Work Text:
In the cracks of light, I dreamed of you
It was real enough, to get me through
- Taylor Swift, evermore
Sometime after the state fair…
She doesn’t sleep that night. After being crooned at by some country singer over summertime blues that echo louder and louder in her mind, Beth slips into bed next to her husband and tries to put off the inevitable. He’s leaving in the morning, heading south to where the sun makes the grass grow in the winter, and being pulled apart from her, and their life here, for longer than she wants to truly contemplate.
He’s all she knows in a sea of calm, this anchor of hers who reminds her that when the waves are high and heavy, she’s not for moving, not for going under and forgetting how to find the surface again, not for losing herself and who she is, no matter how many demons threaten to drag her beneath the water. Not when he’s there, right next to her, and that invisible string tethering them together through the rough oceans of life is shorter than ever, looped and knotted over and over in the very hearts that beat opposite each other at night.
She breathes him in, reaching up to twist the small green pendant he’d gifted her that last Christmas around her fingers. Green, like your eyes, he’d said, not knowing how much the simple reasoning meant to her. Not understanding why the jewellery she’s worn around her neck has always been a symbol of him, and them, and everything that keeps her grounded on this earth.
She thinks, then, of the one that will always mean the most. That simple gold ‘B’ she’d found in the cup holder of her truck as an eighteen-year-old – the one that clung to her skin until it hurt too much to think about what it reminded her she didn’t have, and it got buried in her bedside table on one of those fleeting visits home from college. The one that she’d reached for not too soon after she’d come back to the ranch for good, when she’d started to accept her loyalty was to Rip over anyone else on this ranch. That precious chain and simple pendant had shielded her heart from the world as she’d fallen deeply in love with the man sleeping beside her, and wearing it has always kept that feeling of acceptance, and passion, and unconditional adoration from him right near her chest whenever she’s needed it most.
Somehow, this time, she knows it won’t be enough. Won’t represent the true depths of what they’ve overcome and who they now are together, as husband and wife. So she reaches for her phone instead, burrowing into Rip’s side as she searches for something that might feel right. That might feel like the simple rise and fall of his chest as he slumbers is still with her, despite the distance that’s about to come between them. This time, she chooses his letter.
Three days later, she places the heart-shaped pendant that’s been delivered to the ranch around her neck and rues that it’s first outing is for a day of community service, picking up trash at the hands of her godforsaken brother for a punishment she wholly believes she doesn’t deserve. But she keeps her head high, trying not to think about how little she’s slept without Rip beside her, and instead focuses on the fact that wearing her husband’s initial is one more lesson for that whore from California over exactly who he’s fucking at the end of the night. Because she has no intention of fulfilling her sentence. No desire to stand on that highway and scoop beer cans and chip packets into a trash bag for hours on end. And by the look on the supervisor’s face at the cigarette she pulls out from her bra not too long into the morning shift, he doesn’t want her there much either.
The joy at being a free woman again is beaten only by the voice of Rip down the phone, and soon the gentle words he says to her about the distance between them slither around her soul and tighten the vice grip she already thought he could clench no tighter. Well, she decides quickly, that longing for him greater than any sense of logic either of them could impart, the necklace has served its purpose today. It’s brought her a commuted sentence and time to go and reunite with the man she’s realised she doesn’t now know how to be without.
The lodge she soon returns to isn’t home without him by her side, and the look her father gives her as she hightails it out of there with a weekend bag thrown over her shoulder is reminder enough that everyone needs Rip back at the ranch. Because her Daddy’s dependent on her for all the important things like his impeachment trial, and trying to save the land, and she can only be that person if she’s not spiralling herself. A year is simply too long, and she’ll convince her husband, she thinks, with her mouth and her body - in no particular order - until he agrees that Lloyd should be with the cattle and he should be at home, with her, expending his duty to the ranch by tending to the very thing trying to rescue it in the first place.
But when his fingers curl around her the next day, weaving through her hair like the only key to a secret padlock in her mind, she doesn’t think of pulling him home. Can’t find the words to convince him to turn around and haul his ass straight back to Montana this time, because she’s in his arms again, her ear listening to the steady beat of his heart above that brand they both know is really for her, and suddenly nothing else matters. Nothing but filling her cup with everything this tall and handsome broad of a man is.
She finally lets him slip out from underneath her to go and take that shower, and she lies there, taking everything this is in, everything they are when they’re back together, until she realizes the water hasn’t turned on, and her plan of heading downstairs to the speakeasy the hostess had told her about could be thwarted by… something. She frowns, wondering what it could be, so she follows the silence, lingering in the doorway as she finds her husband tracing the diamond and gold ‘R’ glinting under the light above the mirror. The necklace, she realizes; that’s what got him stuck in the mud and holding up their date downstairs with her Tito’s and a dance floor.
“Like it?” She says, voice dragging his eyes up to meet hers in the reflection of the mirror.
“What is it?” He asks, as she steps towards him to look at the piece again.
“Figured it was time I wore something of yours,” She murmurs, fingers tracing the delicate letter that she pulls into her hand.
A hand slinks around her waist, palming her naked stomach as soft lips come down to kiss the side of her face, “You already wear my ring, honey,” He says quietly, gently, like that alone will always be more than he could ever ask for in this lifetime.
“Yeah, well,” She starts, twisting the band on her left hand, almost daring herself to think the same; that maybe one day, even if the ranch doesn’t exist, none of it will matter because God has given her more than she could ever hope for in him. “The ring says I have a husband. This,” She loops it around her fingers, letting it catch the light again, “This says don’t even fuckin’ think about it.”
She won’t tell him it’s so she can sleep when he’s gone again, so she can feel like he’s lying right next to her, chest to chest, in that cold and creaking room in the lodge that makes her want to scream into the empty darkness from a bed that’s made for a husband and wife.
“Then I like it,” He chuckles, indulging her with a squeeze of her hip, before finally heading for that shower he’s supposed to take. She looks at the necklace again and her heart thumps louder, harder. But she doesn’t need it tonight, not when he’s here in front of her, like there’s nowhere else either of them should be. She touches it once, twice, before placing it back on the countertop and deciding neither of them should be showering alone during this little tryst. Soon the steam clouds around their bodies and she ascends to the place only he can take her.
Death is everywhere. And yet, as Beth slips out with a coffee and cigarette for her solitary breakfast on the porch, her grief is secondary this morning.
She thinks of Carter, and the guilt she’s hoping he won’t let chew at his soul. And she thinks of her husband, somewhere on this ranch, preparing for the disposal sale, dutiful as ever until the end of this ranch, and to her.
She wonders where he is. If this is the time he spoke of needing to heal, if he’s not with her. Time and you. Time and you. She touches his letter around her neck, hoping that somehow he can feel her when he may need her more than she needs him. This is her giving him the you, even if he may not know it. And then, with a morose drag of nicotine, she hopes. For a brighter morning, for an easier day, for a time when the light outweighs the dark.
Days later, all she can think is that Rip was right. That the last vestibule of him trying to warn her about the horse trainer in front of her is twisted up in the letter around her neck that she has no doubt Travis Wheatley would like her to remove.
The bastard, she chews internally, ruminating to the sky as a boot is pulled off and placed on the table. She believes her husband now - that the horse trainer in front of her really would try and fuck her, even if Rip was sat right next to her. She’s willing to lose an ounce of dignity if it means she can get Travis to sell their horses sans commission, but he can think again if he believes the symbol she’s chosen to outwardly show her devotion to her husband is coming off at any point.
And let it be a warning to him, she thinks, gaze narrowing. He may be friends with Rip for some godforsaken reason she cannot think of right now, but should he make one inappropriate move, she’ll beat the shit out of him before leaving the scraps for her husband to finish off. Fuck him. Fuck the fucking overpriced horses they’re trying to sell. Fuck her husband for being right. Fuck everything. Apart from her fucking necklace.
She wakes the next day to an empty bed, the man who is and will always be her everything, no doubt already down at the barns and preparing for the only lifeline they have now; sell it all. She lies there for a moment, breathing in his scent still on the pillows, running her hand over the comforter half-made on his side and recalling that feeling of home she had upon seeing him the night before. It wasn’t there when she opened the front door, but it was there with her husband, waiting up for her on that couch with knowing eyes and a half-fluttering smile that give her reason to keep pushing through.
He’s strong in grief, this anchor of hers, who despite his own mounting heartache is unmovable in the rockbed. He’s the unending support who holds her at night and somehow stops the waves from getting close, even when there’s the moon’s gravitational pull to fight against, and the biggesf threat yet of the water crashing over her head. He keeps her afloat, and in return, she wants nothing more than to save this ranch for everything her father and he believe in.
She uses that energy to dress for the day, stepping into the role of matriarch now there really is no one else to lead this place through the tumultuous journey of what’s to come. The ivory dress she picks out is deliberate, pure, with meaningful lines that tell every cowboy who’s here to pry, or buy, that this is business. Everything is straight today; her hair, her hat, her edges. And yet, there the necklace is again, asking her, reminding her, to find that softness within herself. To remember why she’s truly doing this; for her father, for his dream, for the Dutton’s that have gone before, but also, she knows, for her husband.
This is Rip’s home - the only place he knows - and if she can give him more time here, then she will. She takes a breath, fastening the piece of jewellery behind her hair and staring at it in the mirror as it settles on the spot just above her heart. She can do this.
They say their separate goodbyes. To the barn, to the tack room, to the Foreman’s cabin, to the Great Room. When it’s time to leave, for the very last time, she leans against her husband’s sturdy trunk, and lets that feeling of freedom wash over them, as they take in the lodge they’ve called home together.
Her face and body wear the scars of her fight, and she feels his hands move gently over her dress, tenderly pulling her closer without doing any more damage to her healing body. The sun beats down on them, almost as if to say, you could do no more. Her necklace flickers in its rays. He’s the only thing she ever needs.
Somewhere on a ranch outside of Dillon…
She sleeps. Like she always seems to do, in this small house, up the driveway from the big barn, and away from anyone who might give thought to passing through. She figured it would take some getting used to, laying her head here, but when she sinks into bed with Rip, her body feels more at ease than it ever has done before.
It’s funny, she thinks, when she wakes to a cold mattress and half-made bed in the morning. Everything has changed and yet nothing much is different at all; her husband still chases cows no matter what day it is, and she still wrestles with a backdrop of tragedy that seems to be on the signpost of every crossroads in her life.
But still, happy is all he wants for her. Happy is all he gently pushes her to be, with warm, callused hands that silently promise to never let go, no matter how rough the seas get and how high the tides of grief rise.
With his letter around her neck, she finds it today, for him. With cowboys who drink whiskey and play dominoes and make her want to rush home, just to bring Rip back and share this very moment with him. So she does. And for long enough, the light in her eyes as she recounts her tale of lunch is almost as bright as the ‘R’ on her chest.
Then he kisses her, the gentlest he ever has. And she knows, deep in her bones that they’ve never truly been a you and I. Not really. They’re a home to each other, a sanctuary of peace no matter where they are, no matter what jewellery she wears, and no matter what their future may hold. Through everything, they will always be an us.