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TAGS : cowboy!logan, cowboy!reader, m!reader, end of the western era (early 1900s), reader is miserable idk, sort of?internalized homophobia (reader), hurt/comfort, mentions reader smoking and drinking
WARNINGS : none
A man grapples with himself every day. It's the one thing he can't escape from no matter how far he runs. No matter how hard he pushes his horse, no matter the edge of which cliff he roams or which river he follows.
Your mind will always be with you.
A cowboy's life is hard. You have to like to suffer to be a good cowboy- need to like the biting cold, the blistering heat, the soaking wet and the suffocating dry. That suffering shuts everything else out.
You're lonely. You haven't seen anyone other than the same 10 men in months. You've been to town but the faces blur together, what with people carin’ less and less about men like you, wastin' their time chasing cattle in the middle of nowhere instead of settling down.
Cowboys are tight knit, trust and respect runs every relationship.
But you don't know if you know a damn man here. If you really know who they are, if they know who you are.
If town has no place for you, and the wild doesn't either, where are you meant to be? Where is home?
“Need a drink?”
You looked over your shoulder at Logan. Logan and his red dun he called Horse cause he couldn't be arsed to name her. Logan and the liquor filled flask he brandished at you that you knew one swig of would probably kill you, knowing how much alcohol that man could take. He drank moonshine like water, whether it was brewed right or not. Either way, you nodded numbly.
He slid off the saddle and walked up to your side, setting his weight down heavily next to you, legs dangling off the ledge of the cliff, and passed you the flask.
Whatever you drank from it tasted like flaming rat piss. You swallowed it down without a word and handed it back.
You didn't know who Logan was, and he didn't know you either. You shared a bunk, and that was about all you knew about him. He worked twice as hard as everyone else, you knew that too- he was the biggest, angriest, roughest cowboy you'd ever met...but you'd see him sit in flower fields helping calves take their first few steps while momma laid a few paces away, recovering from the strain. You felt like you were the only one who saw that side of him, the way other fellers talked about him.
You knew he had claws. Claws that left marks in trees, claws that killed, claws that opened beer bottles and slashed shirts when they had to be repurposed into rags. You'd seen him take beatings that'd kill any other man and get up without a scratch.
You wished to have half his strength.
“How'd you find me?” You asked, staring aimlessly at the horizon.
“The good ol’ fashioned way.” He said, his way of saying he just looked. “You looked like a young man fixin’ to do something stupid. Hoped to find you before you did.”
You nodded, your thumb caressing your wrist before coming up to push up the brim of your hat.
“‘S rough out here.” You admitted.
“So head into town.”
“Rough there too.”
“You think you don't belong nowhere?”
“...Yeah.”
Logan nodded pensively, then took a swig of his drink.
“Tried the army?” He asked after a few moments of silence.
“I'm not a fighter.”
“Don't have to be.”
Silence again. You wondered if he was speaking from experience, the way you could hear the clinking of dog tags around his neck. You stuck your hand out for the shitty liquor again, and he heavily dropped the flask into your hand.
“Do you belong anywhere?” You finally tried, wondering if you'd find anything out about Logan.
“No. Haven't had anywhere for 60 years, even when I had friends n’ family.”
“60 years? How old are you?”
He gave you a small smile, almost cocky, like he knew he looked damn good for his age.
“Home can be a bug you never find or an island in the middle o’ buttfuck nowhere you never come across. So stop lookin’ for it.” Logan shrugged, reaching to get his flask back. “You're home. You're all you got. People and places come an’ go. Home'll never be permanent unless it's you.”
“Old enough.” Then he continued. “The point is that you don't need people to be happy. I think you're the kind of fella that looks for “home” everywhere you go, in everyone you meet.”
You silently nodded along, staring down at your hands while he spoke. You heard him uncap his flask and take another drink, before you decided to speak again.
“Don't it get lonely?”
“S'ppose it does after a while. Long while.” He admitted. “But you're gonna be lonely in life. It's not “if”, it's “when”. Just gotta be ready for it.”
“Wish I was like you.”
“Y’ don't.”
“Wish I had someone like you then.”
And it had started like that. You and Logan. He hadn't said anything, just pulled you into his side with a hand on the side of your head. Leaned his nose against your forehead and muttered that he'd take care of you.
Logan made you feel like a man in a way you'd never felt. He'd crush your hat down on your head and tell you to give it your all out on the range, thumped his fist on your chest and shook you by the shoulder when you got your work done good. You were the only one who drank from his flask and smoked his cigars. You were the only one who wore Logan's hat if you didn't bring your own.
And in the afternoons, when you stopped on the trail to eat, you and Logan wrestled. When you practiced roping, it was him you tossed your lasso at playfully. Pulling him in with his arms pinned to his sides and a big smile on his face you'd never seen before.
With him, you weren't the quiet little boy who got pushed around. The quiet little boy that wasn't enough of a man to play with the fellers but not enough of a sissy to play with the ladies.
You were a man, with Logan. A real one.
Something about the way he treated you, like you were more than what others saw you to be, changed the way you behaved. Maybe it was something about confidence. Maybe it was growing up.
Laying in the grass with your bare back propped up against the tree behind you, you watched Logan wash off in the lake. Both of your horses were by the water’s edge, more interested in each other than any sort of hydration. S'ppose it's a reflection of you.
You'd never take your shirt off, not until recently. Bothered by the idea of not looking man enough to do it.
Logan made you feel man enough.
With his cigarette in his mouth one night and his fingers running down the center of your chest. Hadn't meant to mean anything, but the way the campfire's flame reflected in his eyes when he looked up at you and muttered that you ‘didn't look half bad’ made your heart clench and your gut twist.
Pride and fear and disgust and excitement. Other things, a man can't say he felt.
Maybe you were man enough, you'd thought. Maybe it wasn't so bad.
Your world revolved around Logan. Part of you hated it, but you couldn't pull away. Because it was wrong, to think of him the way you did when you were meant to be a man- and again, you fell into that cycle. Not a man. Not a sissy.
Logan gave you a home. You didn't have to spend sleepless nights dwelling on that. Now you had to peel your skin off over what you were.
“Got that stench on you again.” Logan called out from the lake. “Yer thinkin’.”
“Yeah. Might be thinking too hard.”
“Feelin’ lost again? Losin’ your place?”
“No. Losin’ myself, I think. But I'll get my mind sorted. I think I just need to…well, to think on it.”
He could read you. Smell you. Everything you ever thought of he could sniff out. You can't lie and hide from him. He knew.
Smoke and tobacco couldn't drown out your shame that night, and you knew he could smell it, the way he looked at you from the other side of the room.
Shame and nerves. Fear and disgust. Revulsion and Nausea. Curiosity. Desire. For another man's body sitting not far from yours. You didn't want these feelings, not when you'd just started to feel like a man for the first time in your life, but your skin itched for touch in ways you'd never known.
Sexuality had no part in it and yet you were sick at the thought of it. Of a gentle caress. Of his palm on your back or his lips on your jaw.
You wanted to be more of a man and it was all crumbling in front of you.
“I'm not a pervert, Logan.” You breathed out, as his fingers skimmed your jaw, your head turning, following his touch like a pathetic dog. “I'm not a fucking pervert.”
“I know. I don't think y’ are.” He murmured. “Wantin’ don't make you any less of a man.”
“Doesn't it? No man wants another. No man wants this.”
His thumb tugged on your lower lip and you almost sobbed. You wanted to be held. You wanted to feel everything. Pressure from his arms, from all sides, warmth, a heart…
“You asked me if it gets lonely.” Logan muttered. “It does…Not just sometimes. It always gets lonely. But there's ways to make it better. Make it go away for a night. N’ it's never made me any less of a man.”
You were a stray animal. Logan had tamed you, in a way, and that was all you could think of while you lay on his chest and listened to his heart thump. And feeling his fingers run down your back and over your side, and over the bumps of your spine, finding them through your flesh.
Bare skin. Borderline burning against yours. His hands were big on your body, feeling out your muscles. His calluses scratched against your back, up over your shoulder blades. You lifted your head. Looked him in the eyes.
“Haven't had this in years.” You whispered. He thumbed at your cheek, his eyes so soft, so warm. You'd never been on the receiving end of anything like it before.
His weight shifted and you were rolled onto your back, Logan on top of you. For the first time, you saw him hesitant, as he leaned down to brush his lips against yours, before pulling back uncertainly.
“Won't let you go.” He muttered back, hand sliding up to cup the side of your chest, over your heart, as he leaned down again and pressed his lips against yours.
One day, you'll have to let go. One day, you'll have to drift your separate ways, and Logan'll be nothing more but an errant thought and a few hazy dreams.
But for now, he was everything. He was the first time you'd ever had everything.
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