Western Lovers: Cowboys & Biologists (12/31)
Title: Western Lovers: Cowboys and Biologists <12/31>
Author:sassywitch
Beta the patient and talented charlieisagirl
Pairing: OB/DW
Rating: NC-17 for the series, PG-15 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: 2610
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| Chapter 6| Chapter 7| Chapter 8| Chapter 9| Chapter 10| Chapter 11
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.
~*~*~*~*~*
As always when Baby was around, Orlando woke up at dawn. As had become his habit in the past week, he looked automatically to the place where David’s bedroll had been.
It was empty.
It had been empty for seven days. He had no reason to believe it wouldn’t always be empty. David had made love to him--made him cry out with the pleasure and beauty of his touch--and then had left without a word. David hadn’t been back since.
Why did you leave, David? When I asked you why you hated wanting me, you told me it was because you couldn’t have me. Then we made love and you walked away as though nothing had happened. Why, David? Didn’t I please you?
Blinking back the tears that would do no good, Orlando got up and quickly began preparing his breakfast. His breath made silvery white plumes in the cabin’s cold air. The Chinook had been followed by a cold northern wind that had settled in as though it meant to stay until summer. Last night, a thin veil of snow had fallen once more over the land, making the ground glitter with white.
“If that mama cougar has gone hunting, we’ll find her tracks. Then I’ll finally find her den. Right, Baby?” Orlando asked, his voice husky from lack of use.
The big animal’s ear pricked alertly at his first word. His yellow eyes had a gemlike clarity as they followed Orlando’s every motion until breakfast was eaten and the cabin was put in order.
“Ready to go tracking?”
Instantly baby was on his feet, vibrating with eagerness. He pawed at the front door.
“I thought you would be. This time, let’s find something bigger than a bobcat.”
Baby whined and pranced, understanding only that his favourite activity was about to begin.
Vowing to think only about cougars and not the man who had touched his soul and walked away as though nothing had happened, Orlando opened the door and let Baby out. He shot across the clearing and raced into the sparse forest like a low-flying shadow.
Orlando slipped on his backpack and walked quickly out into the light. The tracks Baby left were crisp, clear and unnecessary. Orlando knew where he was going: to the creek in the bottom of a ravine and up the opposite slope to the base of the big fir tree where the cougar had first been spotted. The cat had managed to elude her trackers since the wild chase two weeks ago.
While looking for the mama cougar, Orlando had found the tracks of two other cougars, photographed them, logged them and followed them as far as possible. One had been a young cat searching for territory unoccupied by others. The boundary markers left by resident cougars had discouraged the young cat, pushing it along until it was beyond the boundaries of Orlando’s study area.
The second cougar whose tracks Orlando had found was apparently a permanent resident, but it didn’t have a den, which meant that it wasn’t a female with cubs. Cougars without cubs covered as much as thirty miles in a day. Following such animals was very difficult, even when Baby’s nose was thrown into the effort. In bad weather, tracking cats without radio collars was impossible.
Orlando had pinned his hopes on David’s belief that the ‘big tree cougar’ was a mama. The fact that the cat had vanished for the past two weeks was encouraging rather than discouraging. It probably meant that the fir tree was more toward the edge of the cougar’s territory than in its centre and the cubs were keeping close to home. But a mama cougar nursing cubs had to eat to keep up her own strength, which meant she had to go out and hunt. Hunting cats left tracks, especially in freshly fallen snow.
When Orlando reached the tree, Baby was casting about for fresh scent. When he found none, he looked to Orlando. He whistled. Baby shot off along the shoulder of the rise, quartering a new area. Orlando followed his progress, whistling or calling occasional instructions, communicating with him in a code that the two of them had worked out over years of hunting together.
Three hours later and seven miles’ distance from the big tree, Baby struck fresh tracks. His howl electrified the silent land. Instantly, Orlando whistled for Baby to return. He obeyed on the run, mouth wide, pink tongue lolling, laughing up at him when he found him.
At Orlando’s signal, Baby fell in step at his left heel. So long as Baby hadn’t been penned up for days, he was more than happy to collaborate on the hunt. In the past week, he had gotten plenty of exercise. Orlando had spent as little time as possible within the cabin, for it was haunted by David’s absence.
A few minutes later Orlando was studying the tracks Baby had found. They was indeed fresh. More important, the tracts had been left by the cougar Baby had once treed; the slightly oversized toe on the cat’s left front paw was unmistakeable. Eagerly, Orlando followed the tracks, moving quickly. The forest thinned even more, giving way to a boulder-strewn, south-facing slope. The tracks suddenly came very close together, almost overlapping. Abruptly the tracks dug in hard and deep - and vanished.
Orlando paced off the length of empty snow until the tracks began again and whistled soft approval.
“Thirty three feet in a single bound. Not bad for a young female.”
Through binoculars, Orlando scanned the landscape immediately in front of him. The wind gusted, shifting and swirling down the slope, blowing from his back rather than across his face.
Suddenly Baby threw back his head and howled.
“Quiet,” Orlando said without putting down the glasses. Baby yapped and danced.
“Heel.”
Baby heeled. And whined very softly.
“Settle down, Baby,” Orlando said impatiently, still scanning the landscape. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Me.”
The sound of David’s deep voice made Orlando spin around and stare in disbelief. The first thing he noticed was that David had a rifle slung across his back. The second thing he noticed was David’s eyes: cold as the wind, as dispassionate as the sky and full of shadows, so dark they actually hurt Orlando.
“There was a decent tracking snow,” David said, “So Billy sent me back up here to help you.”
Like his eyes, David’s voice lacked emotion.
“Sent you,” Orlando repeated. “I see.”
Orlando turned back and began scanning the landscape with a composure that was pure desperation. His heart was beating much too hard, too fast, and his hands would have shaken if he hadn’t gripped the binoculars until his knuckles showed white.
Billy sent me. Sent me. Sent me.
The words echoed in Orlando’s mind, slicing into him. David couldn’t have made it clearer that he hadn’t sought him out for any reason other than a direct order from the owner of the Double L.
“Tell Billy thank you, but it’s unnecessary,” Orlando said when he could trust his voice once more. “Baby and I do our best work alone.”
“Billy didn’t ask if you needed me. He told me to check on you.”
“You have. I’m fine.”
Narrowly David surveyed the straight line of Orlando’s back. He heard his words, but he couldn’t accept them. This voice belonged to a stranger, flat where Orlando’s had been vibrant, thin where his had been rich.
“You don’t sound fine,” David said.
Orlando said nothing more.
David swore beneath his breath. He walked silently up to Orlando, not wanting to get any closer but unable to stop himself. As he moved, his body was tight with the conflict that had been tearing him apart since his self-control had broken and he had taken and surrendered to Orlando in the same passionate instant.
“Damn it, I didn’t want it to be this way,” David said harshly. “I didn’t want you to be hurt.”
Orlando lowered the binoculars. They were useless anyway, for his eyes were too swimming with tears to see anything at all.
“Is that why you left without so much as a word? To keep from hurting me?”
“What was I supposed to do, tell you fairy tales about love? I won’t lie to you, fairy-tale boy. You knew it when you came to me at the cabin and burned me alive.”
Abruptly David stopped speaking. Memories of Orlando’s sensuality were lightning strokes of pain that scored him repeatedly, like the lash of a cat-of-nine-tails against tender skin, giving him no peace, ripping through new defences and old, scoring across the unhealed past, threatening to touch him as he had vowed never to be touched again.
And he fought his hunger as he had never fought anything except death itself. Wanting, not wanting, fighting himself and Orlando, trapped in an agonizing vice, David turned Orlando to face him and saw the silver glitter of unshed tears swimming in his chocolate eyes.
“Don’t you understand?” David whispered savagely. “I can’t be what you want me to be.”
Orlando closed his eyes. “A man who believes in love.”
“Yes,” David said flatly. His hard thumbs tilted Orlando’s face to his and his fingers trembled against Orlando’s skin. “I told Billy I wouldn’t come up here. He told me I could take his orders or I could pack up and leave the Double L. I packed, but I couldn’t let you run me off the only home I have, so I came up here knowing I would hurt you all over again.”
“David…” Orlando whispered, reaching to him.
“No! I don’t want to hurt you again, but it’ll happen just the same unless you stop asking me to kiss you every time you look at my mouth, stop asking me to touch you every time you look at my hands, stop asking--” David’s eyes closed, then opened once more, clear and hard and cold. “I would sell my soul not to want you, Orlando, but the devil took it a long time ago and I want you with a need hotter than hell burning.”
As Orlando looked at David’s ice-blue eyes, a chill moved over him. David was a wild animal caught in a trap, and Orlando was that trap. The knowledge was in his eyes, shadows and bleakness, watchfulness and calculation and fear and, most of all, an agony that drew David’s mouth into a hard line. This was a trapped animal that was contemplating gnawing off his own leg to escape.
David’s pain was as real as the unsheathed claws of his honesty.
Orlando took a deep, shaking breath and acknowledged the truth. “I understand. You won’t love me. I can’t help loving you. Too bad, how sad, and all that. Meanwhile, the earth turns and the seasons change and babies are born and some die and there’s not a damn thing we can do about that, either.”
“Orlando….”
Orlando waited, hoping in spite of himself.
“Orlando, I...” David made an odd, almost helpless gesture with his hand.
After a moment, Orlando smiled with the bittersweet acceptance that he had learned after Savannah’s death.
“It’s alright, David. I was warned going in, and several other times along the way, and that’s more than we usually get out of life. You don’t have to love me. I’m yours without it, if you want me. And even if you don’t.”
David’s jaw tightened against the pain of Orlando’s acceptance of what he was and was not. “That’s not….” His throat constricted again, taking away his ability to speak.
“Fair?” Orlando suggested.
Orlando’s smile was as sad and enigmatic as his changing chocolate eyes. David looked away, unable to bear what he was doing to Orlando.
“I thought you didn’t believe in fairy tales, warrior.”
“I don’t.”
“Then don’t talk to me about ‘fair’. If life were fair, my sister would have celebrated her birthday today. But life isn’t and she didn’t and wailing about it won’t change one damned thing.”
David looked back slowly. His eyes were intent, fierce, searching Orlando’s. “You really mean that?”
“I always say what I mean. It’s a failing of mine.”
“You don’t believe in fairy tales, but you do believe in love,” he said, unable to understand. “Knowing what life truly is, you still allow yourself to love.” David hesitated, not wanting to hurt Orlando anymore but unable to stop himself from asking, “How can you?”
Orlando looked into the untamed depths of David’s eyes and saw a curiosity that was as great as his wariness, as intense as his passion…a wolf circling closer and closer to the beckoning campfire, pulled toward the flames against his deepest instinct of self preservation, enthralled by the radiant possibilities of fire.
“How can I do anything else?” Orlando said simply. “Look at what man goes through, daily and still we laugh, we love, we live. Not just survival, David. Living.”
Chapter 13