Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I’m not much for laudanum, myself.”

“Pardon?” Ben says reflexively, and looks up with narrowed eyes, startled out of contemplating the state of his drink. He’s past tipsy, but he hasn’t gotten to the point where he’s let go of caution. He shifts a little in his seat and the movement reveals the pistol in the holster at his hip.

The man nods in acknowledgment but stands there patiently and smiles a little. “Yessir, I don’t mean to be bothering you, but I was hoping you wouldn’t mind sharing the table. Seeing as how there’s no empty ones available.” He makes a gesture that encompasses the room and Ben looks around. The drunkards are cradling their bottles and leaning over their drinks, much like he had been. It’s unusually busy of an evening and it’s loud; the gamblers’ dice clack against the table and sharp giggles burst from the girls sitting in the laps of their cowboy friends. There’s a faint haze of smoke in the air that obscures the crude drawings some bored patrons have carved into the wooden walls.

Ben would really rather go back to tuning it all out, would rather be left alone to his drinking, because he’s tired. But he doesn’t have the energy to argue and he’d rather not waste what he has left in drunken conversation. He’d spent all day riding on the trail of some goddamned criminal on the lam, with a five hundred dollar reward for his return, only to hear news that Riley from over in Nebraska Territory had already brought the man in and claimed the reward. Ben mentally chastised himself; he’d been slow to pick up the trail on a bounty and that just wouldn’t cut it if he wanted to be the one claiming those rewards at the end of the day.

He feels like he may have lost his way, lost his fire, lost something-- Somewhere on that hard ride, or maybe one of the countless times before that -- when his horse threw a shoe or he took a tumble, maybe it had fallen out of him then and he hadn’t noticed in time to pick it up again.

The man’s still standing, smiling, waiting for an answer. He looks a decent sort, better than Ben himself looks-- his hair neat and parted on one side, pulled into a tail at the back of his head. It’s for damn sure he smells better than Ben, after a day of nothing but horse and heat and sweat. Sometimes, he decides, it’s easier to ignore a man sitting at your table than to fight him over it. So Ben nods at the empty chair and signals the wiry-haired bartender for another drink. He’s still got some left in the glass, but by the time the old man brings the bottle over, it’ll be gone.

“What are you drinking there? Gin?” his table companion asks as he sits. Ben only raises an eyebrow. “I happened to overhear your very politely-worded request that the bartender not ‘mix in the laudanum’. I’m not much for laudanum, myself.” He shakes his head. “I’ve heard too many stories about folks who get a taste; it gets ahold of them and they can’t kick it.”

Ben snorts because his “request” was more like a promise that he had a bullet with the bartender’s name on it if he mixed laudanum in his gin. He lowers his voice conspiratorially when he relents, “I suppose I wouldn’t look to kill a man for watering down my drink, but he doesn’t know that. I’d like to keep it that way.” He grins and his companion’s grin widens in response. Ben is surprised at how good it feels-- to smile? to make someone else smile? He doesn’t know; either, both? He knows he wants it to happen again.

“It’s too easy to lose your wits to laudanum and I reckon that’s not a thing a man who walks around with a gun -- as I’m sure you know -- can afford to do,” Ben continues. The man doesn’t seem surprised at Ben’s knowledge though his gun isn’t clearly visible under his coat and Ben wonders what he’ll say, wonders if he’s right about this man, that he’s a man who’s seen and done the same things Ben has. But the bartender walks over with a full bottle of gin to unceremoniously top off Ben’s glass and the man says nothing.

His new-found drinking companion hands over enough money for the bottle of gin and asks for an empty glass. When the bartender leaves and they’re left alone again, he sticks out his hand and says, “How d’you do, my name’s Sean.”

And Ben doesn’t know why he shakes Sean’s hand and tells him his own instead of ignoring him like he planned; why he shares the bottle instead of buying his own drinks; why he feels comfortable enough with this gunslinging stranger to settle back and talk about years of riding across the burning heat of Nevada and the unending flatlands of Nebraska Territory and all the emptiness to be found in between.

*

“Who you been drinking with there, Cutler?”

Ben and Sean stumble out of the saloon and Ben’s head comes up in surprise as he recognizes Riley. Riley from Nebraska Territory. Riley who--

“Riley, you sonofabitch, you stole my bounty out from under me. I’m not ready to be friends again ye--” He’s not sloppy drunk from all the drinking they did, but the spirits and the unexpected company seem to have loosened his tongue. He sees Sean stiffen and make a quick motion, a practiced movement he knows so well he’s reacting to it before he has time to think-- a reflex has saved his life more times than he can count.

“Sean, what in hell?” He doesn’t really understand why the three of them are now at a standoff, pistols drawn and pointed warily at each other, each of them having taken an automatic step back to give themselves some room.

“‘Sean’?” Riley says, incredulous. “What, are you making friends with your bounties now? Jesus Christ, Cutler, he’s the Montana K--”

And for a moment he can’t hear, or see, or breathe, much less think. He doesn’t know if the utter shock is written across his face. He feels hot. He feels still.

But he’s moving, his body moves instinctively in the exact ways it knows how to, without his thoughts to direct it. And it’s slow, like dragging water, but it moves.

He hears three shots and Riley’s screaming in pain, but that only means he’s not dead.

The Montana Kid is cursing now, in what was Sean’s voice only a minute ago and before he can brace himself there’s a fist flying toward his face. Ben’s only aware for a moment: he’s on fire, his face is on fire, his head is on fire, he’s found that fire he lost back on that trail when his horse threw a shoe or he took a tumble.

And he almost wants to thank his drinking companion for helping him find it, but he isn’t sure which one to thank.