Outlaw's Prayer (ch. 5, part two)
Title: Outlaw's Prayer (5/?) part two
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Skibmann (Neal Tiemann/Andy Skib), various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: The bulk of this story will be separated into three parts: part one was chapters 1-4, and so part two stars with this chapter. I have been working on this story for the past seven months and I am SO excited to finally be posting it :D What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5, part one
Five years ago
"If you keep lettin' me win like this, darlin', pretty soon you're going to have to ante up with your trousers."
David frowned, a deep-set furrow in his brow becoming a permanent addition to Burleson, because he wasn't letting anyone win, and had never done so since he was old enough to hold five playing cards in his fist. He was no card shark--he left that position to the paddleboat hustlers along the Mississippi, one of which had found his way to Blue Springs one summer and taught David the game as a boy--but he had always considered himself a fairly decent hand at poker. Now, he observed, as he caught sight of his dwindling stack of cash on the table, his pride was being handed back to him, bruised.
The flow of his bank notes had been clearly headed across the table in a moderate flow over the past few hours, with some give or take in each immediate hand but the overall outcome was the same. David could lie and say he was distracted by the charming beauty across from him, entrancing him with sharp, intelligent hazel eyes and the quirk of tender red lips so effectively he was simply handing his money over to her. But David knew well enough to accept when he was licked, and this Kelly Clarkson--pants-wearing, whiskey-shooting, card-hustling, independent woman he had never seen the likes of anywhere in the territories--was licking him but good.
Oh, but that was quite a different kind of game, David mused over his cards; one he would like to play with Miss Clarkson soon enough.
His gaze flickered from the hand he was dealt to the woman before him, finding it difficult to look away for long. "You do seem to be holding your own here, Kelly," he admitted, pausing only momentarily to remind himself not to call her "Miss"--he had received a mean poke in the ribs for that earlier, with a force that warned him not to entice the woman to use the other four fingers against him, too. "But I'll be catching my second wind soon, just you see."
She laughed, leaning back leisurely at her regular poker table--God, that laugh, David thought, the rest of the saloon and all the people in it falling away at just that sound, wishing he could hear it forever. "A second wind; sure, Mr. Cook," she joked, insisting on calling him by his last name purely because he had asked her not to. "The same second wind your friend here will catch." She pointed to her left, to the young man very literally holding the third side of the poker table. Andy had been a wreck for the past half hour, the teenager barely able to hold onto his five cards let alone bet with any level of skill or intuition. His head rested on the table along with his poker hand, eyes covered by a thick shock of dark hair, skin the slightest hint of green.
"Andy is doing quite well, but thank you for your concern." David took one look at the younger man and knew he wouldn't be playing any poker hands for a long while, but he wouldn't give Kelly the satisfaction of saying so.
His remark brought up a pained groan from Andy; Kelly showing little remorse. "It's not my fault your boy can't handle his liquor," she replied flippantly, her cheeks barely flushed an inebriated pink. The shots of whiskey were far more at home in Kelly's body than in Andy's. David sympathized with his partner, truly he did; but from the moment the three outlaws had walked into the Breakaway Saloon he could tell Kelly Clarkson was not a lady you challenged, shot-for-shot, unless you planned to lose. It would be a lesson Andy learned the hard way, but a lesson learned nonetheless.
She nodded her head at her other side, a mischievous smile on her face; David's own lips couldn't help but curve into a smirk behind his cards. "You gonna bet, blondie, or what?" she challenged the man who made up the fourth end of the poker table, an ease and familiarity in her tone that made David feel like the three outlaws had known her all their lives. Neal, however, was not as pleased with Kelly's newfound favorite nickname for the sharpshooter; he scowled, glaring at her confident smile, wishing she had kept to her playful potshots at David or settled for returning his lovestruck stare.
Folding his cards face-down on the tabletop, Neal admitted defeat; he had no patience for poker as it was, and with Kelly's skill he wasn't very happy with losing. "I'm out," he said gruffly, rising from his seat. He pointed across the table to the teenager, who looked very close to napping in the middle of the ante. "And so's he." Andy sounded his agreement with this, indicating to everyone at the table that he was indeed still alive, and made no signs of protest as Neal helped him to his feet, carrying most of his dead weight.
"We'll be in the room," Neal indicated to David the row of doors along the back wall of the saloon, leading to tiny bedrooms with quaint straw beds and wash basins in each, simple yet more than enough for the cattle drivers with money to put down for one while passing through. There had only been one room available when the three men rode into town, the outlaws happy just to have a roof over their heads and something besides the hard earth underneath their bodies at night, but David wanted an excuse not to resort to sleeping in that room tonight. There was more he was betting on at the Breakaway Saloon than just poker.
With a genial nod over his cards David sent them off, knowing Andy would be in good hands with Neal, who had powered through his own fair share of liquor-fueled evenings that got out of hand. He watched them retreat, Andy's sense of constraint down in the pit of his stomach with the whiskey as he rested his head on Neal's shoulder, arm around his waist, allowing Neal to guide their path to the bedroom. David faintly heard Neal warn him, in a tone he knew was reserved only for Andy, before they disappeared from sight. "If you puke on me, you're going out the window."
Turning his attentions back to Kelly, David quickly read the expression on her face, changing from the playful mischief she employed to lure the three men over to her poker table to something much more serious. "Ready to play, cowboy?" she asked, her voice deep and sultry, quite different from the light, energetic tone she had earlier. Now he felt like neither of them had only poker on their minds.
David's voice dropped low along with his inhibitions as he peeled a few bank notes off the top of his dwindling pile. "I'm no cowboy," he jested. Burleson got its fair share of cattle ranchers, rough-hewn men seemingly impervious to heat, exhaustion, or the smell of thousands of cow hides ready for the slaughter. They held their jobs in respectable esteem and performed them well, but David had never met a cowboy who could successfully string a proper sentence together, much less hold a stimulating conversation beyond the current status of the weather. He couldn't see Kelly, witty and sharp as she was beautiful, getting much pleasure from the company of a cowboy. He tossed the cash in the center of the table with the ante, his stare giving away nothing about his cards and everything about something else. "Raise."
But Kelly seemed unfazed, almost ready for these developments; the corners of her mouth curled up into a smile, her eyes narrowing. "I know exactly who you are." The coolness of her tone made David pause, hesitate for only a second as he gauged her reaction. Their appearances alone revealed to the town that they were no poor cowboys, barely able to afford the leather on their boots. Their growing notoriety from their bank robberies, rumors about the outlaws rolling through the plains like summer thunderstorms, made David fear they were being noticed for more than that, both Neal's many tattoos and his own not easily overlooked or disguised. He thought they were operating well below the radar, enough to relax in a little town like Burleson without being noticed; perhaps he thought wrong.
She added another handful of bills to the pile, her eyes continually locked on David's as his body went rigid, guarded. "Raise," she called. The little lady was not playing around.
Neither was David. The best defense was a good offense, and while his tone still held a playful, flirtatious attitude, this was also about seeing exactly what she knew about the three outlaws. He wanted to make her sweat, and not just from a tough hand of poker. "You pegged us for your table the moment we walked into the room, didn't you." He leaned back in his chair, letting his stare sink in, waiting for the moment when Kelly grew uncomfortable, nervous; guilty. The moment never came. "What's your game, huh? Stacked deck? Cards under the table?" His eyes floated down to the space underneath the poker table, lingering on her uncrossed legs. "I know you're not hiding an ace up your skirt because you're not wearing one."
"I'll wear a skirt when a man puts me in one," Kelly countered, her face giving away nothing but the raw attraction blazing in her eyes. "And I don't cheat, if that's what you're asking." The accusation rolled off her back like rainwater, the card sharp familiar with men twice her size and age calling out in indignation that a girl couldn't possibly beat them in poker. David had yet to learn that Kelly had been taught by every card shark to pass through Texas, perfecting her skills on countless cowboys and unwitting marks, and that she learned long ago that winning in poker was more about mastering your opponent than mastering your cards. "I'm just very, very good at what I do."
"Really." David wanted to see what else Kelly was very, very good at, perhaps something old cowboys and card sharks couldn't teach her. He pushed the rest of his cash pile into the center; he had no idea how much money he had just bargained, but it wasn't like there never was more. A new town, a new bank, and David and the boys suddenly had more money to burn. "All in."
This finally got a rise out of Kelly; her eyebrows perked, contemplating if David was sly and baiting a trap to recoup some of his money, or if he was just thinking with a body part other than his brain. He wouldn't have been the first. "We're not playing for marbles, here, Mr. Cook," she reminded him. She had never played with such high stakes as these three men, easily upping antes and raising over one another like their bank notes were prairie grass, mere bunches of it in a wide, unending plain.
Now it was David's turn to smirk, his eyes shining with mischief, a hidden agenda. The game they were playing, this daring dance in a crowded saloon, emptying slowly as the hours went by, was far more interesting than poker. "Let's make it interesting," he propositioned, fanning his cards face-down on the table surface. He leaned over the table to bring his voice down low, an intimate tone he wanted only Kelly to hear. "You win this hand, I tell you why I'm no cowboy. But if I win," he winked as Kelly leaned in as well, the wide Spanish oak table still bridging a distance between them, but now he could reach out and touch her if he wanted, curl a strand of her hair around his finger and feel its silkiness for himself. "When I win this hand, you have to tell me what it takes for a man to get you into a skirt."
Kelly couldn't help but grin, the outlaw's playful deviousness finally breaking down her sly poker face. "Let's see those cards, then," she challenged, as she stretched her leg underneath the table, sliding a surreptitious boot toe up the length of David's calf. It took all of his willpower not to overturn that goddamned slab of wood and take her right there on the saloon floor. "Show me what you got."
Without taking his eyes off the woman, David overturned his cards, revealing a respectable two pair: aces and queens, one of the better hands he had been dealt that evening, even when it was his turn to deal the cards. "Do I win?" his voice was a lust-fueled rasp, enjoying the pleasure of the chase as much as the capture.
But the satisfied look that crossed Kelly's face told David he bet more than he bargained for. "Your little bet's useless to me, Mr. Cook," she patronized. "I told you, I already know who you are. I just want the answer to one question."
David would have been tenser if Kelly's leg hadn't kept running up and down his own, her ankle nearly hooking him in by the calf like a stream trout caught for supper. "And what would that be?"
Kelly told David all he needed to know when she overturned her cards and revealed the three kings in her hand. "I want to know what an outlaw gang's doing in Burleson."
Chapter 6
Author: honestys_easy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Skibmann (Neal Tiemann/Andy Skib), various others, both slash and het
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own; never happened, never will.
Summary: For his entire life, Kyle Peek always longed for the thrill and adventure in the open lands of the wild West. He gets more than he ever bargained for when he joins up with the legendary outlaw gang known only as The Kings.
Notes: The bulk of this story will be separated into three parts: part one was chapters 1-4, and so part two stars with this chapter. I have been working on this story for the past seven months and I am SO excited to finally be posting it :D What started out as a fledgling idea grew to be a huge AU and I'm very grateful to share it with you. A ginormous thank you goes out to dreamerren, for her work as beta and practically as the story's second author. Title credit goes to Nick Gibson for his song "Outlaw's Prayer."
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5, part one
Five years ago
"If you keep lettin' me win like this, darlin', pretty soon you're going to have to ante up with your trousers."
David frowned, a deep-set furrow in his brow becoming a permanent addition to Burleson, because he wasn't letting anyone win, and had never done so since he was old enough to hold five playing cards in his fist. He was no card shark--he left that position to the paddleboat hustlers along the Mississippi, one of which had found his way to Blue Springs one summer and taught David the game as a boy--but he had always considered himself a fairly decent hand at poker. Now, he observed, as he caught sight of his dwindling stack of cash on the table, his pride was being handed back to him, bruised.
The flow of his bank notes had been clearly headed across the table in a moderate flow over the past few hours, with some give or take in each immediate hand but the overall outcome was the same. David could lie and say he was distracted by the charming beauty across from him, entrancing him with sharp, intelligent hazel eyes and the quirk of tender red lips so effectively he was simply handing his money over to her. But David knew well enough to accept when he was licked, and this Kelly Clarkson--pants-wearing, whiskey-shooting, card-hustling, independent woman he had never seen the likes of anywhere in the territories--was licking him but good.
Oh, but that was quite a different kind of game, David mused over his cards; one he would like to play with Miss Clarkson soon enough.
His gaze flickered from the hand he was dealt to the woman before him, finding it difficult to look away for long. "You do seem to be holding your own here, Kelly," he admitted, pausing only momentarily to remind himself not to call her "Miss"--he had received a mean poke in the ribs for that earlier, with a force that warned him not to entice the woman to use the other four fingers against him, too. "But I'll be catching my second wind soon, just you see."
She laughed, leaning back leisurely at her regular poker table--God, that laugh, David thought, the rest of the saloon and all the people in it falling away at just that sound, wishing he could hear it forever. "A second wind; sure, Mr. Cook," she joked, insisting on calling him by his last name purely because he had asked her not to. "The same second wind your friend here will catch." She pointed to her left, to the young man very literally holding the third side of the poker table. Andy had been a wreck for the past half hour, the teenager barely able to hold onto his five cards let alone bet with any level of skill or intuition. His head rested on the table along with his poker hand, eyes covered by a thick shock of dark hair, skin the slightest hint of green.
"Andy is doing quite well, but thank you for your concern." David took one look at the younger man and knew he wouldn't be playing any poker hands for a long while, but he wouldn't give Kelly the satisfaction of saying so.
His remark brought up a pained groan from Andy; Kelly showing little remorse. "It's not my fault your boy can't handle his liquor," she replied flippantly, her cheeks barely flushed an inebriated pink. The shots of whiskey were far more at home in Kelly's body than in Andy's. David sympathized with his partner, truly he did; but from the moment the three outlaws had walked into the Breakaway Saloon he could tell Kelly Clarkson was not a lady you challenged, shot-for-shot, unless you planned to lose. It would be a lesson Andy learned the hard way, but a lesson learned nonetheless.
She nodded her head at her other side, a mischievous smile on her face; David's own lips couldn't help but curve into a smirk behind his cards. "You gonna bet, blondie, or what?" she challenged the man who made up the fourth end of the poker table, an ease and familiarity in her tone that made David feel like the three outlaws had known her all their lives. Neal, however, was not as pleased with Kelly's newfound favorite nickname for the sharpshooter; he scowled, glaring at her confident smile, wishing she had kept to her playful potshots at David or settled for returning his lovestruck stare.
Folding his cards face-down on the tabletop, Neal admitted defeat; he had no patience for poker as it was, and with Kelly's skill he wasn't very happy with losing. "I'm out," he said gruffly, rising from his seat. He pointed across the table to the teenager, who looked very close to napping in the middle of the ante. "And so's he." Andy sounded his agreement with this, indicating to everyone at the table that he was indeed still alive, and made no signs of protest as Neal helped him to his feet, carrying most of his dead weight.
"We'll be in the room," Neal indicated to David the row of doors along the back wall of the saloon, leading to tiny bedrooms with quaint straw beds and wash basins in each, simple yet more than enough for the cattle drivers with money to put down for one while passing through. There had only been one room available when the three men rode into town, the outlaws happy just to have a roof over their heads and something besides the hard earth underneath their bodies at night, but David wanted an excuse not to resort to sleeping in that room tonight. There was more he was betting on at the Breakaway Saloon than just poker.
With a genial nod over his cards David sent them off, knowing Andy would be in good hands with Neal, who had powered through his own fair share of liquor-fueled evenings that got out of hand. He watched them retreat, Andy's sense of constraint down in the pit of his stomach with the whiskey as he rested his head on Neal's shoulder, arm around his waist, allowing Neal to guide their path to the bedroom. David faintly heard Neal warn him, in a tone he knew was reserved only for Andy, before they disappeared from sight. "If you puke on me, you're going out the window."
Turning his attentions back to Kelly, David quickly read the expression on her face, changing from the playful mischief she employed to lure the three men over to her poker table to something much more serious. "Ready to play, cowboy?" she asked, her voice deep and sultry, quite different from the light, energetic tone she had earlier. Now he felt like neither of them had only poker on their minds.
David's voice dropped low along with his inhibitions as he peeled a few bank notes off the top of his dwindling pile. "I'm no cowboy," he jested. Burleson got its fair share of cattle ranchers, rough-hewn men seemingly impervious to heat, exhaustion, or the smell of thousands of cow hides ready for the slaughter. They held their jobs in respectable esteem and performed them well, but David had never met a cowboy who could successfully string a proper sentence together, much less hold a stimulating conversation beyond the current status of the weather. He couldn't see Kelly, witty and sharp as she was beautiful, getting much pleasure from the company of a cowboy. He tossed the cash in the center of the table with the ante, his stare giving away nothing about his cards and everything about something else. "Raise."
But Kelly seemed unfazed, almost ready for these developments; the corners of her mouth curled up into a smile, her eyes narrowing. "I know exactly who you are." The coolness of her tone made David pause, hesitate for only a second as he gauged her reaction. Their appearances alone revealed to the town that they were no poor cowboys, barely able to afford the leather on their boots. Their growing notoriety from their bank robberies, rumors about the outlaws rolling through the plains like summer thunderstorms, made David fear they were being noticed for more than that, both Neal's many tattoos and his own not easily overlooked or disguised. He thought they were operating well below the radar, enough to relax in a little town like Burleson without being noticed; perhaps he thought wrong.
She added another handful of bills to the pile, her eyes continually locked on David's as his body went rigid, guarded. "Raise," she called. The little lady was not playing around.
Neither was David. The best defense was a good offense, and while his tone still held a playful, flirtatious attitude, this was also about seeing exactly what she knew about the three outlaws. He wanted to make her sweat, and not just from a tough hand of poker. "You pegged us for your table the moment we walked into the room, didn't you." He leaned back in his chair, letting his stare sink in, waiting for the moment when Kelly grew uncomfortable, nervous; guilty. The moment never came. "What's your game, huh? Stacked deck? Cards under the table?" His eyes floated down to the space underneath the poker table, lingering on her uncrossed legs. "I know you're not hiding an ace up your skirt because you're not wearing one."
"I'll wear a skirt when a man puts me in one," Kelly countered, her face giving away nothing but the raw attraction blazing in her eyes. "And I don't cheat, if that's what you're asking." The accusation rolled off her back like rainwater, the card sharp familiar with men twice her size and age calling out in indignation that a girl couldn't possibly beat them in poker. David had yet to learn that Kelly had been taught by every card shark to pass through Texas, perfecting her skills on countless cowboys and unwitting marks, and that she learned long ago that winning in poker was more about mastering your opponent than mastering your cards. "I'm just very, very good at what I do."
"Really." David wanted to see what else Kelly was very, very good at, perhaps something old cowboys and card sharks couldn't teach her. He pushed the rest of his cash pile into the center; he had no idea how much money he had just bargained, but it wasn't like there never was more. A new town, a new bank, and David and the boys suddenly had more money to burn. "All in."
This finally got a rise out of Kelly; her eyebrows perked, contemplating if David was sly and baiting a trap to recoup some of his money, or if he was just thinking with a body part other than his brain. He wouldn't have been the first. "We're not playing for marbles, here, Mr. Cook," she reminded him. She had never played with such high stakes as these three men, easily upping antes and raising over one another like their bank notes were prairie grass, mere bunches of it in a wide, unending plain.
Now it was David's turn to smirk, his eyes shining with mischief, a hidden agenda. The game they were playing, this daring dance in a crowded saloon, emptying slowly as the hours went by, was far more interesting than poker. "Let's make it interesting," he propositioned, fanning his cards face-down on the table surface. He leaned over the table to bring his voice down low, an intimate tone he wanted only Kelly to hear. "You win this hand, I tell you why I'm no cowboy. But if I win," he winked as Kelly leaned in as well, the wide Spanish oak table still bridging a distance between them, but now he could reach out and touch her if he wanted, curl a strand of her hair around his finger and feel its silkiness for himself. "When I win this hand, you have to tell me what it takes for a man to get you into a skirt."
Kelly couldn't help but grin, the outlaw's playful deviousness finally breaking down her sly poker face. "Let's see those cards, then," she challenged, as she stretched her leg underneath the table, sliding a surreptitious boot toe up the length of David's calf. It took all of his willpower not to overturn that goddamned slab of wood and take her right there on the saloon floor. "Show me what you got."
Without taking his eyes off the woman, David overturned his cards, revealing a respectable two pair: aces and queens, one of the better hands he had been dealt that evening, even when it was his turn to deal the cards. "Do I win?" his voice was a lust-fueled rasp, enjoying the pleasure of the chase as much as the capture.
But the satisfied look that crossed Kelly's face told David he bet more than he bargained for. "Your little bet's useless to me, Mr. Cook," she patronized. "I told you, I already know who you are. I just want the answer to one question."
David would have been tenser if Kelly's leg hadn't kept running up and down his own, her ankle nearly hooking him in by the calf like a stream trout caught for supper. "And what would that be?"
Kelly told David all he needed to know when she overturned her cards and revealed the three kings in her hand. "I want to know what an outlaw gang's doing in Burleson."
Chapter 6