New Fanfic
Title: Green Eyes 1/3
Author: Trix
Rating: R
Summary: Ben Wade muses on the drunken whore that is fate.
Green eyes. It had always been the eyes that haunted him. That drove him to madness and back again. It started with his mother. Her eyes were green, green like good jade, and she was always laughing. Until the day she stopped, stopped and handed him that bible and left him alone at the train station. He never knew if she’d gotten herself killed in some dark alley, truly trying to get them both train tickets, or if she’d just abandoned him. He hoped it was the latter, really. It was easier to bear being unwanted than it was to imagine she’d died, violently and alone.
When he was 19, there was ‘frisco. There was Velvet, with her golden curls and gorgeous voice and those sea green eyes that shifted as she spoke, or sang or fucked. She’d been the girl he’d imagined spending the rest of his life with. He’d gone on one last heist, to make enough money to help her buy out her contract, and when he went back for her…she was gone, as if she’d never existed. Just a sweet, beautiful dream. He’d spent the next four years exorcizing the ghost of any sort of kindness and goodness inside himself. Determined to never be so weak again. If you didn’t have a heart, it couldn’t get broken.
That was when he met Charlie Prince. He was a dirty, foul mouthed little bastard and even fouler tempered, but he’d had a heart like a lion and a sea of devotion, untouched and just waiting to be used. Ben had cleaned him up, taught him to shoot, how to walk and talk and act like a man should. Under the filth, Charlie had been blond, beautifully perfectly blond, with green eyes that were vivid as grass on the prairie. They’d drifted together, and apart for nearly fifteen years, sharing bedrolls and whores and more of their lives than any two men really should. Those green eyes always brought him back, even when he knew he should end it.
He tried, god knew he never intended to be a sodomite. He took whores to his bed, women all. None of them were right, none of them would follow where he led, none of them had the loyal heart he wanted or the green eyes he needed . The irony of his capture was that he’d lingered to bed a woman that he only wanted himself to want, instead of actually desired. The man though, the man with his smart mouth and bold as brass questions. That did indeed pique his interest a trifle. Men didn’t look Ben Wade in the eye. They hadn’t since he’d been seventeen years old and slaughtered his way through half his own gang to take his previous bosses position as Boss.
Men didn’t look Ben Wade in the eyes, because most men don’t like looking at Death, their own or anyone else’s. It was too close, too real a reminder that a man’s life was a finite and limited thing. Dan Evans looked him in the eye and never flinched. Dan Evans knew death, knew it well and wasn’t afraid of it. It sat with him at breakfast and dinner, it shadowed his steps. Death and Danny-boy were old pals, and no mere mortal could terrify a man what supped with death itself.
Ben had to respect a thing like that, and the sheer brass balls it took for him to look him in the eye and never flinch or look as the Law came for him. Most men would have looked, betrayed the game by some inadvertent gesture or sheer nerves. Not Dan, the sonovabitch never even turned a hair. Ben simultaneously wanted to stab a knife through one of those fine eyes and bend him over the bar and pound him raw for the sheer nerve of it. It was enough of a dichotomy of desire to keep him bemused all the way to the farmer’s ranch.
He’d never expected what he found. Velvet. Older, more worn…but it was her, sure as summer rain, and the boy what looked at him with those worshipful eyes, that was his own flesh; sure as he breathed. He looked at the salt shakers on the table, that was the last piece. They were the same damned salt shakers that had sat on the little table in her room. Handed down in her family for for generations, she’d been a sea captain’s daughter and those salt shakers had come from Japan, and were like as not worth more than the entire fucking ranch they lived on.
She knew him too, it was in her furtive glances and the desperate sheen to her gorgeous sea-green eyes, and he couldn’t stop looking at all of them. What a tangled, twisted knot of a family this was. Like as not he’d never know the whole story. He wouldn’t expose her. He’d never wanted Velvet to be afraid of him, he wouldn’t ruin the life she’d built for herself…and for his son. Sturdy and handsome, with his Momma’s green eyes and his own nose and chin, a more generous mouth than his own, made more for smiling than sneering. So much fire in him it spat and fizzled as anger and restlessness. He knew it, knew how it felt; and quite suddenly he realized that the last thing he ever wanted was for his boy to ever, ever turn out like him. He looked at Dan Evans and saw in him all the things he wanted his boy to have. Steadiness, to temper that fire in him, loyalty to his family. Mule stubbornness in good and plenty, and the strength to face what other men couldn’t and not flinch. To carry on, when life tried to rob him of his dignity and to do the right thing, even when everyone else called him a damn fool.
He looked at them all and decided then and there that he was going to escape. He was going to put as many miles between the Evans Family and himself as possible. He wasn’t going to rain ruin down on this family. On *his* family. They might not know it, but they were his; and Ben Wade always watched after what was his.
There was time, after all. It was many miles to Contrition, and who knew what could happen on the lonely road.
Author: Trix
Rating: R
Summary: Ben Wade muses on the drunken whore that is fate.
Green eyes. It had always been the eyes that haunted him. That drove him to madness and back again. It started with his mother. Her eyes were green, green like good jade, and she was always laughing. Until the day she stopped, stopped and handed him that bible and left him alone at the train station. He never knew if she’d gotten herself killed in some dark alley, truly trying to get them both train tickets, or if she’d just abandoned him. He hoped it was the latter, really. It was easier to bear being unwanted than it was to imagine she’d died, violently and alone.
When he was 19, there was ‘frisco. There was Velvet, with her golden curls and gorgeous voice and those sea green eyes that shifted as she spoke, or sang or fucked. She’d been the girl he’d imagined spending the rest of his life with. He’d gone on one last heist, to make enough money to help her buy out her contract, and when he went back for her…she was gone, as if she’d never existed. Just a sweet, beautiful dream. He’d spent the next four years exorcizing the ghost of any sort of kindness and goodness inside himself. Determined to never be so weak again. If you didn’t have a heart, it couldn’t get broken.
That was when he met Charlie Prince. He was a dirty, foul mouthed little bastard and even fouler tempered, but he’d had a heart like a lion and a sea of devotion, untouched and just waiting to be used. Ben had cleaned him up, taught him to shoot, how to walk and talk and act like a man should. Under the filth, Charlie had been blond, beautifully perfectly blond, with green eyes that were vivid as grass on the prairie. They’d drifted together, and apart for nearly fifteen years, sharing bedrolls and whores and more of their lives than any two men really should. Those green eyes always brought him back, even when he knew he should end it.
He tried, god knew he never intended to be a sodomite. He took whores to his bed, women all. None of them were right, none of them would follow where he led, none of them had the loyal heart he wanted or the green eyes he needed . The irony of his capture was that he’d lingered to bed a woman that he only wanted himself to want, instead of actually desired. The man though, the man with his smart mouth and bold as brass questions. That did indeed pique his interest a trifle. Men didn’t look Ben Wade in the eye. They hadn’t since he’d been seventeen years old and slaughtered his way through half his own gang to take his previous bosses position as Boss.
Men didn’t look Ben Wade in the eyes, because most men don’t like looking at Death, their own or anyone else’s. It was too close, too real a reminder that a man’s life was a finite and limited thing. Dan Evans looked him in the eye and never flinched. Dan Evans knew death, knew it well and wasn’t afraid of it. It sat with him at breakfast and dinner, it shadowed his steps. Death and Danny-boy were old pals, and no mere mortal could terrify a man what supped with death itself.
Ben had to respect a thing like that, and the sheer brass balls it took for him to look him in the eye and never flinch or look as the Law came for him. Most men would have looked, betrayed the game by some inadvertent gesture or sheer nerves. Not Dan, the sonovabitch never even turned a hair. Ben simultaneously wanted to stab a knife through one of those fine eyes and bend him over the bar and pound him raw for the sheer nerve of it. It was enough of a dichotomy of desire to keep him bemused all the way to the farmer’s ranch.
He’d never expected what he found. Velvet. Older, more worn…but it was her, sure as summer rain, and the boy what looked at him with those worshipful eyes, that was his own flesh; sure as he breathed. He looked at the salt shakers on the table, that was the last piece. They were the same damned salt shakers that had sat on the little table in her room. Handed down in her family for for generations, she’d been a sea captain’s daughter and those salt shakers had come from Japan, and were like as not worth more than the entire fucking ranch they lived on.
She knew him too, it was in her furtive glances and the desperate sheen to her gorgeous sea-green eyes, and he couldn’t stop looking at all of them. What a tangled, twisted knot of a family this was. Like as not he’d never know the whole story. He wouldn’t expose her. He’d never wanted Velvet to be afraid of him, he wouldn’t ruin the life she’d built for herself…and for his son. Sturdy and handsome, with his Momma’s green eyes and his own nose and chin, a more generous mouth than his own, made more for smiling than sneering. So much fire in him it spat and fizzled as anger and restlessness. He knew it, knew how it felt; and quite suddenly he realized that the last thing he ever wanted was for his boy to ever, ever turn out like him. He looked at Dan Evans and saw in him all the things he wanted his boy to have. Steadiness, to temper that fire in him, loyalty to his family. Mule stubbornness in good and plenty, and the strength to face what other men couldn’t and not flinch. To carry on, when life tried to rob him of his dignity and to do the right thing, even when everyone else called him a damn fool.
He looked at them all and decided then and there that he was going to escape. He was going to put as many miles between the Evans Family and himself as possible. He wasn’t going to rain ruin down on this family. On *his* family. They might not know it, but they were his; and Ben Wade always watched after what was his.
There was time, after all. It was many miles to Contrition, and who knew what could happen on the lonely road.