulge and jut of flesh in Evans’s trousers, the curve of where flesh met wood above his boot. The chain between Wade’s wrists rubbed against the underside of his prick, scraping the swollen vein there. “I want you to look at me, Dan.”
The rancher shifted, his eyes downcast. “You want an awful lot, Wade,” he said, sharp, but he turned back, away from the window. The afternoon light caught the side of his face, pink and burned and turning a glowing bronze beneath. His whiskers were a pale gold across his clenched jaw, his mouth more burned than the rest of him altogether, pink and flushed and naked under Wade’s gaze.
What a stupid, stubborn man, Wade thought, half admiring, half despairing, oddly reminded of Charlie’s strange, fierce devotion. What a stupid, stubborn man, to turn down that money, to risk himself - to risk his son - out here. And for what? For the notoriety of having taken down Ben Wade?
His prick throbbed at that thought, as perverse and pleased as could be.
It wouldn’t be long now. It couldn’t be; Butterfield would be back soon; Charlie would be up soon; hell, the train would be here soon. The watch in Evans’s loose grasp read 1:55, and Wade dug his fingers into the flesh of his prick, pinching the head almost painfully while his other hand moved across the shaft in quick, brutal movements. His skin was slick with sweat and precome, and it won’t be long now, he thought, feeling the pressure in his balls, watching Evans watch him, it wouldn’t be long at all.
At the window, Evans made a small, chocked-off noise, shifting a fraction in his seat. His gun slid down in his lap, less important, now, than the fop-watch ticking in time with Wade’s breathing.
“Tell me - something - Dan,” Wade said raggedly, his words exhaled in time with the movements of his hand, as if pushed up to his mouth by his jerking hips. “Tell me something true, and - and I’ll come with you - for free - I’ll go to - that damned train - with you -“
Evans parted his lips slowly, as if moving to speak, his eyes fixed on Wade, his grip punishingly tight on gun and watch alike.
Wade could feel a burning, helpless pressure in his belly, clawing its way out, jerking his hips upwards. He was grinning, teeth bared, hot and wanting this, as hotly and as fiercely as he’d wanted Butterfield’s goddamned money. “Tell me,” he gasped, and his fingers dug in, thumb over the head of his prick, “tell me - you - you’re - you’re not hard - right now.” The rancher’s mouth gaped, wet and pink and disbelieving and Wade pressed in against the head of his prick, in, digging the edge of his thumbnail into the slit, the rancher’s eyes still on him. Holy mother of God, and his hips slammed up, his grip shuddered across his prick and his orgasm bit and fought its way out of him like a live thing. Hot ejaculate spilled across his fist and down his fingers, each pulse dragging a ragged, hissing sigh from between his clenched teeth.
At the window, Evans stared at him, unmoving, unchanged but for the colour high in his cheekbones and the white-knuckle grip over the gun and fop-watch. His mouth still hung open, wet and pink and inviting, as Wade eased himself back on the bed, sighing a little as the last of the aftershocks left his body.
Evans cleared his throat and looked away. Wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue; a sharp, darting movement, almost an afterthought. “Would you like a handkerchief?”
Still trying to gather his breath, Wade looked back at him and laughed. “That would be most appreciated. And -“ he held out his hand for the kerchief, “my question, Dan? Will you answer my question?”
The rancher smiled, quick and fleeting. “I don’t need your cooperation to get you on that train. Wade.”
You don’t want it, you mean, Wade thought, amused, and absurdly reminded of Charlie again, of that stubborn, tenacious streak. He accepted the square of cloth with good grace. Much good may your wishes do you. He felt the curiosity push at him again, bubbling up under his skin, demanding to know why. He pressed it aside firmly, unwilling to indulge himself in this manner. He had developed a grudging respect for the rancher, it was true, the same admiration he bore for Charlie whenever he latched on to something new; a dog with a bone he wasn’t about to surrender to anyone. That was fine, acceptable, even. It was always faintly humiliating to be brought to bear by an idiot, and Evans was head and shoulders above the imbeciles Butterfield and his ilk customarily sent after him. Wade had liked the challenge, but a challenge was all it had been.
You fought your enemy. You beat him. If he was particularly gifted, you respected him, maybe mourned his death. You did not eat at his supper table. You did not flatter his wife, or chastise his son.
You did not learn more about him in three days than you knew about your crew in three years.
Evans’s watch read 2:10.
In a few minutes, Butterfield would be back with his bought soldiers, and they would have to move. Charlie would be there, gold and glowing in the afternoon sun, Wade’s pistol strapped to his hip in spirit if not in life, and Wade would be free again. And this man, all pink where his Charlie is gold, and with no new scar, no new loss of limb, no mark at all of Wade’s to remember him by, would get his wish, at last for a little while.
In a few minutes, the train would be here.
In the rancher’s tight grip, the watch’s right hand inched slowly forward.
*
fin
queenspanky's dad provided us with a penthouse apartment on the Spanish coast, full of food, air conditioning, OH, AND A POOL. I nearly drowned a few times getting over-excited about the proximity to water, but that's ok. I mentioned the tanning, right?
I got back at Horrendous O'clock (TM) last night, tired and sleep-deprived (wingsmith DOES. NOT. SLEEP. I, on the other hand, am the world's lightest sleeper. = not a good combination. Did I take my siestas seriously? Why yes, Ethel, I did.), and rolled out of bed at Stupid O'Clock (TM) this morning to go to a job interview. Yes, yes, I got the interview at the Refugee Council, everyone hop around and rejoice. I will in all likelihood not get the job (in all certainty, in fact) as I was massively sleep-deprived and unprepared for the questions, but I feel better nonetheless. Like I've actually started the job-hunting process. Yay, woot.
Oh, and I wrote porn. Yes, actual porn, with actual man-bits in it. The icon bears no resemblance to what's in the porn, but as 3:10 to Yuma icons are few and far between, you'll just have to put up with my generic 'Westerns' icon, which is a naked Casey Affleck.
Life can be greatly improved by the addition of naked Casey Affleck, I've found. However, my life is currently being improved by the addition of naked Christian Bale and naked Russell Crowe.
ETA: Success! I now have a 3:10 to Yuma icon. W00t!
In conclusion, I read a bazillion books. Feel proud of my mad multitasking skillz.
*
Title: Hands, or something like it
Fandom: 3:10 to Yuma
Summary: Killing time. 100fandoms #76, scratch.
Rating: hard R (or maybe even an NC-17. Anyway, man-naked-things. Yes.)
Notes: This still needs a going over with a fine-toothed comb. I'm ok with it, but only in a WIP sense. If anyone fancies dissecting it, I will gift you virtual cookies.
1:25
Wade’s stomach was making its displeasure known. He hadn’t had a bite to eat since supper the prior evening - hot beans and dry bread at the campsite, eyes skittish across the landscape for Apache warriors - and riding through the night took it out of him. The wet, ragged wounds on his belly ached, slick and pink from the burns McElroy's posse had inflicted with that thrice-damned machine. Wade was tired. Didn’t used to be. Used to be, he could ride a tenday with a bullet in him on beef jerky and water, and not feel it afterward. Charlie kidded him about his cast-iron stomach, saying it was made of sterner stuff than the Hand of God. They should write legends about that, he’d laughed, watching Wade tear his way through the tough strips of meat.
A good man, his Charlie, always there to watch his back like his own guardian angel, all scrawny bones and whipcord muscle and this look in his eyes whenever he turned to Wade. It was a wild, familiar look: a child staring up at a harvest moon that seemed to encompass the entire sky. Wade had looked like that himself once, or thinks that he might have done, a boy of eight with a Bible spread open on his lap, watching his life disintegrate across the train tracks, a mile at a time.
He remembers a kind older woman coming to sit with him on the last leg of the journey to nowhere in particular, patting his combed hair and holding his hands when he wouldn’t look at her.
His stomach rumbled. That was enough of that - more than enough - far too much, in fact. With all this running, he was turning maudlin, and that would never do. He stretched carefully across the bed, sliding a look to where Dan Evans was pulling the net curtains closed. Charlie’d be here any minute, now, the crew in tow. Wade didn’t even have to think on this; didn’t have to wonder. It was just the way it was: he’d get away, no problems, no issues, and Charlie would make it all easier by being here, a good man with a wild look in his eyes and Wade’s pistol strapped to his hip.
Wade had more than one Hand at his disposal.
***
1:30
The ceiling had an amazing array of cracks and crevices, not so much a surface as a pockmarked face staring down at the dirty eiderdown of the bridal bed.
Evans, hidden from the outside by the net curtain, shifted his gun in his grip, his attention for the goings on below. Wade didn’t like that very much; didn’t much like anyone thinking they could afford to spare their attention for anyone else, despite his current situation. Even in irons, you’d think the rancher not so big a fool as to turn his face away.
“So this is the bridal suite. Now, I wonder how many brides have taken in this view.” Wade mused. “What are you gonna do with your $200 now, Dan? Now that the rains are coming?”
Evans’s gaze flickered to him, uninterested. “I owe people money, Wade.” He sounded almost apologetic.
***
His stomach wasn’t the only part of his body demanding his attention. The bar matron had barely scratched his itch before Evans had barrelled back in Wade’s way, queer limp and queerer eyes in the gloom, sold to the lowest bidder. He was an odd sort for a rancher out here, as odd as his lovely wife, certainly. Neither one of them fit for the life, that Wade could plainly see, their skins too pale, their hides too vulnerable for homesteading. It weren’t out of love of cattle they were stuck in that little backwater, scraping pennies and selling themselves cheap to keep every dust-ridden acre of parched dirt. One and a half legs were no better than no legs at all, out there. Sure, he could ride and shoot, but that counted for nothing against the brute strength needed to run a ranch, even one as ramshackle as that. No wonder he’d been rabid to see his boy on the line like that, leaving house and mother unprotected. If Evans had had the strength, Wade had no doubt that William would have been over his daddy’s knee, and sore for a week.
Or - maybe not. Wade looked over at the man leaned against the windowsill, calculating. Evans’s face was all pinks and golds, set in relaxed lines over the clenched curve of his jaw. A preacher’s face under all that dirt; the face of a righteous man.
Maybe not.
No, Wade’s hunger was definitely not the only appetite making itself known.
Butterfield would be gone for a while yet, he decided. Lawmen drove a hard bargain in these parts.
And if he wasn’t going to get fed -
***
1:35
It took the rancher a few minutes to work out what Wade was doing. No doubt a good, God-fearing, church-going man wouldn’t even dream of indulging himself; no, of course, he wouldn’t recognise the motion.
“You’d best stop with that right now,” Evans warned, his voice rough. His jaw clenched spasmodically, his whole face hardening into opacity. The anger Wade was sure was there was locked away beneath that calm surface. “I’m not so easily distracted.”
Except, he was, wasn’t he? It was so easy to provoke him, to roust furious emotion out of him in waves that it was almost not worth the bother.
“And I’m not so easily sated, if you think one quick tumble two days previous is enough,” Wade retorted. He grinned, baring his teeth in invitation. Careful, careful… “Since I suspect that you would have objected to me enjoying myself with your lovely wife -“
The rancher tensed all over, visibly restraining himself. “Stop talking,” he said, flat and hard. “Stop talking right now.”
Wade shrugged; a clipped awkward motion, curtailed by the shackles. He did not lift his gloved hands from where they lay against the buttons of his trouser placket. “Or your lovely William, for that matter.” His voice dipped low as he smiled, watching the outrage light the rancher’s eyes.
Evans tensed even more at that comment, gripping the gun to his chest as if barring himself against the chair to stop himself from bashing Wade’s head in. All he’d have to do was come a little closer, his fists uselessly tight against the shotgun, both out of commission in close quarters.
Wade closed his eyes briefly against the fury radiating from the shadowed form, waiting for the clumsy, inexpert attack, before - abruptly, unexpectedly - it was suddenly gone.
Evans leaned forward into the light as he laughed. “And I am not that easy to provoke, either.” He leaned back in his chair, back into shadow, the tension draining from him. “You’re better off sleeping for a while. The train-ride is long, I’m told, and there are no sleeper berths in the prison car.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled.
“No privacy, either,” Wade reminded him gently. “Shouldn’t I make the most out of the bridal suite, Dan?”
There was a flicker of - something - in the rancher’s gaze before another lopsided grin tugged on the scar high up on the burned face. “Are you asking my permission?”
Ah. Wade’s prick filled at the words, thickening inside his trousers. His fingers eased open the top button of the placket, his smile a little strained. “Do I look like the sort of man to ask permission for anything?” Not anymore, he wasn’t, not for a long time. Even with Charlie he hadn’t asked permission - he had simply taken him along, dragging his love unwillingly from a local girl to himself, the young Charlie’s infatuation with this new life more than enough to erase the memories of what might have been. No, Wade had never had to ask people to love him, from afar or up close, their hands clenched in fear and arousal whenever he walked into the room.
Another button, pushed through the rough fabric. He rucked his shirt up a little, so he could feel the cold edge of his shackles against his belly. The fabric dragged across the small round wounds left by McElroy’s ministrations, making him hiss at the grossly wet, squalid discomfort the motion produced. Not like a cut, or the burn from a bullet graze, that ached and throbbed in sharp, radiating waves across his body, painful and sweetly triumphant with every pulse; no, these wounds merely hurt.
He wished he’d killed the piss-slick bastards twice.
“I don’t know. You’re asking an awful lot of questions for someone so - independent.” The rancher did not look away, his disapproving, God-fearing eyes fixed on Wade’s. He had not flinched at the brief flicker of pain across Wade’s face; indeed, he almost seemed to relish it. Perverse bastard, Wade thought, strangely amused. He wouldn’t abandon Wade to torture beneath the mountain, but could take pleasure in its after-effects. Well, perhaps he thought the discomfort well-deserved. Unbending, fixed moral fibre. Weren’t all heroes made of the same brittle stuff?
“Ah,” he reached his hands up and tugged his gloves off with his teeth, “but an outlaw’s not gonna last long on his own, Dan.” He reached back down. “I thought you knew that.” The last button slid through the loop of fabric; Wade eased one hand inside the opening. His prick felt heavy and swollen inside his clothes, still sore after riding in a shoddy saddle all this way. The pain in Wade’s belly did nothing to detumesce it, his blood beating a tattoo against his hand as he stroked it carefully. Wade nodded towards the window. “I thought you understood that.”
The rancher’s mouth quirked into half a smile. “Is that something else your boys do for you?”
Wade drew his prick out, awkward and one-handed, hissing as it met the humid, warm afternoon air. Evans made no move to look away, staring frankly with that same flat, calculating look he’d been sporting the whole trip. Wade’s prick throbbed, hot and wet, liking the attention. Too damn pretty for a rancher, Wade thought, oddly reminded of his - lost, lamented - pistol, engraved and bejewelled so as to be almost too beautiful to use for killing. Almost, almost. Too damn pretty for a rancher, and would have been intending to get schooling before the war, maybe; maybe he’d had it. The calluses on his hands were too fresh, too raw for him to have grown up on the land, still ragged around the tender edges. Wade thought about how they’d felt around his neck, about how they’d feel elsewhere on his body, on thinner, more tender skin.
His fingers traced over his prick, right hand cupping the thick head while his left gripped the base. He only had a few inches’ worth of movement across the steel chain, but it was enough. Better, even, each movement stopped jerkily as the chains stretched taut. “And what if it was? Do you think I’m going to hell for that, Dan?” The chain rasped across his flesh, pleasant and painful all at once, and Wade grimaced in response.
Evans’s gaze did not waver. “Not for that. You have crimes that take precedence.”
Wade could not contain his bark of laughter at that unprepossessing righteousness. Ah, heroes. “Well said! A man as damned as I has little else to fear on this earth, for whatever time I have left.” He raised an eyebrow, his hands stilling their movement. His prick throbbed above his grip, the head an angry, liquid flush. “But I wouldn’t want to damn a God-fearing man such as yourself, Dan Evans, nor to mark such an unblemished -“ his eyes flickered over Evans’s scar; down, across the wooden leg - “life. I will stop, if you would prefer.” He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He kept his hands still over his prick, ceasing the pleasant motion, but did not relinquish his hold. He wouldn’t. He was almost painfully rigid, now, the head leaking liberally over his fingers, easing the way. He wouldn’t.
Well. Maybe.
At the window, the rancher was silent. Then, “I would not deny a condemned man a last meal, Wade. As I have no food to offer, I hope that privacy will suffice.” Slowly, deliberately, he turned his face away - away from Wade, splayed out grotesquely on the bridal bed, his trousers undone and his leaking prick in his shackled hands. He turned his face towards the window.
Ah, that wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. That took all the sweetness out of it, all the triumph. That made it all about the rancher’s goodness, his thrice-damned honour, the same weasel streak that kept him from taking Wade’s money. He could face the window and listen to Wade touch himself, and feel disgusted and righteous all in equal parts, and take his pleasure in the thought, given as if in gift.
Wade did not give gifts.
He shifted back on the bed, scooting up until he was propped up against the headboard, on full display. “You can look at me, you know,” he said, low and quiet. Evans’s eyes flickered over to his, startled, and flickered away again. “I want you to look at me.” He reached down again, adjusting himself, easing his sac free of the cut of his placket, cupping it and rolling it in his palm. “Dan,” he said. He could see the sudden bulge and jut of flesh in Evans’s trousers, the curve of where flesh met wood above his boot. The chain between Wade’s wrists rubbed against the underside of his prick, scraping the swollen vein there. “I want you to look at me, Dan.”
The rancher shifted, his eyes downcast. “You want an awful lot, Wade,” he said, sharp, but he turned back, away from the window. The afternoon light caught the side of his face, pink and burned and turning a glowing bronze beneath. His whiskers were a pale gold across his clenched jaw, his mouth more burned than the rest of him altogether, pink and flushed and naked under Wade’s gaze.
What a stupid, stubborn man, Wade thought, half admiring, half despairing, oddly reminded of Charlie’s strange, fierce devotion. What a stupid, stubborn man, to turn down that money, to risk himself - to risk his son - out here. And for what? For the notoriety of having taken down Ben Wade?
His prick throbbed at that thought, as perverse and pleased as could be.
It wouldn’t be long now. It couldn’t be; Butterfield would be back soon; Charlie would be up soon; hell, the train would be here soon. The watch in Evans’s loose grasp read 1:55, and Wade dug his fingers into the flesh of his prick, pinching the head almost painfully while his other hand moved across the shaft in quick, brutal movements. His skin was slick with sweat and precome, and it won’t be long now, he thought, feeling the pressure in his balls, watching Evans watch him, it wouldn’t be long at all.
At the window, Evans made a small, chocked-off noise, shifting a fraction in his seat. His gun slid down in his lap, less important, now, than the fop-watch ticking in time with Wade’s breathing.
“Tell me - something - Dan,” Wade said raggedly, his words exhaled in time with the movements of his hand, as if pushed up to his mouth by his jerking hips. “Tell me something true, and - and I’ll come with you - for free - I’ll go to - that damned train - with you -“
Evans parted his lips slowly, as if moving to speak, his eyes fixed on Wade, his grip punishingly tight on gun and watch alike.
Wade could feel a burning, helpless pressure in his belly, clawing its way out, jerking his hips upwards. He was grinning, teeth bared, hot and wanting this, as hotly and as fiercely as he’d wanted Butterfield’s goddamned money. “Tell me,” he gasped, and his fingers dug in, thumb over the head of his prick, “tell me - you - you’re - you’re not hard - right now.” The rancher’s mouth gaped, wet and pink and disbelieving and Wade pressed in against the head of his prick, in, digging the edge of his thumbnail into the slit, the rancher’s eyes still on him. Holy mother of God, and his hips slammed up, his grip shuddered across his prick and his orgasm bit and fought its way out of him like a live thing. Hot ejaculate spilled across his fist and down his fingers, each pulse dragging a ragged, hissing sigh from between his clenched teeth.
At the window, Evans stared at him, unmoving, unchanged but for the colour high in his cheekbones and the white-knuckle grip over the gun and fop-watch. His mouth still hung open, wet and pink and inviting, as Wade eased himself back on the bed, sighing a little as the last of the aftershocks left his body.
Evans cleared his throat and looked away. Wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue; a sharp, darting movement, almost an afterthought. “Would you like a handkerchief?”
Still trying to gather his breath, Wade looked back at him and laughed. “That would be most appreciated. And -“ he held out his hand for the kerchief, “my question, Dan? Will you answer my question?”
The rancher smiled, quick and fleeting. “I don’t need your cooperation to get you on that train. Wade.”
You don’t want it, you mean, Wade thought, amused, and absurdly reminded of Charlie again, of that stubborn, tenacious streak. He accepted the square of cloth with good grace. Much good may your wishes do you. He felt the curiosity push at him again, bubbling up under his skin, demanding to know why. He pressed it aside firmly, unwilling to indulge himself in this manner. He had developed a grudging respect for the rancher, it was true, the same admiration he bore for Charlie whenever he latched on to something new; a dog with a bone he wasn’t about to surrender to anyone. That was fine, acceptable, even. It was always faintly humiliating to be brought to bear by an idiot, and Evans was head and shoulders above the imbeciles Butterfield and his ilk customarily sent after him. Wade had liked the challenge, but a challenge was all it had been.
You fought your enemy. You beat him. If he was particularly gifted, you respected him, maybe mourned his death. You did not eat at his supper table. You did not flatter his wife, or chastise his son.
You did not learn more about him in three days than you knew about your crew in three years.
Evans’s watch read 2:10.
In a few minutes, Butterfield would be back with his bought soldiers, and they would have to move. Charlie would be there, gold and glowing in the afternoon sun, Wade’s pistol strapped to his hip in spirit if not in life, and Wade would be free again. And this man, all pink where his Charlie is gold, and with no new scar, no new loss of limb, no mark at all of Wade’s to remember him by, would get his wish, at last for a little while.
In a few minutes, the train would be here.
In the rancher’s tight grip, the watch’s right hand inched slowly forward.
*
fin