are you michael robinavitch amor fati son (i have to suffer suffering makes me better i don't know who i am if i'm not suffering and drowning) or trinity santos momento mori daughter (i have to have control i have to make sure nobody misses me i have to burn bright because tomorrow i flame out)
Oops I saw @moontashpena's new fanart of cowboy buckies with snuggly horses and my hand slipped
(on ao3)
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And he said let's change his name to High and Mighty
Bucks higher than he should, and he's mighty hard to ride
It doesn’t matter when or where John Egan meets Gale Cleven, because when they do they don’t much like each other.
John’s on a winning streak at the poker table and making it everybody’s problem, and Gale’s sitting in the corner nursing a drink sweating in the stuffy late night heat and watching the goings on around him like he’s above all of it, too good to get down and dirty with the rest of them. John’s a reckless showboater who likes getting roaring drunk and hanging around with women in frothy lace dresses with low necklines sitting on his lap, and Gale’s a stick in the mud who only cares about two things: polishing his gun, and tending to his horse.
So it hardly matters when they first crossed paths, pure coincidence and the inevitability of wandering from small town to small town like they do. What matters is that the same night they first crossed paths, first caught sight of each other through tobacco and lamp wick smoke, they also happened to tie their horses up next to each other at the post outside. And, well, if they’d known what would come of that decision neither of them probably would’ve made it.
“I blame you for this,” John tells Gale Cleven the fifth or sixth time they cross, who’s counting?
“How d’ya figure that?” he drawls around the sliver of his ever-present toothpick, still as aloof and unbothered as he’s ever been.
“You don’t ever let that poor beast have any fun of his own, never ride with a group so he can make friends, never even loan him out as a stud I bet. What else is a man with needs supposed to do under those conditions?”
If John were looking a little closer he thinks maybe he’d catch a little glimpse of a smirk or an eyebrow twitch or something, but he doesn’t want to see either of those things so he resolutely doesn’t. Instead, he watches Gale’s stallion and his own rub their faces against each other’s like a couple of lovesick kids necking behind the barn for the first time and he clicks his teeth – annoyance rather than an attempt to get Lucky to stop this nonsense and come to him, he knows from experience now that it’s useless.
“Alright,” Gale allows – for all of two seconds, before he adds, “so what’s wrong with yours then? You do all those things.”
John doesn’t splutter, but only because he refuses to call it that. He puts his hands on his hips and he blusters whatever nonsense first comes to mind about how his stallion is like him through and through, just always looking for a good time that’s all, and the way Gale sizes him up at that from under the brim of his hat, hand raised to toy with his toothpick and draw attention to the fact that yes he’s definitely smirking now, does more to put color in John’s cheeks than the noon sun burning overhead ever has.
“Way I figure, you tied yours up next to mine that first night,” Gale shrugs when John’s run through and exhausted all the wind in his proverbial sails. “We were there first. Nothin’ would’ve ever happened here if you hadn’t.”
“Now hold on a minute, that’s not fair-”
“Ain’t about fair,” Gale shrugs again, still smirking, still touching that goddamn pretty mouth he’s got like he doesn’t realize what that can do to a man, “just sayin’ what happened. Now pull your beast off, I’ve gotta get goin’.”
John looks at the beast in question, his pride and joy, his perfect dapple, more white than gray, still rubbing his cheek all up against Gale’s dime-a-dozen chestnut nosing under Lucky’s jaw and stamping a hoof in the dirt like he’d push closer if there was any closer to get.
“What’d you even name that thing, anyway?” John asks; he supposes if his horse has got a sweetheart, weird as it is, he can at least be permitted that much curiosity, can’t he?
“Sweetheart.” And it must be the God’s honest truth, because that damn flirty chestnut flicks an ear toward Gale and rolls an eye in his direction, though he keeps his nose bumping against Lucky’s throat.
“You didn’t-”
“Got somethin’ better?”
John throws his head back and laughs at that, because no, as a matter of fact he supposes he doesn’t. Lucky nickers at him, switches his tail, and he somehow manages to tuck himself even closer to Gale’s Sweetheart, his own sweetheart, and John just knows it’s going to be a fight to get those two apart, same as ever.
“Alright Lucky, that’s enough. C’mon,” he sighs when his laughter has faded to chuckling. He makes a grab for the reins, shoulder brushing against Gale’s as he does the same beside him, and between the two of them tugging and coaxing and cajoling and, finally, offering palmfuls of sugar cubes pulled from Gale’s saddlebag, they manage to get their stallions separated enough to plant themselves between them and keep them from getting right back to their snuggling.
“So I’ll see you around?” John says, not because he wants to but because it’s inevitable.
“Uh-huh. See you around, Bucky.”
John stands there next to Lucky’s bobbing head, ignores the way he’s nosing in John’s pockets to look for more treats to instead watch Gale swing himself up into the saddle and head away down the road, dust swirling under Sweetheart’s plodding gait, all reluctance. At the edge of town, Gale doesn’t twist to look back but his horse does, head ducked low and suddenly appearing to the left as he lets out a lonesome sort of whinnying cry that echoes all too easily back down main street. Lucky’s head jerks up with a jingle of his bridle to return it, long and high-pitched, lonesome as a wolf out in the wilderness.
“I know, big guy. Tough break, lovin’ a fella like that huh?” John tuts, patting a hand against the soft heat of Lucky’s neck as he turns to head for his back. He gets a foot in the stirrup and he’s quick to sling himself up into the saddle when he feels the way Lucky’s nervy and tensing to run already. Sure enough, his ass has barely hit leather before Lucky’s off like a shot. John swears and grabs the reins up in one hand and the pommel with the other to keep his balance, though thankfully by the time they draw level with Gale John’s managed to get himself composed enough to offer the other man a roguish sort of grin as Lucky turns his head to nip and nuzzle at Sweetheart’s mane.
“Don’t suppose you’d want to let these two lovebirds have some quality time together, would you?” John asks when Gale cuts him a devastating side-eye. “Seems a little cruel to keep tearing them apart like this.”
And Gale Cleven, high and mighty and too good for anybody Gale Cleven, smiles at him, soft and winsome. “Y’got a strange way about you, John. Crazy,” he says, but it doesn’t sound like it’s an insult. “Stick around if you want,” he adds, shrugging, “just don’t go blamin’ me when you get bored.”
“Deal.”
So they ride, and John never gets bored, Gale never asks him to leave, and somehow along the way, it doesn’t matter when or where, John finds himself a sweetheart of his own out there under the stars, across the campfire, riding beside him knee-to-knee.
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