"Good thing I came along." Buck drilled Chris with a hard stare. The man had better know it was true.
"Good thing you did." Chris conceded, then looked away. Buck almost smiled at Chris's gutlessness.
Angry silence stretched between them on the long ride back to town. The others seemed to pick up the mood, even JD's antics fading without anyone to interact with. But in spite of his and Chris's differences, they all pulled together in the face of the town's outrage, escorting Lucas James to jail once more.
That idiot Conklin tried to collar them as they exited, and what passed for a crowd in this one-horse town was gathered behind him. "Hey! Hey. Hey! What are you doing bringing him back here?"
JD, puffed up behind his tin badge, answered. "He's going to stand trial for murder."
"How? The Judge is dead." Conklin pushed forward, but Vin shoved him back a step.
"I'm afraid the news of my death is a bit premature." The judge stepped out of the newspaper office, leaning heavily on Mary Travis, and the crowd, like a flock of chicks, milled and fluttered over to him. Hurt or no, he looked plenty tough to handle the townsfolk. Chris must have thought so, too, because he drifted away quietly, and no one seemed to notice.
Buck followed swinging down from the boardwalk, and trailing Chris into the alley that led to the saloon. For a second he thought Chris hadn't heard him; the man's callous disregard for his own safety stoked the anger already burning in his gut. Chris stopped, but didn't turn.
Buck stopped, too, taking in the tension wound tighter than a bowstring in his old, old friend. He also took in the hand that brushed a little too closely to Chris's colt, a gun that Buck knew had a mechanism filed down to hair-trigger readiness. Would he turn? Draw? Or stand there waiting for an anonymous bullet to end his suffering?
"Buck." Chris's hand fell away, but the tension didn't ease.
"Chris." He walked forward, then, pulling the man around to face him. Chris didn't fight him, just spun easily on his heels, that damn ugly serape flapping in the hot breeze.
Chris met his eyes now, hot and angry. Defensive. He damn well ought to be.
"Go on," Chris challenged, his eyes glittering. "Say it."
"What? That you're an idiot? That you almost got those men--hell, that boy who damn near worships the ground you walk on--killed? Why would I waste my breath, Chris? You already know it."
"Fuck you, Wilmington." Chris stepped sideways.
Buck was faster, and angrier. He slammed Chris up against the side of the boarding house, under the cover of the outside stairs, and leaned in to hold him there.
"When I say so, and not a moment sooner."
Chris struggled, his hands gripping in Buck's shirt, trying to push him back. Buck pulled away, just enough to shove Chris back again, hard enough for his head to thud against the faded wood and the acrid breath to gush from his lungs.
"Damn you, Buck." Chris squirmed, but he wasn't getting anywhere by force, and they both knew it. Once, he might have pulled that piece, but no longer. Not after all they'd been through. Not after all they'd been to each other. Or all they'd done to each other.
"Nuh-uh," Buck countered. "You're the one who's damned, and we both know it. But until the devil gets his hands on you, you're mine, Larabee."
It was an old bargain between them, dating from the bitter, dark months following the fire. Chris, consumed by grief and pain, took to drinking himself insensible and picking fights. Fists, knives, or guns, Larabee didn't care; along the way he polished a pretty fair reputation as a gunslinger, and left a trail of bodies in his wake. Buck followed along, alternately placating and weighing in as the situation warranted. Somehow, some way, they'd both survived. Buck guessed he ought to be glad Chris didn't have the balls to swallow a bullet, or things would have ended a lot quicker.
But the night Buck had to pull his piece, shooting a kid no older than JD whose only crime was not knowing to step aside from a crazy man, he'd hauled Chris out of town across his saddle, beaten him until Buck's hands stopped shaking, and then fucked him until the sun rose. They'd struck a deal then, that bound them to this day. Hell, it bound them 'til one or the other of them wound up six feet under boot hill, or left his bones to dry on the open range.
Chris struggled again, and this time, Buck leaned in harder, his forearm a bar across Chris's throat. "I'm the one who gets to choose that day."
He watched as Chris's face turned red, his mouth gaping open, whether to gasp breath in or curse him, Buck wasn't sure.
"I'm the only one who gets to kill you. It's my right, and don't think you or anyone else is going to take it from me."
Chris shook his head, still rebellious.
"No one," Buck repeated, barely a whisper in Chris's ear. Leaning in, he used his whole body to pin Chris, rubbing his erection against Chris's groin. "Right?" He took his arm away, letting Chris gasp in enough breath to answer.
"Whose are you?" Buck asked, nuzzling up to Chris's ear.
Chris didn't respond, held himself stiff and still against all provocation.
Buck slid a hand into that windblown blond hair, pulling Chris's face up, kissing him as tenderly as he'd been harsh a moment ago.
"Whose?" he prompted again.
"Yours," Chris finally conceded, finally relaxing under Buck's onslaught.
"Mine." Buck kissed him again, brushing back the sweaty hair. "And don't you forget it." He stepped back, then, leaving Chris leaning limp against the wall.
Chris watched him saunter away, Buck's bowlegged stride as familiar as the weight of the colt he couldn't stop caressing, and couldn't make himself draw.
He heaved a sigh. No matter how badly he wanted a drink, he'd be damned before he'd walk in there after him, watch Buck laughing it up with his new friends or chatting up a saloon girl as if nothing had happened between them.
Chris didn't have friends, didn't want them, couldn't afford them.
Except Buck, of course, whom he couldn't escape. He'd tried often enough: gunfights, bar fights, drinking himself unconscious. Hell, less than a week ago, he'd picked a fight with a dozen drunken cowhands and no one to back him up but a young store clerk with a shiny new rifle.
Vin was a good man. Chris knew that now, and if he were in the market for friends... But he wasn't. He wondered, maybe, if he were jealous. Vin had a sure exit waiting for him back in Texas, and no qualms about taking that ride. He pulled his gun, finally, staring at the blued barrel, and into the dark mouth before sliding it back into his holster.
"Coward." He shook his head, grinning bitterly. Buck had done his damnedest to persuade Chris from his hell-bent path every day they spent together, and sometimes he even succeeded. The magic might work for a day, or a week or a month. But eventually the black fog would drift back through Chris's heart, and Buck's laughter would slice into him like ground glass, his soul flayed by that boundless living spirit, when all Chris could hear was screaming, all he could smell was smoke and ash.
Some moments, it seemed like his only way out was through the man, but, hell, he couldn't even kill Buck when he had a blade to his throat. And couldn't get Buck to follow through with his threat. Promise. Whatever. Some days it seemed almost real. Chris Larabee was damned to walk this earth alone until Buck freed him, and it seemed like that day wouldn't come any time soon.
The End
