Billy, Lando, the Colorado Territory, 1873
Takes place after the Barfight and before Parting Ways.
The Shooting Lesson
Billy wakes up to the sun on his face and the smell of coffee.
It's early yet, to judge from the snap in the air, but a touch later than is his custom, and he blinks against the brightness as he works his way out of his sleeping roll. Campsite looks unmolested, with the horses grazing placidly off to one side. Lando's not in sight, but Billy can hear him on the other side of the rise, and there's a pot of oatmeal and a kettle of coffee warming next to the fire. He straps his gunbelts into place, flipping each revolver open to check the chambers (fully loaded, as he left them) before settling them in the holsters. Hat and boots come next, after a quick check proves them free of invaders, and he retrieves his coat from where it was pressed into service as a pillow. His roll comes together easily enough, and he straps it down tight and tosses it over next to his pack. Morning ritual at its end, he climbs to his feet and stretches, one hand braced against his head to a cascade of pops down his spine.
The coffee is Lando's usual rivermud, but he's done a fair job on the oatmeal, and Billy works his way through both at an easy pace before heading down to the water to wash the dishes and his face. This spot is a favorite of his: a decent-sized clearing on the south side of the Purgatoire, where the big rocks catch the sun all day and the cottonwood trees hide the camp from the road. He found it by accident on his first trip to Denver, and in the years since there's been no sign that anybody uses it but him. He usually makes at least a day's stop, if he can afford to; the fish will bite a line left tied and drifting, and one of the eddies makes for fine bathing after a few hours of sun. For now, though, he contents himself with scrubbing a cupped-handful of chilly water over his face and neck and taking a few minutes to appreciate the view before he heads off to find Lando.
He's in the first place Billy checks, an open stretch of rocky ground not a hundred yards over from their campsite. There's a heap of small boulders at one end, and Lando's circling around them with his arms full of a truly bizarre assortment of objects: smaller rocks, a couple branches, a bird's nest, what could be a badger skull, and something that looks like an old boot the river tossed up. With great deliberation, he places a rock down on a boulder, squints up at the far end of the clearing, adjusts it, circles the whole formation, squints again, and selects the next object. Billy smothers a grin and leans up on the far side of a cottonwood to watch him work. It takes a while, Lando fussing with each piece of detritus and muttering to himself or humming snatches of melody. After he's got the last piece settled (the badger skull, balanced precariously on one end of a branch wedged upright) and has stepped back to admire his handiwork, Billy pushes off his tree and saunters out into the sunlight.
"You taken up a hobby I should know about, Lando?" he calls. Lando turns and grins broadly; he's not usually this chipper in the mornings (Billy's gotten used to having to yank the bedroll out from under him to get him moving), but today he's practically beaming with good humor.
"Look, Bills!" he hollers, gesturing back at his pile of boulders. Mentally calculating how much coffee had been drunk when he'd woken, Billy raises an eyebrow. Lando glares a little and steps to one side, throwing both arms out to frame the sculpture with a flourish. "It's a shooting range!"
Billy's one eyebrow -- the eyebrow of skepticism, Lando thinks of it privately -- arches further upward, but on the usual scale of these things it's not too doubtful (which is to say it's only about an inch higher than his other eyebrow, rather than winging up like it's trying to retreat into his hairline), so Lando chooses to take it as a good sign. He grins, and Billy's eyebrow lowers very slightly. "I'll need to practice, Bills; you said I'd need to practice," he reminds Billy, and watches the eyebrow lower itself so that it's even with its partner again.
"I did say that," Billy says, which would be agreement coming from anyone else, but which Lando has figured out by now is merely a statement of fact when Billy says it.
Lando's hand drops to the butt of the revolver hanging low on his right side; the weight of it is still new enough to be distracting and unfamiliar, but he feels that little spark of excitement at the feel of the smooth bone under his fingertips. It isn't new, of course; guns are expensive, and though he and Bills are holding plenty comfortably, they're nowhere near comfortable enough to just buy a new revolver on a whim. And besides that, Bills had said it was a good idea to find out if Lando had a feel for a pistol before they sprang for something fancy.
So it's not new -- and there's just the one, no reason for two until Lando proves capable, also according to Billy, no matter how desperately Lando wants to wear the double gunbelts -- but it is nice, a good gun. Billy had spent quite some time looking over what had been available, had hefted them, spun the cylinders on a few, and eventually, had broken this one and another down to be sure everything was clean and in good order before telling Lando to take his pick of them. Every time Lando touches it, he still feels the echo of his delight.
Mixed with the delight is a healthy dose of nerves, however. He's got no real idea how well he'll do with a gun. It's not like poker, he figures, because a lot of learning poker for Lando has been a process of slow absorption. There are the rules, yeah, and Billy has made sure he knows them backwards and forwards, but much of what he understands about the game he's learned from watching Billy play it. He thinks this will be different, and not just because he hasn't had much chance to watch Billy use his guns. This is going to take a hell of a lot more practice before he's good at it, he thinks; it's unlikely that the knack that he has for poker is going to apply.
None of that stops him from being wildly excited, however, and he shifts anxiously from foot to foot, watching Billy as he considers each of the objects Lando has scattered about the scrubby expanse of earth nearby. He's made no attempt to make it easy for himself -- has done just the opposite, in fact, as it seems to him that being good at something when the doing of it is made easy is no real skill at all -- and he wants to ask Billy if he approves, but can't quite bring himself to do it. There've been times, of late, that he can feel Billy's impatience with Lando's lack of self-confidence, and Lando doesn't want to rile Billy right now.
Not when he's angling for a lesson.
So he stands quiet and still is he can -- which is not entirely -- and waits for Billy to finish considering. Billy frowns and turns slightly to scan the area nearest the road, then cocks his head to squint up at the angle of the sun, one eye mostly closed. He turns his head and spits on the ground and rolls his shoulders as though to settle himself. "I reckon now's as good a time as any," he says, and Lando grins and resists the urge to whoop triumphantly.
Lando's got that look right now that reminds Billy of a half-grown herder dog waiting for the practice call, like he could be off and running before a word'd make it fully out of Billy's mouth. Lately, he's been seeing Lando shed youth (and its attendant stupidity) with unconscious but rapid ease, baring the frame of his permanent character. And he's steadying remarkably--just a few months ago he would've been bouncing on his heels, literally, with no notion until Billy called him on it. Now he's standing there, hand casual on the butt of his gun, and only the slight drumming of his index finger on the gripstock gives him away. Billy watches it out of his periphery, and holds off a smile, and thinks that this keen excitement will always be a part of Lando. One day he'll be able to sit at a High Stakes table and hold a royal flush like it's the supper menu, no mistake about it, but in the back of his mind where no one can see it, his bootheels will be bouncing.
Now, though, that abundance of energy is a liability for the lesson at hand, so Billy tilts his head and says, "Go fetch my kit -- make sure to get the oil with it -- and a box of bullets. Bring the .44s too." Lando waits an extra beat, to make sure Billy's finished (age and experience have also conspired to make him a better pupil), and then his smile cracks wide open and he takes off for their campsite at a dead sprint. Billy wanders over to a large flat-topped rock, settles himself next to it, and starts considering how best to go about this.
When Lando comes back into the clearing, it's at a brisk but more sedate walk (and good thing, too, because Billy would've blistered his ears for running with his gun kit and two boxes of ammunition), and the exertion seems to have grounded him slightly. Billy takes the bullets first, setting them off to the side, and then spreads his kit out on the rock in front of him. He holds one hand out while the other continues to sort his tools; it takes Lando a second, but he cottons on just before Billy has to cut his eyes up in a prompt. He lays his gun carefully in Billy's hand (it's warm to the touch) and drops into a crouch beside him.
"I'll teach you this later," Billy says, flipping the catch and tipping the barrel up to double-check the chambers. "For now, just watch." Lando nods and leans in, eyes keen, as Billy begins to disassemble the revolver. It's an S&W Model Two Army, same as Billy's had been before he'd managed to lay hands on a pair of Model Three's. He intends to boost Lando to the same, provided Lando shows a knack for this, but in the meantime he doesn't feature ending up in situations that'll rest on Lando's ability to reload in seconds, so the Model Two'll do for now. It's a good gun besides, if a little fragile at the top hinge, and Billy's still got the proper tools for it. So far, it looks to be well cared-for; the components are yielding easy enough under punch and screwdriver and plier, and he's not finding anything worse than a bit of grime and caked-on grease.
Having broken the gun down to his satisfaction, he unstoppers the gun oil and dips the first of the brushes in it. "You need to clean it nightly," he says, scrubbing out each of the chambers, "cylinder, barrel, and frame at least if you can't get a clean spot to take it apart. If there's been rain or dust, especially both, always do the full job. Same if you've had occasion to fire it; trouble comes in decks." There's a stubborn little stain above the trigger; he works it over with the chamois. "If you scrimp on the maintenance, you won't notice much at first, but the pins'll come to stick and the screws'll give over time, and you're liable to learn of it staring down the barrel of another man's gun." Cadence follows action as he polishing the pins down and checking each of the screws for wear or stripping. A couple of the springs want replacing, but they're sound enough to learn on, and they can stock up on spare parts in Denver.
There's not much more to say, as he's saving the hows of the maintenance for later, so he goes silent to concentrate on what he's doing. As always, Billy finds the methodical nature of the work soothing, cleaning and examining each bit of metal, laying them all on the cloth with deliberate care. When all the pieces are gleaming, he seals the oil and starts the reassembly process. It's both easier and more difficult than taking the gun apart; there's nothing there now to gum up the works, but even a slight mis-set will cause problems later. Billy takes his time, lining the starter-punch up precisely, double-checking the angle before each tap of the hammer. He's aware of Lando's eyes tracking his movements, Lando's fingers twitching in mimicry as he commits it to memory. It's an enviable knack, the way his body soaks up what his eyes witness, and Billy's got no doubt that he'll find Lando's half-learned this when he goes to teach it to him.
The hinge-screw twists into place, and Billy spins the cylinder, checks the action on hammer and trigger. Thumbing the barrel catch, he gives the gun a firm shake to test for rattle. Everything's as it should be. He wraps his tools back up and hands the kit to Lando to tie off while he reaches for the box of .32s. Each cartridge slots neatly into its chamber. When Billy stands Lando does too, right hand drifting out, but he drops it to his side when Billy makes no motion to hand the gun over.
Billy cocks his head back a little, to get a better look at Lando's face. "Tell me what you know about shooting," he says.
"Um," Lando says, but he's aware enough of himself now to know that no matter how dismayed he might be feeling currently (that would be very), it's not showing on his face. Billy's expression remains neutral in the face of Lando's uncertainty, however, so Lando figures it's okay. It's an honest question, not an excuse to mock. Billy does mock, but it's fairly gentle, a form of ribbing Lando had witnessed growing up (between brothers, sometimes, or hands on the ranch). Lando's never actually been a party to that kind of thing before Bills, though, and even now he's not used to it.
He shrugs and backs up a couple of feet so Billy won't have to crane his neck to look at Lando. "Not much," Lando admits. "Not much more than you point the end with the hole in it at what you want to shoot." He hooks his thumbs into the stiff, new leather of his gunbelt and forces himself not to rock or bounce. "I haven't ever even shot a rifle or a shotgun. My step-father kept them under lock and key." Billy nods his understanding of this, but doesn't say anything, which Lando takes to mean he's to keep talking.
He considers for another minute, then gives into the urge to rock a little on the balls of his feet. "Well, then," he says. "I know you have to cock the hammer back to fire. I've heard that you have to aim with both eyes to get the right perspective, even though a lot of people don't, but I don't know that that's true. I think it must be, though, since it's true enough with a slingshot." He thinks again, casting one eye toward the gun Billy's still holding, and adds, "I know a gun that size will kick like hell."
He takes another minute to think -- it seems fairly ridiculous that that's all he can come up with, but that seems to be the case -- and then sighs. "I guess that's it, practically speaking," he admits.
Billy nods. It's about the answer he expected, and one that told him what he wanted to know. "Good. You won't have to take time to unlearn bad habits." He hands the gun to Lando and walks to the center of the clearing, stopping about forty paces' distance from the makeshift range. Lando follows.
It's a good set-up, really; nice variety of targets, different sizes, different heights, and not all of them positioned for a clear shot. Billy takes a moment to admire it, then looks over and lets the quiet spin out while he waits for Lando to start them off. Despite what Lando may think (and what he's said on occasion), Billy's hardly a born teacher. In the last year and a half, he's taken to it far more than he imagined he would, but his method is still more instinct than structure. He knows what he wants to teach Lando about shooting, what Lando'll need to know, but there's more than one road into the lesson and Billy's far from settled on which one'd be best. So he opts to pass on the question and just wait and see what Lando does. It's not the kindest way to start, maybe, but he's never claimed to be gentle, and this does tend to get them where they're going as sure as any set course would.
A minute crawls slowly by before Lando shifts and tips the gun in his hand, letting the sun catching on the metal. "I don't know how you want me to hold it. For shooting, I mean." He bears Billy's considering look a little uncomfortably but without comment.
Picking up a fist-sized rock, Billy tests its weight and then lobs it in a long arc over the open ground. Turning to follow the throw, Lando doesn't flinch when the rock explodes in midair, but he jumps when another shot shatters the largest of the fragments barely an instant after it's been flung loose. By the time he whirls back, eyes dinner-plate wide, Billy's already got his left-hand pistol holstered; he flips the right-hand gun back into the leather, metal still hot from the second shot. He lets his hands rest easy on the grips and meets Lando's eyes.
"It depends," he tells him.
Lando blinks, following the thread of conversation back, and a little of the admiration and envy fade from his expression as he considers this. "On what I'm shooting?" he asks.
Billy tilts his head sideways, less disagreement than redirection, and says, "On the circumstances where you decide to shoot." He looks down at the gun hanging loose in Lando's hand, over at the broken fragments of rock littering the ground beyond them, and then back up at Lando. "When could you shoot a man, Lando?"
Lando's face clouds over at the question. Billy thinks that most shooting lessons probably start with how to hit the target (he wouldn't know, he taught himself), but he suspects it won't be Lando's physical ability that sets limits on his gunwork, and he wants them both looking to those other limits now. Voice even and quiet, Billy asks, "When could you kill him?"
He doesn't want to admit that the question shakes him a little -- bloody hell, the whole reason this is happening at all is because of the barfight, because of what almost happened that day -- but it does, and he guesses Billy knows it. As well as Billy knows Lando, it's practically a certainty. He feels foolish, he feels young, and he hates that feeling, as always. Of course Billy wants to know the answer to that question. Of course he does. As excited as Lando had been about getting a pistol of his own -- as excited as he still is, in spite of understanding the angles of it -- he hadn't once thought about the most basic reason a man needs one.
A rifle or a shotgun might be for hunting, might be for self-defense, but there's no reason for the Model Threes hanging low on Billy's hips -- or the Model Two Lando is holding in his now-sweaty right hand -- except for killing people.
He ought to consider the question, ought to give it the attention he knows it deserves, but the simple truth is, he doesn't want to. The idea makes him feel sick and unhappy, fills him with more than a little dread. He remembers the smell of the gunpowder hanging in the air, a smell he usually quite likes, and the way it had been mixed with the sweet tang of cooked blood. He remembers the warm spray of it across his own face. He remembers the mess and the cold, cold look in Billy's eyes, and his mind shies away from the notion that he could ever look like that himself.
He doesn't know how to say those things. And he isn't sure he would, even if he did know how. He loves Bills and wouldn't hurt him for anything, and though Billy isn't the kind of bloke that's easily hurt, Lando thinks knowing that Lando doesn't want to be like him, not like that (that the way Billy looks when he's behind the double-dose of death of his guns in both hands is the only time Lando doesn't admire him), might be enough to do it.
But he has to say something; he knows Billy, and unless he finds something to say there will be no lesson. And in spite of everything that goes along with the gun in his hand, Lando wants to learn this. Even more, perhaps, than he'd wanted to learn poker, he wants to know this. It's not just the thing in the bar, either. Someday may come the time when there's a bloke behind Billy and there isn't a shot glass at hand, there may come a time when Lando needs to reciprocate that act, and he must be able to do that.
As sick and awful as the idea of killing a man makes him, the idea of losing Bills because Lando doesn't know how to save him makes him feel a thousand times worse.
"When I have to," he says finally, and is a little surprised to hear his own voice come out low and grim and grating, but certain.
Watching the thoughts circle back and forth behind Lando's face sets Billy on alert, because it's clear that they're not pleasant but he can't tell much more than that. And he doesn't think it's because Lando's trying to hide them (he can't quite manage that yet when there aren't cards involved, though he is getting more opaque, more careful), but because they're on new territory now, and Billy doesn't have all the cues he needs to recognize what he's seeing. The hard edge in Lando's voice speaks clear enough -- he doesn't doubt his answer, and Billy doesn't either, not exactly. But necessity's a nebulous thing, with boundaries that shift without warning, and he means to walk them along the edges a bit so Lando knows it too. More than that, though, it's the look in Lando's eyes that makes him wary, because his face is tight but his eyes look wild -- cornered.
"And when's that?" Billy asks, and Lando turns his head a little farther, as though he wants to make sure his glare doesn't miss its mark. He looks about as pissed off as Billy's ever seen him, and that ratchets Billy's attention a notch tighter. Voice dispassionate, he keeps fishing. "When he's drawing down on you?"
"Yes." Lando fills the sound with a world of aggravation.
"If he's pulling a knife?"
"Yes." Same answer, same tone.
Billy takes them the next step forward. "What if it's a chair, or a whip -- something that'll hurt like hell, but won't kill you?"
This time, Lando hesitates a little. "It depends. I don't know. Maybe." His free hand is beating a tattoo onto his left thigh; he doesn't seem to notice.
There's a rhythm to this, not unlike tracking, and for all that it's Lando's limits Billy's trying to find, each question feels like he's circling in on Lando himself. Lando feels it too, obviously; the tension in his shoulders is visible out of Billy's periphery, and the hand holding the revolver has wrapped around it, thumb on the gripstock, fingers curving down tight around the outside of the trigger guard. It's a queer way to hold it -- awkward, and a little hateful, as though he's prepared to cast it away. Instinctively, Billy shifts so that his weight's balanced better over his feet. He doesn't feel threatened (he can't imagine Lando ever raising a hand to him, or vice versa), but it's clear they're coming up on something from the way Lando's braced for it, and he wants to be ready when they get there. "Depends on what?"
Lando frowns. "On the situation. On whether or not I think he means to kill me. On whether or not I think I can talk my way out of it, or fight my way out of it without getting too messed up. On lots of things. Is there some point to this, Bill?"
On any other day, that last snippy question would mean the end of the lesson, and they both know it. In one of their early poker lessons, back when Billy was still struggling to put words to things he'd never intended to talk about, Lando had complained that Billy wasn't telling him anything, that he just sat there and beat him. Billy'd stopped, and stared at him, and finally said, Kid, I'm not gonna teach someone who doesn't want to be taught. He hadn't brought the cards out again for two weeks. But this isn't a poker lesson, and it's not impatience that's putting the fight in Lando now. Billy ignores the question, not to be difficult, or because he doesn't know the answer, but because telling him outright what they're trying to get to would give Lando the means to avoid it entirely. And the more Lando fights this, the more Billy's sure they can't afford not to get into it now.
Lando waits, mentally getting a grip on his temper, just waiting for Billy to say something sharp, or just turn and walk off. It's a lesson, just a lesson, he tells himself -- and he knows that this isn't all that different than the way Billy usually goes about teaching Lando things, it only feels different -- but it doesn't dispel the sense of being ... pushed, somehow. Cornered. He waits, certain that Bills will call it off, and only half-regretful of that.
But Billy doesn't do it. Instead, he ignores the question entirely, and carries on as though Lando hadn't said a word, as though there hadn't even been a good two or three minute silence in there. "Could you kill on a job?" he asks, voice inflectionless, and something hard and heavy settles in the pit of Lando's belly, something that feels suspiciously like dread. "To protect a boss, his trade or his goods?"
Lando looks away, squints up at the sky for a long moment, and tries to put whatever it is aside. He feels it, whatever it is, feels it like a threat hovering at the edges of his perception, hummingbird-quick, too quick to really track with your eyes. Like a bullet, like the moment when everything empties out of Billy's eyes, like the movement of his hands as he draws ...
He shakes his head a little, not a negative, just a motion, movement to try and let off some of the tension he can feel coiling under his skin. He shifts his gaze out to the shooting gallery, picks out the badger skull with his eyes, stares fiercely at it while he tries to get ahold of himself.
"Lando," Billy says, and it's a prompt, but it's an unusually gentle one. Any other time, Lando would probably appreciate that, would value it (because while Bills is a lot of good things, patient is not one of them), and even now he knows that he must've gone quiet for a while, a minute at least, for Billy to actually say something, but he can't ignore the sharp uprising of aggravation that flares in his chest and tightens his shoulders.
"I don't know, dammit," he snaps, tongue just a hair faster than his self-control, and that will be the end of this for sure. Lando runs his free hand through his hair -- it's so long now that his fingers tangle briefly in the curls and he has to tug them free, which only aggravates him more -- and sighs. "I don't bloody know," he repeats, more harshly than he means to, but less snappish than before, at least.
The weight of Billy's gaze is enormous. Lando can sort of see it out of the corner of his eye, though he doesn't turn to look. He doesn't want to see that cool, distant look Bills gets on those few occasions on which Lando manages to actually offend him, rather than just aggravating him.
"Lando," Billy repeats eventually, and his tone is still quiet and calm. "We're trying to answer your question."
Huh? he thinks, but doesn't say, some shade of his mother reminding him silently that "Huh" is not a word, but that's almost periphery to what he's actually thinking. He's actually thinking that he doesn't belive Billy has ever spoken to him with quite this degree of patience, with such deliberate intent not to rile Lando, and he can't help but respond to that by doing his damnedest to comply. He shakes his head again and forces himself to think about what Billy's saying. "What question?" he asks, because he honestly doesn't remember what he'd even asked, and he asks it calmly, if perhaps not exactly nicely.
"You asked how you're supposed to hold a gun while you're shooting," Billy says, still with that same steady patience. He's just looking at Lando, his expression serene but focused. He's never looked at Lando like that as far as Lando can recall, and it unsettles him. The weight in his belly turns over oddly, almost fluttering, and Lando is so uncertain of what that look means, and of what his own reaction to it means, that he blinks and looks away.
It takes him a moment to come back to the thread of the conversation, and it occurs to him that this is by far the hardest beginning to anything Billy has tried to teach him yet, and that hardly bodes well. He shrugs the thought away with difficulty, and takes a deep breath. "I'm not following you, Billy," he admits with deliberate calm, though he doesn't look at Billy again.
Lando's grimace is frustrated and weary, the same face he wears toward the end of a messy day of field labor. Billy can sympathize -- they've spiralled pretty far from the nominal topic, and he hasn't given Lando much of a map to follow. He's not ready to, not quite yet, but he cuts back to beginning in hopes that something concrete will make the going a little easier for Lando. "Well, for one thing, it matters whether you've got it out or not when you start shooting."
Lando sucks a slow breath in and turn his head away. Billy waits, watching a muscle twitch at the edge of his jaw, the only part of his face his can see. The sun's climbing higher, and the quiet hangs still between them. Lando lets the pent-up air out of his lungs, his shoulders dropping into a slump.
"Sometimes you're an ass, Bill," he says to the far side of the clearing. The hand holding the gun sinks to his side.
The response rocks him back a half-step, though he doesn't mean to move. Lando half-turns at the sound of pebbles shifting; his gaze aims itself at some patch of ground a few yards in front of him, as though he doesn't quite want to look at him directly yet. Billy, for his own part, stands there and waits for the strange pressure in his chest to dissipate. It's an unfamiliar feeling. Anger (at himself for not being better at this), regret (because he knows bone-deep that easing off will only sink them later on), and other things too dense and unfamiliar for him to put names to them.
The silence drags itself out long enough that Lando looks up at Billy, his face wary and shuttered. "I'm not going to run you around for fun, Lando," Billy says, and the words come out quiet. Lando studies Billy's face, considering this (and it's uncomfortable, being looked at right now, but he can't pin down why so he just waits under it); a little of the tension unwinds itself visibly from Lando's shoulders, and he scrubs his free hand across his face.
"Okay," he says, and then, less clearly: "Sorry."
It's not, obviously, but this moment is getting thicker than Billy'd really like, so he sidesteps the apology and turns back to the task at hand. "That's all right. But you need to know these things, or at least start thinking on them, and I need to know what to teach you." Lando nods and shakes his shoulders, the way a horse dislodges a fly. He's back to studying the far edges of the clearing again. "We know almost enough to start. If you can manage a little bit more, we can move on to the easy part." As irony goes, it's pretty weak, and Billy's left waiting to see if he's managed to coax Lando back in.
Lando suspects he should find the gentle, steady calm in Billy's voice soothing, even comforting, but he's still feeling too jittery to be able to appreciate it. He can feel a muscle in his jaw jumping, but he can't quite unclench his teeth enough to make it stop.
But since he believes Billy when he says he isn't going to run Lando around for fun (or he wants to, anyway), he keeps his gaze fixed on the shooting gallery he's set up (what now feels like hours ago, when he was still thinking of this whole thing as fun), because he doesn't want Billy to know how angry he still is. Justified or not.
Just get through it, he thinks, and it should be easy because God knows he's done it often enough, just stood still and let his step-father lecture him about being a man or rant on Lando's shortcomings (or even worse, on Lando's father's failures, with Lando, with the ranch, with whatever he happened to be riled about that day). Let whatever it was just unravel until he finally ran out of words or temper.
But this is different. He's never had to endure something like it from Billy, not like this. Bills hardly says anything about what Lando does wrong; he's naturally fairly spare with words, anyway, which is what makes winning praise from him so ... worthy. When Lando screws up, it's usually just, "Try it again," or "You can do better," or occasionally an explanation as to why what Lando did won't work. But. He won't quit. He won't. So.
"Yeah, okay," he says, and feels more than sees Billy nod. He can't help bracing himself a little for whatever is still left that Billy wants to know. Just get through it, he thinks again -- because he guesses it must be something Billy thinks is important if he's willing to put up with Lando's sullenness without comment -- but he still isn't ready for it when Billy says:
"Could you shoot a man who didn't know he had it coming?"
He flinches, he can't stop it, and half-gasps, "No!" It feels a little like the words and his breath are being shoved out of him by a painless blow to the gut, but while it doesn't actually hurt, there's some kind of rolling, thunderous panic blossoming there, and he's horrified to feel a tell-tale burning at the backs of his eyes. "Christ, Billy, no!"
"Hey, hey now," Billy says, his voice now faintly concerned. He steps forward (and Lando draws himself in, feels it happening without being able to stop himself, and sees Billy seeing it, though he can't tell from Billy's face what he thinks of it, as per usual), and sets a hand on Lando's back, directly between his shoulder blades. Lando blinks -- he isn't sure what he'd been expecting, but that wasn't it -- but doesn't move away. For a long moment Billy just looks at Lando. There's a little verticle line between his brows and his eyes are slightly narrowed, which is how Billy looks when someone seriously pisses him off, but it's different. It takes Lando a few more seconds to translate that expression into worry, and when he does he feels a little flare of something behind his breastbone. He might've said something stupid, then (he can almost feel the urge to apologize crouching in his throat, right under his Adam's apple), but Billy tilts his head a little and takes Lando by both shoulders, turning him (and Lando's too surprised to resist even a little) a bit so they're facing each other.
"I," Lando stammers, "I can't, I..."
Billy gives him a single, gentle little shake, and Lando blinks again. "I don't reckon you're ever going to have to," he says quietly, and it sounds an awful lot like an promise to Lando. The flare of warmth behind his breastbone blazes for a moment, and Lando's breath catches, hitches unsteadily. "You just need to know so you don't find out the wrong answer at the wrong time." He pauses and gives Lando another little shake. "Okay?" he murmurs, and Lando nods a little dazedly.
It's Billy's touch that calms him, really. Billy hardly ever touches him, so it's not expected, and it's soothing, even with the way Lando's head suddenly feels like he's been clipped a good one in the ear. Billy just continues to look at him, so Lando says, "I'm fine. I just ..." He shrugs, trying to shake off whatever it is that's making him feel so ... off-balance, all of a sudden. "I said when i have to, Billy. And that's what i meant. Have to." He waves one hand, gesturing a little aimlessly sort of in Billy's direction. "I'm not ... I won't ..." He trails off, uncertain how to say what he wants to say.
Lando doesn't finish and Billy's doesn't need him to, because it's clear enough where that sentence is headed. Concern (a strange feeling, not one he's used to) drains away and leave its space for something colder, a cloud in front of the sun. I'm not: like you; I won't: do the things you do. It's true, all right, even more than in the telling of it, because Lando has seen Billy kill, but he doesn't know all the killing he is capable of. There are other deaths, delivered by steel, by lead and fire, that a better man would wear as a scar on his soul and a worse one as a notch in his belt. Billy carries them as scuffs on the metal of his guns -- they're there, all right, but they hold no weight and the memory of them doesn't slow his hand.
Billy is not a good man. Lando will be. Nothing that true needs to be said out loud.
He lets the brim of his hat shade his face for a moment and slides his hands an inch or so down Lando's arms, squeezes once before letting go. "Let's do what we set out to do," he says. "I'll talk you through it."
Lando curls into himself a hair more -- Billy can't tell if it's at the thought of firing a gun or if his shoulders have just been waiting to hunch and can now that Billy's hands are gone -- and he glances down at the revolver in his hand. His grip's changed again; he's holding it properly, hand curled around the stock, index finger resting along the trigger guard, but with a cautious edge he hadn't had at the start of the lesson. Since the day they bought it he's held it with care, but the same care he'll show for a toolkit or a deck of cards. Now he's holding it like a weapon. Billy watches a little more of Lando's youth rise off of him, steam in the morning sun, and doesn't know whether he should be sorry to see it go.
"Okay, yeah," he says, straightening his shoulders and lifting his eyes from the gun. "What first?"
"First," Billy tells him, "I want you to holster your gun." Lando's head turns a little at that, chin coming up, and Billy lays out the shape of his thoughts before Lando can get the wrong idea. "When you're shooting out of necessity, it's a safe bet you won't be drawing till you mean to fire. That means you're gonna have to do it all in one motion, and you're going to be aiming and firing from the hip. It's not as easy as having your gun right out in front of you, but the skill you're going to use is the one you want to practice."
Lando's face clears as he listens to the explanation, visibly linking the physical task to the net of questions before. Billy's damn relieved to see the suspiciousness dissipate; he's not good enough at this to get to the heart of the matter by talk alone, so it's fortunate that his ass-backwards teaching style has finally looped them to the point he was trying to reach. "We'll take it slow for now; speed'll come with time," he continues, and Lando nods and slides the gun into the holster. "Drop your hand to the gripstock -- is the holster at a good height? Good. You always want to holster on the same side, not border-style. Know why?"
Hand resting on the butt of the gun, Lando considers this. "Faster?"
Billy nods approval. "Dead right -- takes less movement, too. If your hand's gotta cross your hip, the man you're gunning for is gonna see you moving years before you get there, and swinging back across makes you more inclined to shoot wide." He walks around to Lando's far side and faces the shooting range, making sure that Lando's got a clear view of his right hand. "Now watch. When you go for your gun: get your fingers in place as you pull free. Thumb cocks the hammer back and swings the gun up -- get the barrel level as your hand comes forward -- and you pull the trigger." As he talks, hand and gun match words in a slowed-down version of the technique he's describing. It's a sight harder to keep the draw clean this slow, but this is how Billy taught himself to shoot, running through the motions at half-speed over and over while he isolated all the extra twists and swings that marred his aim and smoothed them out. He hasn't had to practice like that for years, but his body remembers, and the gun slides as surely through the air as though he'd carved a channel for it. He doesn't fire -- no need to waste a bullet -- just finishes with the gun hovering inches from his hip and holds there for a moment before flipping it back into the holster.
Billy circles back around to Lando's gun-side, stopping a half-pace behind him, and gestures at the target range. "Go ahead."
Lando twitches, straightening abruptly, the invitation to begin somehow taking him by surprise. He turns dead-on to the range and lets his eyes scan all possible targets, though he knows already what he's going to go for. The grinning, empty-eyed skull is just too tempting a target.
He doesn't give into the urge to think about the actual mechanics of it; it never helps him to do that. In fact, it would be fair to say that he's only safe really thinking about how a thing is done once he's already comfortable with doing it. Instead, he replays Billy's draw in his head, just the motion of it, and feels the muscles of his shoulders and neck ease as he fixes his gaze on the skull and imagines it shattering.
A faint tickle of excitement itches faintly at his skin, and his right hand twitches and settles onto the butt of the pistol easily. And it is easy. It feels just right, and he acknowledges silently that while the idea of shooting somebody makes him deeply uneasy, the idea of shooting itself ... Well. He likes that just fine.
"Just the draw?" he hears himself ask, as though from a distance. "Or do you want me to actually shoot?"
"The whole thing, and keep the gun out when you've fired," Billy says, his voice falling into what Lando thinks of as his "teaching cadence," a slow rise and fall of voice that indicates nothing at all, no expectation and no impatience, but rather just conveys information. "Don't think about it too hard, and don't worry if you miss your mark -- we got plenty of bullets. Just pick your target and let's find out what your body knows."
The itching of his skin shifts and solidifies into a bright, hard knot in his belly -- he faintly recognizes this as having something to do with Billy's choice of words, but the understanding of that seems unimportant -- and he flexes his fingers on the smooth, warm butt of his -- his -- gun.
He doesn't even try for speed. Instead, he goes for a smooth, easy motion, something that feels as natural as this always looks when Billy is doing it, and he's as surprised as he can be when the gun comes out and up not just smoothly, but almost fluidly, like his hand already knew this, and had just been waiting patiently for his head to catch up. His finger finds the trigger by some natural grace, and it all feels eerily familiar, as though he's done this, as though he remembers it in some fashion, and when he squeezes it's an extention of that motion, slow and easy and utterly correct.
He isn't surprised when the badger skull explodes, and the flat, heavy crack of the shot doesn't startle him in the least. The kick of the gun is expected, and he rolls his shoulder to absorb it without thought.
He stands there for a long moment, after, considering. It wasn't fast the way that Billy is fast -- no one else is that fast -- but it was still bloody fast. He knows it.
Easy as poker.
Easier.
He slides the pistol back into the holster slowly, but doesn't take his hand off of it. He's conscious of his grip on the butt of the gun, of the way the grain feels under the pads of his fingers, and though he isn't consciously looking at any of the other targets he'd set up, he knows where they are, he knows how to move if he were going to try for them.
He turns to look at Billy -- also familiar, utterly so -- and sees the gleam in his eyes, the very faint crinkle at the corners of his eyes that isn't a smile, but is, for him.
"Bills," he says, and Billy's chin comes up, his eyes narrowing slightly, as though he's heard something unexpected in Lando's voice. Lando doesn't doubt it. He hears it, too. The satisfaction, the cool, bright certainty. He hears it. "I can do this," Lando says.
Billy gives a single nod, but Lando shakes his head.
"No," he says almost sharply. "I mean. Look."
He turns back, and this time he doesn't look at any one target, almost doesn't look at anything at all, just lets his eyes rove over the range, lets his smart right hand pluck the gun from the holster, and he's firing almost at once, watching the old boot flip end over end, a triangular slice of shale disintegrate, the bird's nest explode into a shower of straw and twigs, and he stops only when the click of the hammer is dry and flat, breathing hard and feeling almost feverish.
He eases the hammer back down -- apparently his hand had tried to cock it again, fire it again, before he'd registered the lack of bullet on the last shot -- and slowly, carefully, drops the hot metal back into his holster.
In the back of his mind, Billy's aware that he's holding his breath and has been since Lando's gun cleared leather for the second time. It's not out of surprise (the day he does something that damn-fool obvious is the day he turns in his deck) but a sort of reverence, instinct urging him not to interrupt what he could see coming just an instant before it started. Hands resting on his own pistols (and it's just his own body heat and the sun, but he feels a sympathetic sort of warmth in the grips), he lets himself stare out over the range for a minute. There's nothing new he needs to glean from it; as he looks over the debris, he's running the same five seconds over and over again in his head. The way Lando had moved, gun swinging easy from target to target like each bullet knew what it was meant for and just borrowed his arm to get there. The long narrow curve of his posture, the lazy sweep of his hand. There's a certain casualness some gunfighters get, where every motion is as loose and as sure as the pendulum swinging in a grandfather clock. A sort of deceptive slackness that, in Billy's experience, comes with vast familiarity, a taste for murder, or being more than a little touched in the head. Lando's got none of those qualities (jokes about the last aside), but he's got that look about him even with his hand resting on a gun still hot from the first shots he's ever fired.
Lando's no killer and they both know it, but if Billy came upon him as a stranger, he'd keep both hands free.
The queerest part, though, is how steady he looks. From the first day Billy picked him up on the road, Lando has had a mercurial quality about him, like he's always a moment away from being somewhere else. That's gone now, like emptying the chamber knocked him into place. Billy looks him over, trying to take in the difference, and Lando stands easy through it. His eyes are bright, his face a little flushed -- and what's not there, Billy realizes, is Lando's perpetual question: did I do all right? He may be waiting patiently for Billy's judgment, but it's plain as day that this time he's judged his own performance and known its worth.
He looks like a man.
It's a strange realization, and Billy tips his head a little under it, runs his thumb along the brim of his hat and smiles. Lando cocks his head a little at Billy's chuckle, and Billy hooks his thumbs into his gunbelts and leans back to grin up at the sun. "I don't even know why I'm surprised," he says to the placid blue sky, and he looks back in time to catch Lando's own smile spreading wide.
They share theirs between them for a minute.
"All right," Billy says, and he reaches over to claps Lando on the shoulder without really thinking about it. "Reload and show me that again, a little faster, and then we'll see how you shoot when you're moving."
by shaenie and the_drifter.
The Shooting Lesson
Billy wakes up to the sun on his face and the smell of coffee.
It's early yet, to judge from the snap in the air, but a touch later than is his custom, and he blinks against the brightness as he works his way out of his sleeping roll. Campsite looks unmolested, with the horses grazing placidly off to one side. Lando's not in sight, but Billy can hear him on the other side of the rise, and there's a pot of oatmeal and a kettle of coffee warming next to the fire. He straps his gunbelts into place, flipping each revolver open to check the chambers (fully loaded, as he left them) before settling them in the holsters. Hat and boots come next, after a quick check proves them free of invaders, and he retrieves his coat from where it was pressed into service as a pillow. His roll comes together easily enough, and he straps it down tight and tosses it over next to his pack. Morning ritual at its end, he climbs to his feet and stretches, one hand braced against his head to a cascade of pops down his spine.
The coffee is Lando's usual rivermud, but he's done a fair job on the oatmeal, and Billy works his way through both at an easy pace before heading down to the water to wash the dishes and his face. This spot is a favorite of his: a decent-sized clearing on the south side of the Purgatoire, where the big rocks catch the sun all day and the cottonwood trees hide the camp from the road. He found it by accident on his first trip to Denver, and in the years since there's been no sign that anybody uses it but him. He usually makes at least a day's stop, if he can afford to; the fish will bite a line left tied and drifting, and one of the eddies makes for fine bathing after a few hours of sun. For now, though, he contents himself with scrubbing a cupped-handful of chilly water over his face and neck and taking a few minutes to appreciate the view before he heads off to find Lando.
He's in the first place Billy checks, an open stretch of rocky ground not a hundred yards over from their campsite. There's a heap of small boulders at one end, and Lando's circling around them with his arms full of a truly bizarre assortment of objects: smaller rocks, a couple branches, a bird's nest, what could be a badger skull, and something that looks like an old boot the river tossed up. With great deliberation, he places a rock down on a boulder, squints up at the far end of the clearing, adjusts it, circles the whole formation, squints again, and selects the next object. Billy smothers a grin and leans up on the far side of a cottonwood to watch him work. It takes a while, Lando fussing with each piece of detritus and muttering to himself or humming snatches of melody. After he's got the last piece settled (the badger skull, balanced precariously on one end of a branch wedged upright) and has stepped back to admire his handiwork, Billy pushes off his tree and saunters out into the sunlight.
"You taken up a hobby I should know about, Lando?" he calls. Lando turns and grins broadly; he's not usually this chipper in the mornings (Billy's gotten used to having to yank the bedroll out from under him to get him moving), but today he's practically beaming with good humor.
"Look, Bills!" he hollers, gesturing back at his pile of boulders. Mentally calculating how much coffee had been drunk when he'd woken, Billy raises an eyebrow. Lando glares a little and steps to one side, throwing both arms out to frame the sculpture with a flourish. "It's a shooting range!"
Billy's one eyebrow -- the eyebrow of skepticism, Lando thinks of it privately -- arches further upward, but on the usual scale of these things it's not too doubtful (which is to say it's only about an inch higher than his other eyebrow, rather than winging up like it's trying to retreat into his hairline), so Lando chooses to take it as a good sign. He grins, and Billy's eyebrow lowers very slightly. "I'll need to practice, Bills; you said I'd need to practice," he reminds Billy, and watches the eyebrow lower itself so that it's even with its partner again.
"I did say that," Billy says, which would be agreement coming from anyone else, but which Lando has figured out by now is merely a statement of fact when Billy says it.
Lando's hand drops to the butt of the revolver hanging low on his right side; the weight of it is still new enough to be distracting and unfamiliar, but he feels that little spark of excitement at the feel of the smooth bone under his fingertips. It isn't new, of course; guns are expensive, and though he and Bills are holding plenty comfortably, they're nowhere near comfortable enough to just buy a new revolver on a whim. And besides that, Bills had said it was a good idea to find out if Lando had a feel for a pistol before they sprang for something fancy.
So it's not new -- and there's just the one, no reason for two until Lando proves capable, also according to Billy, no matter how desperately Lando wants to wear the double gunbelts -- but it is nice, a good gun. Billy had spent quite some time looking over what had been available, had hefted them, spun the cylinders on a few, and eventually, had broken this one and another down to be sure everything was clean and in good order before telling Lando to take his pick of them. Every time Lando touches it, he still feels the echo of his delight.
Mixed with the delight is a healthy dose of nerves, however. He's got no real idea how well he'll do with a gun. It's not like poker, he figures, because a lot of learning poker for Lando has been a process of slow absorption. There are the rules, yeah, and Billy has made sure he knows them backwards and forwards, but much of what he understands about the game he's learned from watching Billy play it. He thinks this will be different, and not just because he hasn't had much chance to watch Billy use his guns. This is going to take a hell of a lot more practice before he's good at it, he thinks; it's unlikely that the knack that he has for poker is going to apply.
None of that stops him from being wildly excited, however, and he shifts anxiously from foot to foot, watching Billy as he considers each of the objects Lando has scattered about the scrubby expanse of earth nearby. He's made no attempt to make it easy for himself -- has done just the opposite, in fact, as it seems to him that being good at something when the doing of it is made easy is no real skill at all -- and he wants to ask Billy if he approves, but can't quite bring himself to do it. There've been times, of late, that he can feel Billy's impatience with Lando's lack of self-confidence, and Lando doesn't want to rile Billy right now.
Not when he's angling for a lesson.
So he stands quiet and still is he can -- which is not entirely -- and waits for Billy to finish considering. Billy frowns and turns slightly to scan the area nearest the road, then cocks his head to squint up at the angle of the sun, one eye mostly closed. He turns his head and spits on the ground and rolls his shoulders as though to settle himself. "I reckon now's as good a time as any," he says, and Lando grins and resists the urge to whoop triumphantly.
Lando's got that look right now that reminds Billy of a half-grown herder dog waiting for the practice call, like he could be off and running before a word'd make it fully out of Billy's mouth. Lately, he's been seeing Lando shed youth (and its attendant stupidity) with unconscious but rapid ease, baring the frame of his permanent character. And he's steadying remarkably--just a few months ago he would've been bouncing on his heels, literally, with no notion until Billy called him on it. Now he's standing there, hand casual on the butt of his gun, and only the slight drumming of his index finger on the gripstock gives him away. Billy watches it out of his periphery, and holds off a smile, and thinks that this keen excitement will always be a part of Lando. One day he'll be able to sit at a High Stakes table and hold a royal flush like it's the supper menu, no mistake about it, but in the back of his mind where no one can see it, his bootheels will be bouncing.
Now, though, that abundance of energy is a liability for the lesson at hand, so Billy tilts his head and says, "Go fetch my kit -- make sure to get the oil with it -- and a box of bullets. Bring the .44s too." Lando waits an extra beat, to make sure Billy's finished (age and experience have also conspired to make him a better pupil), and then his smile cracks wide open and he takes off for their campsite at a dead sprint. Billy wanders over to a large flat-topped rock, settles himself next to it, and starts considering how best to go about this.
When Lando comes back into the clearing, it's at a brisk but more sedate walk (and good thing, too, because Billy would've blistered his ears for running with his gun kit and two boxes of ammunition), and the exertion seems to have grounded him slightly. Billy takes the bullets first, setting them off to the side, and then spreads his kit out on the rock in front of him. He holds one hand out while the other continues to sort his tools; it takes Lando a second, but he cottons on just before Billy has to cut his eyes up in a prompt. He lays his gun carefully in Billy's hand (it's warm to the touch) and drops into a crouch beside him.
"I'll teach you this later," Billy says, flipping the catch and tipping the barrel up to double-check the chambers. "For now, just watch." Lando nods and leans in, eyes keen, as Billy begins to disassemble the revolver. It's an S&W Model Two Army, same as Billy's had been before he'd managed to lay hands on a pair of Model Three's. He intends to boost Lando to the same, provided Lando shows a knack for this, but in the meantime he doesn't feature ending up in situations that'll rest on Lando's ability to reload in seconds, so the Model Two'll do for now. It's a good gun besides, if a little fragile at the top hinge, and Billy's still got the proper tools for it. So far, it looks to be well cared-for; the components are yielding easy enough under punch and screwdriver and plier, and he's not finding anything worse than a bit of grime and caked-on grease.
Having broken the gun down to his satisfaction, he unstoppers the gun oil and dips the first of the brushes in it. "You need to clean it nightly," he says, scrubbing out each of the chambers, "cylinder, barrel, and frame at least if you can't get a clean spot to take it apart. If there's been rain or dust, especially both, always do the full job. Same if you've had occasion to fire it; trouble comes in decks." There's a stubborn little stain above the trigger; he works it over with the chamois. "If you scrimp on the maintenance, you won't notice much at first, but the pins'll come to stick and the screws'll give over time, and you're liable to learn of it staring down the barrel of another man's gun." Cadence follows action as he polishing the pins down and checking each of the screws for wear or stripping. A couple of the springs want replacing, but they're sound enough to learn on, and they can stock up on spare parts in Denver.
There's not much more to say, as he's saving the hows of the maintenance for later, so he goes silent to concentrate on what he's doing. As always, Billy finds the methodical nature of the work soothing, cleaning and examining each bit of metal, laying them all on the cloth with deliberate care. When all the pieces are gleaming, he seals the oil and starts the reassembly process. It's both easier and more difficult than taking the gun apart; there's nothing there now to gum up the works, but even a slight mis-set will cause problems later. Billy takes his time, lining the starter-punch up precisely, double-checking the angle before each tap of the hammer. He's aware of Lando's eyes tracking his movements, Lando's fingers twitching in mimicry as he commits it to memory. It's an enviable knack, the way his body soaks up what his eyes witness, and Billy's got no doubt that he'll find Lando's half-learned this when he goes to teach it to him.
The hinge-screw twists into place, and Billy spins the cylinder, checks the action on hammer and trigger. Thumbing the barrel catch, he gives the gun a firm shake to test for rattle. Everything's as it should be. He wraps his tools back up and hands the kit to Lando to tie off while he reaches for the box of .32s. Each cartridge slots neatly into its chamber. When Billy stands Lando does too, right hand drifting out, but he drops it to his side when Billy makes no motion to hand the gun over.
Billy cocks his head back a little, to get a better look at Lando's face. "Tell me what you know about shooting," he says.
"Um," Lando says, but he's aware enough of himself now to know that no matter how dismayed he might be feeling currently (that would be very), it's not showing on his face. Billy's expression remains neutral in the face of Lando's uncertainty, however, so Lando figures it's okay. It's an honest question, not an excuse to mock. Billy does mock, but it's fairly gentle, a form of ribbing Lando had witnessed growing up (between brothers, sometimes, or hands on the ranch). Lando's never actually been a party to that kind of thing before Bills, though, and even now he's not used to it.
He shrugs and backs up a couple of feet so Billy won't have to crane his neck to look at Lando. "Not much," Lando admits. "Not much more than you point the end with the hole in it at what you want to shoot." He hooks his thumbs into the stiff, new leather of his gunbelt and forces himself not to rock or bounce. "I haven't ever even shot a rifle or a shotgun. My step-father kept them under lock and key." Billy nods his understanding of this, but doesn't say anything, which Lando takes to mean he's to keep talking.
He considers for another minute, then gives into the urge to rock a little on the balls of his feet. "Well, then," he says. "I know you have to cock the hammer back to fire. I've heard that you have to aim with both eyes to get the right perspective, even though a lot of people don't, but I don't know that that's true. I think it must be, though, since it's true enough with a slingshot." He thinks again, casting one eye toward the gun Billy's still holding, and adds, "I know a gun that size will kick like hell."
He takes another minute to think -- it seems fairly ridiculous that that's all he can come up with, but that seems to be the case -- and then sighs. "I guess that's it, practically speaking," he admits.
Billy nods. It's about the answer he expected, and one that told him what he wanted to know. "Good. You won't have to take time to unlearn bad habits." He hands the gun to Lando and walks to the center of the clearing, stopping about forty paces' distance from the makeshift range. Lando follows.
It's a good set-up, really; nice variety of targets, different sizes, different heights, and not all of them positioned for a clear shot. Billy takes a moment to admire it, then looks over and lets the quiet spin out while he waits for Lando to start them off. Despite what Lando may think (and what he's said on occasion), Billy's hardly a born teacher. In the last year and a half, he's taken to it far more than he imagined he would, but his method is still more instinct than structure. He knows what he wants to teach Lando about shooting, what Lando'll need to know, but there's more than one road into the lesson and Billy's far from settled on which one'd be best. So he opts to pass on the question and just wait and see what Lando does. It's not the kindest way to start, maybe, but he's never claimed to be gentle, and this does tend to get them where they're going as sure as any set course would.
A minute crawls slowly by before Lando shifts and tips the gun in his hand, letting the sun catching on the metal. "I don't know how you want me to hold it. For shooting, I mean." He bears Billy's considering look a little uncomfortably but without comment.
Picking up a fist-sized rock, Billy tests its weight and then lobs it in a long arc over the open ground. Turning to follow the throw, Lando doesn't flinch when the rock explodes in midair, but he jumps when another shot shatters the largest of the fragments barely an instant after it's been flung loose. By the time he whirls back, eyes dinner-plate wide, Billy's already got his left-hand pistol holstered; he flips the right-hand gun back into the leather, metal still hot from the second shot. He lets his hands rest easy on the grips and meets Lando's eyes.
"It depends," he tells him.
Lando blinks, following the thread of conversation back, and a little of the admiration and envy fade from his expression as he considers this. "On what I'm shooting?" he asks.
Billy tilts his head sideways, less disagreement than redirection, and says, "On the circumstances where you decide to shoot." He looks down at the gun hanging loose in Lando's hand, over at the broken fragments of rock littering the ground beyond them, and then back up at Lando. "When could you shoot a man, Lando?"
Lando's face clouds over at the question. Billy thinks that most shooting lessons probably start with how to hit the target (he wouldn't know, he taught himself), but he suspects it won't be Lando's physical ability that sets limits on his gunwork, and he wants them both looking to those other limits now. Voice even and quiet, Billy asks, "When could you kill him?"
He doesn't want to admit that the question shakes him a little -- bloody hell, the whole reason this is happening at all is because of the barfight, because of what almost happened that day -- but it does, and he guesses Billy knows it. As well as Billy knows Lando, it's practically a certainty. He feels foolish, he feels young, and he hates that feeling, as always. Of course Billy wants to know the answer to that question. Of course he does. As excited as Lando had been about getting a pistol of his own -- as excited as he still is, in spite of understanding the angles of it -- he hadn't once thought about the most basic reason a man needs one.
A rifle or a shotgun might be for hunting, might be for self-defense, but there's no reason for the Model Threes hanging low on Billy's hips -- or the Model Two Lando is holding in his now-sweaty right hand -- except for killing people.
He ought to consider the question, ought to give it the attention he knows it deserves, but the simple truth is, he doesn't want to. The idea makes him feel sick and unhappy, fills him with more than a little dread. He remembers the smell of the gunpowder hanging in the air, a smell he usually quite likes, and the way it had been mixed with the sweet tang of cooked blood. He remembers the warm spray of it across his own face. He remembers the mess and the cold, cold look in Billy's eyes, and his mind shies away from the notion that he could ever look like that himself.
He doesn't know how to say those things. And he isn't sure he would, even if he did know how. He loves Bills and wouldn't hurt him for anything, and though Billy isn't the kind of bloke that's easily hurt, Lando thinks knowing that Lando doesn't want to be like him, not like that (that the way Billy looks when he's behind the double-dose of death of his guns in both hands is the only time Lando doesn't admire him), might be enough to do it.
But he has to say something; he knows Billy, and unless he finds something to say there will be no lesson. And in spite of everything that goes along with the gun in his hand, Lando wants to learn this. Even more, perhaps, than he'd wanted to learn poker, he wants to know this. It's not just the thing in the bar, either. Someday may come the time when there's a bloke behind Billy and there isn't a shot glass at hand, there may come a time when Lando needs to reciprocate that act, and he must be able to do that.
As sick and awful as the idea of killing a man makes him, the idea of losing Bills because Lando doesn't know how to save him makes him feel a thousand times worse.
"When I have to," he says finally, and is a little surprised to hear his own voice come out low and grim and grating, but certain.
Watching the thoughts circle back and forth behind Lando's face sets Billy on alert, because it's clear that they're not pleasant but he can't tell much more than that. And he doesn't think it's because Lando's trying to hide them (he can't quite manage that yet when there aren't cards involved, though he is getting more opaque, more careful), but because they're on new territory now, and Billy doesn't have all the cues he needs to recognize what he's seeing. The hard edge in Lando's voice speaks clear enough -- he doesn't doubt his answer, and Billy doesn't either, not exactly. But necessity's a nebulous thing, with boundaries that shift without warning, and he means to walk them along the edges a bit so Lando knows it too. More than that, though, it's the look in Lando's eyes that makes him wary, because his face is tight but his eyes look wild -- cornered.
"And when's that?" Billy asks, and Lando turns his head a little farther, as though he wants to make sure his glare doesn't miss its mark. He looks about as pissed off as Billy's ever seen him, and that ratchets Billy's attention a notch tighter. Voice dispassionate, he keeps fishing. "When he's drawing down on you?"
"Yes." Lando fills the sound with a world of aggravation.
"If he's pulling a knife?"
"Yes." Same answer, same tone.
Billy takes them the next step forward. "What if it's a chair, or a whip -- something that'll hurt like hell, but won't kill you?"
This time, Lando hesitates a little. "It depends. I don't know. Maybe." His free hand is beating a tattoo onto his left thigh; he doesn't seem to notice.
There's a rhythm to this, not unlike tracking, and for all that it's Lando's limits Billy's trying to find, each question feels like he's circling in on Lando himself. Lando feels it too, obviously; the tension in his shoulders is visible out of Billy's periphery, and the hand holding the revolver has wrapped around it, thumb on the gripstock, fingers curving down tight around the outside of the trigger guard. It's a queer way to hold it -- awkward, and a little hateful, as though he's prepared to cast it away. Instinctively, Billy shifts so that his weight's balanced better over his feet. He doesn't feel threatened (he can't imagine Lando ever raising a hand to him, or vice versa), but it's clear they're coming up on something from the way Lando's braced for it, and he wants to be ready when they get there. "Depends on what?"
Lando frowns. "On the situation. On whether or not I think he means to kill me. On whether or not I think I can talk my way out of it, or fight my way out of it without getting too messed up. On lots of things. Is there some point to this, Bill?"
On any other day, that last snippy question would mean the end of the lesson, and they both know it. In one of their early poker lessons, back when Billy was still struggling to put words to things he'd never intended to talk about, Lando had complained that Billy wasn't telling him anything, that he just sat there and beat him. Billy'd stopped, and stared at him, and finally said, Kid, I'm not gonna teach someone who doesn't want to be taught. He hadn't brought the cards out again for two weeks. But this isn't a poker lesson, and it's not impatience that's putting the fight in Lando now. Billy ignores the question, not to be difficult, or because he doesn't know the answer, but because telling him outright what they're trying to get to would give Lando the means to avoid it entirely. And the more Lando fights this, the more Billy's sure they can't afford not to get into it now.
Lando waits, mentally getting a grip on his temper, just waiting for Billy to say something sharp, or just turn and walk off. It's a lesson, just a lesson, he tells himself -- and he knows that this isn't all that different than the way Billy usually goes about teaching Lando things, it only feels different -- but it doesn't dispel the sense of being ... pushed, somehow. Cornered. He waits, certain that Bills will call it off, and only half-regretful of that.
But Billy doesn't do it. Instead, he ignores the question entirely, and carries on as though Lando hadn't said a word, as though there hadn't even been a good two or three minute silence in there. "Could you kill on a job?" he asks, voice inflectionless, and something hard and heavy settles in the pit of Lando's belly, something that feels suspiciously like dread. "To protect a boss, his trade or his goods?"
Lando looks away, squints up at the sky for a long moment, and tries to put whatever it is aside. He feels it, whatever it is, feels it like a threat hovering at the edges of his perception, hummingbird-quick, too quick to really track with your eyes. Like a bullet, like the moment when everything empties out of Billy's eyes, like the movement of his hands as he draws ...
He shakes his head a little, not a negative, just a motion, movement to try and let off some of the tension he can feel coiling under his skin. He shifts his gaze out to the shooting gallery, picks out the badger skull with his eyes, stares fiercely at it while he tries to get ahold of himself.
"Lando," Billy says, and it's a prompt, but it's an unusually gentle one. Any other time, Lando would probably appreciate that, would value it (because while Bills is a lot of good things, patient is not one of them), and even now he knows that he must've gone quiet for a while, a minute at least, for Billy to actually say something, but he can't ignore the sharp uprising of aggravation that flares in his chest and tightens his shoulders.
"I don't know, dammit," he snaps, tongue just a hair faster than his self-control, and that will be the end of this for sure. Lando runs his free hand through his hair -- it's so long now that his fingers tangle briefly in the curls and he has to tug them free, which only aggravates him more -- and sighs. "I don't bloody know," he repeats, more harshly than he means to, but less snappish than before, at least.
The weight of Billy's gaze is enormous. Lando can sort of see it out of the corner of his eye, though he doesn't turn to look. He doesn't want to see that cool, distant look Bills gets on those few occasions on which Lando manages to actually offend him, rather than just aggravating him.
"Lando," Billy repeats eventually, and his tone is still quiet and calm. "We're trying to answer your question."
Huh? he thinks, but doesn't say, some shade of his mother reminding him silently that "Huh" is not a word, but that's almost periphery to what he's actually thinking. He's actually thinking that he doesn't belive Billy has ever spoken to him with quite this degree of patience, with such deliberate intent not to rile Lando, and he can't help but respond to that by doing his damnedest to comply. He shakes his head again and forces himself to think about what Billy's saying. "What question?" he asks, because he honestly doesn't remember what he'd even asked, and he asks it calmly, if perhaps not exactly nicely.
"You asked how you're supposed to hold a gun while you're shooting," Billy says, still with that same steady patience. He's just looking at Lando, his expression serene but focused. He's never looked at Lando like that as far as Lando can recall, and it unsettles him. The weight in his belly turns over oddly, almost fluttering, and Lando is so uncertain of what that look means, and of what his own reaction to it means, that he blinks and looks away.
It takes him a moment to come back to the thread of the conversation, and it occurs to him that this is by far the hardest beginning to anything Billy has tried to teach him yet, and that hardly bodes well. He shrugs the thought away with difficulty, and takes a deep breath. "I'm not following you, Billy," he admits with deliberate calm, though he doesn't look at Billy again.
Lando's grimace is frustrated and weary, the same face he wears toward the end of a messy day of field labor. Billy can sympathize -- they've spiralled pretty far from the nominal topic, and he hasn't given Lando much of a map to follow. He's not ready to, not quite yet, but he cuts back to beginning in hopes that something concrete will make the going a little easier for Lando. "Well, for one thing, it matters whether you've got it out or not when you start shooting."
Lando sucks a slow breath in and turn his head away. Billy waits, watching a muscle twitch at the edge of his jaw, the only part of his face his can see. The sun's climbing higher, and the quiet hangs still between them. Lando lets the pent-up air out of his lungs, his shoulders dropping into a slump.
"Sometimes you're an ass, Bill," he says to the far side of the clearing. The hand holding the gun sinks to his side.
The response rocks him back a half-step, though he doesn't mean to move. Lando half-turns at the sound of pebbles shifting; his gaze aims itself at some patch of ground a few yards in front of him, as though he doesn't quite want to look at him directly yet. Billy, for his own part, stands there and waits for the strange pressure in his chest to dissipate. It's an unfamiliar feeling. Anger (at himself for not being better at this), regret (because he knows bone-deep that easing off will only sink them later on), and other things too dense and unfamiliar for him to put names to them.
The silence drags itself out long enough that Lando looks up at Billy, his face wary and shuttered. "I'm not going to run you around for fun, Lando," Billy says, and the words come out quiet. Lando studies Billy's face, considering this (and it's uncomfortable, being looked at right now, but he can't pin down why so he just waits under it); a little of the tension unwinds itself visibly from Lando's shoulders, and he scrubs his free hand across his face.
"Okay," he says, and then, less clearly: "Sorry."
It's not, obviously, but this moment is getting thicker than Billy'd really like, so he sidesteps the apology and turns back to the task at hand. "That's all right. But you need to know these things, or at least start thinking on them, and I need to know what to teach you." Lando nods and shakes his shoulders, the way a horse dislodges a fly. He's back to studying the far edges of the clearing again. "We know almost enough to start. If you can manage a little bit more, we can move on to the easy part." As irony goes, it's pretty weak, and Billy's left waiting to see if he's managed to coax Lando back in.
Lando suspects he should find the gentle, steady calm in Billy's voice soothing, even comforting, but he's still feeling too jittery to be able to appreciate it. He can feel a muscle in his jaw jumping, but he can't quite unclench his teeth enough to make it stop.
But since he believes Billy when he says he isn't going to run Lando around for fun (or he wants to, anyway), he keeps his gaze fixed on the shooting gallery he's set up (what now feels like hours ago, when he was still thinking of this whole thing as fun), because he doesn't want Billy to know how angry he still is. Justified or not.
Just get through it, he thinks, and it should be easy because God knows he's done it often enough, just stood still and let his step-father lecture him about being a man or rant on Lando's shortcomings (or even worse, on Lando's father's failures, with Lando, with the ranch, with whatever he happened to be riled about that day). Let whatever it was just unravel until he finally ran out of words or temper.
But this is different. He's never had to endure something like it from Billy, not like this. Bills hardly says anything about what Lando does wrong; he's naturally fairly spare with words, anyway, which is what makes winning praise from him so ... worthy. When Lando screws up, it's usually just, "Try it again," or "You can do better," or occasionally an explanation as to why what Lando did won't work. But. He won't quit. He won't. So.
"Yeah, okay," he says, and feels more than sees Billy nod. He can't help bracing himself a little for whatever is still left that Billy wants to know. Just get through it, he thinks again -- because he guesses it must be something Billy thinks is important if he's willing to put up with Lando's sullenness without comment -- but he still isn't ready for it when Billy says:
"Could you shoot a man who didn't know he had it coming?"
He flinches, he can't stop it, and half-gasps, "No!" It feels a little like the words and his breath are being shoved out of him by a painless blow to the gut, but while it doesn't actually hurt, there's some kind of rolling, thunderous panic blossoming there, and he's horrified to feel a tell-tale burning at the backs of his eyes. "Christ, Billy, no!"
"Hey, hey now," Billy says, his voice now faintly concerned. He steps forward (and Lando draws himself in, feels it happening without being able to stop himself, and sees Billy seeing it, though he can't tell from Billy's face what he thinks of it, as per usual), and sets a hand on Lando's back, directly between his shoulder blades. Lando blinks -- he isn't sure what he'd been expecting, but that wasn't it -- but doesn't move away. For a long moment Billy just looks at Lando. There's a little verticle line between his brows and his eyes are slightly narrowed, which is how Billy looks when someone seriously pisses him off, but it's different. It takes Lando a few more seconds to translate that expression into worry, and when he does he feels a little flare of something behind his breastbone. He might've said something stupid, then (he can almost feel the urge to apologize crouching in his throat, right under his Adam's apple), but Billy tilts his head a little and takes Lando by both shoulders, turning him (and Lando's too surprised to resist even a little) a bit so they're facing each other.
"I," Lando stammers, "I can't, I..."
Billy gives him a single, gentle little shake, and Lando blinks again. "I don't reckon you're ever going to have to," he says quietly, and it sounds an awful lot like an promise to Lando. The flare of warmth behind his breastbone blazes for a moment, and Lando's breath catches, hitches unsteadily. "You just need to know so you don't find out the wrong answer at the wrong time." He pauses and gives Lando another little shake. "Okay?" he murmurs, and Lando nods a little dazedly.
It's Billy's touch that calms him, really. Billy hardly ever touches him, so it's not expected, and it's soothing, even with the way Lando's head suddenly feels like he's been clipped a good one in the ear. Billy just continues to look at him, so Lando says, "I'm fine. I just ..." He shrugs, trying to shake off whatever it is that's making him feel so ... off-balance, all of a sudden. "I said when i have to, Billy. And that's what i meant. Have to." He waves one hand, gesturing a little aimlessly sort of in Billy's direction. "I'm not ... I won't ..." He trails off, uncertain how to say what he wants to say.
Lando doesn't finish and Billy's doesn't need him to, because it's clear enough where that sentence is headed. Concern (a strange feeling, not one he's used to) drains away and leave its space for something colder, a cloud in front of the sun. I'm not: like you; I won't: do the things you do. It's true, all right, even more than in the telling of it, because Lando has seen Billy kill, but he doesn't know all the killing he is capable of. There are other deaths, delivered by steel, by lead and fire, that a better man would wear as a scar on his soul and a worse one as a notch in his belt. Billy carries them as scuffs on the metal of his guns -- they're there, all right, but they hold no weight and the memory of them doesn't slow his hand.
Billy is not a good man. Lando will be. Nothing that true needs to be said out loud.
He lets the brim of his hat shade his face for a moment and slides his hands an inch or so down Lando's arms, squeezes once before letting go. "Let's do what we set out to do," he says. "I'll talk you through it."
Lando curls into himself a hair more -- Billy can't tell if it's at the thought of firing a gun or if his shoulders have just been waiting to hunch and can now that Billy's hands are gone -- and he glances down at the revolver in his hand. His grip's changed again; he's holding it properly, hand curled around the stock, index finger resting along the trigger guard, but with a cautious edge he hadn't had at the start of the lesson. Since the day they bought it he's held it with care, but the same care he'll show for a toolkit or a deck of cards. Now he's holding it like a weapon. Billy watches a little more of Lando's youth rise off of him, steam in the morning sun, and doesn't know whether he should be sorry to see it go.
"Okay, yeah," he says, straightening his shoulders and lifting his eyes from the gun. "What first?"
"First," Billy tells him, "I want you to holster your gun." Lando's head turns a little at that, chin coming up, and Billy lays out the shape of his thoughts before Lando can get the wrong idea. "When you're shooting out of necessity, it's a safe bet you won't be drawing till you mean to fire. That means you're gonna have to do it all in one motion, and you're going to be aiming and firing from the hip. It's not as easy as having your gun right out in front of you, but the skill you're going to use is the one you want to practice."
Lando's face clears as he listens to the explanation, visibly linking the physical task to the net of questions before. Billy's damn relieved to see the suspiciousness dissipate; he's not good enough at this to get to the heart of the matter by talk alone, so it's fortunate that his ass-backwards teaching style has finally looped them to the point he was trying to reach. "We'll take it slow for now; speed'll come with time," he continues, and Lando nods and slides the gun into the holster. "Drop your hand to the gripstock -- is the holster at a good height? Good. You always want to holster on the same side, not border-style. Know why?"
Hand resting on the butt of the gun, Lando considers this. "Faster?"
Billy nods approval. "Dead right -- takes less movement, too. If your hand's gotta cross your hip, the man you're gunning for is gonna see you moving years before you get there, and swinging back across makes you more inclined to shoot wide." He walks around to Lando's far side and faces the shooting range, making sure that Lando's got a clear view of his right hand. "Now watch. When you go for your gun: get your fingers in place as you pull free. Thumb cocks the hammer back and swings the gun up -- get the barrel level as your hand comes forward -- and you pull the trigger." As he talks, hand and gun match words in a slowed-down version of the technique he's describing. It's a sight harder to keep the draw clean this slow, but this is how Billy taught himself to shoot, running through the motions at half-speed over and over while he isolated all the extra twists and swings that marred his aim and smoothed them out. He hasn't had to practice like that for years, but his body remembers, and the gun slides as surely through the air as though he'd carved a channel for it. He doesn't fire -- no need to waste a bullet -- just finishes with the gun hovering inches from his hip and holds there for a moment before flipping it back into the holster.
Billy circles back around to Lando's gun-side, stopping a half-pace behind him, and gestures at the target range. "Go ahead."
Lando twitches, straightening abruptly, the invitation to begin somehow taking him by surprise. He turns dead-on to the range and lets his eyes scan all possible targets, though he knows already what he's going to go for. The grinning, empty-eyed skull is just too tempting a target.
He doesn't give into the urge to think about the actual mechanics of it; it never helps him to do that. In fact, it would be fair to say that he's only safe really thinking about how a thing is done once he's already comfortable with doing it. Instead, he replays Billy's draw in his head, just the motion of it, and feels the muscles of his shoulders and neck ease as he fixes his gaze on the skull and imagines it shattering.
A faint tickle of excitement itches faintly at his skin, and his right hand twitches and settles onto the butt of the pistol easily. And it is easy. It feels just right, and he acknowledges silently that while the idea of shooting somebody makes him deeply uneasy, the idea of shooting itself ... Well. He likes that just fine.
"Just the draw?" he hears himself ask, as though from a distance. "Or do you want me to actually shoot?"
"The whole thing, and keep the gun out when you've fired," Billy says, his voice falling into what Lando thinks of as his "teaching cadence," a slow rise and fall of voice that indicates nothing at all, no expectation and no impatience, but rather just conveys information. "Don't think about it too hard, and don't worry if you miss your mark -- we got plenty of bullets. Just pick your target and let's find out what your body knows."
The itching of his skin shifts and solidifies into a bright, hard knot in his belly -- he faintly recognizes this as having something to do with Billy's choice of words, but the understanding of that seems unimportant -- and he flexes his fingers on the smooth, warm butt of his -- his -- gun.
He doesn't even try for speed. Instead, he goes for a smooth, easy motion, something that feels as natural as this always looks when Billy is doing it, and he's as surprised as he can be when the gun comes out and up not just smoothly, but almost fluidly, like his hand already knew this, and had just been waiting patiently for his head to catch up. His finger finds the trigger by some natural grace, and it all feels eerily familiar, as though he's done this, as though he remembers it in some fashion, and when he squeezes it's an extention of that motion, slow and easy and utterly correct.
He isn't surprised when the badger skull explodes, and the flat, heavy crack of the shot doesn't startle him in the least. The kick of the gun is expected, and he rolls his shoulder to absorb it without thought.
He stands there for a long moment, after, considering. It wasn't fast the way that Billy is fast -- no one else is that fast -- but it was still bloody fast. He knows it.
Easy as poker.
Easier.
He slides the pistol back into the holster slowly, but doesn't take his hand off of it. He's conscious of his grip on the butt of the gun, of the way the grain feels under the pads of his fingers, and though he isn't consciously looking at any of the other targets he'd set up, he knows where they are, he knows how to move if he were going to try for them.
He turns to look at Billy -- also familiar, utterly so -- and sees the gleam in his eyes, the very faint crinkle at the corners of his eyes that isn't a smile, but is, for him.
"Bills," he says, and Billy's chin comes up, his eyes narrowing slightly, as though he's heard something unexpected in Lando's voice. Lando doesn't doubt it. He hears it, too. The satisfaction, the cool, bright certainty. He hears it. "I can do this," Lando says.
Billy gives a single nod, but Lando shakes his head.
"No," he says almost sharply. "I mean. Look."
He turns back, and this time he doesn't look at any one target, almost doesn't look at anything at all, just lets his eyes rove over the range, lets his smart right hand pluck the gun from the holster, and he's firing almost at once, watching the old boot flip end over end, a triangular slice of shale disintegrate, the bird's nest explode into a shower of straw and twigs, and he stops only when the click of the hammer is dry and flat, breathing hard and feeling almost feverish.
He eases the hammer back down -- apparently his hand had tried to cock it again, fire it again, before he'd registered the lack of bullet on the last shot -- and slowly, carefully, drops the hot metal back into his holster.
In the back of his mind, Billy's aware that he's holding his breath and has been since Lando's gun cleared leather for the second time. It's not out of surprise (the day he does something that damn-fool obvious is the day he turns in his deck) but a sort of reverence, instinct urging him not to interrupt what he could see coming just an instant before it started. Hands resting on his own pistols (and it's just his own body heat and the sun, but he feels a sympathetic sort of warmth in the grips), he lets himself stare out over the range for a minute. There's nothing new he needs to glean from it; as he looks over the debris, he's running the same five seconds over and over again in his head. The way Lando had moved, gun swinging easy from target to target like each bullet knew what it was meant for and just borrowed his arm to get there. The long narrow curve of his posture, the lazy sweep of his hand. There's a certain casualness some gunfighters get, where every motion is as loose and as sure as the pendulum swinging in a grandfather clock. A sort of deceptive slackness that, in Billy's experience, comes with vast familiarity, a taste for murder, or being more than a little touched in the head. Lando's got none of those qualities (jokes about the last aside), but he's got that look about him even with his hand resting on a gun still hot from the first shots he's ever fired.
Lando's no killer and they both know it, but if Billy came upon him as a stranger, he'd keep both hands free.
The queerest part, though, is how steady he looks. From the first day Billy picked him up on the road, Lando has had a mercurial quality about him, like he's always a moment away from being somewhere else. That's gone now, like emptying the chamber knocked him into place. Billy looks him over, trying to take in the difference, and Lando stands easy through it. His eyes are bright, his face a little flushed -- and what's not there, Billy realizes, is Lando's perpetual question: did I do all right? He may be waiting patiently for Billy's judgment, but it's plain as day that this time he's judged his own performance and known its worth.
He looks like a man.
It's a strange realization, and Billy tips his head a little under it, runs his thumb along the brim of his hat and smiles. Lando cocks his head a little at Billy's chuckle, and Billy hooks his thumbs into his gunbelts and leans back to grin up at the sun. "I don't even know why I'm surprised," he says to the placid blue sky, and he looks back in time to catch Lando's own smile spreading wide.
They share theirs between them for a minute.
"All right," Billy says, and he reaches over to claps Lando on the shoulder without really thinking about it. "Reload and show me that again, a little faster, and then we'll see how you shoot when you're moving."
by shaenie and the_drifter.