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“Didn’t think you’d show your face around here again,” is the first thing Pete says when Rooster turns up at the ranch. Not “hello,” not “how you doing.” Not “don’t you know it’s been 15 years and I’ve thought about you every day.” No.
Pete leans up against the porch railing, arms folded over the top of it, and surveys Rooster where he stands on the dirt path leading up to the house. He’s a little afraid of what Rooster’ll do — hell, what he’ll do — if he gets any closer.
Rooster looks good, Pete thinks. He’s the spitting image of his dad, down to the mustache and the garish paisley button down he’s got on. That throws Pete for a loop almost more than the fact that Rooster’s standing there at all. More than that, though; he looks grown. Like he’s actually lived in the world. Frayed brim to his hat, where he’s constantly adjusting it atop his head. Boots scuffed. Ratty duffel bag plopped in the dust at his feet. Same scowl Pete last saw 15 years ago before Rooster turned his back and rode off.
Rooster lifts one shoulder in a bored shrug. “Heard you were looking for some hands for the rest of the season.” He stares Pete down, like he’s challenging him to run him off again. “Thought I could help.” Pete opens his mouth to interject, but Rooster holds up a hand, halting him. “It’s not permanent, before you get any ideas, Mav. I’m gone as soon as you’ve moved all those cattle out.” He folds his arms over his chest, tilts his chin up. Defiant, like always. “Or until you find someone better.”
Better? Pete nearly laughs. There isn’t anyone better. He trained Rooster himself, until — well. Until Rooster didn’t want that anymore.
Pete doesn’t respond. He lets the silence stretch out between them.
“Or I can go.” Rooster pinches the worn brim of his hat, tugs it down to shade his eyes better, but doesn’t actually step away. His heels stay planted in the dirt just the same as they were when he’d first walked up and opened his mouth.
The thing is, Pete does need the help. He’s had an ad tacked up down at the general store for months now; he’s got more cattle at the ranch this year than he can manage with just the small staff he keeps. If he doesn’t move the cattle, he doesn’t know how they’re going to make it through the winter just on the money he’s got saved up.
But everyone who stops by the ranch has been all kinds of wrong for the work. Too green, too experienced, too demanding, too weak, too sick, too bossy, too delicate. No one lasts. And when they are fit — when they get past the lengthy list of skills Pete demands of his hired hands — they wind up walking off the job. Because of him. Some of them even said so on their way out.
He doesn’t blame them, not exactly. He doesn’t think even he’d want to work for himself. But it is what it is, and what it is is that Pete’s got a small crew who he trusts and otherwise he runs the ranch alone.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way.
Pete pushes himself up to standing and takes slow, deliberate steps across the porch. Measured. Exact. The heels of his boots click against the wood, breaking the silence.
“Stay,” Pete says when he gets to the stairs. “It’s what your dad would have wanted.”
Rooster barely flinches. The smallest twitch of his face. Anyone else would have missed it, but Pete’s known Rooster since the day he was born. Rooster looks away from Pete, off into the distance. “Where should I put my stuff?”
**
The ranch was supposed to be theirs: Maverick and Goose, Mitchell and Bradshaw. It was a dream formed over one too many drinks and one too many clashes with the old timers who ran the ranch they’d come up on together as kids. They’d pooled their money, Goose had talked his girl into coming along for the adventure and the freedom, and they went further west.
It wasn’t easy, not that they expected it to be. There’s a lot of work that goes into a place like this, especially building it from scratch. But they were smart, they worked hard. They had enough to cobble something together.
Something small, at first. Just a few cattle, some horses. Some crops. Enough for them to live on at first, then enough to sell, and then enough to need other people to help them sell and clean and plant and wrangle.
They had a lot of good years. Made some money. Made a name for themselves. Thrived. Goose married his girl, had a kid. Pete got to feel like he was part of a family.
But the land out here is harsh. Unforgiving. One wrong move, one mistake, and everything changes.
The ranch is just Pete’s now.
**
If Pete hadn’t seen Rooster ride up onto his property with his own eyes, he wouldn’t actually believe that the kid’s still there. Pete set him up in the guest house and has hardly seen him since, outside of crossing paths at dinner time.
They sit in near silence at the table in the big house, except for small talk about the day. Did you check how much grain is in storage, don’t forget about fixing that weak spot in the fence, did that man from the city stop by about the cattle or no?
It’s killing Pete that this is what they’re reduced to. Strangers, almost, when he was there for Rooster’s first words, first steps. First broken bone.
First funeral.
They’d gotten through it, and Pete had thought it would all work out in the end, and then Carole got sick in the winter and said, “don’t let my boy run those cattle, you keep him safe, you hear.” She didn’t need to add “like you didn’t do for his daddy,” because Pete knew down in his bones that she was probably thinking it anyway.
And so the next summer, he told Rooster that he was welcome to stay on at the ranch and work, but that he wasn’t hitting the trails with them even though he was more than old enough already, and then it all fell apart.
Now Rooster just grunts at him over dinner, doesn’t make eye contact, barely says a word.
But he’s here. That’s got to mean something, Pete tries to tell himself.
**
The good thing about Rooster having grown up here is that he knows the work. He knows the rounds he’s got to take with the livestock. He knows what Pete needs done and when. Pete would be lying to himself if he said he did things any different now versus the day Rooster had walked away. He just does the chores slower, is all. His back isn’t what it used to be, or his knees. On the wrong side of 50, he’s got to admit that some things are different than they used to be.
He knows Rooster’s been working, though. Works straight through from dawn to dinner, if Pete’s guessing right. Doesn’t barely see a glimpse of him, but the stalls are mucked in the stables, the hay’s refreshed, water’s changed out. Everything’s in its place.
After a couple of weeks, Pete almost feels like all of his usual work is gone, what with the pace that Rooster’s working at. So he spends more time out with the horses now that he doesn’t have so much upkeep to do. It’s easy to find the free time to saddle up Darkstar and take her through the fields, let her really run when they’re free and clear of fences and responsibilities.
The wind whips through Pete’s hair as he leans low over her. He doesn’t even have to signal her to run faster, she just goes, burns across the field against the setting sun. When she jumps, he lets out a whoop, feeling like he could take flight like a bird with her help.
Once she’s tuckered herself out, Pete lets her amble back into the paddock. He’s surprised to see Rooster there, one foot propped up on the fence. He’s got his shirtsleeves rolled up, the top buttons of his shirt undone. It’s been an uncharacteristically hot day, one that makes you think that summer might not ever end. Pete feels the heat himself now that he’s not dashing across a field on horseback. A bead of sweat rolls down Rooster’s neck and pools at his collarbone; Pete’s got to shake his head to get his mind right.
Rooster frowns a little and Pete realizes he’s been staring. “You gonna put her back and clean up for the night?” Rooster asks. “Or you want me to stick around to help?”
“I’ve got it,” Pete says as he dismounts. He presses his hand to Darkstar’s shoulder, lets it linger as she shifts from foot to foot impatiently, ready to be rid of the saddle. “You can go on in and get dinner, no need to wait around for me.”
Rooster makes a noise in agreement, but instead of walking out, he follows Pete in and heads over to Darkstar’s stall. “Just freshened up her water before you got here,” he says, swinging the door open for Pete to lead her in. “And there’s some treats out for her. You rode her hard.”
Pete doesn’t look back over his shoulder at Rooster because he knows he can’t quite control what his face is doing. “I barely see you around but you’re managing to keep tabs on me now?”
“Eh.” Rooster comes along the other side of Darkstar, murmurs something soft to her, then starts taking off her saddle. “Hard to miss what you’re up to, running across the field out there like your tail’s on fire.”
“Thought I’d let her stretch her legs, maybe. I don’t ride out much like that anymore,” Pete says. “Not for years. Not since—” He stops short, biting back on the next words that were going to come out of his mouth.
Rooster’s hands go still on the saddle. They stand there, frozen, letting the silence stretch on. “What ever happened to old Hellcat, anyway?”
Pete busies himself with hand-feeding some oats to Darkstar, so he doesn’t actually have to look at Rooster. “Died, maybe a couple years after you left. She was old. It was time.”
“Ever get rid of that attitude?”
Despite his best efforts, Pete does laugh. “Never,” he says. “Cantankerous right up to the end.” Pete lets out a sigh. “Never did let anyone else ride her, after your dad,” he adds. “Didn’t feel right.”
Rooster slides the saddle off and turns to put it away for the night. “You kept riding her, though,” he says quietly.
Pete doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he gives Darkstar the last of the treats then pats her gently before stepping out of the stall, following Rooster’s path across the paddock. He leans up against the workbench, an arm’s length away from Rooster. Rooster only glances over at him while he cleans off the saddle.
“Felt like I had to,” Pete says finally. “Felt like if I kept riding her, I could understand why it happened.”
Rooster sets down the cleaning rag he’s been using and curls his hands around the edge of the bench. “Mav, you don’t need me to tell you it was an accident.”
That doesn’t mean Pete doesn’t think he should have been able to stop it. That doesn’t mean Pete doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, trying to shake off a 30-year old memory that won’t ever leave. So, yeah, maybe Pete does need Rooster to tell him that.
There’s a thousand things he could say, and not one of them is going to bring Goose back.
“Lock up when you’re done,” Pete says instead. “Dinner’s going to be ready soon.” He doesn’t give Rooster a chance to respond before he turns and leaves.
**
Rooster keeps showing up at the stables at the end of the day. Pete doesn’t know how to tell him that he doesn’t have to do this, that he doesn’t have to wait for Pete to bring Darkstar back in. He doesn’t have to help brush her out, clean off the saddle, freshen up her hay. Surely there’s something, anything, else that Rooster would rather be doing than this.
So Pete doesn’t object and Rooster keeps showing up.
“Why’d you come back?” Pete finally asks one day while he’s crouched down to check out Darkstar’s hooves. “Why now?”
“Like I said, I saw your ad.”
“And?” Pete looks up at Rooster, eyebrows arched. “You could have just ignored it. You ignored every letter I sent, after you left, didn’t you? Not that hard to pretend you never saw I was looking for help.”
Rooster balls one hand into a fist and taps it lightly against the side of the stall. “Well. Front gate still says Mitchell and Bradshaw, don't it?”
It does. You couldn’t have paid Pete to change it, not for all the money in the world. “Coming to claim what’s yours, then?” Pete moves away from Darkstar, edging out of the stall before she starts picking up on his tension, and Rooster follows.
That seems to catch Rooster off-guard. He pauses for a moment, face flushed, before he responds. “Well, you never bought us out. Never bought mom out before she died, and now I’ve got dad’s half of the business by rights, so, you know what? Yeah, maybe.”
Pete stops abruptly and turns around to face Rooster. “If this was about money, Bradley, you should have just said so. I can get you your share right now and you can go. You can stop pretending you care about all of this.” He waves one hand in the air, gesturing at the paddock and the horses and the tools and, hell, himself, maybe, if he doesn’t think too long about it.
Rooster stands straight up, looming over Pete. “You think it’s about money?”
Pete lifts his hands in a shrug. “What else am I supposed to think, you talking like that? If I knew why you just showed up, acting like you never even left in the first place, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. You gonna give me any other ideas, if it isn’t?”
Rooster laughs, bitter. “You sure are a piece of work,” Rooster says, “if you can’t figure it out on your own.” Behind them, closed up in her stall, Darkstar lets out a frustrated huff; Rooster turns to look at her for a moment, watching her settle, then shakes his head. “Maybe it’s about coming home, Maverick, did you think about that?”
No, of course Pete didn’t. Why would he, when Rooster made it very clear many years ago that this wasn’t ever going to be home again, and that it was Pete that took that away from him. Pete looks at Rooster helplessly. “Bradley,” he starts, but before he can even get the rest of his thoughts together, Rooster’s turned and stalked out of the stables.
**
The idea of coming home sticks with Pete, though, and it casts everything Rooster’s doing in a new light. If it’s about coming home, then maybe it’s also about mending what went wrong. Maybe it’s about time to let the past be the past.
Maybe it’s about Rooster stepping out from his dad’s long shadow. About getting to know each fresh other as grown men, instead of both of them being too wrapped up in their own grief to find a way through.
Maybe it really is about coming home.
“Why’s it just you living out here?” Rooster asks one night over dinner.
“It’s not just me,” Pete says, confused. “I’m low on labor but there’s enough help in the busy season to get by. You see them yourself. It’s not just me.”
Rooster shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean.” He taps his fork anxiously against the plate, looking like he’s thinking about what to say next. Lucky for him, Pete can wait here all night. “I know you’ve got help, I know Hondo and his boys come out every year, and some of dad’s friends from before, and now some of the kids from town. I know. What I mean is—” He gestures vaguely at Pete, at the house. “This is a big house and you’re all alone in it.”
Ah. That. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Pete says. “Half of it was supposed to be your mom and dad’s. Yours.”
“And the other half is yours, and it’s always been pretty fucking empty, Mav. No wife, no kids. What’ve you got out here?” His words are sharp but his tone has no bite to it. He sounds sad, almost.
The house was so big because there was supposed to be enough room for Goose and Carole and whatever family they built. The whole gaggle of children he knew Goose wanted. There was supposed to be enough room for — well, for the off-chance that Pete ever decided he knew what he wanted out of life that didn’t involve working the land.
“This is just the way it is,” Pete says. “It’s fine. I don’t have any complaints. Just never worked out any different.”
“You’re not lonely?”
Pete doesn’t know how to answer that. He’s got the horses, he’s got his work. He’s got the folks who come by regularly to work. He’s got Darkstar and the stars in the sky and endless acres of land. Sure, he crawls into bed by himself every night, wakes up alone, but that’s probably for the best, he imagines. Not much good comes out of getting yourself attached to Pete Mitchell. He learned that real early on.
“This is just the way it is,” he repeats. “I came to terms with it a long time ago.”
Rooster’s jaw works soundlessly; he’s clearly thinking something over. “You deserve better than ‘just the way it is,’” he says eventually.
The sentiment makes Pete uncomfortable, especially coming from Rooster. Who is he, to try to tell Pete there’s a better way to live? Pete snorts. “I don’t see you riding up here with no one else, you know. Just you and that horse and all your possessions in the world, right?” Rooster’s jaw clenches and Pete watches him swallow. “So, any other deep philosophy you wanna share about a life you’re not living either?”
Rooster sets his fork down, shoves his chair back, and stands up. “I’ve got you now, don’t I?” He rolls his shirtsleeves back down and picks up his hat, watching Pete carefully all the while. “Maybe that’s enough for me.”
Pete feels like he’s supposed to do something, say something. He half reaches his arm out, thinking about stopping Rooster before he can leave, to ask him what, exactly, he means by all of this. But he freezes up, uncertain as to if he even wants the answer or not.
Rooster shakes his head. “You’re something else alright, Pete,” he says. He clutches his hat to his chest, frowns, and leaves, with Pete still rooted there, feet almost like they’re stuck to the floorboards for good.
**
Pete’s sitting up late, squinting at the ledgers to try to make the money stretch just a little bit further, when he hears the front door swing open, then heavy footsteps coming through the house. It’s not unusual for some of the hired hands to swing back through the house for a late snack, but these footsteps don’t stop at the kitchen; they keep going up the stairs.
That’s got Pete’s attention for sure.
He closes the book and lifts up his lamp, heading to the hallway to meet whoever’s coming up.
Pete shouldn’t be surprised, maybe, after their conversation at dinner, but it’s Rooster trudging up, that same beat up duffel clutched in his hands. He reaches the top of the stairs and looks to his left and his right.
Pete clears his throat once Rooster’s cleared the landing.
“Jesus,” Rooster yelps, taking a step back. “You stand in the dark all the time or just for special occasions?”
“Got a lamp,” Pete says, swinging it a bit in front of him. “It’s not that dark.”
“Ah, fuck off.” Rooster waves his hand at Pete. “My old room still set up?”
The room you abandoned just about the day you turned 18? Pete wants to ask. The room you said you were never coming back to? Pete just shakes his head. “Emptied it out a while back. Your stuff’s in storage. Your mom and dad’s room is still the same, though.”
That, Pete couldn’t bear to touch. Had it cleaned up after Carole died so Rooster didn’t have to deal with that on top of the grief of losing his mom. But the rest of it, furniture, everything, still the same. Pete jerks his chin to the left, in the direction of the room, as if Rooster’s forgotten somehow.
“Hm,” Rooster goes, then shrugs and heads down the hall.
Pete wonders if he should be there for Rooster, so he doesn’t have to step into that room full of memories on his own, but by the time he’s made up his mind, Rooster’s already gone in and shut the door behind him.
**
He sees Rooster more now. Rooster shows up for breakfast, sits for a quiet cup of coffee before the sun’s even up. They start their chores together and only split once it’s time for Pete to tend to the horses. They cross paths at the end of the day, when they’re both sore and tired and dirty. They eat, they clean up together, they share a drink after the sun goes down.
Pete’s fine with being alone, but he’s got to admit, sitting on the front porch with Rooster, close enough that they bump elbows when one of them goes to take a drink, that this isn’t too bad either. This is something he could get used to.
Rooster smiles easier now, too. They don’t talk much about the past — the ghosts of Goose and Carole are always there, Pete knows full well this house is always going to have those memories attached — but instead about what they’ve been up to in the past 15 years.
The endless cattle drives for Pete, the series of miserable ranching experiences all across the plains for Rooster. The bad weather, broken bones, sleeping rough, all of it. Rooster’s toughened up over the years and Pete almost feels bad for giving him shit about coming back. He’s a hard worker, but maybe even more important is that Pete doesn’t think he’s smiled this much in years.
Pete promised Carole before she died that he’d keep her boy safe, and Pete’s only now realizing that the only way to keep him safe was to let him out in the world, spread his wings on his own. And if he came back, then maybe he was ready to shake off the shadow of what happened to his dad all those years ago.
“Getting late in the season,” Pete says one day as he clears the table after dinner. “We’ve got to move the cattle south next week. I could use the help, if you want to come.”
Rooster pushes his empty plate towards Pete and looks up, staring. “Really?”
“You came out to work for the season,” Pete says casually. “Why not finish the job?”
Rooster squints at Pete. “You remember why I left, right?”
Of course Pete does. Pete could repeat the argument word for word, even now, all these years later. His own failure to get Rooster ready for that sort of work, his inability to articulate his fear that Rooster was going to meet the same end as Goose did. Of course Pete remembers.
Pete doesn’t respond at first, instead goes and sets the plates down in the tub to get washed up.
He hears a chair scrape across the floor behind him, and then Rooster’s there, hand gently on Pete’s elbow. “What changed, Mav?”
Pete closes his eyes. “I didn’t think you were ready then.” He can feel each of Rooster’s fingertips pressing into his arm. “If something went bad — I just didn’t think you were ready.”
Rooster tugs on Pete’s arm, forcing him to turn so they face one another. “And now?”
Pete looks up at Rooster. Like Goose reincarnated, he is, but tougher. Harder. Not as interested in entertaining Pete’s bullshit. “I can’t stop you from making your own choices. I don’t want to stop you. If you want to work this ranch, live this life, well.” Pete looks away. “I’d rather you be running cattle and mucking stalls and working your fingers to the bone here with me, than one of those types who’s just gonna use you up and spit you back out without a second thought.”
“It’s been a rough couple of years,” Rooster admits. His grip loosens around Pete’s elbow and his hand slides up instead, light against his bicep. “Not a lot of folks run an operation like you do.”
Lots of pieces of shit out there, Pete knows it. It’s why he and Goose started a place of their own.
“Well.” Pete nods at Rooster. “Make sure you pack up, then. I can use a good set of hands.”
**
The delivery goes fine. The cattle, the crew, everyone gets there in one piece.
It’s what comes after that changes everything.
“I don’t like this,” Rooster says, looking up at the sky, at the dark clouds looming in the distance.
They’re far enough out from home that if it starts storming, they’re going to have to break for shelter. They can’t just ride through and hope for the best. Or they shouldn’t, at least. The rest of their party had passed through here hours ago and were probably nearly back to the ranch by now. Pete and Rooster decided to take their time for once, and this is what it got them.
“No, don’t think I do, either,” Pete says. Darkstar paces restlessly, ready to take off and try to beat the storm, whether Pete wants her to or not. The skies are going to open up any minute now, Pete knows it, and he doesn’t like this part of the trail at all. He can see just where the water’s going to come rushing in, if it spills over the banks of the river out in the distance.
If he closes his eyes, he sees Goose, soaked and pale and so cold. So Pete doesn’t close his eyes.
“What do we do, Mav?” There’s a nervous edge in Rooster’s voice; he was just a boy when his dad died but it’s not like he doesn’t know the truth of it. Not like he doesn’t know it was storming just like this when it happened.
Pete wheels Darkstar around in a loose circle as he looks up at the sky, contemplates the wind. “Can’t outrun the storm. Can’t backtrack, we’re too far from town.” He shakes his head as he pulls back up next to Rooster. “I think we ride.”
“Like our tails are on fire?” Rooster shifts in his saddle.
Pete presses his heels into Darkstar’s sides to nudge her forward. “Yep.” If they’re lucky, they’ll get to higher ground before it floods. “Let’s go.”
So they ride, hoping to get through as much of the storm as they can. The rain starts as a frustrating mist, then a consistent drip, and soon starts coming down so hard they can barely see. Pete’s heart starts to beat harder in his chest and he can’t quite catch his breath as the ground churns muddy underneath the horses’ hooves.
He shouldn’t do it — he should be concentrating on getting them out of this; after all, he knows the land best, he’s done this ride before — but he keeps turning around to look at Rooster. Make sure he’s still there. That he’s still okay.
If Pete squints through the rain, he can just about see Rooster, hunched over on his horse. His mouth’s set in a grim line, eyes wide, as he barrels forwards. His hands grip the reins, white-knuckled, and Pete second guesses for the first time his decision to bring Rooster out on the trail with him.
Rooster catches Pete staring and shakes his head curtly. Pete can’t hear him over the rain and the pounding of horse hooves against the ground, but he can read lips. Pay attention, Rooster’s yelling. I’ll be fine.
Pete wants to believe that, he really does. But when he looks at Rooster, all he sees is his failure to save Goose, and his terror over the possibility that he’s going fail Rooster too. He keeps looking back even while he’s driving Darkstar forward, hoping that between one glance and the next, the rain will stop and things can go back to normal.
It’s the watching that does Pete in, in the end. Somewhere just beyond Pete’s field of vision comes a bright flash of lightning cutting through the suddenly dark sky. He’s twisted back around to look at Rooster when he hears a loud crack from somewhere nearby. Rooster’s eyes go wide and he digs his heels into his horse’s sides, surging forward, close enough that Pete can finally hear him shouting: “Look out! In front of you!”
Pete whips around just in time to see a giant tree topping to the ground in his path. He yanks on Darkstar’s reins, trying to steer her around it, but she startles and skids to a halt instead, rearing up on her hind legs to avoid the tree.
Pete feels himself slipping, slipping, the reins sliding out of his hands as he loses his grip. He feels weightless for a second before the ground rushes up to meet him and everything goes black and quiet.
**
Everything comes to Pete in a jumbled blur after that. Hands on him, pulling at him. A bone-chilling cold leeching in through his jeans and work shirt. The whine of horses, a scuffle, the feel of moving through space. A hazy glimpse of his hands, wet blood smeared across his palms.
“Stay with me,” he hears through the ringing in his ears. “Don’t you fucking dare go.” A distorted static hum of words.
He thinks he remembers Goose, clutching his hands, saying something Pete can’t quite make out, and then he thinks that maybe he’s actually dead, and what a fucking way to go out.
“Pete,” he hears, over and over, increasingly loud, urgent. “Tell me you’re okay.”
He’s able to open his eyes for just a few seconds, able to actually pick out what’s happening in the world around him, and this time, he realizes it’s Rooster crouched next to him, wet and cold and pale but alive . Same as Pete, then, he guesses.
Rooster’s hand rests at the side of Pete’s face, tender almost. Before he blacks out again, Pete thinks that he can’t remember the last person who touched him with that sort of care.
**
It could have been an hour or it could have been days, but eventually Pete opens his eyes and this time they stay open. He doesn’t drift right back off into a restless, dreamless sleep and he thinks maybe the worst of it is past then.
He takes stock of his body first: everything hurts, which is no surprise. He can wiggle his fingers, toes, turn his head side to side. His vision still blurs if he moves too fast and it feels like a horse is sitting on his head with how much it hurts, but all things considered, he feels okay. Better than expected.
Pete digs his elbows into the ground beneath him and struggles to sit; when he’s upright, he’s sitting next to a slowly crackling fire, and across from that: Rooster. His eyes are wide, looks like he’s seen a ghost. He stammers for words before finally landing on: “you good?”
Pete leans forward, drawing his legs up to his chest and resting his arms across his knees. The way his right hand throbs, he thinks he might have a broken finger or two. The deep ache in his side says broken ribs at the very least. But he’s weathered all of this before. He can breathe in and out. He thinks maybe he can even stand, if he tries hard enough.
“Will be,” he says. It feels true enough, even if right now everything still hurts.
“Shit,” Rooster breathes out. When Pete glances up next, Rooster’s come around his other side, hands hovering just over Pete.
“It’s fine,” Pete says, trying to wave Rooster off. “I fell, but it’s fine. Horses okay? We can’t get out of here without them. Give me a few, I’ll be fine to ride and we can get out of — wherever we are.” Pete looks up, trying to figure out where exactly they are. The rain’s just a drizzle now, not nearly as treacherous as it had been before. They’re perched under an outcropping of rock, just enough of an overhang to keep them dry if the rain picks up again. The horses are tied up a few yards away, happily ignoring Pete and Rooster for now.
And Rooster’s posted up next to him, one arm around Pete’s waist, the other curled over his forearm atop his knee.
“I thought I was going to lose you, Pete,” he says, and there’s something dead serious in his voice that Pete doesn’t exactly know what to do with.
“Everything is going to be fine,” Pete says. “Thank you but I didn’t need saving. I’m just glad that you’re okay.” He shifts to put his hand gently over Rooster’s. “I don’t think I could have lived with myself if—”
“You dumb fuck,” Rooster cuts him off. “I thought I was going to lose you,” he repeats, more urgently this time, and then there’s a hand at Pete’s chin. Rooster’s fingers curl lightly at his jaw, turning Pete’s face towards him, and then Rooster’s mouth is moving on his and several things slide into place in Pete’s mind right then.
He’d been ignoring the way Rooster’s gaze lingers a little too long on him. He’d been ignoring the way Rooster’s lashes brush against his cheeks when he closes his eyes. Or how Rooster slides past him in the barn with a hand at the small of Pete’s back. Or how his own attention gets drawn by Rooster’s broad shoulders, the long line of his neck, flush across his cheeks when he catches Pete looking.
“Well, shit,” Pete says when Rooster pulls away.
Rooster shifts back on his heels, crouched in the dirt. “I—” He lets his hand fall away from Pete’s face. “We can pretend I—” He sputters for words in the absence of reassurance from Pete.
Pete chuckles. “Now who’s the dumb fuck?” He tries to lean forward to get to Rooster again but his back protests when he leans too far forward. All he can do is search out Rooster’s hand and slide their fingers together.
Rooster looks down at their hands. “Oh. Yeah?”
“Jesus, Rooster,” Pete says. He tips to the side, leaning up against Rooster. It’s easier than talking about it, figuring out how to articulate how he’s both surprised and not surprised at all by this. How it feels natural, almost, to press his face against Rooster’s neck and just breathe in.
They sit in silence for a while before Rooster speaks. “I did get all your letters, you know,” he says. “Every last one managed to find me. Any time I come back into town, just a whole stack waiting for me.”
Pete closes his eyes. “Read them?”
“Took a while, but I did eventually.” Rooster’s arm slides around Pete’s waist. “I’d always realize how much I missed you when I read them. Like you were there taking at me about the ranch. About dad. About life.” His fingers stroke lightly up Pete’s side as he speaks. “Made me feel like I still had a place here.”
“I was never mad that you left, Bradley,” Pete says. “Mad at myself, maybe. You always had a place at the ranch, no matter what.”
“I came back a couple times, you know,” Rooster says, and that gets Pete to sit up straight.
“To the ranch?”
Rooster nods. “Never stepped past the gate, though. You were out on cattle runs, that’s the only reason I came by at all. Knew I wouldn’t have to see you.”
Pete looks down at their legs stretched out in front of them. They’re both covered in mud, he realizes. He’s filthy all up his right side, where he landed when Darkstar bucked him off. Rooster’s covered from the knees down. Where he’d crouched in the ground to help get Pete back up.
“I wasn’t ready,” Rooster says.
“For what?” Pete asks. He settles one hand on Rooster’s thigh, just above where the worst of the mud is caked on his jeans.
“To figure out why I felt like I couldn’t stay away from the ranch. From you.” Rooster’s hand comes to rest on top of Pete’s. “I had to grow up, and growing up meant seeing what life was like with people who didn’t give a shit about you. Ranchers who work you ‘til you’re half dead. Guys who toss you out when you let them learn too much about you. People who never actually saw me.”
He shifts back to look Pete in the eye. “You were just trying to protect me. I didn’t get it then, when I left.”
“I just wanted you to be safe,” Pete says. “What happened with your dad—” He closes his eyes and like always, he’s watching Goose take his last breath. “It’s always with me. If something had happened to you—”
“But it didn’t,” Rooster interrupts. “It hasn’t.” He rests his hand at Pete’s cheek again, fingers creeping up into his hair. “I’m safe. You did your job. Took me years, but I figured it out.” He leans in again, then, hesitating just a breath away from fully closing the gap between them; Pete helps him out and tips forward, kissing him slowly. Feeling safe. Feeling whole.
When they break, Rooster presses his forehead to Pete’s. “I think I always loved you, but I had to stop hating you first,” he says, and it takes Pete’s breath away a little bit to hear it. If there’s any way to describe what it is to have feelings for Pete Mitchell, that’s got to be exactly it.
“I take it that’s coming along then?” he says. He rests his fingers under Rooster’s chin, nudging his face up so he can look him in the eyes.
“Good enough,” Rooster says. “No complaints.”
“No complaints?” Pete flexes his right hand again, wincing at the pain that shoots up his arm. “Would’ve been nice to not fall off a fucking horse for—” He pauses, gesturing between them. “For all of this.”
Rooster merely shrugs. “You think you’re up to giving her a second chance?” He inclines his head towards Darkstar, who looks as chagrined as a horse can get over throwing Pete off. “We can go home, clean up.” He darts in, kisses Pete’s temple. “Talk.”
Pete chuckles. “Talk, sure.” He wants to dry off and then sleep for a week, but they can do that, too. “Let’s go home, Rooster,” Pete says, and this time, home actually means something to him.
Maybe it really was all about coming home, after all. Just like Rooster said.