Western Lovers: Cowboys & Biologists (14/32)
Title: Western Lovers: Cowboys and Biologists <14/33>
Author:sassywitch
Beta the patient and talented charlieisagirl
Pairing: OB/DW
Rating: NC-17 for the series, and for 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: 2506
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| Chapter 12| Chapter 13
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.
~*~*~*~*~*
Caressing his tiny daughter’s head gently, Dom nuzzled his nose against her face. Watching her inquisitive green eyes, he smiled at her and touched the tip of her perfect nose with one long finger. He spent so much time with her and her siblings, but still every facial expression and sound she made was new to him.
For the briefest of moments, Dom regretted waking when he heard Lana’s grumblings via the baby monitor on the bedside table. He had laid there for a few moments, watching Billy sleep, his hair tousled, his face pressed into the pillow beside Dom’s head, dark shadows smudging his cheekbones. A loving smile turned up the corners of Dom’s mouth as he remembered their slow, languid lovemaking last night. Billy had gone back to work after dinner and returned to shower and crawl into bed long after the children were happily sleeping. Every morning, Billy woke at the first sound of wakeful babies and fed and changed their children; it was a routine that had happened shortly after the babies arrived. Billy worked so hard on the ranch he didn’t have the time to spend with the kids. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, because Dom could see the regret in Billy’s eyes when he came home at night and he had missed another bedtime. Dom hated to steal the morning from Billy, but he looked exhausted and Lana’s cries didn’t rouse him as they usually did. So he had pressed a soft kiss to Billy’s forehead and rolled out of bed to tend to their children.
“You just wanted to spend time with Daddy, didn’t you?” Dom cooed at her.
Deftly balancing her in the crook of one arm, he opened the microwave door before it could beep at him. Screwing the nipple onto the bottle of warmed formula, he tested its temperature quickly.
“Shhh.” Dom jiggled Lana as she began to fuss in his arms, “It won’t be long, Baby-doll. Just a couple more minutes and you can have breakfast on the porch with DomDaddy,” he murmured to her as he opened to door. “Just you and me, Doll-face; we’ll let everyone else sleep just this once.” Dom crooned to the little girl as he carried her the length of the porch. “Your papa deserves a sleep in, and since I’ve only got one pair of hands, wouldn’t you like to have my undivided attention?” Dom asked her quietly as he sank down onto the porch swing, rubbing the milky nipple against her rosebud lips. Smiling as her mouth closed around the rubbery teat and began sucking hard, Dom watched her tiny hands lifted to pat at the sides of the bottle.
“Need a hand?” David’s voice sounded quietly, startling Dom badly.
“Jesus, Daisy,” Dom murmured, his voice unsteady, a tremor visible in his hands. “For fucks sake, don’t bloody do that.”
“Sorry,” David laughed. “I forget you’re delicate.”
“Sod off,” Dom glared at him, a broad smile splitting his face. “Wanker.”
“Not so much,” David replied, as he sat on the swing beside Dom.
“How is Loverboy?” Dom grinned, looking slyly at David.
“I wish you wouldn’t fucking call him that,” David sighed.
“Are you shagging him?” Dom asked with a chuckle. “Is he male? I think it’s the perfect title for him.”
“I don’t love him. He doesn’t love me.” David stated, adamantly. “And I sure as hell don’t want to talk about him.”
“Right.” Dom drew the word out in disbelief as he thrust Lana’s bottle into David’s hand. Lifting Lana to his shoulder, Dom rubbed her back gently, cooing in her ear until she belched loudly. “I’ve seen that look before, Daisy. You might fool him, but you can’t fool me. You left him while he was sleeping again, didn’t you?”
“I won’t sleep with him, Dom.” David sighed, “He’ll expect too much.”
“Okay,” Dom nodded sagely. “You’ll fuck him, but you won’t sleep with him. What is it with your family?”
“You know Billy was concerned about your reputation. He was worried about the way the ranchhands would treat you.” David almost breathed a sigh of relief, happy to direct the conversation away from Orlando.
“So….What’s your excuse?” Dom questioned quietly. “We both know that you’re in mutual love and lust, so why not let him wake up in your arms, just once. God forbid, you might even like it.”
“Just for the record, it’s lust, not love. What the fuck is it with you?” David sighed, passing Lana’s bottle back as Dom settled her back in his arms. “Just because you’re in love, you sappy bastard, it does not mean that we all want to be. Some of us do just fine on our own. Some of us don’t need to wake up tangled up with another person.”
“You’re so full of shite, Daisy.” Dom laughed, dropping the subject for the time being.
Both men sat silently, David’s booted feet pushing gently on the floor, swinging them slowly. The slurping noises Lana made as she suckled around the nipple was the only sounds for several minutes.
“You never told me, what was your degree in?” Dom asked, his long finger caressing Lana’s cheek as she sucked slowly on her bottle.
“That’s a random subject change, even for you,” David laughed.
“I’m trying to talk Billy into finishing his,” Dom explained with a shrug, “I thought that might be able to convince him of changing his major to Archaeology.”
“He’d like that. It’d be nice to see him finish it; he really enjoyed the study. I think not finishing was one of the things he really regretted.” David explained.
“So what did you study?” Dom asked again.
“Nothing important,” David replied quickly.
“So? Tell me.”
“I’m not going to get out of it, am I?” David sighed.
“Nope.” Dom almost laughed at the crestfallen expression on David’s face.
“I wasn’t interested in studying, but Billy insisted that I get a degree, so by the time I enrolled, all the classes I wanted to take were full. The ones I ended up taking my first semester were simply because they were the only ones still available. After that semester, I kept them up because I ended up loving them.”
“C’mon,” Dom said as he turned slightly to face David, snuggling the now sleeping Lana against his chest. “Don’t tease me.”
“You fucking laugh, I swear I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“Just spill it, you silly git.” Dom was already laughing.
“Victorian Literature, specifically Romance poetry and Textiles.”
“You’re telling me you have a degree in love poems and sewing?” Dom’s eyebrows nearly shot over the back of his head as he struggled not to laugh.
“Knew I should lie.” David shook his head. “And it’s not just fucking sewing, it was learning about costuming, and sewing, knitting, crotchet and all things in between.”
“You….YOU can knit?” Dom chuckled.
“Of course I can.” David shrugged, “Can’t you?”
Dom angled him a disbelieving look, his eyebrows arched speculatively. “Actually, no.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing, son.” David nodded authoritatively.
“Knitting?” Dom asked quizzically.
“Why is it so unbelievable?” David questioned.
“Because….” Dom gestured towards him vaguely, “Look at you, Daisy! You’re hardly genteel nana material.”
“I’ll have you know,” David grinned as he replied, “I graduated in the top percentage point. Besides, by my second year, I was the envy of every male on campus. I was closer to the girls and their virtue than any of them would ever be.”
“And that worked for you?” Dom grinned at the mental image.
“The girls and I spent many a night comparing notes on the male half of the student body.”
“So why didn’t you follow your heart?” Dom asked, his finger tracing his daughter’s cheek as he spoke.
“I did,” David assured him.
“But you enlisted.” Dom frowned.
“My brothers were both in the military. Family stays together.”
“You’re all absolutely nuts.”
“No.” He shrugged as if his answer explained everything. “We’re family.” David leaned into Dom’s side and let his hand cup Lana’s silky head. “When it’s all you’ve got there’s nothing more powerful than family.”
“What about the family you make for yourself?” Dom murmured, carefully steering the conversation back to Orlando, watching David’s calloused fingertips lovingly trace his niece’s head.
“Not everybody finds what you and Billy have.”
“No. They don’t.” Dom replied. “But you have, haven’t you? And that knowledge frightens the living crap out of you, doesn’t it? That’s the real reason you won’t sleep with him in your arms. You can see in Orlando what Billy sees in me and you’re terrified that you’ve found the One.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about this with you. I can’t, Dom, and I won’t.” David stood, stalking to the other end of the veranda and back again.
“Too late now. Won’t what?” Dom frowned.
“I saw what happened to my mother, I saw it crush Billy, and I’ve seen it eat Craig alive. I will not sacrifice myself on that altar for anybody.” David turned to lean stiffly against the railing, his face turned to the horizon as the golden ball of the sun began to lift above it.
“Sacrifice?” Dom quirked an eyebrow as he spoke. “That’s a harsh comparison, isn’t it?”
David turned on Dom, his face filled with an incredulous expression. “Don’t you remember how you felt when Billy sent you away?”
“Of course I do,” Dom began to explain, but David cut him off.
“I remember, too well. You were heartbroken, Dom, but he was broken. It wasn’t even like that for him the first time. I’ve watched Craig hand his heart out to be crushed time and again. He’s a lot like Mama in that way: he needs to love and be loved. I watched my mother’s need for love and adoration slowly squeeze the soul out of her, until she was just a shell. Even loving her sons wasn’t enough; love killed her, Dom.” David leaned back against the railing, his voice a husky growl as he spoke. “I will not do that. You and Billy were damned lucky. I’ve got my brothers, I’ve got my nieces and nephew, I have good friends. I won’t need the one thing that will break me.”
“Even for Orlando?” Dom asked quietly.
“Especially with Orli,” David verified, his lips pressed together in a tight line.
“Why? Because he got inside? Because he loved you without reservation? Because you want to break his heart?” Dom frowned, standing and moving to stand directly in front of David.
“Because I don’t want to hurt him anymore than I know it already does. Because I know he’s going to get hurt and I can’t let that happen, not to him. Because I’ve seen what love does to people.” David stalked further along the veranda angrily. “I can’t. I won’t. End of story.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Daisy?” Dom murmured sadly, his long fingers gently caressing his daughter’s head as he spoke.
“Don’t get what?” David growled.
“Doing this…being an absolute ass, that hurts him more than anything else. You don’t want to hurt him, you should never have touched him.”
“Thanks for the fucking update, Dom.”
“Then talk to him, Daisy. Tell him why, don’t just creep out in the middle of the night like an uncaring asshole.”
“It’s the only way I can do this and not tear us both apart,” David murmured. “I’ve already hurt him. I won’t make it worse.”
Dom frowned, pressing one long fingered hand against David’s chest. “Hurt him?”
“I tried to choke him. He touched me while I was sleeping. Before I woke up, I had him pinned to the ground, my hands around his neck. The poor bastard had almost passed out before I realized what the hell was happening.”
“It’s a conditioned response, Daisy. A lot of soldiers have the same responses, the same fears. You’ll lose that.”
“Before or after I actually kill him?”
“You won’t kill him; you won’t even physically hurt him. Your love won’t let you,” Dom explained.
“I. Don’t. Love. Him.”
“He does.” Standing, Dom walked slowly back into the house, leaving David to contemplate their discussion.
Unfolding his lean frame, David followed Dom inside. “What do you mean, he does?”
“Exactly what I said, you great git,” Dom replied, carefully handing his sleeping daughter to David and turning to rinse the bottle in the kitchen sink.
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen him with you, Daisy. We all have,” Dom sighed. “You have to be an idiot not to see the love and adoration in his eyes, when he looks at you.”
“Then you stop him!” David exclaimed. “You have to make him stop it. I don’t want him to love me. You tell him. He won’t fucking listen to me. I don’t love him and I never will.” Lana squirmed in David’s arms as his hold tightened on her, his body tensing with anger as he spoke to Dom.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Daisy,” Dom replied calmly. “You’re an adult. He’s your boyfriend, so shouldn’t you be having this conversation with him?”
“He is not my boyfriend,” David hissed quickly, his hold gentling on his niece as he rocked her gently, soothing her.
“Jesus, Daisy, you fuck him, he loves you, and you adore him regardless of what you say. What would you call him?” Dom asked, one eyebrow quirked. “Convenient shag? Or maybe just a good fuck?”
“If that’s what it takes to make you stop talking about him.” David stood straighter as he spoke, his mind actively seeking a definition for his new friend.
“You know that’s not going to happen anytime soon,” Dom murmured, leaning in to lift Lana from David’s arms. “Besides, it won’t stop you thinking about him, will it?” Dom glanced up into David’s face before he continued speaking. “You don’t have to tell me: I know and I can see it in your face. You two aren’t so different from Billy and I. And I know you’ll be lying if you tell me he’s not your first thought when you wake and your last before you sleep. You think about him when you see a beautiful sunrise, or hear a bird sing. You’ll look at something mundane and so boring every day and want to share it with him, just because you can, and you’ll see the beauty in everything, just because you’re sharing it with him. And you do that every single fucking day. Don’t even bother denying it.”
“Dominic, I swear if you weren’t holding that little girl, I’d knock you on your skinny ass,” David hissed, his fingers caressing his temples trying to will away the pain beginning to throb there.
“No you wouldn’t,” Dom replied looking up into David’s face. “You know why? You know every word I’ve spoken is the truth.”
“I don’t love him.” David growled.
“Liar.” Dom started to walk out of the kitchen. “There’s aspirin in the cupboard over the sink. Take some, then take the lube from the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. Go back to your lover, and this time treat him right, Daisy.”
Chapter 15