Possibly this post does not deserve a title
This is Little House on the Prairie fic. Er... specifically, it's from the latter books, though-- from The Long Winter onwards. jibrailis and helenvalentine I am looking at you. ♥ I didn't want to post this on the fic journal because I didn't want to bother people by cluttering up their friendspages with LITTLE HOUSE PORN, but hopefully, friendslist, you are more used to dealing with me and my stupid entries... and tons of porn have been written about much less appropriate subjects than a pair of nineteen-year-old boys, come on... please don't hate me. ;____;
A Prairie Home Companion
4,000 words
Almanzo/Cap
Mostly based on the books, though with a little real-life history scattered throughout, like the uncertainty regarding Almanzo and Cap's ages, and Cap's eventual untimely death at twenty-six. So many anachronisms!
Highlight for notes and spoilers: I think that any story set in a pastoral setting has the potential to embody the traditional pastoral conflict, the movement from homosociality or homoeroticism to heterosexual union. So I think it's not really that Laura is Almanzo's beard, or that he doesn't love her; it runs deeper than that, because this push toward heterosexual union is almost inevitable in a pastoral narrative, and Almanzo is mostly just balking at the thought of being unable to buck it. But the oppression runs both ways, of course, because the stubborn impulse to retain homosociality comes at the cost of silencing women-- which is why Laura has no lines, though she probably said some very saucy things to very many people... [/blather]
All the world must be moving out west. Royal’s is still the only feed store in town, but all summer long, family after family wanders into De Smet and settles the claims they’ve held down.
“You just watch,” says Royal, “this will be a city yet-- we’ll do good business here.”
Almanzo doesn’t care much for Royal’s notions of business, only loves Dakota Territory for the endlessness of it. There’s nothing like a flat land for breaking horses. He leans against the screen of their door and watches Royal whittle his handful of wood down to nothing, amusing themselves with the trickle of passersby down Main Street.
A lady bustles past, glances at them from beneath her bonnet, and exchanges a nod with Royal.
“You know her?” asks Almanzo.
“New teacher,” says Royal. “Miss Florence Garland, I helped her down at Loftus’ yesterday. There’s a fella knows how to drive a bargain, I figure he’ll burn for it, but if I don’t envy him his flinty heart. She’s at that new prairie shanty with a brother your age, I hear. Guess that’s him.”
Behind her, a boy comes hurrying down the path, carrying a stack of kitchenware piled atop a bundle of linen. He spots them looking and perks up in recognition, turning toward them. His load sways precariously as he makes his way up the steps.
“You must be the Wilders,” he says. “Florence says you did her a good turn at the grocer’s yesterday, thank you.”
“It was nothing,” says Royal. “Glad to help. I’m Roy Wilder, and this is my brother Almanzo.”
“Cap Garland,” he says. “It’s good to meet you, Roy.” And then he cranes his head around the pots and pans, and says, “Manzo.”
It’s just that Cap has his back to the midday sun, glinting savage off the copper, and Almanzo can’t really make out the look on his face from the shade. Almanzo is just wary, that’s all; people are right to be, out in the Territory. Wary of lanky, loose-limbed boys with golden hair and funny names.
“You can call me Wilder,” says Almanzo, like he needs to keep Cap at bay. Like fencing out a wolf.
“Okay,” says Cap, and smiles.
+
The difference is that wolves know where they’re not welcome. They can smell your gunpowder, the clumsy bear-traps you beckon them into. Slinking friendless in circles around the trace of your sheep in the grass.
It’s the foxes that squeeze themselves past the pens and the bolted gates, digging holes and dodging bullets just to sink their little teeth into a pullet’s throat. It’s always the foxes you have to watch out for.
There’s a rainstorm catches them unprepared, and Almanzo barely makes it inside, the rain lashing down in droves as soon as he slams the door behind him.
“Clouds out of nowhere,” says Royal, looking moodily out the window of their shanty. “That’s all the work for today, if it doesn’t let up. And just when I was about to head out.”
“Never mind,” says Almanzo. “Some summer rain’s good news.”
Almost like he’s being laughed at, a flurry of knocks sound on the door just then. Royal and Almanzo exchange a brief look. The knocking turns to pounding, and a voice calls, “Don’t let a body drown on land.”
When Almanzo pulls the door open, it’s Cap standing there, shivering. He’s soaked to the bone and gasping for breath. All his clothes are plastered to him, hair drenched against his forehead.
“For God’s sake, Manzo,” says Royal, “will you let him in?”
Dumbly, Almanzo steps aside. Royal snatches the muslin straight off their table and whisks Cap indoors, where he dabs the cloth through his hair, wipes away the water streaming into his face.
“--didn’t see it coming,” Cap is saying, blue-lipped and shaky, “and I would have had to cut through the Slough to get back home, but in this weather--”
“What are you waiting around for?” Royal demands, gesturing at Almanzo. “Get him something to change into, start a fire, make yourself useful.”
Naturally, Royal takes to Cap. For a younger brother, Almanzo has never been much to fuss over, thankless and sullen at the implication that he wouldn’t do perfectly well on his own. But Cap laps up the attention when it’s offered him, and besides, he’s shrewd. The shopkeeper in Royal likes that.
Royal decides he can’t let a guest out without feeding him first, and he rummages about the kitchen, trying to scrounge up a couple buckwheat pancakes. When Almanzo turns back from the fire, Cap is peeling himself out of his shirt, the line of his back a long, wet curve.
“I can do the pancakes,” Almanzo tells Royal, desperately unsure of where to look. “I’m better at them, anyway.”
“Don’t be rude,” says Royal. “Keep Cap company, you’re the same age. You ought to make friends.”
Almanzo hangs around the stove until he’s reasonably sure that Cap is done changing. When he tiptoes back out, Cap is sitting in front of the fireplace, looking into the burning straw like there’s something worth watching there. Almanzo shuffles a bit, and sits himself down next to Cap, resigned to small talk.
But whether it’s because Cap is exhausted, or because Almanzo is so clearly not a conversationalist, it never happens. Almanzo joins him in silently watching the fire, and Cap’s toes are bare beneath the hem of his borrowed trousers, shirtsleeves falling halfway over his hands. Royal’s hand-me-downs. They’re a bit large even for Almanzo, but Cap is swimming in them. He’s a farmer, not skinny, but there’s a young quickness to his body, like it hasn’t quite started filling out yet.
Suddenly guilty, Almanzo darts a glance at Cap’s face, just to make sure he hasn’t been caught staring. But Cap’s head is drooping in the warmth of the fire, sun-bleached eyelashes fluttering closed.
Almanzo looks into the fire, and when Cap’s head slides onto his shoulder, he shifts a little nearer. It would be awful manners to let a sleeping guest fall to the floor. The sound of the rain, the sizzle of pancakes on the griddle.
+
Cap’s not so bad after all. He’s a hard worker, and Almanzo thinks, nobody who is a hard worker can really be bad. It doesn’t hurt that Cap seems to be attached to him, though Heaven only knows why.
They grow closer through the fall, when Cap comes by their fields every so often to lend them a hand, and he and Royal help the Garlands move into town for the winter. Cap’s easy to get used to, once Almanzo starts. He’s eager but never underfoot, reckless but not foolhardy. When Almanzo makes one of his sombre attempts at a joke, Cap’s eyes go wide, then he grins and his teeth are even and sharp.
“You have some humor in you, Wilder,” he says, and touches him lightly on the shoulder as he passes. It’s a quick, fleeting thing, but Almanzo feels like he’s been scalded. He wonders if Cap notices him rubbing at the spot through his shirt.
So when the Hard Winter hits and the rumors of seed wheat start wafting through De Smet, there’s no one else he’d rather go with than Cap. Well, there’s probably no one else in town who would go at all. But when Almanzo asks him, he hesitates.
“Forget it,” says Almanzo, irritated. “I can make the trip alone.”
“No, wait, let me come with you,” says Cap. “It’s just that-- I’m just really glad you asked, you know.”
Almanzo feels the back of his neck begin to prickle with an unaccountable itch, and he says, “It’s not a picnic. It’s twenty miles out south with hardly any markers, and chances are, we’ll get caught in a blizzard and lose our way back.”
“Yeah,” says Cap, almost shyly. “Thank you for taking me.”
Later, in front of Loftus’ store with their sleds heavy with grain and the storm starting to whip them, it’s half the excitement of victory that makes Almanzo lean in toward Cap and kiss him. Their breath is frozen on their lips and Almanzo can hardly feel the touch at all, but Cap nearly drops the reins to his buckskin.
“Wilder,” he says, “what was--”
He brings his gloved hand up to his mouth, and in the thin light through the storefront window, he looks so terribly young. Like he’s been taken apart and peered into.
“Just how old are you, anyway,” says Almanzo.
Cap blinks, and the moment is over; he’s back to himself again, grinning as he swings up onto the horse.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says. “Homesteader.”
+
The spring comes against all odds, and by then Almanzo calls himself twenty-two. Cap calls himself twenty. It’s too late in the season for strenuous work, but the Wilders have their store and their seed wheat and their horses, so Almanzo isn’t worried.
In the checker rooms at the drugstore there’s talk about a Fourth of July buggy race, and he can’t shake the thought from his mind, addicted to the rush of triumph now. When Almanzo tells Cap about it, his whole face lights up, and that seals the deal.
“You don’t even own a buggy,” says Cap, delighted.
“Prince and Lady will beat any team in town,” says Almanzo. “Even with a whole house hitched behind them.”
“So what’re you talking to me for,” asks Cap, and props his feet up on the bale of hay. The grass smells sweet all around them, and Almanzo drinks in the insolent stretch of Cap’s legs, his trousers tight around his hips.
“They still need exercise,” says Almanzo, and Cap licks his lips.
Making their way at suppertime back to the Wilders’ shanty at a trot, Almanzo pulls Lady up beside Prince, and hands Cap the lit cigar. Cap makes sure to curl his fingers around Almanzo’s as he takes it, and his cheeks hollow obscenely when he inhales.
“Come here,” says Cap, and leans off of Prince, resting his weight on the hand he puts on Lady’s back.
“You’ll break your neck,” says Almanzo, but Cap shakes his head and takes another drag, and presses his mouth against Almanzo’s.
The smoke is dusky in their throats, and Cap opens so easily into him. It’s a better cigar than he would have bought, won at checkers, but Almanzo wonders what Cap tastes like beneath it. Even after the wisps of smoke have drifted away, he keeps chasing the flick of Cap’s tongue, into the soft heat of his mouth.
Cap pokes the cigar back between Almanzo’s teeth, his eyes bright. The sun’s starting to dip. Almanzo runs his hand through the mess of Cap’s hair, still washed pale from the summer past.
“You like my hair?” asks Cap. “That’s a surprise. Turns out your tastes are really nothing unusual.”
But it’s not the same, is what Almanzo wants to tell him. That he’s never trailed after blonde boys or girls before, that he likes Cap’s hair best when it’s an overgrown shock of white against the tanned nape of his neck. It doesn’t make you look like a doll, your hair, is what Almanzo would say, if he were fonder of words. It makes you look like lightning.
He gives Prince a sharp pat on the rump, and the horse breaks into a gallop. Cap clutches to the reins and shoots Almanzo a dirty look over his shoulder.
+
Almanzo walks in through the doors of the drugstore. He’s greeted with cheers and toasts, and then with an armful of Cap Garland.
“Come upstairs,” says Cap, low into his ear, under the roar of men offering their congratulations. “Let’s celebrate.”
With a peddler’s cart! people are shouting at him, and What’ll you take for those Morgans, and Almanzo wades through the crowd laughing and apologizing, Nothing, folks, won’t part with them for any price. Cap’s grip is firm around his wrist, leading him up the stairs.
Spirits are too high for checkers, and the room upstairs is empty, dark with all the lamps carried down to the men in the drugstore. Cap wedges a chair beneath the doorknob, grabs at Almanzo’s collar, and kisses him.
“You did it,” he whispers fervently, “five dollars and the talk of the whole town.”
“Did you doubt me?” asks Almanzo, and tips his hat. Cap yanks it away from him and throws it into a corner.
They’re stuck upstairs in an empty room, nothing but bare furniture scattered around the floor, so Almanzo bends Cap over a table and works him open bit by bit. It’s infinitely, painfully slow, and maybe it’s something he ought to have expected, but Cap is loud.
“Wilder,” he gasps when Almanzo fits a third finger inside him. “Yes, oh--”
“Will you keep it down,” says Almanzo, and means for it to sound soothing. Cap only moans and presses back against him, back arching like a wildcat.
By the time Almanzo pushes himself inside, Cap is a whimpering, writhing mess, all of his skin hot to the touch. Cap is struggling to hold himself still, but there are tiny tremors running down his back, and Almanzo thinks of him stepping out of the rain, naked in the firelight. He slips his hand in under Cap’s shirt, splays his palm out over the dip of his spine. Cap flinches, biting down on a broken little sound.
His hips hitch in surprise when Almanzo starts to move in him, and Almanzo is almost certain that the noises he’s making are going to carry downstairs. God, it sends his blood rushing, Cap moaning under him, sweet and utterly wrecked. But he doesn’t want the crowd to grow suspicious, climbing up to investigate.
“Sorry,” he says, “I have to,” and he stifles Cap’s mouth.
“Oh, God-- oh,” Cap pants against his hand, like he can’t help himself, his breath hot and damp. “Wilder, please, yes--”
He clings to Almanzo’s hand with his, desperate and unsteady, as Almanzo drives deep into him. Cap’s a sweet boy, isn’t he, and it almost makes Almanzo want to be cruel, the way Cap takes him so willingly into the heat of his body. He rocks him a little rougher up against the table, and Cap goes so unbearably tight around him, teeth biting into the meat of his hand.
“Do you like that?” he asks, and Cap whines in answer, his eyes wet in the slivers of light through the floorboards.
In the end, one hand digging into Cap’s hips hard enough to bruise, Almanzo thrusts into him with a vicious edge he might regret, only Cap never complains-- just shudders beautifully and takes him and takes him and takes him, never refusing him a single thing.
“Manzo,” he sobs, muffled against his palm. “God, Manzo--”
“Cap,” says Almanzo, and doesn’t correct him.
+
When they all move back to town, Cap visits him at the back of the store like he’s coming home. Almanzo enjoys stealing time alone with Cap, days when Royal does the chores in the stable, Cap’s hair spilling out on the floor before the fire.
At twenty-one -- if he is that -- Cap is old enough to leave school, but he seems to be in no hurry. Maybe it’s his sister the schoolteacher, but then, isn’t Almanzo’s? Cap doesn’t miss a day, though sometimes he cuts it very close to tardy, sneaking past the feed store for a sly kiss or two.
The day that Almanzo watches the boys at school pull all the girls down Main Street in a sled, Cap comes back laughing, shaking out bits of ice from his clothes. Royal’s out in the stable, and Almanzo lets Cap take him into his mouth, warming quick around him.
“Saw you were sledding today,” Almanzo says later, buttoning himself back up.
“There’s one of the girls I think has it bad for me,” says Cap, offhandedly. “You’ll know her father-- the Ingalls girl.”
“You’re modest as always,” says Almanzo.
“She does, though,” says Cap. “She’s all right, but me, I’m more of a-- you know Mary Power? The tailor’s daughter? I like her sort better.”
“What sort is that,” asks Almanzo, and keeps his voice level.
“Tall, dark,” says Cap. “Not much for talking, but steady as a rock.”
Cap looks at him, lips curling into a winning smile. Almanzo swallows and looks away.
“But you’d like Laura best,” says Cap. “You like a bit of fire. Headstrong, feral things.”
“What makes you so sure?” scoffs Almanzo.
Cap stretches out on his stomach next to him, laying his head in the crook of one arm.
“You like me, don’t you,” he says, and it’s not really a question. Almanzo thinks of Cap tugging the sled down Main Street, running in the winter wind, the flush high on his cheeks.
+
In the middle of the revival meeting, Cap nudges him with an elbow and says, “That’s her, Manzo, that’s Laura Ingalls.”
Almanzo follows the tilt of his chin, but the girl has whipped her head around toward the front again. From the back where they sit, she looks small, surrounded by her family. The organ begins to play.
“Did you catch her looking at me,” whispers Cap.
“Sing the hymn, you damn heathen,” says Almanzo, and Cap laughs.
When families start to leave, all the boys and men in the back stand to let them pass. In the shuffle and press of people, Almanzo stumbles, and Cap is gone when he straightens up. He looks everywhere for tufts of summer-sun hair, but he can’t find him. It occurs to Almanzo that Cap might have disappeared on purpose, and he tries to remember that girl’s name, the tailor’s daughter.
The crowd sweeps him into the aisle, and he finds himself pushed into step beside Laura Ingalls, who is barely fifteen but straight-backed. With a sudden vengeful spite, he touches the sleeve of her coat.
“May I see you home?” he asks.
She startles, at that, and her eyes flicker past him like she’s expecting someone else. She was looking at Cap, he thinks. He was right.
But when he says goodbye and trudges into the back of the feed store, Cap is there with Royal, with a plate of ham in his hand.
“Baching it may be lonely work,” says Cap, “but at least you’re free to do as you please.”
“Where were you?” asks Almanzo.
“Oh,” says Cap, “were you looking for me?”
“Don’t play that,” snaps Almanzo, and Royal looks back at him in surprise.
“Who’d you walk back with?” asks Cap.
“Laura Ingalls,” says Almanzo.
Cap’s face softens when he hears it, and he says, “Isn’t she a perfect devil?”
+
Cap starts to make a habit of it, disappearing after the School Exhibition, after church. Laura Ingalls is a good sport, letting Almanzo take her home every time he shows up at her side, looking confused at where he’s ended up.
When a week goes by without Cap in the back room of the feed store, Almanzo asks Royal, “Where’d Cap go?”
“He’s in his own house, where he lives,” says Royal. “Are you visiting him?”
Almanzo falters; there’s no reason why he shouldn’t, but that it seems the wrong way round. At any rate, if Cap wants nothing to do with him, Almanzo isn’t about to force him into his company.
He sees Cap just once before the spring, when he’s setting out to bring Laura Ingalls back to De Smet on a Friday at forty below zero. He’s frowning at the thermometer outside Fuller’s Hardware, when something brushes past his back. Almanzo turns to look, and when the door to Fuller’s swings open, the light from inside glows over Cap’s face, half hidden inside his muffler.
“Cap,” Almanzo blurts out, all his resolution forgotten, “where’ve you--”
Cap tugs down the edge of his muffler, his breath wispy whorls of steam. Almanzo turns warm and thinks that everything is going to be all right, that Cap is going to explain everything, and be in the back room for him when the cutter gets back home.
Instead, Cap just says, “You’re making her wait.”
“God damn it,” snarls Almanzo, wrenches the doorknob away from Cap, and mashes their mouths together. For a moment, it’s like nothing has changed-- Cap’s lips moving against his, achingly familiar.
But then Cap murmurs, “No, Manzo,” half to himself, and “I can’t, sorry, I can’t.”
“What are you doing?” demands Almanzo. “Why can’t you?”
“You should go,” says Cap, and pulls the door open like running away. “God hates a coward.”
Almanzo stands there a long while after the door has closed, shaking in place, not giving a damn what God hates and doesn’t hate. He hates the liars and traitors too, he would shout after him, but of course, Cap never promised him anything.
+
Cap shows up at his door in May, like he’s been there all along.
“I heard you were breaking colts,” he says. “Do you need a hand? Want to hitch them to your buggy? Take me riding.”
Almanzo pulls his hand back, meaning to punch him, but ends up managing nothing but a tight, quiet hug. Cap rests his cheek against Almanzo’s shoulder.
Skip and Barnum are a pair of ill-behaved horrors, and it’s more than work enough just to get them hitched, the red wheels of the buggy bouncing as they rear and kick out. Cap scampers up onto the driver’s seat, but Almanzo shoos him toward the back.
“Maybe next time,” says Almanzo.
“You don’t give me enough credit,” says Cap, and crosses his legs in a mock huff.
They go rattling on across the aimless expanse of the prairie, on and off roads, down to Lake Henry. By the time they arrive, Almanzo’s arms are numb with the straining, and he’s glad to lash the horses to a hitching post and slide off the buggy. Cap sweeps handfuls of early berries off the bushes as they stroll, and his mouth is sweet when Almanzo pushes him down into the grass.
Cap’s hair is beginning to pale again. Almanzo licks the salt off of his skin, and Cap hooks his heels behind Almanzo’s back, pulling him in closer. There’s no one out for miles, and Cap can be as loud as he likes, begging and gasping incoherently when Almanzo fills him.
“You know,” Almanzo says afterwards, “there isn’t a man in town who’d ride behind these colts except you.”
“Except me,” says Cap, “and Laura Ingalls.”
“Laura Ingalls,” says Almanzo, angrily, towering over Cap when he sits up. “Always Laura Ingalls, Laura Ingalls. What is it with you, anyhow? What do you mean by it?”
Cap doesn’t answer, just throws an arm over his eyes.
“It’s bright out,” he says. “Definitely spring.”
“God hates a coward,” Almanzo tells him.
“He does,” says Cap, “but it’s always hard, isn’t it?”
“What is?” asks Almanzo.
“Weaning a foal, Wilder,” says Cap. “It’s hard for everyone.”
And he slides his arm off his face, narrowing his eyes against the sun. When he smiles, the full heat of it is meant for Almanzo, and that’s when Almanzo knows that it’s the last time. He thinks of the dimples in Laura’s seamstress hands -- what a ring would look like nestled into the grooves of her fingers -- and he wants to scream.
+
Once, on the precipice of the Hard Winter, Cap Garland stood in the frosted fields and tilted his head up toward the sky. Above him, all the geese in Dakota were flying south, leaving the ponds barren. Cap shaded his eyes to watch them pass.
If only we were all so brave, he thought. If only we could all flee from perishing things with the courage to never look back.
A Prairie Home Companion
4,000 words
Almanzo/Cap
Mostly based on the books, though with a little real-life history scattered throughout, like the uncertainty regarding Almanzo and Cap's ages, and Cap's eventual untimely death at twenty-six. So many anachronisms!
Highlight for notes and spoilers: I think that any story set in a pastoral setting has the potential to embody the traditional pastoral conflict, the movement from homosociality or homoeroticism to heterosexual union. So I think it's not really that Laura is Almanzo's beard, or that he doesn't love her; it runs deeper than that, because this push toward heterosexual union is almost inevitable in a pastoral narrative, and Almanzo is mostly just balking at the thought of being unable to buck it. But the oppression runs both ways, of course, because the stubborn impulse to retain homosociality comes at the cost of silencing women-- which is why Laura has no lines, though she probably said some very saucy things to very many people... [/blather]
All the world must be moving out west. Royal’s is still the only feed store in town, but all summer long, family after family wanders into De Smet and settles the claims they’ve held down.
“You just watch,” says Royal, “this will be a city yet-- we’ll do good business here.”
Almanzo doesn’t care much for Royal’s notions of business, only loves Dakota Territory for the endlessness of it. There’s nothing like a flat land for breaking horses. He leans against the screen of their door and watches Royal whittle his handful of wood down to nothing, amusing themselves with the trickle of passersby down Main Street.
A lady bustles past, glances at them from beneath her bonnet, and exchanges a nod with Royal.
“You know her?” asks Almanzo.
“New teacher,” says Royal. “Miss Florence Garland, I helped her down at Loftus’ yesterday. There’s a fella knows how to drive a bargain, I figure he’ll burn for it, but if I don’t envy him his flinty heart. She’s at that new prairie shanty with a brother your age, I hear. Guess that’s him.”
Behind her, a boy comes hurrying down the path, carrying a stack of kitchenware piled atop a bundle of linen. He spots them looking and perks up in recognition, turning toward them. His load sways precariously as he makes his way up the steps.
“You must be the Wilders,” he says. “Florence says you did her a good turn at the grocer’s yesterday, thank you.”
“It was nothing,” says Royal. “Glad to help. I’m Roy Wilder, and this is my brother Almanzo.”
“Cap Garland,” he says. “It’s good to meet you, Roy.” And then he cranes his head around the pots and pans, and says, “Manzo.”
It’s just that Cap has his back to the midday sun, glinting savage off the copper, and Almanzo can’t really make out the look on his face from the shade. Almanzo is just wary, that’s all; people are right to be, out in the Territory. Wary of lanky, loose-limbed boys with golden hair and funny names.
“You can call me Wilder,” says Almanzo, like he needs to keep Cap at bay. Like fencing out a wolf.
“Okay,” says Cap, and smiles.
+
The difference is that wolves know where they’re not welcome. They can smell your gunpowder, the clumsy bear-traps you beckon them into. Slinking friendless in circles around the trace of your sheep in the grass.
It’s the foxes that squeeze themselves past the pens and the bolted gates, digging holes and dodging bullets just to sink their little teeth into a pullet’s throat. It’s always the foxes you have to watch out for.
There’s a rainstorm catches them unprepared, and Almanzo barely makes it inside, the rain lashing down in droves as soon as he slams the door behind him.
“Clouds out of nowhere,” says Royal, looking moodily out the window of their shanty. “That’s all the work for today, if it doesn’t let up. And just when I was about to head out.”
“Never mind,” says Almanzo. “Some summer rain’s good news.”
Almost like he’s being laughed at, a flurry of knocks sound on the door just then. Royal and Almanzo exchange a brief look. The knocking turns to pounding, and a voice calls, “Don’t let a body drown on land.”
When Almanzo pulls the door open, it’s Cap standing there, shivering. He’s soaked to the bone and gasping for breath. All his clothes are plastered to him, hair drenched against his forehead.
“For God’s sake, Manzo,” says Royal, “will you let him in?”
Dumbly, Almanzo steps aside. Royal snatches the muslin straight off their table and whisks Cap indoors, where he dabs the cloth through his hair, wipes away the water streaming into his face.
“--didn’t see it coming,” Cap is saying, blue-lipped and shaky, “and I would have had to cut through the Slough to get back home, but in this weather--”
“What are you waiting around for?” Royal demands, gesturing at Almanzo. “Get him something to change into, start a fire, make yourself useful.”
Naturally, Royal takes to Cap. For a younger brother, Almanzo has never been much to fuss over, thankless and sullen at the implication that he wouldn’t do perfectly well on his own. But Cap laps up the attention when it’s offered him, and besides, he’s shrewd. The shopkeeper in Royal likes that.
Royal decides he can’t let a guest out without feeding him first, and he rummages about the kitchen, trying to scrounge up a couple buckwheat pancakes. When Almanzo turns back from the fire, Cap is peeling himself out of his shirt, the line of his back a long, wet curve.
“I can do the pancakes,” Almanzo tells Royal, desperately unsure of where to look. “I’m better at them, anyway.”
“Don’t be rude,” says Royal. “Keep Cap company, you’re the same age. You ought to make friends.”
Almanzo hangs around the stove until he’s reasonably sure that Cap is done changing. When he tiptoes back out, Cap is sitting in front of the fireplace, looking into the burning straw like there’s something worth watching there. Almanzo shuffles a bit, and sits himself down next to Cap, resigned to small talk.
But whether it’s because Cap is exhausted, or because Almanzo is so clearly not a conversationalist, it never happens. Almanzo joins him in silently watching the fire, and Cap’s toes are bare beneath the hem of his borrowed trousers, shirtsleeves falling halfway over his hands. Royal’s hand-me-downs. They’re a bit large even for Almanzo, but Cap is swimming in them. He’s a farmer, not skinny, but there’s a young quickness to his body, like it hasn’t quite started filling out yet.
Suddenly guilty, Almanzo darts a glance at Cap’s face, just to make sure he hasn’t been caught staring. But Cap’s head is drooping in the warmth of the fire, sun-bleached eyelashes fluttering closed.
Almanzo looks into the fire, and when Cap’s head slides onto his shoulder, he shifts a little nearer. It would be awful manners to let a sleeping guest fall to the floor. The sound of the rain, the sizzle of pancakes on the griddle.
+
Cap’s not so bad after all. He’s a hard worker, and Almanzo thinks, nobody who is a hard worker can really be bad. It doesn’t hurt that Cap seems to be attached to him, though Heaven only knows why.
They grow closer through the fall, when Cap comes by their fields every so often to lend them a hand, and he and Royal help the Garlands move into town for the winter. Cap’s easy to get used to, once Almanzo starts. He’s eager but never underfoot, reckless but not foolhardy. When Almanzo makes one of his sombre attempts at a joke, Cap’s eyes go wide, then he grins and his teeth are even and sharp.
“You have some humor in you, Wilder,” he says, and touches him lightly on the shoulder as he passes. It’s a quick, fleeting thing, but Almanzo feels like he’s been scalded. He wonders if Cap notices him rubbing at the spot through his shirt.
So when the Hard Winter hits and the rumors of seed wheat start wafting through De Smet, there’s no one else he’d rather go with than Cap. Well, there’s probably no one else in town who would go at all. But when Almanzo asks him, he hesitates.
“Forget it,” says Almanzo, irritated. “I can make the trip alone.”
“No, wait, let me come with you,” says Cap. “It’s just that-- I’m just really glad you asked, you know.”
Almanzo feels the back of his neck begin to prickle with an unaccountable itch, and he says, “It’s not a picnic. It’s twenty miles out south with hardly any markers, and chances are, we’ll get caught in a blizzard and lose our way back.”
“Yeah,” says Cap, almost shyly. “Thank you for taking me.”
Later, in front of Loftus’ store with their sleds heavy with grain and the storm starting to whip them, it’s half the excitement of victory that makes Almanzo lean in toward Cap and kiss him. Their breath is frozen on their lips and Almanzo can hardly feel the touch at all, but Cap nearly drops the reins to his buckskin.
“Wilder,” he says, “what was--”
He brings his gloved hand up to his mouth, and in the thin light through the storefront window, he looks so terribly young. Like he’s been taken apart and peered into.
“Just how old are you, anyway,” says Almanzo.
Cap blinks, and the moment is over; he’s back to himself again, grinning as he swings up onto the horse.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says. “Homesteader.”
+
The spring comes against all odds, and by then Almanzo calls himself twenty-two. Cap calls himself twenty. It’s too late in the season for strenuous work, but the Wilders have their store and their seed wheat and their horses, so Almanzo isn’t worried.
In the checker rooms at the drugstore there’s talk about a Fourth of July buggy race, and he can’t shake the thought from his mind, addicted to the rush of triumph now. When Almanzo tells Cap about it, his whole face lights up, and that seals the deal.
“You don’t even own a buggy,” says Cap, delighted.
“Prince and Lady will beat any team in town,” says Almanzo. “Even with a whole house hitched behind them.”
“So what’re you talking to me for,” asks Cap, and props his feet up on the bale of hay. The grass smells sweet all around them, and Almanzo drinks in the insolent stretch of Cap’s legs, his trousers tight around his hips.
“They still need exercise,” says Almanzo, and Cap licks his lips.
Making their way at suppertime back to the Wilders’ shanty at a trot, Almanzo pulls Lady up beside Prince, and hands Cap the lit cigar. Cap makes sure to curl his fingers around Almanzo’s as he takes it, and his cheeks hollow obscenely when he inhales.
“Come here,” says Cap, and leans off of Prince, resting his weight on the hand he puts on Lady’s back.
“You’ll break your neck,” says Almanzo, but Cap shakes his head and takes another drag, and presses his mouth against Almanzo’s.
The smoke is dusky in their throats, and Cap opens so easily into him. It’s a better cigar than he would have bought, won at checkers, but Almanzo wonders what Cap tastes like beneath it. Even after the wisps of smoke have drifted away, he keeps chasing the flick of Cap’s tongue, into the soft heat of his mouth.
Cap pokes the cigar back between Almanzo’s teeth, his eyes bright. The sun’s starting to dip. Almanzo runs his hand through the mess of Cap’s hair, still washed pale from the summer past.
“You like my hair?” asks Cap. “That’s a surprise. Turns out your tastes are really nothing unusual.”
But it’s not the same, is what Almanzo wants to tell him. That he’s never trailed after blonde boys or girls before, that he likes Cap’s hair best when it’s an overgrown shock of white against the tanned nape of his neck. It doesn’t make you look like a doll, your hair, is what Almanzo would say, if he were fonder of words. It makes you look like lightning.
He gives Prince a sharp pat on the rump, and the horse breaks into a gallop. Cap clutches to the reins and shoots Almanzo a dirty look over his shoulder.
+
Almanzo walks in through the doors of the drugstore. He’s greeted with cheers and toasts, and then with an armful of Cap Garland.
“Come upstairs,” says Cap, low into his ear, under the roar of men offering their congratulations. “Let’s celebrate.”
With a peddler’s cart! people are shouting at him, and What’ll you take for those Morgans, and Almanzo wades through the crowd laughing and apologizing, Nothing, folks, won’t part with them for any price. Cap’s grip is firm around his wrist, leading him up the stairs.
Spirits are too high for checkers, and the room upstairs is empty, dark with all the lamps carried down to the men in the drugstore. Cap wedges a chair beneath the doorknob, grabs at Almanzo’s collar, and kisses him.
“You did it,” he whispers fervently, “five dollars and the talk of the whole town.”
“Did you doubt me?” asks Almanzo, and tips his hat. Cap yanks it away from him and throws it into a corner.
They’re stuck upstairs in an empty room, nothing but bare furniture scattered around the floor, so Almanzo bends Cap over a table and works him open bit by bit. It’s infinitely, painfully slow, and maybe it’s something he ought to have expected, but Cap is loud.
“Wilder,” he gasps when Almanzo fits a third finger inside him. “Yes, oh--”
“Will you keep it down,” says Almanzo, and means for it to sound soothing. Cap only moans and presses back against him, back arching like a wildcat.
By the time Almanzo pushes himself inside, Cap is a whimpering, writhing mess, all of his skin hot to the touch. Cap is struggling to hold himself still, but there are tiny tremors running down his back, and Almanzo thinks of him stepping out of the rain, naked in the firelight. He slips his hand in under Cap’s shirt, splays his palm out over the dip of his spine. Cap flinches, biting down on a broken little sound.
His hips hitch in surprise when Almanzo starts to move in him, and Almanzo is almost certain that the noises he’s making are going to carry downstairs. God, it sends his blood rushing, Cap moaning under him, sweet and utterly wrecked. But he doesn’t want the crowd to grow suspicious, climbing up to investigate.
“Sorry,” he says, “I have to,” and he stifles Cap’s mouth.
“Oh, God-- oh,” Cap pants against his hand, like he can’t help himself, his breath hot and damp. “Wilder, please, yes--”
He clings to Almanzo’s hand with his, desperate and unsteady, as Almanzo drives deep into him. Cap’s a sweet boy, isn’t he, and it almost makes Almanzo want to be cruel, the way Cap takes him so willingly into the heat of his body. He rocks him a little rougher up against the table, and Cap goes so unbearably tight around him, teeth biting into the meat of his hand.
“Do you like that?” he asks, and Cap whines in answer, his eyes wet in the slivers of light through the floorboards.
In the end, one hand digging into Cap’s hips hard enough to bruise, Almanzo thrusts into him with a vicious edge he might regret, only Cap never complains-- just shudders beautifully and takes him and takes him and takes him, never refusing him a single thing.
“Manzo,” he sobs, muffled against his palm. “God, Manzo--”
“Cap,” says Almanzo, and doesn’t correct him.
+
When they all move back to town, Cap visits him at the back of the store like he’s coming home. Almanzo enjoys stealing time alone with Cap, days when Royal does the chores in the stable, Cap’s hair spilling out on the floor before the fire.
At twenty-one -- if he is that -- Cap is old enough to leave school, but he seems to be in no hurry. Maybe it’s his sister the schoolteacher, but then, isn’t Almanzo’s? Cap doesn’t miss a day, though sometimes he cuts it very close to tardy, sneaking past the feed store for a sly kiss or two.
The day that Almanzo watches the boys at school pull all the girls down Main Street in a sled, Cap comes back laughing, shaking out bits of ice from his clothes. Royal’s out in the stable, and Almanzo lets Cap take him into his mouth, warming quick around him.
“Saw you were sledding today,” Almanzo says later, buttoning himself back up.
“There’s one of the girls I think has it bad for me,” says Cap, offhandedly. “You’ll know her father-- the Ingalls girl.”
“You’re modest as always,” says Almanzo.
“She does, though,” says Cap. “She’s all right, but me, I’m more of a-- you know Mary Power? The tailor’s daughter? I like her sort better.”
“What sort is that,” asks Almanzo, and keeps his voice level.
“Tall, dark,” says Cap. “Not much for talking, but steady as a rock.”
Cap looks at him, lips curling into a winning smile. Almanzo swallows and looks away.
“But you’d like Laura best,” says Cap. “You like a bit of fire. Headstrong, feral things.”
“What makes you so sure?” scoffs Almanzo.
Cap stretches out on his stomach next to him, laying his head in the crook of one arm.
“You like me, don’t you,” he says, and it’s not really a question. Almanzo thinks of Cap tugging the sled down Main Street, running in the winter wind, the flush high on his cheeks.
+
In the middle of the revival meeting, Cap nudges him with an elbow and says, “That’s her, Manzo, that’s Laura Ingalls.”
Almanzo follows the tilt of his chin, but the girl has whipped her head around toward the front again. From the back where they sit, she looks small, surrounded by her family. The organ begins to play.
“Did you catch her looking at me,” whispers Cap.
“Sing the hymn, you damn heathen,” says Almanzo, and Cap laughs.
When families start to leave, all the boys and men in the back stand to let them pass. In the shuffle and press of people, Almanzo stumbles, and Cap is gone when he straightens up. He looks everywhere for tufts of summer-sun hair, but he can’t find him. It occurs to Almanzo that Cap might have disappeared on purpose, and he tries to remember that girl’s name, the tailor’s daughter.
The crowd sweeps him into the aisle, and he finds himself pushed into step beside Laura Ingalls, who is barely fifteen but straight-backed. With a sudden vengeful spite, he touches the sleeve of her coat.
“May I see you home?” he asks.
She startles, at that, and her eyes flicker past him like she’s expecting someone else. She was looking at Cap, he thinks. He was right.
But when he says goodbye and trudges into the back of the feed store, Cap is there with Royal, with a plate of ham in his hand.
“Baching it may be lonely work,” says Cap, “but at least you’re free to do as you please.”
“Where were you?” asks Almanzo.
“Oh,” says Cap, “were you looking for me?”
“Don’t play that,” snaps Almanzo, and Royal looks back at him in surprise.
“Who’d you walk back with?” asks Cap.
“Laura Ingalls,” says Almanzo.
Cap’s face softens when he hears it, and he says, “Isn’t she a perfect devil?”
+
Cap starts to make a habit of it, disappearing after the School Exhibition, after church. Laura Ingalls is a good sport, letting Almanzo take her home every time he shows up at her side, looking confused at where he’s ended up.
When a week goes by without Cap in the back room of the feed store, Almanzo asks Royal, “Where’d Cap go?”
“He’s in his own house, where he lives,” says Royal. “Are you visiting him?”
Almanzo falters; there’s no reason why he shouldn’t, but that it seems the wrong way round. At any rate, if Cap wants nothing to do with him, Almanzo isn’t about to force him into his company.
He sees Cap just once before the spring, when he’s setting out to bring Laura Ingalls back to De Smet on a Friday at forty below zero. He’s frowning at the thermometer outside Fuller’s Hardware, when something brushes past his back. Almanzo turns to look, and when the door to Fuller’s swings open, the light from inside glows over Cap’s face, half hidden inside his muffler.
“Cap,” Almanzo blurts out, all his resolution forgotten, “where’ve you--”
Cap tugs down the edge of his muffler, his breath wispy whorls of steam. Almanzo turns warm and thinks that everything is going to be all right, that Cap is going to explain everything, and be in the back room for him when the cutter gets back home.
Instead, Cap just says, “You’re making her wait.”
“God damn it,” snarls Almanzo, wrenches the doorknob away from Cap, and mashes their mouths together. For a moment, it’s like nothing has changed-- Cap’s lips moving against his, achingly familiar.
But then Cap murmurs, “No, Manzo,” half to himself, and “I can’t, sorry, I can’t.”
“What are you doing?” demands Almanzo. “Why can’t you?”
“You should go,” says Cap, and pulls the door open like running away. “God hates a coward.”
Almanzo stands there a long while after the door has closed, shaking in place, not giving a damn what God hates and doesn’t hate. He hates the liars and traitors too, he would shout after him, but of course, Cap never promised him anything.
+
Cap shows up at his door in May, like he’s been there all along.
“I heard you were breaking colts,” he says. “Do you need a hand? Want to hitch them to your buggy? Take me riding.”
Almanzo pulls his hand back, meaning to punch him, but ends up managing nothing but a tight, quiet hug. Cap rests his cheek against Almanzo’s shoulder.
Skip and Barnum are a pair of ill-behaved horrors, and it’s more than work enough just to get them hitched, the red wheels of the buggy bouncing as they rear and kick out. Cap scampers up onto the driver’s seat, but Almanzo shoos him toward the back.
“Maybe next time,” says Almanzo.
“You don’t give me enough credit,” says Cap, and crosses his legs in a mock huff.
They go rattling on across the aimless expanse of the prairie, on and off roads, down to Lake Henry. By the time they arrive, Almanzo’s arms are numb with the straining, and he’s glad to lash the horses to a hitching post and slide off the buggy. Cap sweeps handfuls of early berries off the bushes as they stroll, and his mouth is sweet when Almanzo pushes him down into the grass.
Cap’s hair is beginning to pale again. Almanzo licks the salt off of his skin, and Cap hooks his heels behind Almanzo’s back, pulling him in closer. There’s no one out for miles, and Cap can be as loud as he likes, begging and gasping incoherently when Almanzo fills him.
“You know,” Almanzo says afterwards, “there isn’t a man in town who’d ride behind these colts except you.”
“Except me,” says Cap, “and Laura Ingalls.”
“Laura Ingalls,” says Almanzo, angrily, towering over Cap when he sits up. “Always Laura Ingalls, Laura Ingalls. What is it with you, anyhow? What do you mean by it?”
Cap doesn’t answer, just throws an arm over his eyes.
“It’s bright out,” he says. “Definitely spring.”
“God hates a coward,” Almanzo tells him.
“He does,” says Cap, “but it’s always hard, isn’t it?”
“What is?” asks Almanzo.
“Weaning a foal, Wilder,” says Cap. “It’s hard for everyone.”
And he slides his arm off his face, narrowing his eyes against the sun. When he smiles, the full heat of it is meant for Almanzo, and that’s when Almanzo knows that it’s the last time. He thinks of the dimples in Laura’s seamstress hands -- what a ring would look like nestled into the grooves of her fingers -- and he wants to scream.
+
Once, on the precipice of the Hard Winter, Cap Garland stood in the frosted fields and tilted his head up toward the sky. Above him, all the geese in Dakota were flying south, leaving the ponds barren. Cap shaded his eyes to watch them pass.
If only we were all so brave, he thought. If only we could all flee from perishing things with the courage to never look back.