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He counts the seconds.
It’s a habit, how many moments between each breath, how many breaths between each moment. He counts them, feeling the world shatter around him, fire ripping it apart. In his periphery he sees her fly through the air, caught in the edges of the explosion. He’s moving, lasso flying, knowing there’s no way he’ll reach her in time - but his aim is true, and her body jerks spasmodically as it’s suddenly forced in a new direction. She’ll have bruises, rope burns - hell, she’s gonna be half broken, but she’ll be alive.
He counts how many seconds, two, three, four, as her body flies towards him, as the explosion crumbles buildings and topples the entirety of his existence. The heat sears along his skin, and he’s still moving, and so is she, and she hits him at second six. He feels a rib crack from the impact, feels his ankle twist as her momentum runs adjacent to his. They tumble and roll, and he’s shoving her behind the best option for cover.
He counts how many seconds until the explosion hits him. It’s only ten.
*
No one had told her who her saviour was. All she has is a lasso and a scar and a hospital bill. All she has is the memories of deep brown eyes and a black stetson and the crushing strength of his arm around her body as he threw her to safety.
She doesn’t know what happened - no one does. The news speculated, her friends argued, and she clung to the lasso as the ambulance drove away.
*
It’s his favourite lasso.
Somewhere in the haze of awareness and drugged sleep he realises she has his lasso, and he wants it back. But half his body is broken, blood leeching into places it shouldn’t, and Ginger won’t let him move. So he lays in bed and he counts the second between each dose of medicine, between waking up and going back under, between the steps Ginger takes as she moves quietly around the room.
Eyes, wide and fearful, body, warm and solid - it clouds his dreams, a fog he can’t escape, and when he wakes the image is gone.
*
She knows when she’s being followed. It’s not a skill so much as it’s an instinct. She knows that she’s been hunted and targeted, but she doesn’t know why.
She knows that there’s nothing really she can do, even as she screams and claws and snarls. Fingers dig into the new scar, hands tangle in her air, and somewhere there’s a hiss-snap sound, and suddenly she’s falling, floating, cracking onto the ground.
“Now, that is no way to treat a lady.”
His voice is the thickest drawl she’s ever heard, and by the time she registers that she needs to get up from the ground, he’s already there, standing over her, offering a hand. She blinks up at him, dazed, probably concussed, and the smirk he’s wearing fades as he crouches down beside her.
“We really oughta stop meetin’ like this, darlin.’”
She knows those eyes, dark and gentle, and she knows that touch as he carefully helps her up from the ground. Expert fingers examine the marks left on her body, clinical eyes scanning the rest of her. “It appears there’s no lastin’ damage.”
She clings to him. He’s safe. She knows it, deeply, inherently, as if it’s been ingrained into her soul. His arm is a gentle weight around her as he takes most of her weight. “Let’s get you home.”
*
He counts the seconds.
His hand is positioned strategically on her wrist as they walk, timing heartbeat to steps to seconds. He can feel her breathing, can feel every tremble, every stumble, and there’s questions burning the tip of his tongue, but really, how involved does he want to get?
He just wants his lasso, his favourite lasso, but she’s ever so skilled at finding trouble. And somewhere along the way he learned how to stop caring about collateral damage, and somewhere along the way he remembered what her eyes looked like and what her body felt like, and here they are again.
He counts the seconds as she lets them into her home, wandering dazedly into the kitchen. He moves with her, eyes adjusting to the darkness. “Lights?”
“No,” her voice is hoarse, burned with fear and adrenaline, he knows the feeling. She presses both hands to the countertop, and he steps back. He counts how long it takes for her to swallow, to straighten, to remember how to breathe.
Her eyes are as he remembered, though they’re much more beautiful when they’re not full of fear. Her body is stronger than he remembered, and in the dim lights slanting through the window blinds he can see the fading pinkness of a new scar. The scar from his lasso. He’ll never know why he thinks it’s beautiful.
In the mottled light, her eyes glow at him. There’s a depth to them, a knowingness, and her voice is steadier when she says, “You’re here for your lasso.” It’s not a question.
He can’t help the smirk, can’t help the small quirk to his brow - sweet mother Mary, she’s so breathtakingly gorgeous, and maybe it’s because their first interaction was soaked in blood, or maybe it’s the way she’s looking at him in this shadowed light. “I am.”
But in that moment, he knows he’s there for more.
She doesn’t move from her place against the counter, and he counts the seconds to her response. Her body is still trembling, but she seems stronger now, more capable, and he consciously stops a hand from reaching out to touch her, if only to feel that strength.
He counts the seconds as she straightens and seems to shake off the lingering claws of fear. “It’s in here.”
He follows her through the small apartment, eleven seconds, and into the bedroom. He lingers in the doorway; this is a sacred space, he can feel it, and he won’t bring their relationship of blood and fear into it.
She opens a drawer in her bedside table and pulls out the lasso. Her hands tremble as she holds it, as she stares at it, and he asks, “What’re the thoughts in your pretty little head?” His voice is too loud in the dark, quiet room.’
She just blinks at him, swallowing another breath, and slowly holds it out to him. It’s an invitation into her sanctuary, and he does his best to leave the blood and fear at the door, but he can sense it trickling in after him.
It’s four seconds to where she stands, another five for her to inhale, and when she looks up at him he feels his own hands trembling. She looks warm and shadowed in the mottled light, he needs to touch her to know she’s real.
They’re breathing together, one, two, three, and when he finally takes his lasso from her. His fingers brush across her palms, and she inhales softly, not looking away. He counts the seconds it takes for her to move, to look away, noting the change in breathing, the pupil dilation -
He shouldn’t be doing this, but he doesn’t know how not to, not when she’s invited him here and not kicked him out.
It takes fifteen seconds for her to look away and move towards the front door. “Thank you, by the way.”
He’s following her, his lasso a familiar weight on his hip. “For what?”
A ghost of a smile kisses her lips. “Saving me. Twice.”
His answering smirk is as familiar as his whip. “Well, sweetheart, that’s just what we do.”
She considers his words seriously for a long moment, and then simply dips her head in acknowledgement and opens the door for him. “Have a good evening.”
The door closes behind him as he realises she never answered his question, and he really wants to know what her answer was.
*
She thinks about him, especially when she doesn’t want to. She thinks about how gentle those eyes were, dark and sad and tired. She thinks about the rumble of his voice, about the heat of his hands, about the curl of his lips with that smirk.
She knows a facade when she sees one, and he wears such a heavy one.
What’re the thoughts in your pretty little head, how could she have told him that she didn’t want to part with the lasso? How could she have said that it was her talisman against the nightmares of that explosion? How could she have even begun to explain she had imagined the man to whom the lasso belonged, and he exceeded all of them?
So, she hadn’t answered, and she’d led him to her front door, and that was the end of that.
That was the end of that.
*
He counts the seconds to the meeting.
He hates these, the posturing, the acting, the politicking. He hates it so much he’s imagined killing them all, just to see, just because he could.
Instead he lets his mind wander to her, to the pretty little civvie, with those sweet, fearless eyes - fearless now, because he’s seen them outside of blood and trauma, and he likes to wonder what those eyes would look like if he leaned down just enough, just close enough they were sharing breaths -
“Agent Whiskey,” the disembodied voice says, and he puts on his glasses, tucking that image safely into the dark recesses of his mind.
*
She doesn’t know if it’s a set up, if he tracked her or if he simply bumped into her, but he’s there, turning the corner to the grocery store the same time she is. Across the traffic and people and hum of the city, their eyes meet. She stands where she is, unwilling to look away, and he stands where he is, unwilling to move any closer.
It’s a moment of breathing, of memories, his eyes, his hands, her body, her voice - and then he touches two fingers to the brim of his hat and disappears into the crowd.
*
She can sense him lingering in the shadows. “Are you following me?”
He laughs quietly, looking over the back of the booth he’s sitting in. The bar is full, but it seems a distant hum, their shared corner secluded and removed from the rest of the world. It’s just him, his voice, his presence. “Now, what makes you say that?”
She won’t look at him, no matter how much she wants to. “You’re here.”
“So are you.” His counter is smooth and easy, and she glances at him briefly. Those dark, gentle are trained on her, unapologetic, unwavering, endless.
She takes a sip of her drink, needing to cool off, needing to breathe, “You saved my life twice.”
“Not on purpose,” and there’s something there, in the way he says it. Like he’s angry at himself for it, like he’s angry at her for needing to be saved.
She still won’t look at him. “Would you do it again?”
“No.”
They both hear the lie.
*
He counts the seconds until they’ve drawn their guns, until they’re aiming, until he needs to pull out his own pistols, or maybe his lasso -
He imagines it smells like her, when he holds it. He imagines it’s warm from her touch. What’re the thoughts in your pretty little head, and she’d never answered, but he thought he knew. After all, if anyone was intimately familiar with nightmares and the need for talismen, it was him.
If anyone -
If she just let him live - but she wasn’t doing anything. She was simply existing, and he was enthralled. That relationship, the way she spoke to him, unafraid and uncaring, as if he were unimportant -
He counts the seconds until the first bullet is fired.
*
She’s fairly unfamiliar with the world of blood and bullets, but she knows that it means something when he turns up at her doorstep, bloody and exhausted and wavering, it means something.
“What’re you doing here?” and it’s in that moment she realises she doesn’t even know his name.
He falls into her, and it’s only the wall behind her that prevents them from tumbling to the ground. “No hospital,” he’s whispering, “had to see you. Had to see you. Had to see you,” and she cradles his head to her chest, slowly sliding down the wall.
She can feel her heart in the back of her throat. “What if you die?”
“Not m’blood,” his fingers squeeze her hips so tightly she gasps, and he just pulls himself closer, “had to see you.”
“You don’t know me.”
Those eyes blink up at her, exhausted and bloodshot. His pupils are blown wide, and she wonders if he’s drunk. “Yes I do.”
It’s a terrifying answer, not because she doesn’t know him, but because she knows that she does. She knows him in that familiar way of two creatures made from the same stardust. She knows him in that way of blood and fear and fire.
Her fingers thread through his hair. “What do I do?”
He just presses his face into her stomach, listening to her heartbeat, feeling her heat. A solid body, warm and strong and familiar. A body he can trust, if just for a few hours.
He counts the seconds to darkness.
*
He wakes to an unfamiliar world. But there’s a presence nearby that he knows, a presence he trusts, and when he sits up, he sees her.
She’s curled on the floor in a blanket with a mug of tea. In that moment, she looks small and frail and exhausted - she looks how he feels, and it makes something in him break and ache and knit together once more.
She’s not someone he’d ever have chosen, not for himself, not for his life, but she’s been there in the worst of it with him, and he can’t seem to stop.
Silently, he approaches, sitting on the floor facing her. The morning sun glows golden on her face. Gorgeous, and his eyes fall to the scar on her arms from his lasso. Beautiful.
“Why’d you help me?” He thinks he knows, but he needs confirmation, he needs to actually know.
Those beautiful eyes meet his, fearless. “Why’d you save me?”
In that moment, he knows neither of them will answer with truth. Neither of them are brave enough. Neither of them are strong enough.
He counts the seconds between his heartbeat.
“Will you stop?” she asks after three-hundred seconds. “If I ask you, will you stop?”
He pretends her question doesn’t shatter something small and fragile in him. They don’t even know each other, except they do in such a horrible way, except his lasso is her talisman, and her presence is his.
“Do you want me to stop?” because he is unwilling to tell her that yes he would, yes if she wanted, because that feels too much like being vulnerable, and he can’t be vulnerable.
She presses her cheek to the mug, not quite looking at him, not quite looking away. The sunlight catches her eyes, and he knows for the first time in a very long time what it is to feel breathless. “Answer for an answer.”
But he can’t do that, he’s not brave enough for that, and so they sit in silence.
*
The world stops.
He counts the seconds.
The world stops the moment he reads the file. He knows that building. He knows who works there.
He counts the seconds.
The world stops because there’s not much he can do from where he sits, there’s not much he can do even as he fires up the silver pony, even as he’s calling in other agents, other LEOs -
The world stops the moment he hears the gunshots.
He counts the seconds as he runs, ignoring the screams, the sirens, ignoring everything except the time as it passes. It takes him four seconds to reach the corner, fifteen seconds to the door -
His lasso is hissing through the air, sparked to life, deadly and terrible, and he sees her in the corner, draped over another body. He sees the blood. Deadly and terrible, just like him, and it’s so easy to kill the men who caused this.
Sirens, alarms, the sprinkler system in the ceiling activates, drenching them.
He counts the seconds until he reaches her, until he presses two fingers to her neck. One, two - heartbeat - and he scoops her up.
There’s voices, shouting - he ignores it all, counting the seconds between each breath she takes, counting the seconds until he reaches the silver pony.
Counting each second until Ginger can see to her, knowing each second he counts, her life is slipping through his fingers.
*
She blinks open bleary eyes to bright light and unfamiliar sheets. Work, shouting, gunshots, blood - and she jerks up. Large, warm hands are there, pressing her back down gently. “Easy there, darlin.’”
She knows that voice, those hands. He stands above her, with that easy grin and that stetson, but she can see past that, can see the exhaustion in those sad, dark eyes.
He guides her back down to the pillow, and she lets him. “Where am I?”
“Well,” he glances around, “you were so kind as to show me your place of work, I figured I’d return the favour.”
She doesn’t look around, too intent on the way the lines of worry crease his brow. “You said you wouldn’t save my life again.”
He hums quietly. “Did I?”
They simply stare at each other. His eyes, she can see a darkness in them, shadows and anger and terrible things, but they’re ever so gentle as they watch her, and when she reaches a hand towards him, his own hand is warm and soft and calloused as it wraps around hers.
“Yes,” she says quietly, “you did.”
Silence lingers over them for a long moment, and she can hear how measured and intentional his breathing is, can feel how intentional everything he does is, and then he says, “I changed my mind.”
She knows it’s the closest to the truth she’ll ever get.
*
He counts the seconds, watching as she slowly moves around her apartment. Rehabilitation was painful, even with Ginger’s skills, but she’s stubborn and tenacious and refuses his help.
“You know,” she says from the kitchen, leaning against the counter, worn out and hollow, “I still don’t know your name.” There’s something hopeful about the way she says it.
He weighs it, what it would be to tell her, to tell this woman with whom he has this relationship, one of blood and fear, of midnight touches and early morning conversations, of self-denial and hope. He counts the seconds as he thinks, the weight of his lasso much heavier than usual.
He counts the seconds, and then it’s creeping past his lips before he can stop it, “Jack.”
The small smile that curls her lips is worth every moment of uncertainty. “Nice to meet you. I’m sure you already know my name.”
He does. He touches two fingers to the brim of his hat and tips his head slightly, reminiscent of that day so many months ago they’d seen each other on the street.
“So,” she breathes into the space and silence between them, “what happens now?”
And he has no answer, no witty retort, no half-truth. He has nothing. “Why did you keep my lasso?” He has nothing except this small branch of almost-honesty he can offer.
She rests her chin in her hands, gazing at him, soft and sweet and lovely. “I wanted to. Why do you keep saving my life?”
I want to, “You seem unusually danger-prone.” To his surprise, she laughs, a joyful sound that smooths the ragged edges of his shattered soul.
She’s grinning at him. “Which means you’ll do it again?”
He arches a brow at the teasing tone. “Try not to need me to, sweetheart.” He can’t help the answering grin that’s tugging on the edges of his lips.
“Don’t tempt me, cowboy.”
God she’s beautiful, and he hasn’t felt this sort of peace in so long, and even if their relationship began in blood and fear, it’s now this, whatever this may be, something of gentle teasing and hot tea and familiarity.
Something of talismen.
When he leaves, he carefully places his lasso back in the drawer of her bedside table. He’ll be back. He counts the seconds.