FIC REPOST: Western Lovers: Cowboys & Archaeologists (9/44)
Title: Western Lovers: Cowboys and Archaeologists
Author:sassywitch
Beta by the talented celtprincess13
Pairing: BB/DM
Rating: NC-17 for the series.
Summary: Billy is a man to be reckoned with. Can Dom heal his wounded soul and his own into the bargain. Could Billy make him forget the bitter lessons of the past?
Feedback: Feedback is my writers crack, which is not to be confused at all with plumbers crack.
Acknowledgements: There are so many people that have helped in the creation of the Double L and it’s families. Thank you to alassenya for everything, hisniblets for the dialect help, thanks for billyhasmyheart for all the research assistance particularly with the bike specs and to glasgowhobbitfor the recipe help. celtprincess13 brings you better grammar and punctuation than I ever could. Thank you all, The Double L wouldn’t be the same without any of you. Disclaimer: Not at all true in reality. These men whilst adorable and perfectly happy to slash themselves, their actual relationship is something that they only know. This story is adapted from a series of books that I adored when I was younger written by Elizabeth Lowell.
Word Count: 3606
Previous Posting: Chapter 1|Chapter 2|Chapter 3|Chapter 4|Chapter 5|Chapter 6|Chapter 7| Chapter 8|
Posted to: fellowshippers, monaboyd and sassyfic
Header Art: Courtesy of the incredibly talented loki_girl.
Authors Notes: As many of you know, Western Lovers is my own particular labour of love, even though in the past it was ostensibly finished, there was always something missing for you the reader. I wanted to remedy that for you. At the end of this posting you will all know all of the Western Lovers family and all of their pasts and secrets. On behalf of all of them and me, I hope you enjoy their story as much as they do. Since I’m two weeks behind my original posting schedule I thought you might all like a bonus chapter this week.
With outward calm, Dom watched the Range rover slither and slide down the shale, retreating from Arwen Canyon as quickly as the rain and rough terrain allowed.
"You can put it away now. They won't be back."
Billy's voice made Dom realize that he was still crouched over the rifle, sighting down its blue steel barrel, his hands holding the weapon too tightly. He forced himself to take a deep breath and stand upright.
"May I?" Billy asked, holding out a hand for the rifle, his shotgun held in the other hand.
Dom gave the rifle to him and said faintly, "It will need cleaning. The rain is very ... wet."
Billy didn't smile, simply nodded his head in serious agreement. "I'll take care of it."
"Thank you. It's been years since I cleaned a rifle. I've probably forgotten how."
"You sure didn't forget how to use one," Billy said as he checked the rifle over with a few swift movements. He noted approvingly that there was a round in the chamber. He removed the bullet and pocketed it. "Thank you."
Dom looked at him and blinked, trying to focus his thoughts.
"For aiming the rifle at them rather than at me," Billy explained smiling slightly "It's nice to know you think I'm one of the good guys."
"I - they - you didn't need me," Dom said, rubbing his hands together against the sudden chill on his skin.
"Three against one? I needed all the help I could get."
Dom shook his head. "You could have made veal cutlets out of that pothunter before his friends could have taken a single step to stop you. Why didn't you?"
"Never did like veal cutlets," Billy said matter-of-factly, opening the truck door. "Get in, Honey. It's wet out here."
"I'm serious," Dom said climbing up into the dry cab. "Why did you hold back? You certainly didn't with Serkis ... did you?" Dom remembered with vivid clarity every moment he had witnessed of the fight with Serkis and if Billy had been holding back, Dom would really hate to be there when he wasn’t.
Billy went around the truck and got in behind the wheel. He sensed Dom's intent gaze and watchful, wary eyes. Wondering if Dom was still afraid of him, Billy watched him from the corner of his eyes as he began wiping down the rifle and the shotgun with the soft cloth kept behind the seat for that purpose. Despite the vague trembling of Dom's hands and the paleness of his skin, Billy began to understand hat he wasn't afraid of him; he was simply caught in the backlash of the adrenaline storm that had come from his brush with pothunters.
"Why?" Dom persisted, rubbing his arms as though he were cold. "What was different?"
"Serkis was a brute who only understands brute force," Billy said finally. "If I had pulled my punches with him, he would have been back for more. That kid, Karl, was different. He's a swaggering bully. A coward. So I showed him what a candy-ass he really is when it comes to fighting. He'll be a long time forgetting.
"Will he be back?"
"Doubt it." Billy turned around and locked the weapons back into the rack. "But if he does come back, he better pray David isn't on guard."
"David?"
"My kid brother. He wouldn’t have been happy. He would have gutted Karl and never looked back. Hard man, David."
"And you aren't?"
Turning looking at Dom over his shoulder, Billy smiled slowly. "Honey, haven't you figured it out yet? I'm so tenderhearted a butterfly can walk roughshod all over me."
It was the second time in as many minutes that Billy had called Dom 'honey', and Dom knew he should object to the implied intimacy, no matter how warm it made his heart. At the very least, he shouldn't encourage Billy by laughing at the ludicrous image of a butterfly stomping all over Billy's muscular body. So Dom tried very hard not to laugh, failed, and finally gave into the need, knowing that it was a release for all the emotions seething just beneath his control.
Billy listened, sensing the complex currents of Dom's emotions. He reached for the door before he looked over at Dom and nodded once, as though agreeing with himself.
"You'll do, Dominic Monaghan. You'll do just fine."
"For what?" he asked, startled.
"For whatever you want. You've got guts. You'd go to war over a carton of Anasazi artifacts. You stand up for what you believe in and my guess is for others who can’t fight for themselves too. That's too damned rare these days."
Billy was out of the truck and closing the door behind him before Dom could put into words his first thought: he hadn't stood in the rain with an unfamiliar rifle in his hands to save a few artifacts from pothunters. It had been Billy he was worried about, one man against three.
I didn't need to worry. Billy is a one man army. Sean was right - someone taught him to play hardball. I wonder who, and where, and what it cost.
The trucks door opened. Billy set the closed carton of artifacts on the seat next to Dom, then swung into the cab with a lithe motion. His masculine grace fascinated Dom, as did the fact that Billy's rain-soaked shirt clung to every ridge and swell of muscle, emphasizing the width of his shoulders and the strength of his back. If he had wanted to, Billy could have overpowered Dom with terrible ease, for he was far stronger than Ethan had ever been, and in the end, Ethan had been too strong for him.
Grimly, Dom turned his thoughts away from a past that was beyond his ability to change or forget. He could only accept what had happened, and renew his vow that he would never again put himself in a position where a man thought he had the right to take what Dom was unwilling to give.
"Don't worry," Billy said.
"What?" Dom gave him a startled look, wondering if Billy had read his mind.
"The artifacts are fine. Karl was an amateur when it came to fighting, but he knew how to pack pots. Nothing was lost."
"Just the history."
His hand on the key, Billy turned to look at Dom, not understanding what he meant.
"The real value of the artifacts for an archaeologist comes from seeing how they relate to each other in situ," he explained. "Unless the artifacts were photographed where they were found, they don't have much to tell us now."
"To a scholar, maybe, but to me, just seeing the artifacts, seeing their shapes and designs, knowing they were made by a people and a culture that lived and died and will never be born again ..." Billy shrugged. "I'd go to war to save a piece of that. Hell, I have more than once."
Again, Billy had surprised Dom. He hadn't expected a nonprofessional to understand the intellectual and emotional fascination of fragments from the past. His response threw Dom off balance, leaving him teetering between his ingrained fear of strong men and the equally deep desire to be close to the contradictory complex man called Billy Boyd.
Billy eased the big truck down the slippery shoulder of shale and headed back for the big overhang that served as a base camp for the dig. By the time they had unloaded their gear, set up sleeping bags at the opposite ends of the overhang's broad base and changed into dry clothes behind the canvas privacy screen that had been erected for just such emergencies, the rain was becoming less of a torrent.
Neither Dom nor Billy noticed the improving weather at first. They had gravitated toward the shard-sorting area that the graduate students had set up. Numbered cartons held remnants of pottery that had been taken from the specific areas, according to the place where they had been unearthed. Whoever had the time or the desire was invited to try piecing together the three dimensional puzzles before they were removed to the old ranch house.
Billy showed a marked flair for resurrecting whole artifacts from scattered, broken fragments. In fact, more than once, Dom was astonished at the ease with which he reached into one carton, then another and came out with interlocking shards. There was something uncanny about how pieces of history became whole in his hands. Billy's concentration on the task made casual conversation unnecessary, which relieved Dom. Soon Dom was sorting shards, trying out pieces together, bending over Billy to reach into cartons, muttering phrases about gray ware with three black lines and an acute angle versus corrugated ware with a curve and a bite out of one side. Billy answered with similar phrases, handing him whatever he had that matched Dom's description of missing shards.
After the first half hour, Dom forgot he was alone with a man in an isolated canyon. He forgot to be afraid that something he might say or do would trigger in Billy the certainty that he wanted him sexually, despite whatever objections Dom might make to his advances. For the first time in years, Dom enjoyed the company of a man as a person, another adult with whom he could be at ease. Billy had ceased to be a threat to his mind and his body, he was simply Billy.
When the rain finally stopped completely, Dom stood, stretched cramped leg muscles and went to the edge of the overhang to look out across the newly washed land. Although no ruins were visible from the overhang itself, excitement simmered suddenly in his blood. Hundreds of years ago, the Anasazi had looked out on the same land, smelled the same scent of wet earth and pinion, seen the glittering beauty of sunlight captured in a billion drops of water clinging to needles and boughs, and the sheer face of the cliff itself. For this instant, Dom and the Anasazi were one.
That was what he wanted to capture in his illustrations; the continuity of life, of human experience, a continuity of life, of human experience, a continuity that existed through time, regardless of the outward diversity of human cultures.
"I'm going to the site," Dom said picking up his backpack.
Billy looked up from the potshards he was assembling. "I'll be along as soon as I get these numbered. Don't go up those ladders until they're dry. And stick to the part of the ruins that has a grid. Some of that rubble isn't stable, and some of the walls are worse."
"Don't worry. I'm not exploring anything alone," Dom replied as he settled the backpack on his shoulders. "Too many of those ruins are traps waiting to be sprung. With the Anasazi, you never know when the ground is a ceiling covering a sunken kiva. I'll stay on the well-beaten path until there are more people on site."
A long look assured Billy that Dom meant what he said, and he nodded. "Thanks."
"For what?" Dom asked.
"Not getting your back up at my suggestions."
"I have nothing against common sense. Besides, you're the ramrod on this site," Dom added. "If I don't like your, er, 'suggestions', that's my hard luck, right? You'll enforce your orders any way you have to."
Billy thought of putting it less bluntly, then shrugged. Dom was right, and it would save a lot of grief if Dom knew it.
"That's my job."
"I'll remember it."
What Dom said was the simple truth. He would remember. The thought of going against Billy's suggestions was frankly intimidating. He had the power to enforce his will and Dom knew it as well as he did. Better. Dom had been taught by his father and his only partner just how little protests mattered to men whose physical superiority was a fact of life.
"If you hear the trucks horn beep three times, or three shots from the rifle," Billy warned, "it means come back here on the double."
Dom nodded, checked his watch and said, "I'll be back before sundown."
"Damn straight you will be." Billy held two pieces of pottery up against the sunlight streaming into the overhang, frowned and set one piece aside before he said, "Only a fool or a pothunter would go feeling around in the ruins after dark."
Dom didn't bother to answer. Billy wasn't really listening anyway - he was holding another piece of pottery against the sunlight, visually comparing edges. They must have fit, because Billy grunted and wrote on the inside of both pieces. After they were cleaned, they would be glued together, but the equipment for that operation was back at the old ranch house.
Beyond the overhang, the land was damp and glistening from the recent rain. The short-lived waterfalls that had made lacy veils over the cliff faces were already diminishing to silver tendrils. Before he left the overhang, Dom glanced back at Billy, only to find him engrossed in his three dimensional puzzle. Dom shouldn't have been relieved at the silent evidence that he didn't have to worry about fielding any unwanted advances from Billy, because quite obviously, Dom wasn't the focus of his attentions. But Dom wasn't relieved. Frankly, he was a bit irked that Billy found it so easy to ignore him.
The realization disconcerted him, so Dom shoved the thought aside and concentrated on the increasingly rugged terrain as he began to climb from Arwen Canyon's floor up to the base of the steep cliffs, following whatever truck tracks the rain hadn't washed away.
Thunder muttered through Arwen Canyon, followed by a gust of rain-scented wind that made the pinions moan. From the vantage point where the Rover had been parked, the ruins beckoned. Partial walls were scalloped raggedly by time and falling masonry. Some of the walls were barely ankle high, others reached nearly twenty five feet in height, broken only by the protruding cedar beams that had once supported floors. Cedar that was still protected by the stone remained strong and hard, while exposed beams weathered with the excruciating slowness of the rock itself.
Using a trick that an old archaeologist had taught him, Dom let his eyes become unfocussed while he was looking at the ruins. Details blurred and faded, leaving only larger relationships visible: weights and masses; symmetry and balance; subtle uses of force and counterforce that had to be conceived in the human mind before they were built, because they did not occur in nature. The multi-storied wall with its T-shaped doors no longer looked like a chimney with bricks fallen out, nor did the roofless kivas look like too-wide wells. The relationship of roof to floor to ceiling, the geometries of shared wall apartment living, became clearer to unfocussed, modern eyes.
The archaeologist who first examined Arwen Canyon estimated that the alcove had held between nineteen and twenty-six rooms, including the ubiquitous, circular kivas. The height of the building varied from less than four feet to three stories, depending on the height of the overhang itself.
The kivas were like basements set off from the larger grouping of rooms. The kivas' flat roofs were actually the floor of the town meeting area, where children played and women ground corn; where dogs barked and chased foolish turkeys. The balcony of a third-storey room was the ceiling of an adjacent two story apartment. Cedar ladders reached to cyst-like granaries built into lateral cracks too small to accommodate even a tiny room. And the Anasazi used rooms so tiny they were unthinkable to modern people, even taking into account the Anasazis' smaller stature.
Dom opened the outer pocket of his backpack and pulled out a lightweight, powerful pair of binoculars. As always, the patience of the Anasazi stonemasons fascinated him. Lacking metal of any kind, they shaped stone by using stone itself. Hand axes weighing several pounds were used to hammer rough squares or rectangles from shapeless slabs of rock. Then the imagined geometry was carefully tap-tap-tapped onto the rough block, thousands upon thousands of strokes, stone pecking at stone until the rock was of the proper size and shape.
The alcove's left side ended in sheer rock wall. A crack angled up the face of the cliff. At no point was the crack wider than a few inches, yet Dom could see places where natural foot or hand holds had been added. Every Anasazi who went up on the mesa to tend crops had to climb up the cliff with no more help than they could get out of the crack. The thought of making such a climb himself didn't appeal. The thought of children or old people making the climb in all kinds of weather was appalling, as was the thought of toddlers playing along the alcove's sheer drop.
Inevitably, people must have slipped and fallen. Even for an alcove that had a southern exposure, protected from all but the worst storms, the daily risking of life and limb represented by that trail seemed a terrible price to pay.
Dom lowered the glasses, looked at the ruins with his unaided eyes and frowned. The angle wasn't quite right for what he wanted to accomplish. Farther up the canyon, where the rubble slopes rose to the point that an agile climber could reach the ruins without a ladder, the angle would be no better. What he needed was a good spot from which to sketch an overview of the countryside with an inset detailing the structure and placement of the ruins themselves. The surrounding country could be sketched almost anytime. The ruins, however, were best sketched in slanting late afternoon light, when all the irregularities and angles of masonry leaped into high relief. That 'sweet light' was rapidly developing as the day advanced.
With measuring eyes, Dom scanned his surroundings before he decided to sketch from the opposite side of the canyon. He shrugged his backpack into a more comfortable position and set off. The rains had been light enough that the creek was a ribbon Dom could jump over without much danger of getting his feet wet, and he worked his way up the canyon until he was about a half mile above the ruins on the opposite side. Only then did he climb up the loose rock slope at the base of the canyon's stone walls.
When Dom could climb no higher without encountering solid rock, he began scrambling parallel to the base of the cliff that formed the canyon wall. Every few minutes he paused to look at the ruins across the canyon, checking the changing angles until he found one he liked. His strategy meant a hard scramble across the debris slope at the base of the canyon's wall, but he had made similar scrambles at other sites in order to find just the right place to sit and sketch.
Finally, Dom stopped at the top of a particularly steep scramble where a section of the sandstone cliff had sloughed away, burying everything beneath in chunks of stone as big as a truck. Wiping his forehead, Dom checked the angle of the ruins and sighed.
"Close, but not good enough." He looked at the debris slope ahead, then at the ruins again."Just a bit farther, I hope."
Climbing carefully, scrambling much of the time, his hands and clothes smelling sweetly of the evergreens he had grabbed to pull himself along the steepest parts, Dom moved along the cliff base. Suddenly, he saw a curving something on the ground that was the wrong color and shape to be a stone. He walked eagerly forward, bending to pick up the potshard, which glowed an unusual red in the slanting sunlight. No sooner had his fingers curled around the shard than the ground gave way beneath his feet, sending him down in a torrent of dirt and stone.
Clutching at the air and screaming, Dom plunged into darkness ... and the name he screamed was Billy's.