Western Lovers:Cowboys & Biologists (6/31)
Title: Western Lovers: Cowboys and Biologists <6/31>
Author:sassywitch
Beta the patient and talented charlieisagirl
Pairing: OB/DW
Rating: NC-17 for the series, PG-13 this chapter.
Summary: David is a hard, jaded warrior, Orlando is a biologist tracking Big Cats on the Double L.
Feedback: Feedback is my writers crack, which is not to be confused at all with plumbers crack.
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: 3581
Previous Story: Can be found here
Previous Ordaisy chapter: As suggested by mystery_ink can be found here
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1| Chapter 2 | Chapter 3| Chapter 4| Chapter 5
Posted to: fellowshippers, monaboyd and ordaisy
Header Art: Courtesy of the incredibly talented loki_girl.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to everyone who has pushed and prodded me into working on this. Special thanks to Dylan_dufresne.
~*~*~*~*~*
Sensing that something was wrong, Orlando awoke with a start. In the silent spaces between gusts of wind, Orlando heard a man speaking in broken phrases, fragmented names, snatches of language that had no rational meaning. But they made sense emotionally. Someone was hurt, trapped, dying…
And it was happening over and over again.
David.
Quickly Orlando sat up and looked across the hearth to the place where David had set up his bedroll and mattress. The room was so dark that Orlando could see only an outline, a darker black that indicated that David was still there. The cold in the room was the penetrating chill of a winter that would not release the land into spring’s life-giving embrace.
Without leaving his sleeping bag, Orlando stirred the fire into life and added fuel. Flames surged up, bringing light and heart into the room. A swift glance told Orlando that David was only half-covered, restless, caught in the grip of fever or nightmare or both.
Orlando unzipped his sleeping bag and slid out. His double-layer, silk and wool ski underwear turned aside the worst of the chill, but the floor was icy on Orlando’s bare feet. Silently he knelt next to David, watching the contours of his face emerge from the darkness as flames licked over the wood.
A combination of stark shadows, golden beard, shifting orange flames and physical tension drew David’s features into lines as harsh as they were compelling to Orlando’s senses. David’s torso was lean, muscular, highlighted by fire and golden swirls of hair. He wore no shirt, nothing to keep the cold at bay.
Orlando knelt at David’s side. As he had earlier in the day, he put his hand on David’s forehead to gauge his temperature.
The world exploded.
Within the space of two seconds Orlando was jerked over David’s body, thrown on his back and stretched helplessly on the icy floor beneath David’s far greater weight while a hot steel band closed around Orlando’s throat. In the wavering light David’s eyes were those of a trapped cougar, luminous with fire, bottomless with shadow, inhuman.
“David…” Orlando whispered, all he could say, for the room was spinning away into darkness.
Instantly the pressure vanished. Orlando felt the harsh shudder that went through David’s body before he rolled aside, releasing him from David’s weight. Orlando shivered with the cold of the cabin floor biting into his flesh and with another deeper cold: the winter’s chill that lay at the center of David’s soul.
“Next time you want to wake me up, just call my name. Whatever you do, don’t touch me. Ever.”
David’s voice was as remote as his eyes had been.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Orlando asked after a moment, his voice husky.
“What?”
“Touching. You haven’t had enough of it. Not the caring kind, the warm kind, the gentle kind. The kind filled with the love you deserve.”
“Warmth is rare and temporary. Cruelty and pain aren’t. A survivor hones his reflexes accordingly. I’m a survivor, Orlando. Don’t ever forget it. If you catch me off guard I could hurt you badly and never even mean to.”
Orlando closed his eyes and shivered against the icy cold. Suddenly he felt himself lifted again. Orlando made a startled sound and stiffened.
“It’s all right,” David said calmly. “I’m wide-awake now. Turn your face towards the fire.”
The difference in temperature between the floor and David’s bed was disorienting. Orlando let out a broken sigh of relief at the warmth and turned his face toward the dancing flames. When he felt David’s hand at his throat once more, Orlando gave him a startled look. David didn’t notice. He was carefully peeling down the mock-turtleneck collar of Orlando’s undershirt. Gently David’s hand slid up beneath Orlando’s chin, urging his gaze more fully toward the fire.
As Orlando turned, a necklace of fine leather thong spilled from the scarlet fabric into David’s hand, drawn by the weight of charms and stones that Orlando wore as a pendant. The shimmer of metal caught his eye. David looked more closely and saw that metallic shimmer was a ring made of fine strands of smoothly braided gold. When he realized the ring was too small to be worn by anyone but a very young child, David tipped his palm and let the gold slide away.
Firelight revealed no marks on the creamy, golden surface of Orlando’s throat. With devastating gentleness, David’s fingertips traced the taut tendons and soft skin. The startled intake of Orlando’s breath followed by the visible, rapid surge of his pulse made David’s body tighten in a wild, sweeping rush that was becoming familiar to him around Orlando.
Even as David told himself he should be grateful that Orlando’s response to him came from fear rather than desire, David knew that he wasn’t grateful. He wanted nothing so much as to soothe with his tongue the tender flesh he had savaged, and then go on to find even warmer, more tender flesh and know its sweetness as well.
But even if he were fool enough to start something he wasn’t going to finish, Orlando wouldn’t be fool enough to want him. Orlando finally understood what David was: a warrior, not a knight in shining armor.
Orlando trembled again.
“Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you now,” David said.
The subdued rasp in his voice was like a hidden caress, making Orlando ache to know more of his touch.
“I know,” Orlando whispered.
“Do you? You’re trembling.”
“I’m not used to…this.”
“Take my word for it,” David said sardonically. “Nearly being strangled isn’t the sort of thing you get used to.” David’s fingertips probed lightly at Orlando’s skin. “Tender?”
Orlando shook his head.
“Does it hurt when you talk?” David asked.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
Orlando nodded.
“I don’t believe you.”
“But it’s true,” Orlando said. “You didn’t hurt me.”
The throaty intimacy of Orlando’s voice made David burn. Very carefully he lifted his hand from Orlando’s warm skin. He sat up in a tangle of sleeping bag and blankets, bringing Orlando upright with him. The easy way he handled Orlando’s weight served to underline his strength and Orlando’s vulnerability--a vulnerability Orlando stubbornly refused to acknowledge.
As David released Orlando, he reached up and put his palm on David’s forehead. David jerked back.
“You were lucky, Orlando. Very Lucky. Don’t push it.”
“You should take your own advice.”
David gave Orlando a narrow look. “Meaning?”
“You’re running a fever, but you plan on getting up at dawn and riding out of here.”
David shrugged. “I’ll see what it looks like in the morning.”
“White.” Orlando said succinctly.
“What?”
“It will look white. All of it. Even if it stops snowing, you won’t be able to tell. The wind will strip off the new snow and blow it everywhere. White on white, sky and ground, everything and everywhere. If you don’t believe me, listen to the wind. You would be a fool to go anywhere tomorrow, and survivors aren’t fools.”
David turned and looked at Orlando with unfathomable eyes. “Get back in your own bed. Fever or no fever, there’s nothing you can do for me.”
After a long tight moment, Orlando took his sleeping bag back to his bed, crawled in and shivered until he was warm once more.
“David?”
David grunted.
“What were you dreaming about?”
“Was I dreaming?”
“Yes. That’s what woke me up.”
Silence.
“Do you dream like that often?” Orlando persisted.
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“Survivors don’t remember their dreams. That’s how we stay sane.”
David rolled over and was asleep within moments.
Orlando lay awake for a long time, thinking about survivors and listening to the wind rearrange layers of snow over the frozen land.
Chapter 7