by Emilia Loft
“Garth!” She pounded on the roof of the coach, startling Casper from his reverie. “Garth you skinny imbecile stop this coach!” Casper knew from the whistle that pierced the air that the only reason he hadn’t immediately obeyed the terrifying woman was he feared the sheriff more. Evan pulled up alongside and leaned in as they continued to canter along at a leisurely clip.
“Problem Miss?” Casper considered how often the sheriff must get away with murder on that charm and smile alone.
“How long do you expect us to get tossed around in this thing before we make it to an actual city?” She was smiling but her words dripped venom and Casper sent a silent prayer for this Bobby Singer waiting in blissful ignorance for his bride.
“Three more days, maybe four.” It was a challenge coated in honey but Meg was either immune or so beyond irritated it had no effect.
“And is there something closer to this spot?” She narrowed her eyes, willing to see his challenge and raise him.
“Sure, got Tully not far off, but it’s out of our way a bit and probably lacking some of the niceties you might be expecting.” Casper was fascinated, he’d never seen two more stubborn people try to sway each other with sweetly veiled spite. Someone should be betting money on this.
“I don’t need much, just a day with a real bed and a real bath and a meal you didn’t scrape off the wheels of this glorified coffin.” Evan laughed, the same full, boyish laugh he gave to Casper but it felt like an insult directed at Meg.
“Garth!” The coach immediately halted, Evan never breaking eye contact with Meg. “You sure you’re not just getting some wedding jitters Miss?” Meg pursed her lips and leaned toward the window, voice low and even.
“Hardly, in fact your Mr. Singer is far more likely to be nervous of me than I am of him.” The hiccup of Garth’s laugh could be taken as his agreement but the two of them ignored it. “You will stop in Tully and allow me a day to collect myself or so help me I will shoot you in your sleep and drive this thing there myself.”
Evan had his retort at the ready, just itching to see what it would do to her expression, when he was struck with a sudden bolt of realization.
A day in town was one more day in Casper’s company.
Somewhere along the way a clock had started ticking in his head, soft enough to go almost unnoticed. Every time they shared a laugh, danced around each other as they went about putting up camp or breaking it down a voice whispered how many more times? They were out in wide open spaces but often enough found themselves crowded against each other, small touches over shared labor, Evan watching the preacher when he wasn’t looking, holding his gaze when he was. He had begun to think of Lawrence as an end, a place that stood in physical monument to the conclusion of whatever beautiful, exhilarating thing this journey had become. Every day he grew closer to the preacher, learning of the flawed, passionate, endearingly innocent man that seemed in turns both iron willed and unbending in his convictions yet open and curious about the world around him. And he seemed fascinated with Evan. Where he’d come from, how he got to be in the place he was today. Things he enjoyed, things he dreamed. It felt, at times, that under the steely, unmoving gaze Evan was being taken apart, each piece evaluated and turned over in careful hands, appreciated. It was addictive, no one had ever lavished that kind of attention on him. Cas didn’t just seem in awe of the badge or titillated by the life of hunting hard men and bedding soft women. He wanted to know Evan past all that, and he showed no signs of flinching from what he found.
Tully was tiny but serviceable, getting there would be a day off trail in either direction. So three more days with Cas by his side, under his protection. It wasn’t easy to admit, but filling the preacher’s canteen, hunting for him, setting up their bed rolls by the fire and telling him stories of his family and home under the stars, passing the warmth of a flask until the man fell asleep beside him, it felt like providing. And he liked it. He liked it a great deal and he was being asked to give it up, hand the good preacher over to the town for their keeping and he knew what that meant. They would blanket him with their curiosity and good-will, they would spirit him away to dinners and picnics and functions for newly appointed church groups their previous preacher had been too old to maintain. But Casper was young and strong and charming, he knew those folks would just fall over themselves to welcome him and Evan’s private little audience would end.
“Garth, looks like we’re heading to Tully.”
* * *
The sun was dropping from its midday zenith when the coach abruptly stopped. There had been no word from Evan nor Garth, no mention of camp or yell to the horses and for some reason the silence that followed stood Casper’s hair on end. Meg sensed it too, the good mood that had seen her chittering away like a canary for the last few hours fading out, words dying on her lips. Not even the animals moved. Casper leaned toward the window.
Evan was perched on his horse, back straight as an arrow and focusing all his concentration towards the woods to their left. His right hand moved so slowly it was almost invisible, a creeping spread of fingers seeking out the purchase of the gun handle that must be hidden somewhere under his duster.
Then Casper heard it. A woman’s scream.
He was out the door of the coach and headed for the treeline before he even realized what he was doing. A hand gripped his arm tight and pulled him back hard, spinning him so he nearly fell into the solid mass of the sheriff’s chest. But Evan didn’t let go, leaned in close, lips brushing Casper’s ear.
“What the hell are you doing?” He whispered in a tight growl. This close Casper could feel the heat of him, his body shifting against the preacher, cheeks scraping against each other. No one could hear them, but Evan curled around Cas as if protecting a secret, and Cas pretended the fraction of a motion, a tilt of the head over and up to put his own lips in line with Evan’s ear to whisper back was nothing more than a means to reply. With no one to see, there was no one to guess how thrilling it felt to him with the skin of his throat exposed and batted gently under the steady panting of Evan’s breath, only a hair away.
“Just listen.”
Move away, he hissed at himself. Move away Casper.
But he was held fast, by Evan’s unmoving hand that only clenched a little tighter, by the rise and fall of his breath that was willing to take the blame for the way their chests brushed then pressed. Brushed then pressed. Every nerve was alive and he couldn’t be at all sure what his body would decide to do in the next moment if left unchecked.
The cry came again. Casper stepped away.
“Do you hear that? It’s pain but not panic.” It was true, the voice was bleating low, throaty and gut deep, but none of the shrill high notes of someone under immediate attack, someone fighting or fleeing. Casper had worked with the suffering enough to know the difference. This person needed help, and not the kind that came barreling in with guns drawn. He motioned as much to Evan and then crept silently through the trees, cautious but steady.
He almost didn’t see the man until he heard the sharp intake of Evan’s breath, closer behind him than he’d realized, and there he was. Casper had nearly walked right into him. The man was young but strongly built and stood so unmoving against the tree he nearly melted into it. The straight black hair at his crown was tied back, his skin warm dark honey in color with a jagged scar running shoulder to hip diagonally across his whole naked torso. It drew Casper’s eyes down to fall on the handle of a neatly fashioned hatchet, held akimbo but not at rest. He could practically feel Evan reach for his holster, he chanced a quick glance back and shook his head with pleading eyes.
The cry came again, long and low and broken at the end. The young Indian clenched his jaw, he refused to look in her direction, trying to conceal, protect. Trying to….
Casper understood in a moment.
“Evan, put your gun on the ground, and let him see it.”
“Not a godamned chance in –“
“Put your fucking gun down P
arker!” He hissed through his teeth, never breaParkerontact with the young man. Evan moved to stand beside him and slowly did as he was instructed. “Good, now I want you to back up slowly, then go to the coach and get blankets, medicine, anything we have. And bring Meg.”
“Cas!” He was trying to pull the preacher’s focus but Casper was intent on remaining locked onto the young man, hands now raised in open supplication.
“Evan he’s protecting his family. That woman sounds like she’s in labor and my guess is they’re alone. Go to the coach, get the supplies and bring Meg. No weapons.” He still wasn’t leaving, Casper could feel the conflict warring within the man at the thought of leaving him unarmed with a savage. When it seemed like he would never go, even as the cries from the woman continued to puncture the air, Casper turned the full weight of his attention on the Sheriff, giving him a small smile. “Please Evan.”
That seemed to be enough. One minute he was there, the next he was a crunch of hurried footsteps fading behind him. Casper turned to his attention back to the youth.
“We want to help.”
The young man said nothing, expression unchanged. Casper had to assume he didn’t speak any English and prayed that somehow he could get through enough to convince the man to let him help. Casper slowly rolled up his sleeves, then pulled his shirttails from his trousers. He unbuttoned his vest and held it carefully open, then lifted the hem of his shirt to reveal the bare skin of his stomach, turning in a slow circle. Next each pant leg was drawn up until he returned his hands to their place in the air, hoping that was enough to make the man understand he wasn’t armed. The Indian made no change of posture, no flicker of expression, just held Casper’s gaze in perfect stillness, prepared to move at a moment’s notice if he should present a threat.
The seconds ticked on, broken only with the sound of the leaves and the woman’s unvarying cries somewhere farther off in the trees. Casper could feel every bead of sweat as it rolled down his neck to catch on his collar, he could smell the damp leaves and feel the give of the earth beneath him but this young man seemed totally unaffected, a phantom. Echoes, whispers in the trees, and Casper wondered for a moment if he was hallucinating, if the elders of this young man’s tribe were speaking to them, warning, arguing….cursing.
Stupid motherfucking son of……
Evan…with Meg. It was difficult to figure which of them was cursing a blue streak. Then they were there and Meg had a hand on her hip like this was an uninvited guest to her tea.
“Who’s he?” For the first time there was something of a reaction in the Indian, a narrowing of the eyes, a tilt of the head. Casper took the bundle of supplies from Evan with one hand and took Meg’s in his other. Pulling her along Casper stopped as close to the young man as he dared, holding up his offering and nodding in the direction of the cries. The Indian dragged a long look over both of them then nodded, looked over their shoulders at Evan and shook his head once.
“Evan, go wait for us back at the coach.”
“What!?” The lady and the Sheriff were unanimous. But he didn’t wait, just pulled Meg along firmly and followed the Indian into the trees, turning back one last time to cast a warning glance at Evan.
* * *
Casper had insisted on Meg’s presence not for the sake of having a woman attend to the matter of a birth, he wasn’t so daft as to assume she knew how to handle something like this. No, he wanted the new mother to find solace in a female face. So he was a bit surprised to see there were already other women there. The domed hut was obviously the last of what had once been a village, the rest of the tribe likely moving on and this little family unable to follow. Outside the hut was a youth of perhaps sixteen, so sun browned and skinny it took a moment for Casper to realize this was a girl. She cast shining black eyes on the guests that held every bit of cold evaluation he had seen in the young man. She led them inside where the darkness revealed the interior slowly. The woman was indeed in labor, panting on a bed of furs, beside her sat an old woman with milky white eyes and very few teeth. The cataracts and the gnarled roots of her hands meant she was not of any real assistance, Casper wondered if she was fully blind.
He’d attended more than a few births. People too poor to pay a doctor or midwife, looking to the charity of the church, as if those occupations might be interchangeable. Mostly he attended women that were very unlikely to survive the ordeal. But he was never one to stand by silent and found himself assisting with most of them. He couldn’t do much if anything went wrong, but he knew the basics.
She was very young, this child her first, and the pain had robbed her of any real care as to who they were or why these strangers were in her home. Casper directed Meg to sit beside her and the moment she did the woman grabbed her hand and didn’t let go. Blessedly, the old woman knew a few words of English, was able to get Catiel’s basic instructions through. It would be hours yet.
3
Chapter 3
Fuck him. Fuckhimfuckhimfuckhim.
Evan couldn’t stay by the fire, but couldn’t get near the trees. Twice he’s tried to slip in and track them, just so he could be sure he – they – were alright. But both times the Indian had stopped him, sending him back with no more than a shake of his head. This was ridiculous, he hunted outlaws, he’d tangled with bigger men, men armed with actual guns and always came out on top. He could take this one asshole any day of the week. But the man had Cas. Well didn’t have him, Cas had walked off with him of his own free will and just thinking about it now set Evan’s teeth to grinding. So he paced, over and over in the limbo between the fire and the trees. Whisky wasn’t helping, besides he needed to stay sharp. Garth was smart enough to hold his tongue and had fallen asleep hours ago. The only thing keeping him sane was the woman’s wails, constant and reassuring in the dark. Her suffering was a relief, if she was there, so was Cas.
By dawn, he was a wreck. He’d checked his ammo countless times, he’d prepped his horse, he was minutes, seconds away from tearing into the woods and hauling Casper out over his shoulder. He was wound so tight that when he saw them dragging out of the trees toward the camp covered in blood, he ran. He grabbed the preacher, spun him, ran his hands over him looking for injuries. He would have stripped him to check if it had not been for Meg.
“I’m fine, too. Thanks.” She trudged over to the fire and collapsed in her tent.
“It’s a boy.” And the preacher had the audacity to smile at him, tired eyed and rough voiced but happy. Evan was in shock, how could he be fucking happy? Didn’t he know that last night had been hell? Didn’t he know what he’d just put him through? Cas was heading for his bed roll, but suddenly Evan was furious. He seized the man’s arm none too gently and dragged him around to the side of the coach, away from prying eyes. Had him pinned to the door, he was shaking him by the shoulders and he couldn’t seem to stop. Casper’s eyes widened with surprise, terrible, unearthly blue pulling him down, drowning him.
“Don’t you ever fucking do something like that again, do you hear me?! Never Cas, never do that to me again!”
“Evan?”
His hands drifted up to cup the preacher’s face, he couldn’t even remember doing it. Evan pressed his forehead against the other man’s, crowding into him as if he could keep him there, prevent him from ever running off again. Tension thrummed through him, singing along his nerves and threatening to snap, but still he didn’t move, he could tell himself the line hadn’t yet been crossed even as he stood on its back and trampled it beneath his feet.
“Please Cas, please don’t do this to me.”
Was he still talking about last night? It was impossible to tell, a cyclone of heat spun through him, around him, slicing paper thin razors of desire into his soft tissue. His whole body demanded its share, every part of him wanted to know a portion of Casper. Fingers staked the senior claim, already tracing his temples, sliding up to tangle in the wild mass of hair. The thickness of it brushing the webbing between them felt incredible. Evan had never
been a sensuous man, pleasure was blunt and fulfilled quickly and in the dark. But caging this angel in his arms, feeling him tremble and fist the cloth of his shirt, it was insidious how quickly this closeness, this simple touch intoxicated him. He squeezed his fingers, gripping fistfuls of those dark locks and shifted Cas’ head back so that it bumped the door of the coach with a soft thud.
Casper moaned. A gritty strand of sound that shot through Evan’s core. Eyes half lidded, glittering like gemstones where Cas peered up from beneath his lashes, mouth pink and slack. He was so fucking ripe and gorgeous, the anger was shifting, the tension and exhaustion was all funneling down, pushing hard and forcing its way into the only space available, his pulsing, living need of Casper. And it took no effort at all to see that he was not alone in this feeling. They panted against each other, neither able to make the move, it was too much. Just standing at the edge of this abyss was overwhelming. Evan felt like he’d stopped breathing, even as his chest rose and fell violently. Casper’s eyes ticked rapidly over his face, frantic and searching, hands twisting the shirt they gripped until he was pulling Evan closer, closer…
God to taste, just to taste this one ti-
“Sheriff?”