Archive of Our Own

He’s nine years old when the words Oh good, we got us a Mexican appear curled around his left bicep, and his mama bursts into tears at the sight of them.

Javier Vasquez doesn’t know what the words mean at first, doesn’t yet read well enough or speak enough English to understand them, but he still doesn’t see a problem even after they’ve been translated for him.

“It’s because they sound like an insult,” his brother Manuel finally tells him, late at night once their parents have gone to bed. “She’s afraid you’re going to get hurt.”

Javier scoffs at that. “It’s my soulmate, Manuel. They’re not going to hurt me.”

He regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth, as well as the tone. Manuel, five years Javier’s senior and practically an adult in his younger brother’s eyes, has never had any words of his own come in and likely won’t at this rate.

That happened sometimes, probably more often than people were willing to admit, but it was still seen as an oddity and those without marks could at times be sensitive about their lack thereof.

Luckily, Manuel just scoffs right back at Javier and thumps him with a pillow for good measure.

Javier can’t retaliate like he normally would, lest he wind up rousing one or both of their parents, so he settles for claiming the pillow as his own and stuffing it behind his back along with the one he’s already been lying on.

Reclining back in his bed, he looks up at the ceiling of their room and idly runs the fingers of his right hand over the spot where he knows his words to be.

“They’re not going to hurt me,” he says again, more pointedly this time.

Manuel sighs, and even in the darkened room Javier can picture the look on his face. “I hope not,” he says quietly, “but you never know with these things. Not everyone is like Mama and Papa.”

Mama and Papa had found each other when they were barely older than Manuel is now, and they’d never looked back. Possible insult or not, Javier doesn’t see any reason why he and his soulmate can’t be the same, and he says as much now.

“Like I said, not everyone is like Mama and Papa. Plus,” Manuel adds, and now Javier can hear him shifting around in the dark, “you’re missing something important.”

“And what’s that?”

“With words like that, your soulmate isn’t likely to be anywhere nearby. You’re probably going to have to travel if you want to find them, and travel far at that, outside of Mexico.”

Javier thinks about that for a while. He idly ponders what it’d be like to have to leave home, to leave the farm that had housed his family since long before he was born, all in order to try and find one person who he might not ever manage to stumble upon.

“I bet I could manage if it comes to that,” he decides finally. “And you don’t know, it might not come to that anyway. They might come here.”

“Maybe,” Manuel says, but he sounds doubtful, like he has any more of an idea how things will play out than Javier does.

Yet, that one word makes something stir uneasily in Javier’s gut, and he abruptly decides he’s done with this conversation. “I’m going to sleep,” he says, rolling onto his side to face towards the room’s only window. “You can stay up and figure out ways to make my soulmate come to me.”

Manuel snorts. “I’m not doing the work for you, Javi. Besides,” he adds almost as an afterthought, “finding your soulmate is only going to be half the problem. You’re an annoying enough little shit that the bond might not even take.”

Rolling his eyes in the darkness, Javier decides he’s not even going to dignify that with a response. Of course his soulmate is going to want him back; otherwise what’s even the point?

*****

Sometime later, after he hasn’t seen his family in years and has taken on a life that his Mama would be far from proud of, he’ll hear his words drunkenly slurred by a man who’s halfway to falling off his horse and know that somehow, wherever he is, Manuel is laughing at him.

*****

Faraday has no idea what his words mean.

Well, that is, technically speaking, something of a lie.

Faraday knows that his words are an indication that the person on the other end of the tether is somewhat irked with him upon uttering them, but he does not know their literal translation.

They appear scrawled across his chest one day in his youth. He doesn’t even notice them at first, he’s too busy trying to find work down in the town that him and his Ma live on the outskirts of, work that he’ll no doubt be too young for, but that’ll help put food on the table for another day.

He finds them when he gets back that evening, unsuccessful in his attempts and with a painful gnawing in his empty belly. He drops his shirt to the floor, he’s so startled by them, and his mother looks up from where she’s been painfully stitching a pattern onto the hem of a dress for the mayor’s wife; her own way of finding money to put food in front of them.

“Joshua?” She asks, frowning in the stuttering candlelight.

When he doesn’t answer, still staring transfixed as his chest, she sighs and sets her work down on the small table in front of her.

“Joshua, what is it?” Climbing up out of her chair she takes the few steps required to cross the tiny room to him and follows his gaze.

“Oh my,” she breathes, voice hushed. “Oh, baby.”

She reaches out a trembling finger, her intention to touch plain, but he jerks back before she can make contact.

“Well,” she says, a catch in her voice as she drops her hand back to her side. “At least you won’t have the same problem I did.”

He cranes his head up to look at her, seeing all too well the way she’s fighting back tears. “I don’t want them,” he says harshly. “I don’t want nothin’ to do with ‘em.”

“Oh, baby,” she says again, and this time when she reaches out it’s to place a careful hand on his shoulder, away from the words now staining his chest in a foreign tongue he doesn’t recognize. “Don’t say that.”

He lets her have her moment, let’s her keep her hand there just long enough to make her feel like she’ll have made a difference, and then he shakes her off again. “I don’t want to wind up like you and Dad.”

His mother has a simple Excuse me, Ma’am scrawled along the underside of her right pointer finger. It’s about as inconspicuous as a soulmark can be, and also as generic. His mother had had someone speak her words at least a dozen times before she’d finally gotten tired of waiting and chosen the speaker she’d liked best.

Unfortunately for her, she’d chosen wrong.

“It won’t be like that,” she assures him, even though they can both hear the tremble in her voice. “Why, just look at ‘em. Whatever they mean, I’m sure it’s different enough that you’ll know ‘em when you hear ‘em.”

He grunts noncommittally before turning away to go back to what he was doing.

*****

Faraday makes it a point not to try and find out what his words actually say, and his mother’s been gone and in the ground for years before he accidentally stumbles upon their general meaning.

He’s wrapped up on the arms of a dark-eyed Mexican beauty who says her given name is Lena and might even be telling the truth when she does so. She’s one of the few working girls in a small, blink and you miss it sort of town in the ass end of Texas, and she throws back her head and cackles when she gets his shirt open.

“Oho, cowboy, you’re gonna piss off some firey little senorita or senor something terrible, aren’t you?”

“Wha?” It takes him a moment to realize that she’s talking about someone other than herself, and he’s got a hand slapped across the words on his chest before he can stop himself.

“Oooh, sensitive.” Lena laughs at him again. “What’s the matter? You don’t want someone like me to steal your heart?”

“You – you know what they mean?” He asks, regretting having asked almost immediately, but still unable to stop before it’s too late.

“’Course I do,” she assures him, voice hardening. “Just because I’m a whore doesn’t mean I can’t read.”

Faraday doesn’t bother to correct her assumption that he’d thought her too stupid to be able to read. Instead, still acting against his better judgement, he says, “And you say she’s mad at me?”

“Yes, si.” She says. “He, she, whoever it is they’re very unimpressed by you. Rude too. My mama’d wash my mouth out if I used words like these in polite company. You want me to translate?”

“No!” Faraday barks, momentarily scrabbling away from her. “Fuck, no. You’ve done enough, thanks.”

She narrows her eyes. “Huh. I think I can see why your intended is going to be so unimpressed by you.”

Still looking annoyed, she slides off of his lap and stands to settle her skirts back into place. “I think you’d better leave.”

Even though he happens to agree with her, Faraday feels like he has to make at least a token protest. “Come on now, darlin’. I thought we were enjoyin’ ourselves.”

Lena gives him a grin that shows off far too much teeth for him to be comfortable with. Then she leans forward, placing one hand on each of his biceps so that she can bracket him in and cut off any potential escape routes. “Let’s just say the magic is gone. However, since I’m a nice girl myself, I’ll give you a going away present.”

Slowly, her lips moving just above the shell of his ear, she rasps out the words on his chest exactly as they’re meant to be pronounced in her native tongue.

“So you can be sure you’ll know them when you hear them,” she says, smiling wickedly as she pulls back.

Anger flares white hot in his gut. He’s half tempted to shoot her for sheer nerve, but for all he’s never considered himself to be a good man he doesn’t entirely think he’s an evil one either and that’s a line he just won’t cross. Therefore he just grabs his personal effects and stomps out of the room with her laughter floating out behind him.

He thinks briefly about finding some of the local hillbillies to swindle out of their money and even more briefly about finding some whiskey on which to get black out drunk. In the end, he does neither and slinks out of the tiny rat hole of a town before the sun’s even properly up.

Better to leave that kind of bullshit behind him.

*****

Vasquez - he hasn’t been Javier since a series of poor decisions had landed him in a life on the run with very little likelihood of ever seeing home again - doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say to the filthy, grinning man who’s just stumbled over to him. He’s dimly aware of Chisolm giving him a sympathetic pat on the arm as he walks by to get to the main camp, but the bulk of his attention belongs to the newcomer.

The newcomer, that is, who’s just uttered the words Vasquez has ingrained on his own body. The newcomer who’s continuing to mockingly butcher Vasquez’s first language with every indication that he’s having a grand time doing it.

The man, Faraday he thinks someone had called him, is clearly feeling the effects of the whiskey Vasquez can smell on his breath. However, there’s a look in his eye that makes Vasquez figure he’d be just as likely to continue making an ass out of himself sober as he is drunk.

Vasquez had always thought, provided of course that he was the second one speaking at this auspicious meeting, that, given the chance to properly reply to his soulmate’s words, he’d think about it carefully and then respond with something sure to be both unique and flattering.

Instead, after several slurred “muchachos” have been thrown in his face, he spits out a series of expletives that would have his mama spinning in her grave if she were able to hear them.

At least it’s probably unique.

Faraday blanches at his words, his entire face going white as a sheet, and Vasquez feels a sense of smug satisfaction wash over him only to belatedly realize that he’s just, among other things, called his potential soulmate a motherfucker at their first meeting.

Not exactly a promising beginning.

Feeling his face heat, he takes a step towards Faraday hoping that they can start over.

“Faraday …” he starts, only to have the other man stumble back away from him, looking for all the world like he’d just wandered into a nightmare.

Faraday almost pitches backwards onto his ass, and the only thing that stops him is Vasquez’s reaching hand wrapping around his flailing arm and steadying him on his feet. As he does so, Vasquez feels something spark deep down inside him when they come in contact with each other, and it’s enough to tell him two things. The first is that Faraday is most definitely his soulmate.

 The second is that he desperately, desperately doesn’t want to be.

“What …” he starts to say, only to be cut off again.

This time when Faraday jerks away from him, he manages to do so without almost falling over and breaking his damn neck in the process. He moves back a step and then a few more seemingly for good measure, all the while watching Vasquez like some kind of spooked animal.

“Sorry, hombre,” Faraday says in a voice that Vasquez can tell is fake even without the tentative connection now flowing between them. “Looks like all that whiskey must’ve finally caught up with me. Think I need to go get my head down. Cheers.”

Vasquez scowls at him, irritation momentarily superseding the rest of the inner turmoil now coursing through his veins. He watches as the other man wanders away from him, ducking back around his horse and moving to dig something out of his rucksack.

For a moment, Vasquez considers following, but the tight set of Faraday’s shoulders makes it abundantly clear his company wouldn’t be welcome. Therefore, rather than upset the tentative balance that their merry band of misfits is no doubt teetering on, he keeps his mouth shut and stalks over to where his own gear is stored, deciding he may as well rest there until Chisolm decides it’s time for them to make their next move.

Whatever that might be.

*****

Their next move turns out to be chasing down a crazy old bastard with head wound and a somewhat alarming amount of facial hair.

Jack Horne is either senile or insane or both and as he wanders away with blood still flowing down the side of his face, Vasquez can’t help but think they’re better off without his particular brand of crazy. Judging by the tight set of Chisolm’s mouth, however, he doesn’t agree.

“I do believe that bear was wearin’ people’s clothes.”

Vasquez glances over at Faraday, who’s watching Horne walk away with a smirk curling around the edges of his mouth. They share a quick look, but Faraday turns away after no more than a second or two.

Growling under his breath, Vasquez kicks out at a loose board in the porch he’s standing on, wondering what in hell’s name he’s done to deserve a soulmate with no interest in him. Maybe, he hasn’t exactly lived a sainted life since that day so many years ago when his words had first flowed across his arm, but this is ridiculous.

Up ahead, Chisolm is signalling for them to move on, so he climbs back atop his horse and tries to focus on watching the trail in front of him rather than anything else.

The trail isn’t one he’s familiar with, and it’s steep enough that he initially has to expend a fair amount of concentration on watching his horse’s footing. Eventually, however, he gets a rhythm going and begins taking a more active role in the conversations happening between the people around him, although he could do without Faraday’s apparent fondness for sniping at him at any given opportunity. It’s not the first time some white jackass has felt the need to throw snide terms at him, but coming from Faraday it’s getting his back up.

Luckily, the rest of his new travelling companions aren’t the worst he’s ever had; Robicheaux in particular is thoroughly amusing in his own way and enough of a charmer to grease away much of the tension that one would expect to find when so many people from such varied backgrounds wind up in the same place. The man even laughs uproariously when Vasquez suggests that their grandfathers may have faced each other at the Alamo.

They make camp for the night in the bed of a canyon with more open space than Vasquez would normally be comfortable with if he were travelling alone. And even though he’s not alone, he still makes a point to wedge himself into a crevice that both gives him a decent vantage point and means he has something to put his back against.

Unfortunately, the downside to the vantage point part is that he can easily spot the way Faraday sets down his own bedroll about as far away from Vasquez as he can get while still nominally remaining in the same campsite and then clambers on top of an outcrop to sit with Teddy Q of all people.

Vasquez huffs irritably at the sight, shoving his hat down over his face to try and block out the view. He thinks for a moment that he might feel a touch of amusement coming off of Faraday right before he scams Teddy out of his bottle of whiskey and back into the protective shadow of Emma Cullen, but prodding tentatively at the feeling results in Faraday slamming the walls he’d put up when they’d first met back into place so forcefully that Vasquez feels like he’s been slapped.

Huffing again, he lies back down and decides to fake sleep until the real thing claims him. Maybe tomorrow he’ll try prodding Faraday into talking to him again. Perhaps he’ll have better luck after a decent night’s sleep.

*****

Chisolm turns out to be a man full of surprises. By the time morning fully dawns he’s managed to talk a Comanche warrior into joining their motley crew and proven to be right about Horne’s willingness to tag along.

“Seven men,” Faraday mutters, as climbs into the saddle once they’re ready to head out. “Seven men, a wet behind the ears kid, and a woman with a chip on her shoulder a mile wide. Now why don’t I like those odds?”

“Oh come now, Faraday, you can bet there’ll be more folks willing to fight once we’ve reached the town,” Robicheaux says beside him.

Startled – he hadn’t realized anyone was close enough to overhear him – Faraday looks at the older man and doesn’t entirely like what he sees. He’s heard stories of Goodnight Robicheaux, the man was after all a living legend, but in person there’s something off about him, a twitchy air buried deep beneath all his blustery, southern charm that Faraday, a chronic and talented bullshitter in his own right, recognizes for what it is.

“You really think a bunch of townies are going to be able to help us against Bart Bogue and whatever army he manages to scrounge up once he finds out what we’re up to?”

Robicheaux eyes him for a moment, and then grins. “Would I be here if I didn’t? Unlike you, my friend, I didn’t have to be coerced into coming along on this little adventure.”

That was true enough Faraday supposed, but it still didn’t make their odds any better. Nor, he thought as Vasquez and his white mount crossed suddenly into his line of sight, were the odds his only problem at the moment.

“Morning, guero,” Vasquez murmurs affably, dipping his head in acknowledgment of Faraday’s presence. “Nice day for a ride, eh?”

“Well ain’t you all bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning?” Faraday asks, immediately suspicious of this behaviour. Vasquez has been trying to none-to-subtly prod at him since their first meeting outside of Junction City, but he’s been blessedly limited in his attempts due to the complete lack of privacy they’ve so far been gifted with on the open road. Faraday can’t say he appreciates the idea that the man might become bolder in trying to rope Faraday into conversing with him as they all go along together.

“What is there not to be happy about, guero?” Vasquez asks, once again using that damned nickname that he seems to be of the opinion suits Faraday to a tee. He’d started using it while they’d been questioning the Pidgeon brothers about Horne’s possible whereabouts, and it did not appear as if he was feeling inclined to drop it anytime soon. “The sun is shining, we had plenty of food to go around for breakfast, and neither of our two newest companions saw fit to cut our throats while we slept. Cannot ask for more than that, no?”

“I can ask for a lot of things,” Faraday snipes back, immediately wishing he could take the words back when they make Vasquez waggle his eyebrows in a decidedly inappropriate manner.

“Do not do that,” Faraday snaps. It is far too early in the day for him already to be feeling this exasperated, and if this is what soulbonds do to people then he thinks he’s been justified in avoiding one all these years.

“Do what?” Vasquez queries, cocking his head to one side.

“You know plenty well what,” Faraday hisses, leaning low over Jack’s flank to try and prevent anyone else from overhearing them. “Cut that shit out.”

“Cut what out?” Vasquez asks, still being deliberately obtuse. His eyes are dancing though, and there’s a smug, obnoxious smirk curling at the corner of his mouth that proves more than anything he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Faraday snarls, his temper ratcheting up with each passing second, seemingly in direct correlation with Vasquez’s amusement.

He’s seriously considering hauling off and punching the man, never mind how difficult that might prove to be while they’re both sitting astride separate horses, when he suddenly realizes what Vasquez is doing.

“You bastard,” he hisses. “Quit tryin’ to get a rise out of me. It ain’t gonna get you what you want.”

All traces of amusement vanish from Vasquez’s face and his eyes narrow sharply. “You don’t know what I want, Faraday,” he says, snapping the reins of his own horse and nudging the animal into a trot that’ll take him out of range. “How can you when you won’t ask?”

Momentarily distracted with watching Vasquez as he progresses along the trail, Faraday almost misses the thoughtful humming noise emanating from Robicheaux. Turning to look at him, Faraday sees that the Cajun has kept pace with him without his noticing and is now watching Vasquez with an interested expression on his face.

Faraday feels his stomach twist uncomfortably at that look. He clears his throat loudly in an attempt to draw Robicheaux’s attention back to him. It works, and Robicheaux gives him a wide grin, his gold tooth flashing brightly in the early morning sun.

“Do my eyes deceive me, Mr. Faraday, or does there seem to be a spot of tension developing between you and our renegade Mexican companion?”

His throat feeling tight, Faraday tries and mostly fails to scoff at this insinuation. Shaking his head as much to clear it as to deny what Robicheaux is hinting at, Faraday clicks Jack’s reins to get him moving. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he huffs.

“Now how did I know you were going to say that?” Robicheaux flashes him another grin, seemingly unbothered by Faraday’s obviously rising temper.

“Do you always stick your nose in where it don’t belong?” Faraday demands, his ire starting to get the better of him yet again.

“All the time,” Robicheaux admits glibly. “Ask Billy if you don’t believe me.”

As if summoned by the sound of his name, the man in question sidles up to them on his own mount without so much as a by your leave. He glances between the two men, dark eyes narrowing noticeably when they focus on Faraday, before shifting back over to Robicheaux. One ebony brow raises slightly, an entire conversation worth of words located in the single movement, and Robicheaux shakes his head gently, just as obviously responding to whatever unspoken question Billy had asked him.

“Trust me,” Faraday says pointedly, “I believe you.”

“Well that’s mighty kind of you,” Robicheaux continues on, seemingly oblivious to Faraday’s souring mood. “Now, as I was saying, I cannot help but notice that you and our dark-eyed company memner seem to have reached some sort of negative impasse. I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to help?”

Faraday stares at him, momentarily at a loss for words.

“Do I look like the sort of man who’d say yes to an offer like that?” He asks finally, feeling flabbergasted beyond measure.

For his part, Robicheaux just shrugs. “Over the course of my time on this earth I have learned the risks of judging a book by its cover. As such, I try not to make assumptions regarding men whom I have just met.”

“Well in my case you can safely assume it’s a bad idea to stick your nose into my personal business,” Faraday informs him. “Keep out of it.”

Like Vasquez had before him, he nudges his horse into a trot, intent on putting some distance between himself and Robicheaux. He’s moved ahead far enough that he’s almost out of earshot when he hears Robicheaux says aloud to Billy, “Do you think he realizes he’s just admitted there is something going on between the two of them?”

Faraday swears under his breath and decides he’s happy they’ll be making their entrance into Rose Creek by mid-afternoon. He’s looking forward to being able to shoot somebody.

*****

They wind up fighting back to back in the middle of the town square and they’re good at it. More than good, they move together as one creature, perfectly in sync. Vasquez embraces it, revels in it even, but his enjoyment is short lived since Faraday shifts away again as soon as he can, racing across the street and ducking around a corner in Robicheaux’s direction, mostly out of Vasquez’s sight.

Vasquez wants to swear at the man, continuously frustrated by his behaviour, but now isn’t the time. There’s still a number of Blackstones left in the town, several of them within his sights and heading for the relative shelter of the lone bank. It’s best he deal with them now and his recalcitrant soulmate after.

That’s provided, of course, that Faraday will let himself be dealt with. So far the man is proving to have a stubborn streak a mile wide.

Squaring his shoulders he ducks into the bank to make quick work of the men inside. One almost gets away from him, running along the porch and nearly making it onto the street before Vasquez puts him down with a bullet in the back. Then it’s over and they’re regrouping in the town square, the ground littered with corpses, thankfully none of them theirs.

Chisolm nods as they all approach him, asking casually how they’d done, grinning when Billy indicates he got five and Faraday reports he got six. Then he shifts his attention back the porch of the building in front of them, for some reason more interested in it than the people behind him.

Vasquez feels Faraday’s eyes on him and when he looks over the man nods at him. “What’d you get?”

“Six,” Vasquez replies, truthfully.

Faraday makes an annoyed face, “I got seven,” he says, holding up a corresponding number of fingers for emphasis.

Vasquez snorts in exasperation, wondering if every interaction they have is always going to be this ridiculous.

At the sound, Faraday glares at him, “You want to try and tie it up?” He asks his meaning clear.

“Say when, guero,” Vasquez replies before he can stop himself.

They eye each other for a moment, the tension thick between them, only looking away when Chisolm crouches down on the ground in front of them.

“Hey,” the man hisses, and that’s when the rest of them learn there’s one enemy who’s managed to survive the mess they’ve just made.

For all he makes an attempt at some false bravado, the former town sheriff obviously thinks they’re about to kill him. Personally, Vasquez wouldn’t have much problem with that – the lead Blackstone has already gotten away, so it’s not like someone isn’t going to tell Bogue what’s happened here – but it seems Chisolm wants the man to deliver a more personal message, only satisfied to let the man leave once he’s repeated the words back to him.

Once the sheriff has stumbled off, the sound of hooves on the ground echoes throughout the air and Emma Cullen and her young friend are riding into the town, calling for their people to come out. There are more of them than Vasquez would have expected, and they all look terrified, both at the sight of the corpses strewn about every which way and by the ragtag band of men standing before them.

The townsfolk take some time debating the issue of the army that’s due to descend upon them at any time, but in the end most of them conclude that they’re willing to accept help to defend their home, while the rest indicate that they plan to leave. Chisolm gives a rousing speech, or at least what he no doubt imagines to be one, and tells them all to go home and get a good night’s sleep while they have the chance.

It sounds like good advice to Vasquez, especially given how long it’s been since he’s had a chance to sleep in a real bed, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t have other things on his mind. He glances in Faraday’s direction, hoping now that the dust has at least momentarily settled he might convince the man to speak with him, but receives only a sharp glare in response.

Vasquez sighs as he follows Chisolm in the direction of the saloon. Maybe he’ll be able to come up with a new plan to get Faraday’s attention once he’s got something in his stomach.

*****

Vasquez eats like a man who hasn’t seen food in a month.

During the few nights they’d been travelling to get to Rose Creek, Faraday had done his best to ignore him whenever they’d all sat down to break bread and had largely succeeded due to being able to wander off and plant himself wherever he pleased. Now, however, they’ve all been seated around a table in the saloon and it’s impossible not to notice the way Vasquez hasn’t stopped eating since the first plate had been set in front of them.

Faraday’s no stranger to hunger, he can’t be given the type of life he leads, but there’s something about the way Vasquez is shovelling the fresh cooked meal into his mouth, like he half thinks it’ll be taken away if he stops for so much as a moment, that makes something clench unpleasantly in the pit of his stomach.

Not liking the way this makes him feel, Faraday sets his attention to picking at Robicheaux whom he figures he can safely assume will not stir … whatever it is Vasquez is stirring in him.

Unfortunately, the meal can only last for so long, and then everyone’s shuffling off to wind down for the evening. Faraday tries to make his escape while he can, but Vasquez is a wily bastard and apparently an even more determined one. He catches Faraday out on the saloon balcony, where he’s gone to try and have a quick smoke in private, away from the prying eyes of the townsfolk.

“I am not havin’ this conversation with you,” Faraday says pre-emptively. He can’t actually see Vasquez yet, as he hasn’t cleared the threshold of the doorway, but there’s a tickling sensation coursing along the damned bond that he hasn’t quite managed to shut out yet, one that intensifies whenever Vasquez gets near him.

“I just want to talk, guero,” the other man says lowly, his hands raised in front of him as he steps out onto the balcony.

“Which, seein’ as I have just said I ain’t talkin’ about this, means we’re at a bit of an impasse, now, doesn’t it?” Faraday points out. There’s not enough alcohol in the world to make him willing discuss this with anyone, let alone the man whose words have been scrawled across his chest since he was a child.

Vasquez makes a frustrated noise and spits harshly over the side of the balcony railing because he’s apparently a disgusting individual on top of an insanely aggravating one.

“What is the harm in talking?” He demands. “I’m not gonna go after your virtue, guero. That is, if you even have any.” He adds snidely, Faraday’s continued insistence on telling him to shove off clearly having gotten his back up.

“My virtue or lack thereof is both none of your concern and not at all what I’m worried about when it comes to you,” Faraday snaps. “Now would you kindly do me a favor and haul your carcass in a direction that is the opposite of mine?”

Vasquez hisses something nasty sounding in Spanish, running his hands up into his dark curls in obvious exasperation. “I just want to talk.”

“And I don’t!” Faraday snarls. “So get the hell out of here and go bug somebody else.”

“If you would just listen to me – !” Vasquez starts again, but Faraday has had enough.

“I said get out of here! I didn’t sign up for a lot of things where this damned fool’s errand is concerned, but most of all I sure as shit didn’t sign up for you.” Taking a final drag of his cigarette, Faraday throws the butt over the railing, wishing belatedly that he’d tossed it on balcony itself because it’d give him an excuse to stomp his foot angrily like he wants to.

Vasquez makes another frustrated noise, and then Faraday feels something, something he doesn’t have the words to describe, prodding at him. It takes him a moment to realize what it is, what it has to be, and when he does he sees red.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” He roars, hoping like hell his words don’t cause someone or other to come running in their direction, but refusing to stop himself all the same. “You get the fuck out of my head, you bastard. And you stay out!”

Vasquez recoils at that, and Faraday gets a sense of something that genuinely seems to be regret, Vasquez’s regret, not his own, before the feeling abruptly pulls away.

“Faraday …” Vasquez starts to say. “I’m sorry. I should not have – .”

“You’re damn right, you shouldn’t have,” Faraday snarls, breathing heavily through his nose in a desperate attempt to calm down. “You’ve got no goddamn right to try pokin’ around in my head.”

“I know, I know.” Vasquez says, hands held up in surrender. “I am sorry.”

The man sounds so regretful that Faraday finds himself being comforted in spite of what’s just happened. He nods then, willing to let the matter pass if it means it doesn’t have to get brought up again.

“You promise to leave it be?” He asks, suspiciously. No matter what, they’re going to have to work together, and they’re not going to be able to do that if they can’t find a way to coexist.

Vasquez opens his mouth to respond – hopefully in the affirmative – only to stop before any words come out. As Faraday watches, he chews absently on his bottom lip for a moment, then squares his shoulders and asks, “Would you accept a promise to try?”

Faraday snorts, his temper flaring back up again like a struck match. “Fuck and no, hombre. You stay out of my business and I’ll stay out of yours. End of discussion.”

Vasquez growls in obvious frustration. “You don’t think our business is each other’s? At least where this,” and here he flaps a hand between the two of them, as if he’s trying to physically show the bond stretching out between them, “is concerned?”

“No, I do not.” Faraday squares his shoulders and says harshly. “My business is my own, Mr. Vasquez, nobody else’s.”

 “Javier.”

“What?” Faraday blinks at him, thrown by the apparent non-sequitur.

“My name,” Vasquez says simply. “It’s Javier.”

“Your name is fuckin’ irrelevant, is what it is,” Faraday says harshly. “And don’t for a second think I’m givin’ you mine,” he adds, on the off chance that Vasquez turns out to have the nerve to ask for it.

Vasquez flinches again at the harshness in Faraday’s voice, and Faraday’s almost certain he gets an unwanted flash of hurt from the other man.

It’s that stab of hurt, whether imagined or otherwise, that keeps Faraday from pressing the matter further. He may not want anything to do with this mess, but he’s honest enough to know that the rejection’s got to be stinging Vasquez who clearly is interested in seeing where a soulbond could take them. Seeing as the two of them have to be able to work together on this fool’s errand, Faraday reckons he likely shouldn’t press his luck any more tonight.

Taking a deep breath, he sucks air into his lungs and then lets it out slowly. He’s not going to bother apologizing to Vasquez, that’s never been his way and he certainly isn’t about to change now, but he can bite back on any more rude comments.

“Alright,” he says finally. “How about we backtrack by about two minutes?”

Vasquez quirks an eyebrow at him, the sight visible even in the dim light leaking out onto the balcony from inside, but doesn’t say anything.

Faraday sighs. “Allow me to reiterate: I am not discussin’ this with you anymore. However, I aim to act like a civil human being if you can respect that.” Or at least as civil as he ever gets, he doesn’t say aloud.

“Doesn’t sound like you’re giving me much of a choice, guero.” Vasquez says, sounding tired.

“That’s because I’m not,” Faraday replies. “This thing between you and me? It doesn’t get brought up again. Otherwise, horse or no horse, town or no town, I’m out of here.” And with that he shoves himself away from the balcony railing and stomps towards the door without another word.

*****

Vasquez watches as Faraday disappears back into the building, waiting until the man is gone before he collapses back against the balcony railing with a deep sigh. Scrubbing a hand tiredly over his eyes he lets his head fall backwards and wonders just what exactly he’s done to land himself in a mess like this one.

“They’re a pain in the ass when they react this way, aren’t they?” A voice says out of the darkness, and Vasquez whirls around, his heart pounding in his chest as he peers into the night in search of the source of the noise.

He finds it leaning up against the doorframe, the door still opened from where Faraday had previously passed through it.

Billy Rocks is not a large man. Add that to the stealthy way he moves and his ability to seemingly fade into the shadows at will, and you wind up with someone who’s extremely talented when it comes to hiding in plain sight.

“Where the hell did you come from?” Vasquez demands. “And what are you doing here?”

“That,” Billy says slowly, “is a loaded question. One with likely a thousand different possible answers.”

Vasquez snorts. “Looks like Robicheaux isn’t the only one of you two who has a way with words,” he observes.

Billy shrugs. “Nobody has quite Goody’s way with words, but I suppose I do alright.”

“Mm. Did you want something then?”

As he watches, a light flares briefly in the dark. Then Billy’s taking a deep drag from his now lit cigarette, exhaling slowly and deliberately. Finally, he says ominously, “Been watching you and Faraday these past few days.”

“Yeah? Why? You see something you like?” Vasquez feels his stomach twist uncomfortably. He’s already in over his head for a number of reasons. The last thing he needs to do right now is add a pissed off assassin to his list of potential problems to have to deal with.

Billy huffs a breath that might, from anyone else, be considered a laugh. “Believe me when I tell you that neither of you is my type. Both too damned big for starters. One of the best things about Goody is that I can look him in the eye without getting a crick in my neck.”

Vasquez freezes. He supposes there might be more than one way to take that last statement, but Billy doesn’t strike him as a man who wastes his time playing games. “You two fucking?” He asks, deciding not to bother beating around the bush given that Billy was the one who brought it up in the first place.

“And then some,” Billy says, not so much as battling an eye as he does so. “Soulbond.”

Vasquez swears. He wonders if he should have seen that one coming given the way that Billy and Robicheaux work like a well-oiled machine.

“You always go around admitting that to people you’ve just met?” He asks eventually. Some people with soulbonds were admittedly prone to flaunting what they had. Others, however, were much more inclined to keep themselves to themselves, and, if pressed, he would have assumed that Billy would have fallen into the latter category.

For his part, Billy just shrugs. “We killed a couple dozen Blackstones together today,” he says, like that’s supposed to mean something.

Which maybe it is. It’s been a long time since Vasquez has had anybody but himself to rely on. It’s possible he’s forgotten what it’s like to have others fighting at his back.

“Why are you telling me now?” He asks.

Shrugging again, Billy takes another drag of his cigarette before answering. “Mainly because I’ve got eyes. Not to mention ears.”

“Ah.” Vasquez winces. Apparently his and Faraday’s little spat hadn’t been as missed by the rest of their fellows as he’d hoped, or at least not where this particular fellow was concerned. “You heard us, did you?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been keeping an eye on you two.” He holds up a hand as Vasquez tries to sputter a response. “Relax. I just happen to have experience with soulbonds that are off to rocky beginnings is all. Personal experience.”

“My sympathies, amigo. So far I can say for myself that it is proving to be no fun.”

Billy makes a sound that might be considered sympathetic in a certain light. “What will you do if he doesn’t come around?”

Vasquez shrugs. “What can I do? Everyone knows a bond will only work properly if both people are in agreement. I suppose in this instance, you would say Faraday holds all the cards. Why? Do you have any suggestions?”

“In my experience, persistence sure doesn’t hurt.”

At that Vasquez can’t help but scoff. “That’s easy for you to say, Rocks. From what I’ve seen of Robicheaux so far, he doesn’t look like the kind of man who would haul off and shoot someone for not minding their own business. Not sure I can say the same for Faraday.”

Billy takes a final drag of his now depleted cigarette and drops it lightly to the floor, crushing the butt beneath the heel of his boot with practised ease. “He won’t shoot you,” he assures, confidence oozing off of him in this as much as it does when he’s slinging his knives about with deadly precision. “Shout at you sure. Swear a bunch, no doubt. But he won’t do much more than that.”

As they both gaze out into the night, Vasquez wishes he shared Billy’s sureness where Faraday is concerned. Maybe the man wouldn’t shoot him, fine, but Vasquez doesn’t imagine it’d be much of a gamble to assume he would still find a way to make his life miserable. Better to leave well enough alone in a situation like that.

*****

After a morning spent out in the fields trailing Chisolm and Robicheaux over what feels like all of creation as they try and get a feel for the lands they have to work with, Faraday had almost been looking forward to meeting up with them in the afternoon and working on teaching the locals how to shoot. Unfortunately, between the sheer ineptitude shown by every last one of their pupils, even the fresh faced and ever determined Teddy Q, and Robicheaux’s increasingly apparent issues with the act of pulling a trigger, the whole thing winds up being far more unpleasant than he’d hoped.

“Damn bastard’s gonna get us all killed,” he mutters angrily as he watches Robicheaux stalk off in the direction of the town, most of the men following along behind him at a more sedate pace.

Chisolm, who’s stayed silent for the duration of their last little display, gives him a cool look from under the brim of his ever present black hat. “I thought you told me I was gonna get us all killed, what with how this is my show and all?”

“Oh you are,” Faraday assures him. “Robicheaux’s just gonna get us all killed faster, and possibly messier.”

“Uh huh,” Chisolm says. “Well, I’m gonna suggest you leave Goody be and instead worry about your own problems.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Faraday turns to ask, and finds himself talking to empty air, Chisolm having stepped away from the fence he’s spent the afternoon resting on and heading back up the path without so much as a by your leave.

“Well now, that’s just plain rude,” Faraday grumbles as he watches him go. Sighing, he pinches the bridge of his nose, readjusts his hat, and then stomps off in the direction everyone else seems to be headed.

*****

Even though he knows it’s ill-advised, Faraday goes looking for Robicheaux as soon as the townsfolk have toddled off in the direction of their homes with the weapons none of them know how to use in tow. It’s still early enough in the evening that the Cajun’s ever present, knife wielding shadow probably won’t be finished with his own work yet, and Faraday wants to have this conversation without Billy around, mainly because he doesn’t much relish the idea of being killed by a hairpin.

He finds Robicheaux alone in one of the rooms they’ve been granted during their stay and ducks inside without bothering to wait for an invitation.

Robicheaux looks up as he enters, his mouth going flat when he sees who’s there. “Didn’t anybody ever teach you it’s rude to enter without knocking?”

“Sure,” Faraday says easily, “but I was also taught it’s better to beg for forgiveness than ask for approval. Guess which one took?”

“Neither, I’ll wager,” Robicheaux replies, giving a weak grin when Faraday nods in concession of his point. “What do you want, anyway? I don’t imagine you’re in here for fun.”

Faraday snorts. “Ain’t nothing about this mess that I’d classify as fun, Robicheaux. When are you going to admit what’s going on?”

Robicheaux shakes a pointed finger at him, instantly aware of what Faraday’s getting at. “Oh no, you do not get to go there with me, my friend. I’ll do my part, you do yours, and let’s neither of us blur the lines any further than that. Alright?”

“Not alright,” Faraday counters. “I don’t know how you’ve got all the others fooled, but me, I know better than to go into a firefight with a man too afraid to shoot watching my back.”

Robicheaux gives him a long, hard look, which Faraday meets head on. He can see now there’s a faint tremor in Robicheaux’s hand, one he can’t seem to control.

As if he knows exactly what Faraday’s thinking, Robicheaux takes a deep breath and runs his tongue along his bottom lip, possibly as a stalling tactic. When he does speak, however, he sends the conversation skidding in a direction Faraday hadn’t been expecting. “You might see me for what I am, boy,” he snaps, “but I can do the same for you.”

At Faraday’s confused look, Robicheaux grins unpleasantly. “Y’see, I know very well what a man who’s fucking up a soulbond looks like.”

Faraday chokes, almost dropping the flask he’d just pulled from his vest and been about to take a swig from. Sputtering, he stares at Robicheaux. “What’re you -? I don’t -! What?”

Robicheaux’s grin sharpens, something half-feral lurking in the corners of it. “I said, I know what a man who’s fucking up a soulbond looks like.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Faraday spits, too little, too late.

Robicheaux snorts. “Try again.”

“I don’t,” Faraday insists, baffled by how he’s lost control of his conversation so thoroughly.

“Anyone ever tell you, you’re not a very good liar, Faraday?” Robicheaux asks, his voice smoothing out as he gains more ground in their little chat. “Because you’re not. Everyone with eyes in their heads knows there’s something going on between you and our favorite Mexican, and I imagine we all know what it is too.”

“You’re crazy,” Faraday says, but the protest is weak even to his own ears.

“Tell that to someone who hasn’t seen his words,” Robicheaux replies, voice pointed.

Faraday freezes. “What? What’re you on about?”

Robicheaux brings his right hand up and runs his pointer finger lightly along the curve of his own left bicep. “They’re right here. Billy saw them earlier while he was working with him, told me about ‘em before I headed to the shooting range to meet up with you and Sam.” He steps forward until he’s well inside Faraday’s personal space and says lowly, “Oh good, we got us a Mexican.”

Faraday feels the bottom drop out of his stomach as he hears the damnable phrase spoken at him. “I –“ he starts, desperately wishing he could come up with a reply and knowing full well he’s not going to be able to weasel his way out of this one.

“Yeah,” Robicheaux says, stepping back, “I remember the first meeting between the two of you, what with how I was there and all. Not exactly an auspicious beginning, my friend.”

“Keep out of it, Robicheaux,” Faraday growls. He’d known it was a bad idea to come up here and dig at the other man from the start, but he’d never have imagined he’d have it turn on his own head quite so effectively.

“If that’s what you want,” Robicheaux says, moving back even further. He turns and crosses the room to a small table in the corner that has a bottle of whiskey sitting atop it. “Drink? I know you’ve got your own there, but this stuff is probably better.”

“I ain’t drinking with you over this,” Faraday grits out.

“Suit yourself.” Robicheaux shrugs and grabs the bottle, pulling the stopper out using his teeth. “But I meant what I said, I know exactly what a man who’s out to ruin a soulbond looks like, mainly on account of how I spent a lot of time seeing one every time I looked in a mirror.”

Faraday doesn’t want to hear this, and he says as much.

“Then leave,” Robicheaux tells him bluntly. “I’m not forcing you to stay. Hell, I didn’t even invite you in, you did that one yourself.”

“Because I had something important to discuss with you,” Faraday snaps, “somethin’ that didn’t have anything to do with me.”

“Mmhm, right,” Robicheaux says. “But just think, if I’m going to be a danger to this little operation of ours because of my own demons, couldn’t one say the same thing about you?”

“The hell are you on about?” Faraday demands. “You’re the one who can’t fire a gun at anything other than a sack of straw, not me.”

“You let me worry about that, and in return you can worry about your own problems.”

“I don’t have any problems,” Faraday insists, “unless you count the fact that I’m stuck on a fool’s mission to defend this piece of shite town from an entire army that wants to kill both it and me.”

“Oh you have plenty more problems than that, Faraday,” Robicheaux says airily, waving the bottle of whiskey for emphasis. “I know what it’s like to try and think straight when your head and your heart are being pulled in two separate directions, and I’m telling you it cannot be done. If you don’t come to some kind of understanding with Vasquez then you’re in for a world of hurt entirely of your own making.”

“Yeah? Well if you’ve got some poor soulmate out there who’s stuck with you, what in the hell are you doing out here so far away from them?”

Robicheuax stares at him, the bottle halfway to his mouth and moving no further. “My god in heaven, but you are a thick one. Here, let me make it obvious enough that even you can understand what I’m talking about.” He sets the bottle back down on the table and strides forward, untucking his shirttails as he does so and shoving the fabric up and away from his waist. “Here,” he says firmly, “take a look at this, will you?”

Faraday glances down and sees that a strip of skin has been exposed just above Robicheaux’s right hip. More importantly, he can see the words inked along the spot.

“What kind of idiot have they sent after me?” He reads aloud. “What in the heck kind of words are those?”

“The kind one would expect for man like me, I’ve always felt.” Robicheaux lets his shirt fall back down and he grins. “Billy’s are ‘Now you look like a man to befriend’. I trust I don’t need to draw you a picture for further clarification.”

There’s a roaring in Faraday’s ears and through it he can faintly hears the lines, Goodnight, this is not a man to arrest, this is a man to befriend. He blinks. “You and Rocks?”

Robicheaux chuckles. “That’s not actually his real name, but yeah. That little devil’s the love of my goddamned life and I do not care who knows it. Honestly, I’d have figured you already knew. We aren’t exactly subtle about it.”

“I make it a point not to get into that kind of personal shit with folks,” Faraday says bluntly. “I reckon it only leads to trouble otherwise.”

“Of course you do,” says Robicheaux, amusement obvious in his voice. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by that. A man as afraid of commitment as you is bound to do his best to bury his head in the sand whenever the subject of feelings so much as looks as if it might come up.”

“Now wait just a damn minute,” Faraday starts angrily, “You don’t know jack shit about me, Robicheaux, you hear me? Not jack shit.”

Robicheaux meets his gaze levelly, unmoved by Faraday’s temper. “I know what it means to be afraid of a soulbond,” he says calmly. “And I know what it means to try and run from one. I may not know why you’re doin’ it. Maybe you’re like me and you think you don’t deserve it, or maybe it’s something else, I don’t know and I don’t care, but I’ll cut you a deal.”

“Yeah?” Faraday asks raggedly. “What’s that?”

Robicheaux grins at him, big and bright. “I’ll leave your business alone if you do the same with mine.”

“Jesus fuck.” Faraday takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He can’t help but flash back to his conversation with Vasquez from the night before, the one where he’d essentially offered the same deal. How ironic that he’s now finding himself on the receiving end of it. “Alright, fine. Whatever. I’m probably just as dead whether you can shoot or not, so what’s it matter to me?”

“Just remember, Faraday, you brought this up, not me.” Robicheaux gives him another one of those unpleasant grins and follows it up with a lazy salute while Faraday backs out of the room.

“Damn, crazy bastard,” Faraday mutters once he’s clear of the doorway. He turns around and immediately almost has a heart attack when he comes face to face with Billy, who’s somehow snuck up on him from seemingly out of nowhere and is eyeing him like he’s a particularly annoying pebble he’s just found wedged in his shoe.

“Sweet Christ, what is it with you?” Faraday hisses. “Can’t you just approach someone like a normal human being, goddamnit?”

Billy doesn’t reply verbally, choosing instead to just raise a single eyebrow in response and then move past Faraday into his and Robicheaux’s room.

“God,” Faraday says, watching him go. He can’t imagine how this night could get more out of his control.

“You taking the Lord’s name in vain now, guero?” A low voice rasps, and Faraday whirls around for the second time in as many minutes with his heart in his throat.

“Damnit,” he swears at Vasquez who’s just appeared at the top of the stairway, “Would you people kindly stop tryin’ to take years off my life? It’s gettin’ a little tiresome.”

“My apologies,” Vasquez says contritely. “I did not mean to startle you.”

“Who said you startled me?” Faraday demands, determined to be contrary even when he knows there’s no point in it.

For his part, Vasquez just rolls his eyes and looks amused. “No one, guero,” he says, again with that damned nickname he seems to like so much.

“What’re you doin’ up here, anyway?” Faraday asks. “I thought you were with Horne and Red this afternoon?”

“I was, but now we’re done. I ran into Billy on my way back and we headed over together.” He pauses for a moment, then adds, “He was looking for Robicheaux, seemed to think something was bothering him.”

Faraday freezes. Seemed to think something was bothering him, his mind repeats. Seemed to think something was bothering him.

Billy and Robicheaux were soulbonded, meaning each of them could feel what the other did. Chances were good Billy hadn’t thought something was bothering Robicheaux, rather he’d known it to be the case and had come looking to fix it.

Faraday glances back at Vasquez and that one look is all he needs to know that Vasquez is fully aware of what their companions share between them. Part of him wants to ask the man if he’s jealous, if he wants to be able to feel Faraday’s emotions the way Billy and Robicheaux can feel each other’s, but for all he’s never thought of himself as a particularly good man, there are some levels even he’s not willing to stoop to.

He knows Vasquez wants exactly that. He must, otherwise there’s no reason for him to keep picking at Faraday when Faraday’s made it abundantly clear that he’s got no interest in acknowledging the bond that’s still fluttering weakly between them no matter how hard Faraday tries to pretend it isn’t.

Determined not to let Vasquez get any kind of read on him, Faraday squares his shoulders and says, “Robicheaux’s in their room already. He and I were havin’ a discussion about today’s training session. I’m sorry to say it didn’t go all that well.”

Vasquez gives him a look that says he clearly knows Faraday’s dodging him in some way, but thankfully he doesn’t press it. “Sorry to hear that,” is all he says. “Hopefully they’ll do better tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Faraday says, watching as Vasquez moves off in the direction of his own room – he’d somehow drawn what Faraday considered to be the short straw and wound up sharing with Red – obviously feeling that their conversation is over.

Faraday’s surprised the other man doesn’t have anything else to say. He’d been half-expecting another attempt at discussing their personal situation, and he tells himself, quite firmly as it happens, that he’s happy to have dodged that particular bullet. After all, he’d asked Vasquez to respect his personal space, so it stood to reason that he should be pleased by having that happen, didn’t it? Therefore there’s no reason for the bereft feeling settling in the pit of his stomach.

*****

As it turns out, Chisolm’s main plan is to turn the entire valley Rose Creek sits in into one giant trap. Vasquez can’t say he disapproves of the idea in principle, especially since their best chance at surviving the upcoming fight will be through outright trickery, he’s just not sure how viable an idea it is.

That is, he’s not sure how viable it is until Chisolm utters the word ‘ammo’ with the kind of grim satisfaction that usually predates someone getting shot.

They take the mine easily enough, simply deciding to pick off all of Bogue’s men from a distance, and then riding into the area once everything is clear. Most of the surviving men look like they’ve seen better days, all of them obviously overworked and underfed. Looking at them makes something unpleasant unfurl in Vasquez’s belly. He’s gone hungry more times in his life than he’d care to admit, what with a bounty on his head keeping him away from all but the most remote settlements after all, but at least that had been a result of his own doing. What’s happened to these men is nothing short of criminal.

If that weren’t bad enough, he finds the gallows posted at the edge of the camp, with a noose prominently displayed upon it, more than a little unsettling. Unconsciously, he reaches up a hand to his own throat, half expecting to feel the heavy coil of rope wrapped around it, just waiting to see him drop.

“You alright?” A voice asks behind him, jerking him out of his reverie.

Startled, Vasquez lets his hand drop back down, wrapping it up in his horse’s reins in a weak attempt to hide its sudden shaking. Only when he’s sure his voice won’t shake as well does he glance over at where Faraday is watching him.

“Of course, guero,” he says, aiming to pitch his voice brightly and knowing full well he doesn’t succeed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, to be honest, I don’t know. The latest step in this crazy ass plan has just gone off without a hitch, after all. By that logic, we should all be feelin’ fine.”

“Then I must be feeling fine, no?”

Faraday nudges his hat up slightly with the back of one hand and peers at him suspiciously from beneath the brim. “You should be,” he agrees, “but that don’t mean you are.”

Vasquez feels his mouth run dry. He licks his lips absently, and doesn’t miss the way Faraday follows the motion. “You keep talking like that, guero, and I might start thinking you care.”

Faraday flushes, the deep red color made all the more obvious by his delicate skin tone. “I don’t care,” he snaps harshly. “I just saw you sittin’ here in a daze and figured I should come tell you we’re goin’ to check out where they’ve stashed all the explosives for the mine.”

He’s lying, and Vasquez doesn’t need a soulbond, dormant or otherwise, to tell him so. The chances were good he’d picked up on the unease Vasquez was feeling through the bond and come to investigate. Vasquez feels a little guilty about that, mainly because if Faraday is feeling anything from their bond that means Vasquez isn’t living up to his promise to keep his emotions contained, but he thinks he can be forgiven under the circumstances. A gallows is something to set any man on edge, let alone one with an impressive bounty on his head.

Thinking about the gallows draws his eye back to where is rises starkly out of the nearby field, and he doesn’t quite succeed in holding back a shudder at the sight of it.

“Damn nasty things those,” Faraday says as he draws his horse up next to Vasquez’s. “I’ve always considered any town with one prominently on display to be a place to avoid.”

Vasquez snorts. “Lucky you.” When Faraday raises a confused eyebrow, he clarifies. “These days any town is a place for me to avoid, never mind if it has a noose out in front or not.”

Faraday looks at him, obviously curious but just as obviously unwilling to ask. Vasquez rolls his eyes. “Go ahead,” he says helpfully, “ask me if you want to.”

Narrowing his eyes, Faraday chews on his bottom lip for a moment, clearly weighing his desire to know the story with his desire to keep Vasquez at arm’s length. In the end the former must win out because when he speaks again what he says is, “Chisolm said you’ve got a bounty on your head, and a fairly hefty one at that.”

“Five hundred dollars,” Vasquez confirms, always oddly proud about that. While his life would be much easier without any bounty, if he has to have one at least it’s of a decent size.

Faraday lets out a low whistle at the number. “That’s quite the solid price,” he acknowledges. “What’d you do? Kill someone you shouldn’t have?”

“No,” Vasquez says darkly, thinking back to the Ranger he’d stumbled upon who’d essentially been using migrant workers as cannon fodder for his own private games. “Just because the law did not agree with me does not mean I shouldn’t have killed him.”

“Ah,” Faraday says. “One of those. I guess you’re more suited to fightin’ men like Bogue than I first thought.”

Vasquez snorts. “You make me blush, guero. Talk like that will go straight to my head.”

Faraday lightly slaps the reins in his hands to get his horse moving, grousing audibly under his breath as he does so. “Honestly, y’try and pay a man a compliment and this is the thanks you get.” Then to Vasquez he adds, “C’mon, we may as well go find the others and see how much stuff we’ve got that goes boom.”

“You sound excited about that.”

Faraday flashes him a quick grin in response. “I’ve always wanted to blow something up.”

“Oh good,” Vasquez replies, “because it sounds like you will get your wish if that is the case.”

Faraday’s grin widens. “What can I say? It’s the little things that make life worth living.”

*****

Once the dynamite has been safely stored inside the saloon, for a given value of safely anyway, Faraday decides to treat himself to a nice stroll. He’s still mildly disturbed by the unsettled feeling he’d gotten off of Vasquez back at the mine, and he thinks a walk might help him clear his head.

The sharp crack of a rifle off in the distance startles him momentarily, but when a quick investigation reveals none other than Emma Cullen standing at the edge of a creek, firing shot after shot into the remains of a fallen tree, he finds himself perking up. This could be just the kind of distraction he needs.

She’s unimpressed by his advice with regards to her shooting, and even less impressed when he decides to show off and fire half a dozen rounds of his own into her chosen target in quick succession.

“Are you always this much of a nuisance, Mr. Faraday?” She asks, coolly disinterested as he holsters his gun. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re a whole lot of talk with very little to show for it.”

“Little to show for it?” Faraday echoes. “Now excuse me, Ma’am. Is it possible you missed mine and my fellows’ grand entrance into your town? The one where we killed almost thirty men between the seven of us?” Or six, rather, he doesn’t add aloud.

“I saw the bodies the same as everybody else,” she says, “and I saw the men and ammunition you brought back with you just now.”

“Well then, I don’t rightly see how you’ve got cause for complaint.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and he realizes it even before she whirls around, her eyes burning and her rifle clutched in her hand like she’s half-thinking of using it on him now. “How dare you?” She spits. “You may not have lost anything to this fight yet, Faraday, but I certainly can’t say the same.”

He takes a step back, not because he’s truly afraid of her, but more so because the force of her anger sends a hot flush of uncharacteristic shame licking up his spine. Embarrassed, he rubs a hand over the back of his neck and looks at the ground.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Ms. Cullen,” he says more contritely than he normally would. “That was out of line.”

He risks a quick peek at her from under his hat, and sees as her face twists sorrowfully. Then she sighs, loosening her grip on her rifle and letting it come to rest gently at her side.

“It’s Mrs. Cullen,” she says softly, “not Ms.”

“I know.” He winces. “I heard you mention your husband a time or two. Matthew, I believe was his name.”

“That’s right. Matthew Cullen, and he was the dearest man I ever knew.” Her heavy gaze slips out of focus, and Faraday’s positive she’s no longer seeing him, but rather some distant specter of a man now dead at Bogue’s hand. “He tried to stand up for us all on his own, and he died for it.”

There’s pain beyond measure to be found in her voice. Even if he’d been the sort of person who offered comfort in times like these, Faraday doesn’t think there’d be anything he could so for her. So, instead, he chooses to remain silent until she speaks again.

“Matthew and I were soulbonded. My words are ‘Lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?’, and his were ‘Lovelier still if you’d just keep right on moving’.” She laughs sadly. “I’d never seen a man so happy to be snapped at as Matthew was the day I threw that phrase in his face. He followed me all the way home and wouldn’t quit pestering me until I agreed to let him in for a meal. My Ma damn near laughed herself sick at his antics, and when he went home that night she told me to count my blessings because she was sure he’d make me happy.”

Faraday swallows harshly. He doesn’t need to know any of this, and nor does he want to. “I should go,” he says stiffly, sure his discomfort with the conversation must be obvious to even the least perceptive of people. “You don’t need me distractin’ you any longer.”

Her gaze sharpens, all her attention once again focused on him as she cocks her head to the side and peers at him like she’s suddenly found something unexpected. “What about you, Mr. Faraday? Have you got some doe-eyed beauty waiting for you somewhere? One who’s going to end up grieving the same as I am now if you stay here and fight this battle that’s not your own?”

Unconsciously, Faraday snorts at the thought of applying the term ‘doe-eyed beauty’ to Vasquez. Oh the man was handsome to be sure; all long and lean, with large, capable hands and dark eyes that always seemed to be laughing about something. If it weren’t for the fact that any interaction between them simply couldn’t happen without resulting in some form of baggage or other, Faraday would’ve gleefully tried to sweet talk him into bed by this point.

‘Doe-eyed beauty’ though, that brought to mind someone meek and demure, a person without any fight in them. None of those things could be applied to Vasquez, and, as much as he still had no desire for a soulmate, at least Faraday could be glad about that much.

What he says aloud, however, is, “It’s complicated.”

She shrugs, the motion causing the gun now resting on her hip to ride up and down in the process. “Matters of the heart usually are.”

“Your lot is an interesting bunch where soulmates are concerned, actually,” she continues on before he has a chance to respond. “I mean, first you’ve got Rocks and Robicheaux, a more obviously bonded pair I don’t think I’ve ever come across in my life, and then Horne I’ll wager is like me, with a soulmate dead and gone and his sanity the worse off because of it. Mr. Chisolm I really couldn’t say, he keeps his cards to close to his chest, and Red Harvest and I don’t even have a language in common so I can hardly be expected to fathom out whatever his story is.”

She pauses then, and Faraday waits with baited breath to learn what her remaining commentary will be. “I’d almost think Vasquez was also like me, but for all he’s wild and untamed, there’s no sorrow fueling him. I guess he’s like you,” she adds, giving Faraday a quick smile. “Complicated.”

“Vasquez,” Faraday says, heartfelt and sure, “is a goddamn menace.”

Her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline, and Faraday curses to himself when he sees the exact moment that she adds two and two together and comes up with four.

“I see,” she says slowly, her lips curving up into the first amused smile he thinks he’s ever seen on her face. “So it’s like that then, is it?”

“It ain’t like anything,” Faraday grumbles. He kicks irritably at a nearby tuft of grass, and then adds quietly, “I would much appreciate it if you kepe this to little conversation to yourself.”

Her smile shifts into a smirk and she raises her rifle, once again taking aim at her earlier practice target. “What conversation?” She asks as she pulls the trigger.

*****

For a town as small as it is, Rose Creek sports a surprising number of places to lay traps for an invading army. Vasquez almost suspects the people in charge of planning the town’s setup had some form of clairvoyance where its future was concerned. Or perhaps he would if he were the type to believe in such superstitions.

Chisolm tells him he’s going to be stationed in the church for the main event, him and a dozen of the town’s best shooters, with Goodnight perched atop in the steeple, all aiming to bottleneck Bogue’s men and pick them off one by one as the others drive the rabble towards them.

That’s why the day after they’ve closed down the mine, Vasquez finds himself in the burnt out husk of the church with Chisolm and Faraday, inspecting the state of the building.

It’s fair to say the structure has seen better days, what with its soot stained floors and its charred walls, the remains of the alter standing sad and forlorn before them.

“At least you won’t have to go too far to pray for forgiveness,” Faraday says, grinning around his cigarette as he inspects some of the remaining pews. They’ll likely wind up scrapping them since the benches won’t prove to be much use during a firefight, but for now a few of them are still standing in place.

Vasquez scoffs, amused and irritated by turns by this back and forth game that Faraday seems to be playing with him of late. One moment the man is telling him to leave him be, and the next he’s insinuating himself into Vasquez’s space, all flashy grins and quick winks.

“There is no forgiveness for men like you, guero,” he says, deciding to play along with whatever game Faraday’s into this time, laughing to himself as Faraday kicks absently at one of the shakier floorboards.

“You keep calling me, guero,” he says, a curious expression on his face as mimics the word. “What’s guero mean, anyway? Handsome? Debonair?”

He punctuates this last statement with a waggle of his eyebrows that sets Vasquez to chuckling. “Eh, something like that,” he replies.

Faraday makes a thoughtful noise at that. “Well, I guess I can’t complain about your taste.”

Surprised at both the words and the coyness in the other man’s voice, Vasquez raises his eyebrows. “You sure you should be saying such things in a church, guero?”

Faraday laughs at that, loud and bright. The sounds sends a shiver up Vasquez’s spine, and he wishes for what must be at least the thousandth time now that Faraday would let him feel the accompanying emotion through the bond.

“Let’s just say,” Faraday continues on as his laughter trails off, “that this is far from the worst thing I’ve ever said or done in a church.”

Vasquez is about to ask him to elaborate, he even thinks he might get an honest answer given the mood Faraday’s in, but then Chisolm ruins it all by calling them out of the church. “C’mon, cut the chatter, I want to go check some lines of sight.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Faraday says mockingly, winking at Vasquez and then moving around him to follow Chisolm out of the building.

Vasquez allows himself one more look around the husk of the church, before following as well.

*****

They’re all sitting around a table in the saloon, Chisolm running through some adjustments he wants made to his master plan for defending the town after a long, hard day of digging trenches, when Faraday slips up for real.

Supper was provided on the house as per usual, but unlike on the previous nights, the folks manning the saloon had all disappeared immediately after in order to go work on their own preparations for the upcoming fight.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, and Faraday supposes if he’s being technical it probably still isn’t, at least not for anybody but him, but right now there are extenuating circumstances.

To put it bluntly, Vasquez has a tendency to unconsciously broadcast things along the bond when he’s uncomfortable, and he’s at his most uncomfortable when he hasn’t had enough to eat. Faraday doesn’t know if it’s a habit leftover from his time living in the brush, though that would make sense, but the man does not care for being hungry and he clearly hasn’t had his fill from his portion of their now depleted meal.

Faraday tries to ignore the feeling, but the main problem with the bond is that it’s a two way street. He’s fully capable of controlling what he broadcasts, which is why he typically chooses to keep as much to himself as possible, but he can’t stop Vasquez from sending his own feelings unless Vasquez is willing to hold them back.

Now, to be fair to Vasquez, he typically respects Faraday’s boundaries, so he can be forgiven for this kind of unconscious behaviour. Unfortunately for Faraday, that doesn’t change the fact that he can feel a gnawing in his belly that he knows isn’t his own, and it’s not at all pleasant.

Finally deciding enough is enough, he grabs the roll that had arrived with his own meal – unlike Vasquez he hadn’t been hungry enough to eat it – and drops it in front of the other man with a curt, “Eat that, would you? You’re drivin’ me crazy.”

The entire table goes silent, even Robicheaux shutting up long enough to lean back in his chair and give Faraday a knowing smirk.

“What?” Faraday barks. “Aren’t we supposed to be discussin’ our grand plan for goin’ out in a blaze of glory in a few days’ time? How about you lot quit starin’ at me, and try focusin’ on that?”

The silence continues on for a few more seconds, until Sam clears his throat. “Right,” he says awkwardly. “So, like I was saying, if we place some of the charges here we’ll have a better chance of catching more of the frontrunners.”

“That’s assuming they stay bunched together enough,” Billy chimes in, and with that the conversation blessedly turns back to where it should be, rather than focusing on Faraday and the little faux pas he’s just made.

“Just eat it,” he murmurs when he notices that Vasquez is still eying the food suspiciously, and if it’s not low enough to go unheard by the rest of the table, at least nobody comments.

For his part, Vasquez gives him a long look, his dark eyes troubled, and then tears a bite out of the roll, chewing as fast as ever.

If Faraday was hoping that would be the end of things, he is sorely mistaken. As soon as the group breaks up for the night, he tries to make his escape upstairs, something he’s finding himself having to do more and more often, but Vasquez is, unsurprisingly, right on his heels.

Faraday sighs as Vasquez plants himself at the top of the stairs, preventing anyone else from following them up, but with his posture making it obvious that he’s going to raise a ruckus over this if Faraday tries to ignore him.

“Do we really have to do this?”

“You saying you don’t want to talk about what happened back there?” He asks, as if Faraday ever wants to talk about such things.

“You were still hungry,” Faraday says, wondering why he has to explain the obvious.

“Yes,” Vasquez agrees, and then adds, “I’m sorry.”

Faraday blinks, confused. “For what? For being hungry?”

Vasquez shakes his head. “No, not for that. For … for …” He trails off and a flaps a hand uselessly, like he’s trying to find the right words but keeps coming up short. “I know you hate it when you can feel what I’m feeling,” he says, finally, eyes downcast. “I did not mean to do it, and I’m sorry.”

Faraday feels a sharp pang of guilt and shifts uncomfortably. He understands now where Vasquez is coming from, the man’s obviously thinking of Faraday’s reaction to when he’d tried to break through his oh-so-tightly constructed walls, but what he doesn’t seem to realize is that he’s equating apples and oranges.

“You didn’t do it on purpose,” he says, guilt further intensifying when Vasquez shakes his head firmly, like he thinks Faraday was asking him a question, as opposed to stating a fact he knew to be true.

“Look,” he says finally, “I’m a lot of things, but a complete and utter bastard is not one of them. Not usually, anyway,” he amends, and Vasquez gives him the ghost of a grin. “My point is,” he adds, “I’m not gonna bite your head off for something you can’t control.”

The look on Vasquez’s face is a skeptical one, and Faraday supposes that’s fair given the extent of their previous track record. However he wants to look at it, he has maybe, possibly, not always handled their situation with as much grace and dignity as he’d like to pretend.

He decides now is not the time to get into this, though, and he heads towards the door to the room he’s been sharing with Horne, with every intention of spending some time by himself to try and get his head back on straight.

His hand is curling around the handle of his door when he turns back around. Vasquez is still standing in the same spot, watching him with an expression Faraday can’t read on his face. He raises one eyebrow when he sees Faraday watching him, and Faraday in turn blows a heavy breath out through his nose.

“You should go find something else to eat,” he says, pointedly turning the doorknob and shoving the whole thing open with more force than necessary. “We both know you’re still hungry.”

Vasquez doesn’t answer him, and Faraday wishes he could count it as a win. Too bad for him, he knows better.

*****

Chisolm comes to him early in the morning on the day they’re due to set the charges. He approaches with the air of a man who’s half afraid he’s about to get punched. Clearing his throat in that awkward way he does whenever he’s being forced to act like the leader of their little band of misfits, he squares his shoulders and gives Vasquez a look.

“What?” Vasquez asks, not liking said look at all. “What did I do now?” As far as he’s aware he hasn’t done anything for Chisolm to be upset about. At least not anything he hasn’t already been chastised for.

A few moments of silence pass before Chisolm gives him another one of his long looks and then says, sounding embarrassed, “I need to send Red out on patrol this morning, which means I need to replace him with someone else to help you set the charges.”

Vasquez has a sneaking suspicion he now knows where this is going, and he gives himself a mental pat on the back when Chisolm squares his shoulders, looking not unlike a man facing a firing squad, and says, “I’m sending Faraday to help you. The others are better suited to help set up the trenches because they’re going to be in them. Faraday wants to blow stuff up, so it makes sense to send him with you.

It does make sense, Vasquez agrees. “Alright,” he says aloud. “That should be fine.”

“You sure?” Chisolm asks, face pinched.

Looking at him, Vasquez is put in mind of an embarrassed father who’s trying to prevent one of his children from having their feelings hurt. While he supposes he can appreciate the sentiment, although he doesn’t, not really, he sees no point to it. He and Faraday are on much better terms now than they had been after their first night in town. Last night’s awkwardness aside, they’ve been getting along fine.

All he says though is, “I’m sure.”

“Good. I’ll tell Faraday to meet you at the barn as soon as he’s done breakfast.” Making a relieved face, Chisolm turns and heads back the way he’d originally come from, no doubt off to deal with bigger and more important tasks than trying to navigate around the personal affairs of two of his men.

Shaking his head, Vasquez decides to make his way over towards the barn where they’ll be placing the first set of explosives, figuring that’s as good a place as any to while away the time until Faraday’s ready to start working.

Faraday takes less time than Vasquez is expecting to show his face, flashing an awkward grin as he walks into the barn. “Mornin’,” he says, striding over and peering into the crate of dynamite Vasquez has open in front of him. “What’cha lookin’ at?”

Momentarily distracted by having the man so near, he’s standing close enough that their shoulders are almost touching, Vasquez takes longer than he should to reply. It’s only when Faraday turns to give him a quizzical look, one of his eyebrows arched expectantly, that Vasquez comes back to himself.

Shaking his head, as if that’ll help clear it, he says, “Explosives. I’m trying to think of the best places to put them to maximize the results.”

Faraday nods in understanding. “Tryin’ to get the most bang for your buck, huh? Makes sense.”

“Yes,” Vasquez says slowly. He’s starting to wonder if working with Faraday might prove to be more difficult than he’d led Chisolm to believe, not because they’re fighting, but because he can’t seem to concentrate.

Faraday must sense that something’s wrong, either through more emotions moving along the bond without Vasquez’s permission, or perhaps simply by reading as much off his face, because he frowns. “You okay?”

Vasquez has to sternly tell himself not to read anything into it, that he’s imagining the note of concern in Faraday’s voice. Otherwise there’s no way he’s going to be able to get anything done today. “I’m fine,” he says firmly, more to convince himself than Faraday.

Faraday gives him a skeptical look, but makes an obvious decision not to push the matter. “If you say so,” he says lightly.

Turning, he aims his focus back on the crates in front of them. “Now then, where are we puttin’ these?”

They settle down to work, and it goes smoothly enough if one can get past the way Faraday keeps risking blowing them both to kingdom come by insisting on smoking around the loaded explosives.

“Really, guero?” Vasquez says exasperatedly when he sees Faraday light what has to be his forth cigarette of the morning. He likes a good smoke as much as the next man, but there’s such a thing as a time and a place for these things.

He hears more than he sees as Faraday takes a long drag from his current cigarette, and the next thing he knows the still burning smoke is bouncing off his elbow and onto the ground beside him. Vasquez lets out a growl, wishing right then that his hands weren’t full of explosive material so that he could give Faraday a good shake, and stomps heavily on the cigarette until he’s sure it’s out.

Once that’s done he turns to glare at Faraday, only to be immediately derailed when he finds the man watching him with a look of impish delight dancing in his eyes and a lazy grin curling around the corners of his mouth.

Against his will, Vasquez feels a rush of fondness at the sight. “You are a menace, guero.”

Faraday shrugs, his grin still firmly in place, and all Vasquez can do is throw back his head and laugh.

“Careful,” Faraday insists, his own amusement evident in his voice, “we’re just as dead if you drop what you’re holdin’ there as we are if I hit it with a lit cigarette.”

“Then maybe,” Vasquez says, still chuckling, “you should behave yourself. After all, you started it.”

“Eh, what can I say? I suppose I’ve always been inclined to push my luck. Been told that by many a person for as long as I can remember.”

Something about his tone, a serious note in his voice that’s not usually evident, causes Vasquez to perk up, his attention dragged back to Faraday like the proverbial moth to the flame. “Penny for your thoughts, guero?” He asks, the phrase twisting awkwardly on his tongue as he meets Faraday’s suddenly somber gaze,

Faraday, his sunny grin now faded, shrugs again. “Doubt they’re worth that much, honestly.”

“Good,” Vasquez tells him, “because I don’t have any money on me right now.”

That does make Faraday laugh briefly, but the sound trails off again almost as quickly as it had begun. “What would you have done if I’d agreed to the offer then?”

Vasquez shrugs, carefully because he’s still tying their latest homemade explosive into place. “I don’t know. Given you something of equal value, maybe?”

Faraday’s quiet as Vasquez finishes the last knot in the thread, and he cocks his head thoughtfully to the side when Vasquez turns to face him directly. “What’ve you got on you?” He asks.

A few seconds stretch quietly between them, and then Vasquez reaches into his vest pocket. Without saying a word he fishes out one his own smokes and offers it to the other man.

Chuckling, Faraday reaches out a hand to take it, only to have Vasquez pull it back at the last second. “Ah ah,” he chides, waggling a finger at him. “You owe me a thought first.”

Faraday snorts, but dips his head in acknowledgment of the jibe. “Any particular thought you’d like?” He asks, apparently deciding to let Vasquez choose.

Momentarily thrown, Vasquez doesn’t answer at first. He doesn’t understand what Faraday’s offering him all of a sudden, or if he’s offering him anything, really, but he’s accidentally put his foot in his mouth enough times during their acquaintance to be wary of responding without thinking it through beforehand.

“Just whatever you were thinking of when I first asked,” he says finally, figuring that’s fair. He holds his hand back out as he does so, putting the cigar back within Faraday’s reach.

This time Faraday does take it, but instead of immediately lighting it like Vasquez had been expecting, he slips it into one of the pockets of his own vest, patting it a couple of times until he’s determined it’s securely in its place.

“I was thinkin’,” he says slowly, “that my Ma would be decidedly unimpressed if she could see me now.”

Startled – the last thing he’d been expecting had been for Faraday to offer up something so potentially personal – Vasquez finds himself at a loss for what to say. He settles for trying to play it safe. “Are you saying she wouldn’t want you here, guero? Wouldn’t want to see you trying to defend those that cannot defend themselves?”

“Well, I don’t imagine she’d be overly keen on my impending likelihood of dyin’ in a shower of gunfire, but that wasn’t what I was gettin’ at, no.” He gives Vasquez a wan smile. “She’d think I was actin’ like a coward where you and me are concerned.”

Vasquez freezes, unsure of how to respond, or if he should even try.

Faraday must s as much because he flashes Vasquez a rueful grin. “I know, the irony of my bringin’ this up when I’ve been so dead set against it ain’t lost on me, but I did agree to your terms so I reckon fair’s fair.”

As far as Vasquez is concerned, very little about their situation has been fair from the beginning, but he’s long since reached the point where he’ll take what he can get and it’s a strategy that seems to be working. Over the course of their stay in the town Faraday’s proven to be much more receptive to his company when he simply bides his time and doesn’t push things.

“What would your mother say?” he asks, hoping Faraday having brought it up himself will mean this doesn’t seem like he’s prying too much.

Thankfully, Faraday seems fine with the question. “I can’t say for certain what she’d have said, but I reckon she’d be thinkin’ real hard about givin’ me a boot to the ass for not at least givin’ you a chance.”

Vasquez doesn’t know what to do with this. Does he let it go? Does he press for more information? He desperately wishes Faraday would open up his side of the bond for once, if only for an instant, just so he could have some vague hope of figuring out how to navigate the waters he now finds himself lost in.

Finally, he huffs out a tired breath. “Guero, I have to tell you, you are a very confusing man.”

“Complicated is as complicated does,” Faraday replies nonsensically, causing Vasquez to snort.

“Like I said, confusing.”

At that Faraday leans back against a nearby railing, crossing his arms over his chest with a thoughtful look on his face. “You sayin’ you don’t think you’re a confusin’ individual?”

Vasquez blinks. “What is confusing about me? I’ve been telling you what I want from the beginning, and that’s it. There is nothing complicated. Why, you think I’m lying to you?”

“No,” Faraday says slowly, shaking his head, “not lyin’. Just - .” He trails off, letting the words just hang there as his gaze shifts off into the distance. Vasquez wonders what it is he’s looking at.

“I don’t know,” he admits finally. “I don’t know what to think where you’re concerned. Also,” he adds with a frown, “just so we’re clear, absolutely everythin’ about you is complicated.”

“Only if you make it that way,” Vasquez disagrees.

Faraday doesn’t have an answer for that, but there’s something in the way he’s now holding himself, body language having shifted subtly until his posture is more open, that sends a small spark of hope throughout Vasquez.

*****

Their conversation from earlier in the day seems to have unwittingly changed the dynamic they’ve been maintaining ever since their first meeting on the outskirts of Junction City. Faraday’s not sure who’s responsible, if it’s just one or even both of them. What he is sure of is that where he’d previously felt like they were constantly sizing each other up, each one always worried about the other’s next move, now they’ve reached some kind of unofficial detente, one where he no longer has any clue what the rules are.

Maybe that’s what sets him off at the supper table that night, showing off Ethel and Maria with a flourish and sending the others, minus the missing Chisolm and Red, hooting with laughter at his antics. Vasquez is the most thoroughly amused of them all, his delighted, wild cackling setting his eyes dancing as it rings throughout the saloon.

Nor is that the only way Faraday knows he’s enjoying himself. The bond’s lit up tonight, with Vasquez not trying to hide his feelings of contentment since their time out setting the charges. He’s still holding back some, ever respectful of Faraday’s boundaries and not so much as nudging Faraday’s permanently present walls in an effort to get through them, but his own emotions are laid bare, ever available should Faraday feel inclined to notice them.

It sets something off in Faraday, not bad or unpleasant, for all that it’s eminently confounding as he tries to suss out his own feelings and whether or not he approves of this sudden shift in their relationship, but rather anticipatory, like he’s hovering on the cusp of something huge and life-altering if only he can fortify himself enough to take the plunge.

Across the table Horne is shaking his head and scolding them for inappropriately comparing guns to women. “It ain’t right,” he says in that funny way of his, with his voice always sounding as if it’s coming from a long way off, spurred on by visions only he can see. As Faraday watches, the old man’s tone goes sad, melancholy enough that even Vasquez stops shovelling food into his mouth long enough to raise a questioning eyebrow at him.

“I had me a wife once,” Horne says, voice soft, “I had a family, some children too. It’s a terrible thing for a man, to have his words fade.”

Faraday freezes, his thoughts harkening back to his conversation with Emma out by the creek, shock coursing through him that’s only partly his own because Vasquez’s jovial mood has up and vanished, replaced instead with a sorrow that makes Faraday want to reach out and touch him. He tramps down heavily on the urge, sternly telling himself to behave, but when he sees Goodnight and Billy on the opposite end of the table, Goodnight with an arm around his partner’s shoulders as Billy reaches up and brushes his knuckles along the other man’s jaw, both of them obviously comforting each other, he feels his gut twitch unpleasantly.

Vasquez is still watching Horne, food forgotten in front of him for possibly the first time ever since Faraday has known him, and seeing him like that, Faraday makes a decision.

Still standing out of his seat, but now with his guns holstered, Faraday darts his hand out lightening quick while everyone else is distracted. Greatly daring, he brushes his fingers through Vasquez’s thick, dark curls, stroking his thumb absently along the man’s temple in a gentle caress. Then he pulls his hand back, shoving it into his pocket and half considering whistling a jaunty tune to add to his air of studied indifference.

The other’s don’t notice anything, Horne too caught up in the past and Goodnight and Billy too caught up in each other, but Vasquez, oh Vasquez notices. He turns around in his seat, wide, startled eyes staring up at Faraday as shock goes skittering along his side of the bond.

“What?” Faraday asks gruffly, cursing his fair countenance as he feels his fact heat under the weight of Vasquez’s gaze. “You’re food’s gonna get cold if you leave it layin’ there much longer.” He says pointedly.

Vasquez gives him a long, thoughtful look and then stuffs an entire forkful of mash into his mouth, smirking at him around utensil.

Faraday lets out a relieved breath, grateful the man isn’t pushing the matter. “You are a disgusting individual.”

“What’s that saying, guero? Takes one to know one.”

“Ah, shut up,” Faraday grouses, and flicks him around the ear as the conversation slowly starts back up around them.

*****

“You forgot your damn vest in the church again.”

Not having heard Faraday’s approach, Vasquez jumps in surprise, spraying half the ladleful of water he’d just been about to suck back all over himself. Sputtering and swiping at his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt, he turns to find Faraday behind him, the article of clothing in question thrown haphazardly over one shoulder.

“What?” Vasquez asks, still trying to get his brain from Point A to Point B and not quite succeeding.

Faraday huffs a laugh and shrugs the shoulder in question, Vasquez’s leather vest seesawing up and down with the motion. “Your vest,” he says again, “you keep leaving in the church.”

By Vasquez’s recollection this is only the second time he’s done so, and he’s surprised Faraday even knows about the first since he’d realized the mistake himself and gone back to get it right away. “Pretty sure you’re exaggerating, guero,” he says finally, “but thank you for bringing it back.”

“Not a problem.” Faraday shrugs again, this time forcefully enough that it dislodges the heavy fabric. He snags it out of the air one-handed before it can hit the ground and lobs it towards Vasquez in an easy throw.

Vasquez catches it with little difficulty, but doesn’t bother putting it back on. His shirt’s already stuck to him thanks to the sweat he’s worked up in the heat, and he sees no need to be adding to that temperature. “I didn’t realize you were over at the church. Aren’t you supposed to be out in the fields?”

There’s a pink flush tinting Faraday’s cheeks, and Vasquez can’t help but wonder if it’s a result of something other than being out in the sun all afternoon with his fair complexion – such as getting caught out on having been looking for Vasquez.

“We finished up in the fields a while ago,” he explains. “Thought I’d stop by the church to see how you lot were gettin’ on, only it turned out you’d already up and got the bell hung again. Damn near scared the life out of me when they sounded the thing out and I wasn’t expectin’ it.”

“Really?” Vasquez asks amused. “For a man who is about to take part in a war, you flinch awful easy then.”

Faraday scoffs at him. “Don’t you worry about me for that mess. I can take care of myself.”

For his part, Vasquez has his doubts about that. He doesn’t need a soulbond to tell him Faraday’s spent the majority of his life in and out of various scrapes, most of them likely of his own making.

Pursing his lips he considers saying as much but in the end thinks better of it. The strange hot and cold game Faraday’s been playing since they’d met has been decidedly more hot than cold as of late, and Vasquez would rather keep it that way.

“Church looks good, no?” He says, figuring that’s a safe route of conversation by a wide margin. “The steeple should hold up against anything Bogue can throw at it.”

Faraday hums in agreement. “You lot did a good job, yeah. Though I have my doubts as to how much good any of it’s gonna do in the end.”

Vasquez frowns. “Feeling maudlin today, are we, guero?

He turns back in the direction of the saloon – his stomach is telling him it’s well on the way to being time for supper and he’s not going hungry when all his work is done – not really surprised when Faraday falls into step beside him.

“I don’t see how pointin’ out the truth counts as bein’ maudlin,” he grumbles. “From where I’m standin’ it’s just bein’ realistic.”

“You have no idea how it will turn out,” Vasquez says, determined to remain positive even in the face of how firmly the odds are stacked against them. “So why borrow trouble?”

“I’m not,” Faraday denies. “I’m more just bein’ cautious.”

“Ah, but there can be such a thing as too cautious, don’t you think? You can’t have much of a life if you don’t take a few risks every now and again.”

Faraday stops moving, and when Vasquez turns to look at him his eyebrows are making a solid bid for his hairline. “Vasquez, my friend, you are without a doubt the first person to ever accuse me of not takin’ enough risks in my life.”

That hadn’t been what Vasquez had meant at all, but before he can clarify what it was he’d been getting at, the sound of hoof beats rings out and Red comes into view riding astride his painted horse.

“That can’t be good,” Faraday murmurs, faint enough that Vasquez imagines he’s the only one who heard.

It’s not good, but nor is it surprising. Bogue’s on his way, riding with an entire army at his back as expected, and he’s due to arrive at sunrise.

“Well,” Faraday says, and Vasquez doesn’t miss the strain that’s taken up residence in his voice, “I guess that’s that then.”

Unexpectedly, he reaches out and claps a hand on Vasquez’s shoulder. “What’s say we go have us a last supper?”

Shaking his head, Vasquez allows himself to be steered back in their previous direction.

*****

When Robicheaux leaves, Faraday isn’t surprised. That’s mainly why he doesn’t say anything while the others discuss the matter on the front porch of the saloon.

After the conversation is done Faraday doesn’t move from his spot on the bench as Horne, Red and Vasquez all tramp off the porch, no doubt heading off to find some way to try and spend what’s likely to be their last night on earth in an enjoyable a manner as possible. He pays particular attention to Vasquez, of course he does, he can’t not at this point, noting that while Horne and Red keep moving along the side of the road, Vasquez only goes as far as the main doors of the saloon, ducking inside rather than continuing on after their fellows. Faraday bets he’s going to go try and talk to Billy.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Chisolm, the only other person left outside, says, settling down in the seat beside him. “I didn’t know it was possible for you to shut up for more than a five minute stretch at a time.”

Faraday considers rising to the bait but in the end decides it’s not worth it, choosing instead to simply shrug in reply and continue fidgeting with the deck of cards in his hand.

Next to him, Chisolm sighs. “There’s still a chance you know.”

At that Faraday snorts and replies, “We’re all dead tomorrow, and you know it. Robicheaux’s the only one who’ll be making it out of this alive.”

Chisolm shakes his head, “You don’t know that,” he says in that mild yet insistent way of his, “and don’t count Goody out just yet. He’s still got time to get his head on straight.”

Faraday snorts again. He’s getting tired of people denying the extent of the trouble they now find themselves in. “The man just abandoned his so called soulmate in a place that’s about to become the fuckin’ valley of death. I reckon if his fear is strong enough to make him do that then it’s gonna keep him away from here sure enough.”

“So you do believe in soulmate bonds. I’m sure Vasquez will be thrilled.”

Jerking his head up at the words, Faraday glares out into the night, feeling sort of like he just got played. “That’s none of your business,” he snaps, hoping his voice won’t carry inside the saloon. “And it ain’t relevant neither.”

Chisolm just gazes calmly back at him, hands raised in a slightly placating gesture, not unlike the ones Vasquez has used on some of the occasions he’s tried to needle Faraday into talking about what’s happening between the two of them.

“Well it ain’t,” Faraday adds mulishly, feeling defensive.

Now it’s Chisolm’s turn to snort. “You’re a real difficult man, Faraday. One of the most stubborn I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.”

Faraday opens his mouth to respond, but Chisolm cuts him off by saying, “You could still leave, you know?” When Faraday just stares at him, he adds, “You said it yourself, we might all be dead tomorrow except for those of us who get out while the getting’s good. You could do that.”

When Faraday doesn’t respond, he keeps pressing. “I’ll note that you didn’t say anything while the rest of us discussed our reasons for staying, but you don’t seem to be leaving either.”

“You’ve still got my damn horse,” Faraday reminds him acerbically.

“And you and I both know you could have stolen him back by now,” Chisolm counters, apparently ready with any answer necessary to keep Faraday from wiggling off the hook he’s got him on. “Try again.”

“It ain’t because of him,” Faraday snaps, either unwilling or unable to refer to Vasquez by name. “I’m not stayin’ because of him.”

“Did I say that you were?” Chisolm spreads his arms wide, palms out to indicate innocence. “I don’t recall having said that.”

“Yeah, well you implied it most heavily,” Faraday snaps, getting more and more frustrated with this conversation with each passing second, “And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop.”

Chisolm sighs then, dropping his arms and letting his hands fall limply into his lap. “You might only have so much time left, boy. Him too. You sure you want to waste it like this?”

Faraday glances back towards the window of the saloon. Inside he can just barely make out where Billy’s slumped over the bar, radiating misery while Vasquez watches him with a worried expression on his face. The sight makes something clench unpleasantly in his stomach, and he turns away before he can do something foolish like to go into the saloon and try and comfort him. Him being Vasquez in this instance.

Chisolm’s watching him with a knowing look on his face, and Faraday feels his lips pull back in a snarl of their own volition. “Leave it be,” he snaps.

Chisolm eyes him searchingly for a moment and then nods, shifting back in his seat into something more of a reclining position.

“Alright,” he says, pulling a cigarette from somewhere in his vest and holding it up. “You got a light?”

Faraday hands over a packet of matches. Chisolm slides one deftly out of the box, flipping the cover closed again as soon as he’s done and then striking the match all in one fluid movement. The flame burns quick and bright as Chisolm uses it to light his smoke, and then it’s gone as the man gives the match a quick shake to put it out.

“Did you want one?” Chisolm asks, patting his vest as he hands the matches back.

“No thanks,” Faraday replies. Along with his own smokes he still hasn’t used the cigar Vasquez had given him a while back, so there’s no need of him nicking one off Chisolm now.

They sit in semi-companionable silence for a time, neither of them saying anything as the sounds of the last peaceful night Rose Creek’s going to see for a while drift lazily around them. If he listens carefully, Faraday thinks he can hear the quiet prayers of those still left over at the church.

“Hey, Sam?” He says finally.

“Hmm?” Chisolm grunts in response.

“How’d you know about Vasquez and me?” Because the thing was – Faraday had never broached the subject with someone who hadn’t brought it up with him first. Robicheaux and Billy knowing was understandable, at least if their claim to have a similar origin story of their own was anything approaching truthful, but Faraday didn’t think anyone’d ever discussed the matter with Chisolm. He certainly hadn’t anyway.

Chisolm doesn’t reply right away.

“Sam?” Faraday says again, this time punctuating the name with a slight kick in the other man’s direction.

Chisolm dodges him easily enough, letting out a tired sigh as he does so. “I’ve got eyes, don’t I?” He says then. “You two’ve been dancing around each other since we met up outside of Junction City. All the time. One of you pushes and then the other pushes back, and, hey, maybe it wouldn’t work out regardless of the situation, but you’re clearly goddamned drawn to each other.”

Faraday considers this. “Yeah, okay,” he allows finally. He’s not sure he likes how obvious Chisolm seems to think they are, doesn’t like the way it makes them sound inevitable – like a foregone conclusion.

“Plus Goody told me,” Chisolm adds, not noticing the way Faraday’s now lost in thought. “Said he and Billy got suspicious way back when we picked up Red and Horne, and he thought it might be something to keep an eye on if it ended up going south.”

“Bit rich comin’ from him,” Faraday says with a snort, giving up on his musings for the time being.

“Maybe,” Chisolm allows. “But everybody knows a misfiring soulbond can play hell on all parties involved. Or so I’ve heard anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Faraday asks, intrigued in spite of himself.

“Means I’ve got no words of my own,” Chisolm replies, dropping that particular stick of dynamite with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop. “Never have, never will.”

“Huh,” Faraday says, surprised. Not having any words wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t exactly common either. Some people thought it was a sign of a person who should expect to die young, while others believed it singled out people who were due to serve a higher purpose. Given the way Chisolm lived his life, Faraday felt safe in assuming the latter was more likely to be true in his case.

“You regret that?” He asks, curious.

Chisolm shrugs. “Sometimes,” he acknowledges, “but for the most part, no. I’ve always been something of believer in the idea that what will be, will be, and left it at that.”

“What will be, will be, huh?” Faraday echoes. “How very open minded of you, Sam. I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be an ass just because you can, Faraday,” Chisolm says chidingly. “Make your peace with your situation however you please, but let that be the end of it.”

Faraday falls silent for a while, and when he speaks again his voice is more ragged than he’d like to admit. “What if I don’t know what I want?”

“Well I reckon that would be a bit of a problem,” Chisolm says slowly. “Especially given, as you keep saying, that we’re maybe all gonna die tomorrow. I guess if I was in your place I’d be tryin’ to figure out what I want real quick.”

“Then again,” he adds pointedly, “I happen to think you do know what you want; even better, I think it’s exactly what’s been on offer this whole time.”

Faraday swallows harshly, suddenly finding it hard to breath, almost like his chest has been caught in a vice and squeezed. “You don’t know that, Sam. Hell, I don’t know that, so there’s no fuckin’ way you can.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Chisolm agrees. “But I bet you’d be better off spending your time tryin’ to figure it out inside then you are doing it out here with me.”

“Ugh,” Faraday replies with feeling.

Chisolm, because he’s an utter bastard when you get down to it, laughs at him. “Get out of here, Faraday. We both know you’ve got more important things to do with your time.”

Then, as if he’s taking matters into his own hands and making Faraday’s decision for him, he stands, steps down off of the porch, and marches off in the direction of the dilapidated church.

Faraday watches him go for a moment or two, before standing himself, intent on making a decision of his own. He’s not about to do something so foolish as finding Vasquez and dragging him into a room for one night of passion, but making peace with his situation isn’t a bad idea.

*****

While the others make a point to leave Billy be once they file off of the veranda from where they’ve all just watched Robicheaux ride away into the night, Vasquez walks back into the saloon and over to where the other man is slumped over the bar, drinking steadily.

“Don’t say anything,” Billy tells him warningly. “You can sit if you want, but don’t say anything.”

Vasquez holds his hands up, hoping to convey with the gesture that he has no interest in making Billy talk about anything he doesn’t want to. “You want to share some of that?” He says instead, pointing at the bottle of rotgut still clutched in Billy’s hand.

“No,” Billy says simply, holding the bottle protectively to his chest. He takes another long swig and then another and then another.

“I knew I was running this risk, bringing him here,” he says finally, once the bottle is empty. “Knew it was likely to be too much for him, and I didn’t even need the damned bond to tell me so.”

“So why not go with him, then?” Vasquez asks. “There’s nothing holding you here if he isn’t.”

Billy stares long and hard off into the distance, obviously seeing something there that Vasquez can’t. “I said it was likely to be too much for him,” he says eventually, “I didn’t say it actually was too much for him.”

Vasquez wants to ask him what he means by that – does he for some reason think Robicheaux is going to change his mind and come back? – but before he can figure out the right words, Billy’s reaching over the bar again and pulling out a new bottle.

“You might want to go easy on that stuff if you are staying,” he says instead. “You are not going be very sharp come morning if the booze hasn’t worn off.”

Billy shrugs, the motion making it plain how little he cares for Vasquez’s advice.

They stay that way for a while, Billy drinking steadily and Vasquez watching him curiously as he slumps further and further in his seat.

Someone eventually wanders inside to join them and Vasquez knows exactly who it is even before the other man clears his throat to speak.

“This is why I keep sayin’ I ain’t got time for a soulbond,” Faraday says plainly, though certainly not as meanly as he might have in the past. “The damn things are more trouble than they’re worth with the way they can reduce otherwise sane individuals into this kind of mess.”

Vasquez turns so that he can see Faraday even in the dim light of the bar. “Now is not the time, guero,” he says, sensitive to Billy’s presence behind him. “Leave it be.”

Faraday gives him a long look, one fraught with something Vasquez can’t manage to put his finger on, and then nods before heading for the stairs and disappearing out of sight.

Once he’s gone, Billy snorts and thumps his latest empty bottle down on the countertop. “That one,” he says, voice not slurring in the slightest, “might actually be more trouble than he’s worth. I do not envy you him one bit. ‘Course,” he adds morosely, “I don’t particularly envy me one bit right now either.”

“You saying you don’t think Robicheaux is worth it?” Vasquez asks.

Billy, who’d been seemingly reaching for yet another bottle, pauses. “No,” he says after several weighted moments have passed. “I’m not saying that at all.” Then he lets his still empty hand fall back towards the counter top and noticeably doesn’t reach for any more liquor.

“That’s what I thought,” Vasquez says absently, suddenly finding himself distracted. There’s something niggling at him, telling him he’s got somewhere else to be now, even though he knows Billy could probably still use the company. He has a sneaking suspicion he knows exactly what it is too. “You gonna be alright if I leave you alone now?”

Turning in his seat, Billy gives him a long look. “I was going to be fine whether you stopped in here or not. Still am. If you want to go chasing after that idiot, be my guest.”

Vasquez briefly considers taking a stab at defending Faraday’s honour in light of the ‘idiot’ comment, but it’s not as if Faraday hadn’t deserved it. As such, he settles for saying, “Just so long as you’re sure you’re not going to drown yourself in one of these bottles.”

Billy waves a hand dismissively, his meaning plain.

Nodding his own acknowledgement, Vasquez pushes his stool back away from the bar and stands. As far as he’s aware Faraday’s the only other member of their remaining team who’s in the saloon right now, and he’d definitely been heading upstairs towards the rooms they’ve all been using.

Vasquez takes the stairs two at a time, not because he’s in any real hurry and more so just because he can. There’s a light shining out from under the door of the room Faraday and Horne have been sharing, and when Vasquez pushes it gently open he finds Faraday sitting back on the bed he must have claimed as his own, idly shuffling his ever present deck of cards.

Faraday turns to look at him as the door swings open, eyeing him silently for a moment, only to shrug and nod his head once, gesturing Vasquez further into the room. “Seeing as I don’t imagine I’ll be able to get you to go away without a fight, you might as well come in.”

Stepping into the room, Vasquez closes the door behind him and the crosses the floor to grab the only chair it boasts. Picking the item in question up, he carries it one-handed over to the bed and sets it down near where Faraday’s still absently playing with the cards in his hands.

“That some kind of nervous habit, guero?” He asks, gesturing at the cards flashing over and under Faraday’s fingers, quick as you please.

“I guess that’s one way of puttin’ it,” Faraday replies. As Vasquez watches he shuffles the cards back into a full deck and then spreads them out like a palm fan. “You wanna pick a card?”

“Now why would I want to do that?”

Faraday gives him a pitying look. “Because it’s a magic trick, Vas, and magic tricks are fun.”

Vasquez raises his eyebrows at the shortened version of his name. It almost sounds to him like a term of endearment, not that he’d dare say as much to Faraday. The man is liable to kick him out of the room if he does so, and that’s the last thing he wants tonight.

Faraday’s still holding the cards out, an almost hopeful look on his face, so Vasquez hesitatingly reaches out and slides one out of the deck.

“Good,” Faraday says, “Now look at it, but don’t let me see it and don’t tell me what it is.”

Obligingly, Vasquez does so, casting his eyes downward to see the two of clubs resting in the palm of his hand.

“And then what?” He asks.

“Now you give it back to me, but you still don’t let me see it.” As Vasquez does as he’s told, he closes the deck and draws it back towards him. “And now I tell you what your card was.”

“How are you going to do that?” Vasquez asks, curious. “Cheat?”

Faraday grins at him, and Vasquez thinks he feels the bond light up for the barest hint of a second, something like amused warmth curling low in his belly. “Of course I’m going to cheat,” Faraday says glibly. “Don’t you know that’s how all magic tricks work? They’re nothin’ but smoke and mirrors.”

Not unlike the man in question, Vasquez supposes. He’s never met a man more inclined to hide himself behind a façade.

“Two of clubs?” Faraday asks, holding up the card in question and dragging Vasquez’s thoughts back to the present in the process.

“Two of clubs,” Vasquez agrees. “How’s the trick work?”

“Can’t tell you,” Faraday grins. “A magician never reveals his secrets, after all.”

“And you do like your secrets, don’t you?” Vasquez murmurs.

He winces as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Faraday hadn’t seemed overly irritable downstairs at the bar, but Vasquez does not want to bring any attitude back out while they’re getting along, especially not tonight.

Surprisingly, however, Faraday doesn’t rise to the bait like he sometimes has in the past. Instead, he says mildly, “Man’s got a right to keep things to himself if he’s of a mind, don’t you think?”

“Of course,” Vasquez nods. Then he adds daringly, “Though, I’ve never asked you to give me anything you don’t want to.”

“No,” Faraday says quietly, after a moment or two has passed. “I suppose you haven’t, always backin’ off when I told you to. It’s downright chivalrous of you.”

Vasquez thinks of how to respond to that, chewing absently on his bottom lip while Faraday watches him with a strange look in his eyes. “This thing we have between us,” he says slowly, unsure of what the best words are, “it’s – it’s not something to be forced. If you don’t want it then …” he shrugs and trails off, hoping his meaning is plain.

“I just don’t see why you’d want it at all,” Faraday says finally. “Even ignoring how it’s completely nonsensical when you think about it – the whole idea that you can know instantly upon meeting someone that you’re meant to spend the rest of your lives together – look at the risk you’re runnin’.”

“Risk?” Vasquez echoes.

“Yeah, risk,” Faraday confirms. He sits up suddenly, rotating on the bed so that his legs swing over the side. As his feet hit the floor, he thumps one booted foot down heavily. “You’ve got a prime example right underneath us, probably still tryin’ to get blackout drunk.”

“You mean Billy,” Vasquez says, realization sinking in.

“’Course I do,” Faraday says. “You see any other soulbonded pairs hereabouts? Or, well,” he pauses, clearly thinking of someone else, “soulbonded pairs where both parties are still alive, that is? You know it’s funny,” he continues on before Vasquez has a chance to answe, “when Robicheaux first told me they were bonded he said Billy was the love of his life. Yet, he still left him here to die. We don’t know if he even tried to get him to come with him. What does that say about this stuff? Nothin’ good, I’m afraid.”

“What does it say about you that you will not even try it and see?” Vasquez counters.

“Plenty, but I’m keeping that under wraps as much as I do anything else. Sorry,” he adds when Vasquez lets out a frustrated sigh, even sounding like he means it.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, neither of them moving until the sound of a door slamming open somewhere below them heralds the return of at least some of their remaining crew. Vasquez hears Horne’s distinctive laugh ring out from down below and he figures that’s as good a sign as any that it’s time for him to clear out.

He runs his hands absently over his thighs as he gets ready to stand, and is startled when Faraday knocks one foot against his own without warning. Vasquez glances over at the other man, surprised to find him staring intently back once their gazes meet. There’s something in his eyes that makes Vasquez’s breath catch and he finds himself trying to reach out through the bond, even though repeated attempts have shown nothing effective.

The same thing happens this time, Faraday’s walls are as firmly in place as ever, but that strange look on his face is still there.

Faraday knocks his foot against Vasquez’s again, this time taking a deep breath as he does so. “You should know,” he says softly, “that if there was anyone I think I could have done this with, it would have been you.”

If Vasquez’s breath was weak before, it’s completely gone now. “Faraday,” he starts, trailing off pathetically when he realizes he has no idea what to say.

“Yeah,” Faraday says his eyes sad. “I know that ain’t fair, but I think it’s the best I can give you.”

It’s not much, practically nothing really, not in the long run, but he’s come to know Faraday well enough over the course of their all too brief acquaintance to understand it’s a huge step where the other man is concerned.

He nods then, not trusting himself to speak, not even sure if he can, and Faraday nods back in response.

“You should probably head out,” Faraday says, after they spend what feels like a small eternity staring at each other. “Big day tomorrow, after all.”

“Si,” Vasquez agrees. “Big day.”

“Mm,” Faraday hums. “Hey, do me a favor, yeah?”

“What is it?”

“Be as careful as you can out there.”

Vasquez feels his insides clench. “That’s a hell of a request to make, guero. Damn unfair, really.”

Faraday shrugs, and the flickering candle in the room sends his face into a sudden shadow. “What can I say? I’ve always been a selfish bastard when you get down to it.”

Vasquez stands at that. It’s high time he gets himself out of here and off to his own room. “I’ll see you in the morning, Faraday,” he says, turning away while he can still force himself to leave.

He’s inches away from the door when he hears Faraday shift behind him, the bed-springs creaking as he suddenly gets to his feet and strides forward.

“Wait.”

Vasquez feels a large hand land on his shoulder, propelling him back and around before he can protest. “Faraday, what -?” He starts to say, only to be cut off by Faraday’s mouth closing over his own.

Caught up in the shock of what’s just happened – what’s still happening – Vasquez doesn’t protest when Faraday walks him backwards until his back hits the flimsy wood of the still closed door, Faraday’s free hand coming up and curling around the side of his jaw in order to let him deepen the kiss.

Vasquez feels like he’s drowning, like he’s being battered by a tidal wave that’s swept him up and isn’t going to let him go until he’s given it the last breath in his body, never mind what that might to do him. He still can’t feel anything from Faraday through the bond, except maybe the barest flicker of an emotion that he can’t put his finger on, and yet he’s overwhelmed.

Then, just as suddenly as it started, it’s over, and Faraday’s pulling back with an ashamed look on his face.

“What?” Vasquez gasps. “Why did you -? I don’t –.”

“Like I said,” Faraday replies ruefully. “I’m a selfish bastard.”

Vasquez stares at him, trying desperately to will his rattled brain into focusing long enough for him to suss out what’s just happened here. Eventually it dawns on him.

This was it, not what Faraday had said before, about how he might have just managed this with Vasquez if things had been different, but this. This is all he’s getting. They’re both going to die tomorrow, and this - this is the most Faraday can give him.

He should be angry. He should be livid enough to haul off and throttle the man right here. Instead, he feels oddly elated, like he’s somehow been justified in maintaining his belief that there really has been something there between them this whole time, that he might just have managed it if only he’d had more time.

Laughter bubbles up out of him entirely out of his control, and, daringly, he reaches out a hand, letting his fingers trail absently along Faraday’s cheek.

“I think, guero,” he says then, “that I might just have won if we’d met before this.”

Faraday snorts, but Vasquez doesn’t think he’s imaging the note of fondness lurking within the sound. “Whatever you want to tell yourself is fine by me, Vas. I can’t stop you.”

Then he pulls back, stepping away until they’re both firmly outside of each other’s reach. “You should get some sleep. Morning’s gonna come soon enough as it is, may as well be as rested as you can be when it does.”

*****

If nothing else, Faraday thinks as McCann’s bullet slams into his gut and drops him to his knees; at least he got his wish to blow something up before he meets his maker. Gasping for breath, he slams to the ground, his entire side a searing mass of agony. He can’t stay down there though, he knows he can’t, and so he struggles back to his feet, determined to reach the church like he’d originally been planning.

It’s as he’s getting to his feet and moving along the path that he feels a wave of rage, more violent than anything he’s ever felt before and terrifying in its intensity, cascade over his body. Blearily, he looks up and sees Vasquez storm out of the church, his mouth spitting Spanish curses and his guns blazing, a picture of the very wrath of god himself. He hits McCann once, right in the chest, but keeps shooting until well after he’s made a kill shot, not stopping until the body’s landed in a conveniently placed coffin in a breathtaking show of irony.

His back shoved against the church door frame, Faraday sets about reloading his guns despite the way his hands are shaking. Absently he watches as Vasquez cuts a swath through the incoming Blackstones, still shouting wildly.

“Keep shooting, guerito!” He yells when he sees Faraday come back out of the church with Billy right on his heels.

“I don’t know why you think I need you to tell me that,” Faraday snaps back, or tries to anyway. Breathing’s still proving to be a bit of a problem.

Whatever Vasquez is about to say in response is cut off by a wild shriek, and then Robicheaux is riding into view, mowing down every poor devil that gets in his path, screaming about a goddamn Gatling gun and for them all to get back inside the church.

Faraday’s one of the first men to make it in, throwing himself behind the row of sandbags as he does so. He feels a sudden pain lance across his left arm and at first thinks he must have been hit again, that is until he hauls himself into a sitting position and sees Vasquez writhing on the ground, his right hand clasped over his left bicep, blood leaking through his fingers.

He’s on the floor, right in front of the still open doors, more exposed than the rest of them. Faraday figures he must have been the last one to make it in and gotten caught as he cleared the threshold.

When the Gatling gun finally, blessedly stops firing, Faraday thinks they might just get a chance to regroup when the scent of smoke reaches his nose and he sees flames shooting out of the building they’ve left the children in.

“The children!” He barks. If Goodnight’s right and they’re reloading the gun then they have to get the kids out of here now.

He shares a look with Vasquez, who’s climbed to his feet and is shoving the townsfolk into a safer position along the back wall despite the blood staining is previously white shirt a dark crimson. The other man gives him a long, knowing look and then nods. Faraday nods back, he doesn’t think he’d be able to come up with the right words even if he had the time, and then he’s on his feet and running back down the road towards the fire.

Sam gets there before him and between the two of them they get the trapdoor open and start shoving the little ones and their minders out the back of the building, pointing them in the direction of the open field. Then it’s a flat run down the street towards the stables, the only thing keeping them from being mowed down once the Gating gun starts up again, their ability to take cover behind a series of crates that won’t protect them for long.

Then the next thing he knows he’s telling Sam he owes him cover and he’s jumping on the back of a horse that’s not his own and riding for broke out towards his own certain doom.

By the time he reaches the wagon and the men guarding it, the right side of his body has been reduced to nothing but pain. He thinks he’s taken at least three bullets there during his kamikaze ride into the field and that was on top of the initial gunshot he’d received back in the town.

Deep down he knows there’s no coming back from this one, there just can’t be, but that doesn’t mean he can’t finish what he’s started. This is why he struggles to his feet once he’s no longer on a horse as the men manning the never to be sufficiently damned Gatling gun eye him quizzically.

Faraday grins at them, his lips pulling back in a parody of a smile even as he can feel the sharp tang of copper in the back of his throat. He’s hurt bad, the kind of bad you don’t walk away from without divine intervention, and these bastards all know it.

So too, it seems, does Vasquez. As Faraday stumbles as close to the wagon holding the Gatling gun as he can with his body quickly losing the ability to keep going, Vasquez is back in his head again and he’s a thousand times more frantic than he’d been when Faraday had taken the first shot from McCann.

Distracted as he is by the wave of emotion emanating from Vasquez, Faraday almost misses it when his legs give out beneath him and he slowly sinks to the blood soaked earth. Most of it is his blood, he thinks idly, while fumbling to pull his last remaining cigarette – the one he’d gotten from Vasquez a couple days before, ironically enough – out of his vest pocket. Clamping it between his teeth, he starts searching again, this time for the pack of matches he’s positive he’s got in there.

All the while Vasquez is in his head, having snuck in there who knows how, feelings of rage, denial, sadness and horror all mixing together and buffeting Faraday three ways from Sunday.

“Poor bastard,” Faraday murmurs low in his throat. He’s found the matches but can’t quite seem to make his fingers work to operate them. “I can’t lie. You deserved better than me.”

He wonders if Vasquez can feel what he’s thinking all of a sudden because the force of the other man’s emotions ratchet up impossibly higher, even in spite of the way Faraday still has his walls up as strong as ever. Or at least he thinks he does. Things are starting to get a little fuzzy for him.

Trying and failing to ignore what’s happening with Vasquez, Faraday watches tiredly as the man with the missing eye, obviously the one who’s been left in charge of the Gatling gun, steps down from the platform and begins picking his way across the debris field to where Faraday has fallen far short of his intended goal.

The man says nothing as he slowly proffers a light, unaware of what Faraday’s planning and how it’s likely to see them all wind up as so many bloody pieces strewn about the outskirts of Rose Creek.

Smoke lit, Faraday takes a grateful puff, going so far as to nod pleasantly at this man who he’s about to take with him into the great beyond when he goes and then slumps forward face first into the ground as he prepares to play the greatest magic trick of his life.

Pity I’m not likely to survive it, he thinks, fighting the urge to let out a hysterical laugh. He can still feel the panic coming from Vasquez, who seems nearer now, as if he’s thinking about doing something foolish like throwing himself into the mess Faraday’s now found himself in the middle of.

Faraday shakes his head in denial of this. If Vasquez is still standing now, then he almost definitely will be once the Gatling gun and these last few men are taken care of. He’ll be able to walk away from this mess, unlike so many others, and sitting here with his own blood pouring out onto the ground, knowing he’s about to die, Faraday is gifted with the abrupt realization that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to see that Vasquez survives this fight.

Hell of a time to realize you don’t hate this whole soulmate thing as much as you’ve let on, Joshua, he thinks with the hysteria from before brimming ever closer to the surface. He feels a sudden, guilty pang at the thought that he’d never gotten over himself long enough to give Vasquez his first name when asked, and now he never will.

Deserved so much better, he thinks as he reaches into his vest for a final time and drags out his one remaining stick of dynamite, his mind half on Vasquez and half on his plan. Maybe I’ll get the chance to make it up to you in the afterlife, who knows?

He presses the tip of the smoke he still has firmly clamped between his teeth to the dynamite’s fuse and feels a sense of satisfaction when he sees it catch.

His satisfaction is almost drowned out by the wave of horror Vasquez slams him with from wherever he is, strong enough that if he weren’t already on his knees he’d have been knocked there by the force of the emotions.

It’s at this moment that Joshua Faraday, a man who’s all but made it his life’s mission to avoid tying himself to the one person in the world that the universe in its infinite wisdom thinks is his perfect match, says a vehement to hell with it. He pulls his arm back, delighted by the way Bogue’s men all gape at him in horrified fascination when they see the dynamite clutched in his fist, and at the same time drops every wall he’s put in place to keep Vasquez out, both over the past however many days and also over the course of his entire life.

The realization that he’s been let in seems to momentarily derail Vasquez, and Faraday uses the man’s distracted state to slip along the bond. It’s alright, he soothes, neither knowing nor caring how clearly what he’s feeling will get through. Whatever the amount, it’s bound to be better than nothing. It’s fine. You’re going to be fine.

Be safe.

Then he hauls his arm back as far as he can and lets the dynamite fly.

*****

Bogue is freshly dead and the dust has barely started to settle when Vasquez is darting headlong into the field, running as fast as his legs will carry him in the direction of the now destroyed Gatling gun. He thinks he hears someone shout his name – Chisolm maybe, or perhaps one of the townsfolk - but he doesn’t stop, can’t stop. The link between him and Faraday is faint, so, so faint, but it’s still there, which means Faraday is too.

He finds him sprawled on his back, face canted up towards the bright afternoon sky, with half a dozen visible wounds bleeding freely.

“Faraday,” Vasquez chokes, skidding over the churned up earth until he comes to a stop and throws himself down at the other man’s side. He wants to reach out and touch but there’s so much obvious damage, and who knows how much less obvious damage, that he’s afraid of making things worse.

“Is he alive?”

Vasquez whirls around and finds Chisolm rushing through the brush towards him, a few of the still upright townsfolk following behind him.

“Si, si,” Vasquez gasps, finally giving into the urge to touch Faraday and pressing two fingers to the pulse point at his throat. It’s weak but it’s there. “He’s alive.”

“But it’s bad,” Chisolm confirms. He motions with one hand and two of the men trailing behind him rush forward carrying what Vasquez realizes is a makeshift stretcher. “We can’t leave him here. They’ve set up an infirmary back in the town. His best chance is getting him back there.”

Intellectually Vasquez knows what Chisolm is saying makes sense. In actuality however, he flat out growls at the two new men as they approach.

“Vasquez,” Chisolm says. He moves forward and starts to tug Vasquez back. “You have to let them take him,” he says gently. “He’ll die if we just leave him here.”

“I know,” Vasquez whimpers, “I know, but …” He watches helplessly as the two men swarm forward and make quick work of getting Faraday’s limp body loaded on the stretcher.

“Yeah, yeah c’mon. Don’t worry, we’re gonna go with them.” Chisolm’s hand is on his shoulder, propelling him along the route. “We’re gonna do everything we can.”

They make the trip back to town at a dead run, the two stretcher bearers somehow staying upright even in spite of the awkward load they’re carrying. The building that’s been turned into an infirmary is crowded, thick with the scent of blood and sweat, the cries of the injured ringing through the air.

The stretcher bearers continue through the main room and keep moving towards the back of the building, coming upon a room where a number of people are doing everything they can to prevent further loss of life on this day.

A dark haired woman who has her hands soaked in the blood of a man lying on the table in front of her looks up as they all pour into the room. She takes one look at Faraday’s limp body and her face darkens. “Put him over there,” she barks, jerking her head towards the one empty slab in the room. “He’ll be next after this one.”

“You,” she adds, glaring at Vasquez where he’s trailed into the room after Faraday, “what do you think you’re doing in here? If you’re good enough to walk under your own power than someone who isn’t me can see to you.”

“He’s with the other one,” Chisolm says from the open doorway. “Soulbond.”

“Another one? Lord almighty but you people are a well-tied bunch. Alright,” she jerks her head towards Faraday, “you being here will probably help him then, so as long as you keep out of my way, you can stay.”

The woman uses her upper arm to brush sweat damp hair out of her face and Vasquez realizes with a start that the man she’s desperately trying to sew back together is Goodnight. He turns to look for some sign of Billy, hoping like hell that the other man is around somewhere, and finds him sitting shirtless on a stool in a corner while another man Vasquez doesn’t know is industriously digging in his shoulder with some medical tool or other. As Vasquez watches, the man pulls a metal slug out of the wound and drops it in a dish where it rattles as it lands.

Billy, though, doesn’t appear to notice. He’s staring fixedly at Goodnight’s prone body, as if he’s trying to keep the other man alive out of sheer force of will.

For his part, Vasquez doesn’t know what he should do, but the one thing he is certain of is that he’s not leaving Faraday’s side unless someone forcibly removes him. He settles for mimicking Billy’s ability to remain as unobtrusive as possible and tucks himself into the corner nearest Faraday.

“You can touch him if you want,” the woman says. Vasquez is going to assume she’s a doctor given that she’s clearly been given the worst off patients to deal with and she even more clearly knows what she’s doing. He’s never met a woman doctor before, but if this one can save his soulmate then he’s certainly not going to get in her way.

“It’ll probably help,” the woman adds when Vasquez  - too lost in his own thoughts – fails to reply. “There’s plenty of evidence out there that folk with soulbonds are more likely to fight harder to survive when their partners are nearby.”

Vasquez almost chokes on a laugh that he can’t prevent from trying to come bubbling up out of his throat. He has no idea what he is to Faraday right now, but if this woman thinks that his presence might help then his presence she will have.

He watches as another woman, this one acting as nurse perhaps, comes bustling over with a bowl of hot water and a bunch of rags and begins the process of getting as much of the blood off Faraday as possible.

The second woman gives him a tired look as she cuts Faraday’s vest and shirt off of him and then dabs gently at one of the bloody wounds on his chest. His entire torso is a ruined mess, three puncture wounds visible and bleeding sluggishly.

As she works, the woman looks back at him. “You heard what Doc Cooper said, didn’t you?” She asks. “You can touch him if you like.”

“I …” Vasquez shakes his head, feeling overwhelmed. “Where? He’s so -. So -,” he flaps a hand uselessly at Faraday’s body, unable to put words to what he’s trying to say.

“Why not his hand?” She suggests. “It doesn’t look like either of those have been hurt, and you won’t be in my way.”

Vasquez nods, grateful for the idea, and reaches out to curl his fingers gently over Faraday’s right hand, the one that happens to be closest to him.

The woman smiles gently at him and continues on with her work, sopping up blood as she goes. “You must’ve been speakin’ Spanish to him the first time you met, hmm?” She says softly.

Vasquez blinks at her, confused, and she points one finger briefly at Faraday’s chest. As more of the blood is cleared away, Vasquez can make out the words scrawled there in dark ink. It’s the first time he’s ever seen them, and explains Faraday’s insistence on always keeping his shirt on when they’d been working on the town defences. Miraculously, they’re still intact in spite of the multiple hits Faraday has taken today.

“It is Spanish, isn’t it?” The nurse asks, still working just as efficiently as ever, but apparently determined to keep Vasquez engaged in what she’s doing.

“Si,” Vasquez says, hoping she doesn’t ask him for a translation.

Thankfully, she doesn’t, and he’s able to focus his attention where it should be.

*****

Vasquez can’t remember the last time he had a proper night’s sleep. He assumes it was back before Bogue and his Blackstones had ridden into town, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake in spite of the best preparations the seven of them had been able to concoct, but maybe not. Maybe, if he’s being honest with himself, he hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep in years.

He’s not likely to get one like this either, sitting in a rickety chair by Faraday’s bedside, hunched awkwardly halfway over the mattress so he doesn’t have to break the physical contact between the two of them, his hand splayed over the pulse point in Faraday’s wrist the best, if not the only, way for him to convince himself that the other man is still here with him. For a given value of here with him that is.

And it’s not as if he’s the only one with that kind of idea, even if the argument could be made that he’s taken it to something of an extreme level. That doesn’t change the fact that Billy’d set up camp right next to Goodnight’s bed the moment he was strong enough to get there under his own power. Vasquez feels that, if nothing else, he’s at least in good company.

Granted, he’s also jealous as can be. While Faraday’s been unconscious ever since they’d hauled his torn up body in from the field, Goodnight woke up three days ago and has been driving his caregivers to distraction ever since with his never ending chatter. Never ending that is, except for when he’s asleep, which he is admittedly still doing a lot of.

“You ever get nervous when he drops off like that?” Vasquez asks on one occasion when Goodnight’s eyes have slipped shut mid-sentence.

Billy looks up from where he’s polishing his knives, finally all recovered from the battlefield, and briefly meets Vasquez’s gaze before shifting his glance to Goodnight. “No,” he says eventually, “he does that even when he’s not all shot up to hell.”

Vasquez huffs a weak laugh. “I probably should not be surprised to hear that.”

“You shouldn’t,” Billy agrees.

“Mm,” Vasquez hums, turning his attention back to Faraday’s sleeping form. Doctor Cooper, or Adelaide as it turned out was her first name, had been by earlier and seemed pleased by what she’d seen. For his part, however, Vasquez can’t see any change in the other man’s state.

Tiredly, he reaches out and strokes one finger along Faraday’s nearest forearm.

“He’s going to wake up,” Billy says from his place across the room. “You just need to give it time.”

“You say that every day,” Vasquez points out, stilling his fingers directly above Faraday’s wrist, as relieved as always when he feels a pulse beating beneath the warm skin. He wishes he could feel something through the bond, but it seems to have gone dormant throughout Faraday’s convalescence.

“And I’m going to keep saying it every day,” Billy insists, “because then one day I will be right.”

Vasquez sighs. “Let’s hope that’s true.”

*****

He almost misses it when it first happens because he’s turned away from the bed, watching as Billy and Goodnight argue over something – he’s not sure what.

“Vasquez, look.” Goodnight has a smile on his face, a real smile, one without all of the affectations and exaggerations that are usually found within it as part of the flamboyant personality he shows to the world.

Vasquez follows his delighted gaze and his heart leaps when he realizes he hadn’t been imagining a sudden pressure on his wrist. Faraday has snaked a hand out from beneath the bedcovers and locked his fingers in a loose grip around Vasquez, the touch just enough contact to break the spell Vasquez has been under and send him careening back to Faraday’s bedside.

Faraday’s hand falls limply back onto the bed, but Vasquez is too busy being transfixed by his gaze to immediately notice the lack of contact. His eyes are open, just barely, mere slits really, but they’re open and Vasquez can see Faraday tracking his flailing movements as he all but collapses onto the bed, remembering only at the last moment that jostling Faraday would do more harm than good, and keeping himself properly upright by sheer, stubborn force of will.

“Faraday,” he breathes. “You awake, guero?”

Faraday doesn’t say anything, but his lips move like he wants to and a frustrated look crosses his face, possibly at the fact that no words are coming out. He crooks the fingers of his free hand towards himself and Vasquez slides forward again, his hand reaching out to gently cup Faraday’s chin of its own volition.

Maybe it’s because Faraday’s awake this time, but the new contact sends sparks shooting through him and brings with it the thundering of Faraday’s emotions. It’s mostly a solid wave of confusion, no doubt brought about by finding himself not only awake in strange surroundings, but awake at all. There’s also a significant amount of pain, and no small amount of fear as well.

“Easy, Faraday. It’s alright. You are alright.” Vasquez tries to send comfort along the bond, but he can’t tell if it goes through. He’s getting something from Faraday, yet the other man’s emotions are such a mass of confusion that everything else is trumped by it.

“Faraday,” Vasquez says again, this time the name sounding ragged to his own ears. He thinks the other man is trying to tell him something, but he hasn’t a clue as to what that might be. “Faraday, I don’t know what you want.”

Faraday frowns then and he again gestures with his free hand, as if to tell Vasquez to come even closer.

Obligingly, Vasquez leans further into his space and watches as Faraday’s lips move. This time he’s almost certain Faraday’s actually said something, only it’s too faint for him to make out.

“Louder, guero,” he says as firmly as he can with what feels like every emotion he’s ever felt ricocheting around his body, threatening to pull him apart at the seams. “I promise I’ll listen to whatever you have to say, but I have to be able to hear you.”

Faraday’s throat works and Vasquez feels a stab of pain shoot through the bond, the first thing he’s felt from it with utter clarity, as Faraday struggles to life his head off the pillow.

“What?” Vasquez starts to say, only to have Faraday cut him off with a single shake of his head.

Faraday tilts his head so that his mouth is no more than an inch away from Vasquez’s ear and Vasquez hears, ever so faintly …

“Joshua.”

And with that Faraday’s gone again. His eyes roll back into his head and Vasquez is momentarily half convinced that the bastard’s gone and died on him for real, the only thing keeping a shocked whimper from escaping him the fact that he can still feel Faraday’s pulse beating sure and strong beneath his fingertips.

He stays that way, curled around Faraday’s sleeping form – just sleeping now, thankfully no longer horrifyingly comatose – for longer than he could say. When he finally does come back to himself, he can’t help but drop a quick, feather light kiss on Faraday’s forehead as he sags back into his chair, his eyes never leaving the man in front of him.

Joshua he thinks to himself, remembering the night, one that seems like a lifetime ago now, when Faraday had told him he had no right to his name and therefore should not expect to be gifted with it. He doesn’t know what to do with the fact that he’s been given it now. Hopefully it means something good.

An awkward cough behind him abruptly reminds him that he and Faraday are not alone in the room.

“Did he say something?” Goodnight asks eagerly. “It looks like he was trying to say something. Ouch! Billy! There’s no need to be pinching me. I’m an injured man here.”

“You’re something alright,” Billy grouses. “Give the man some privacy, you nosy bastard.”

They briefly dissolve into a half-hearted bickering match, something Vasquez has learned of late that they do all the time when left to their own devices, and Vasquez almost chokes on the laugh that comes rattling out of him without permission.

“Aha!” Goodnight crows triumphantly. Vasquez has no idea how hasn’t torn any of his stitches given how often he gets excited over things. “He did say something, didn’t he? I knew it.”

“Oh for shit’s sake,” Billy says, fond exasperation radiating off him in waves. “I know you’re bored out of your corn-fed mind, but leave it be why don’t you?”

Billy’s chair makes a scraping sound as he shoves it back and away from his spot by Goodnight’s bed and gets to his feet.

“Someone should tell Adelaide he woke up,” Billy says, stepping across the room so that he’s not quite hovering slightly back and to the left of Vasquez.

“You volunteering, amigo?”

“Obviously,” Billy replies. “We all know you’re not going anywhere and Goody’s bound to open up any of half a dozen bullet holes if he so much as breathes wrong.”

Ignoring Goodnight’s indignant squawk of protest, he heads towards the door with a casual, “I’ll be right back,” thrown over his shoulder as he goes.

The room descends back into silence once he’s gone until it’s inevitably broken by Goodnight.

“Alright, truly now. What’d he say?”

*****

Faraday learns later that the first time he remembers waking up is in fact the second time he actually does so. While he’d apparently previously woken up just long enough to babble his first name at poor Vasquez in a fit of delirium, the first time he truly remembers coming back to himself is several days later, all while feeling like he’s swimming through some sort of fog as he tries to return to where he knows he’s supposed to be.

A distant voice tells him to open his eyes. Faraday struggles to obey the order, but his eyelids feel heavier than they ever have before. If he’s being honest, he’s not sure he has it in him to be awake right now.

He hears a huff of breath, nearby, yet seemingly coming from far away, and the same voice he remembers from before says more insistently, “Joshua. Open your eyes, Joshua.”       

This time Faraday listens and when his eyelids slowly crack open to let something in the first thing he sees is a familiar pair of worried brown eyes.

“There you are, guero,” Vasquez breathes. “I was starting to think you were trying to run out on me again.”

Faraday blinks, the action somehow one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do, and he struggles to focus on the other man. Every part of him hurts, his torso in particular simply one solid block of agony, though he finds himself wanting to sit up as his head becomes a little more clear.

“Easy,” Vasquez says, reaching out a hand to steady him. Then, when it becomes obvious that Faraday’s going to keep moving come hell or high water, he makes an exasperated sound and gets a hand behind his back, helping him into a reclining position as best he can.

“You’re going to tear your stitches if don’t keep still,” he scolds. “Gonna have the poor doctor very pissed at you.”

Faraday waves a hand at him weakly, so exhausted after expending such a little amount of energy that he knows he won’t be doing anything more.

“Did we win?” He asks, even though the mere fact that he’s still breathing should be an indication that they did.

Vasquez simply chooses to shuffle closer and lean his chair right up against Faraday’s bed. “We did,” he says easily. “Or, well. We won enough. Half the town is destroyed and half its men along with it. Still, Bogue and his men are also dead.”

Faraday lets that sink in for a moment then nods.

“And the others? Our others,” he clarifies when Vasquez looks confused. He supposes they and the rest of their merry band have been through enough together for him to admit he cares about them.

“Ah,” Vasquez says, understanding dawning on his face. He reaches out and runs one long fingered hand gently along Faraday’s arm. Faraday feels the bond stir at his touch and he’s positive he feels a burst of satisfaction flit along it from Vasquez.

“They’re here. They’re fine. To a point anyway. You and Robicheaux were the most badly hurt and Horne ended up looking like a,” his face twitches in an obvious attempt at remembering the word he’s looking for. “Pincushion? I think is what Chisolm called it. Whatever. The word is not important. He’s going to live, though there wasn’t enough space to put him in here so he’s in a different room.”

At his words Faraday cranes his neck and realizes they’re not as alone in the room as he’d initially thought. Goodnight is lying in a bed across from him, his eyes closed and with what looks like half an apothecary’s worth of bandages wrapped around his chest.

Vasquez follows his gaze and snorts. “He’s awake, you know. You can say something to him if you want.”

Across from them, Goodnight cracks one eye open and huffs. “I was trying to be polite and give you boys some modicum of privacy. Don’t you be complaining if you’re the ones who won’t allow the fiction to continue.”

His words cause a laugh to come stuttering out of Faraday – something he immediately regrets with the way it causes a wave of agony to lance through his gut.

“Goddamnit!” He swears, but that only makes things worse and his eyes are starting to water embarrassingly with the pain when a sudden, soothing wave washes over him. It doesn’t make all the pain go away, far from it in fact, but it slices through the worst of it and gives him a chance to get his breath back.

“What?” He gasps and then sees where Vasquez’s hand is flattened over his own. “Oh,” he says as he realizes what Vasquez is doing, “oh, now that might just be damn well worth all the trouble I’m in for.”

He regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth, less because they make Vasquez pull back and take the comforting feeling with him, and more because he can now feel something that feels an awful lot like hurt radiating out from the other man.

“Vas,” he starts to say, but it’s too late. Vasquez is already out of his chair and heading for the door.

“The doctor should know you’re awake again,” he says, voice tight, and then he’s gone, leaving Faraday with nothing to do but lie there and call himself seven different kinds of fucking foolish.

“You’re an idiot,” Goodnight says helpfully, managing to make Faraday feel even worse by reminding him they’d had an audience for that little mishap of his just now.

Faraday looks over at the older man, half expecting to see annoyance in his gaze and feeling even worse when all he sees is pity instead.

Goodnight shakes his head. “If I’d been half as stupid as you when I’d met him, I’m pretty sure Billy’d have stabbed me on principle rather than waste his time on me. And, for the record, I was pretty damned stupid all in my own right.”

Faraday is not having this discussion. Not now, and hopefully not ever.

“Billy alright?” He asks, hoping Goodnight will let himself be distracted.

Goodnight gives him a look which indicates he knows exactly what Faraday is doing, but all he does is fold his hands in his lap, reclining back against his own pillows with a nod. “He’s fine enough, albeit a little banged up. Gatling gun got us both a bit before you blew it the fuck up – thanks for that by the way. Anyway, Billy took some metal in the back and shoulder but basically walked it off because that’s what he does. Whereas I took more bullets than he did and pitched off the fucking church roof for good measure. Something that apparently makes me, and I’m quoting here, an over dramatic asshole.”

Faraday’s too tired to laugh again, but he feels his lips twitch into a smile. “Was he sharpenin’ any of his knives when he said it?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“Then I reckon you’re fine.”

Goodnight falls silent and Faraday’s briefly hopeful that he won’t start digging again. Unfortunately, even lying shot up to hell in a hospital bed, he’s apparently not that lucky because after a moment Goodnight takes a deep breath and says, “You realize you’ve done a hell of a number on him, right?”

“Robicheaux …” Faraday starts to say, but Goodnight cuts him off with a wave of his lesser bandaged hand. Judging by the visible splints, Faraday's willing to bed he'd broken a few bones in his tumble out of the steeple.

“I know what you’re going to say, Faraday. You’re going to tell me it’s none of my business and that I’d best leave well enough alone. And fair enough, maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not my place to say jack shit to you, but the fact is somebody’s got to set you straight.”

“There ain’t nothing to set me straight on,” Faraday says mulishly. He’s decidedly of the opinion that he doesn’t deserve this when he’s just woken up from risking his neck saving an entire town full of people. “I didn’t do anything.”

Goodnight snorts. “Not at first, sure, that’s part of the problem. You’re messing with his head with all this back and forth nonsense. First you told him no, then you told him yes but almost died immediately thereafter, and now you’re awake and have as good as told him no again.”

“This is none of your damned business, Robicheaux,” Faraday barks, fighting to ignore the way the force of his declaration makes his gut twist, since it's only partly due to his injuries anyway.

“Maybe not,” Goody says coolly, “but I’m someone who also almost botched his chance at a soulbond, so I know what I’m talking about.”

Faraday’s saved from trying to figure out a response to this, for a given value of saved that is, by Vasquez re-entering the room with a dark-haired woman in tow.

“Why’s he sitting up?” She demands, glaring at Vasquez. “You didn’t tell me he was sitting up. The sorry bastard’s liable to ruin my needlework if he’s moving around too much.”

Vasquez doesn’t follow her fully into the room, choosing instead to lean stiffly against the door frame. He shrugs, refusing to meet Faraday’s eye despite his best attempts. “I don’t own him, Adelaide. Couldn’t control him if I tried.”

“Yeah? Try anyway.” Rolling her eyes, the woman sits down in the chair Vasquez had previously occupied and turns her critical gaze on Faraday. “Alright then, let’s take a look at you. Though heaven help you if you’ve torn anything. I ain’t in the mood to be puttin’ more people back together again.”

Faraday stares at her. “You’re the one who did this?” He gestures to his bandaged body as best he can.

She nods. “Though in your case I had help.” A second nod, this time in Vasquez’s direction. “There’s something about an active soulbond that makes injured folks hang on. You’d likely have been dead three times over without him around.”

Faraday’s not sure what to do with that and, unconsciously, he reaches out a tentative touch along the bond. He gets a fleeting taste of something, some strong emotion that he can’t qualify, and then Vasquez slams a series of walls into place so heavily that Faraday feels like he’s been slapped.

“I …” He says, tongue heaving in his mouth, like it’s going to swell up and choke him.

The woman, the doctor apparently, misunderstands his trouble. Face softening, she rests a hand lightly on his forearm. “You’re going to be alright, Mr. Faraday. A difficult patient though you may have been, you’re through the worst of it. That’s God’s honest truth even if you don’t believe me quite yet.”

Faraday wants to make some kind of joke, one of his famous one-liners that’ll make her chuckle and maybe even swat at him half-heartedly. He doesn’t have it in him, though, and he stares helplessly over her shoulder, trying unsuccessfully to get Vasquez to do more than eye him stoically.

*****

Vasquez can’t believe he was foolish enough to believe Faraday (Joshua, a traitorous voice hisses in the back of his mind. Joshua.) had changed his mind about wanting the soulbond. The man had been dying, which was bound to make him act unusually. Maybe he’d thought what he was doing was some final act of kindness, if not outright pity, one where he wouldn’t have to face any consequence since he’d been about to die.

Growling under his breath, Vasquez lashes out suddenly, his left foot kicking roughly against the wall outside of Faraday’s (Joshua sings that damned voice again) room. He swears when the action causes pain to shoot through his foot and up along his leg, although part of him deems it to be a welcome distraction from the thoughts running rampant through his head.

“And what did that wall do to you?” A soft voice asks from behind him.

Vasquez turns and finds Billy leaning against the railway at the top of the stairwell, clearly having slipped up the steps sometime within the last few minutes without being noticed.

“J – Faraday is awake,” Vasquez says tightly. “Looks like he might even stay that way this time. Adelaide is with him now.”

“And you’re not?” From anyone else the words would have come across as judgmental, but Vasquez has spent enough time in Billy’s company, most notably while they were sharing a silent vigil at Faraday and Goodnight’s bedsides, that he knows better.

Vasquez huffs. “He was properly conscious for only a moment before he was implying the bond is a mistake and more trouble than it’s worth. So no, amigo, I am not with him.”

“Ah.” Billy pushes up off the railing and strides down the hallway. Once he reaches Vasquez he tucks a hand into a pocket of his vest and withdraws a half crumpled cigarette. Wordlessly, he holds it out, his offer plain.

Vasquez laughs in spite of himself. “No thank you. I know what you put in those things.”

“Suit yourself.” Billy shrugs and tucks the cigarette back away. “But you look like you could use it.”

“Don’t worry,” Vasquez assures him, “the thought is appreciated.”

“Mm. What’re you going to do?”

“You say that like you expect me to have an answer,” Vasquez scoffs. “Who has an answer for something like this? And yes, before you say anything, I am aware I am not the first person to have trouble getting a functional soulbond. Knowing that doesn’t help!” Angrily, he hauls off and kicks the wall again for lack of having a better outlet on hand.

“Oh that’s helpful,” Billy says. Vasquez doesn’t have to be looking at him to know he’s rolling his eyes.

“If you have a better suggestion,” Vasquez says through gritted teeth, “I am open to ideas.”

“Take a walk,” Billy says, staring back impassively when Vasquez turns back to look at him. “I’m serious,” he adds, when Vasquez continues to stare at him incredulously. “You’ve barely left his side in weeks. Go find yourself a distraction and take some time to get your head back on straight. He’s not going anywhere and some distance will help.”

He says it all with the air of a man who knows what he’s talking about, which Vasquez suspects he is. “Distance, you say, huh?”

“Distance,” Billy agrees. “Distraction. Get a bit of both and it will go a long way to making you feel better. Then, once you’ve managed that, you can come back and sort out the rest of it.”

It’s probably the most he’s ever heard Billy say at one time, and Vasquez can’t fight the logic of any of it. Taking a deep breath, he nods. “I imagine I can find somewhere in the town to make myself useful.”

“Try the building crews,” Billy suggests. “They’re all over the place right now.”

Vasquez thinks it over, then nods again, more decisively this time. “Maybe I will.”

*****

It’s been three days since Vasquez has so much as spoken a word to him when Faraday says to hell with it and stages a jailbreak. Adelaide had recently made it very clear he wasn’t even to think about getting out of bed for the foreseeable future, promising dire retribution should he prove to have the nerve to disobey her. Unfortunately, desperate times called for desperate measures.

“Do you even know where he is?” Goodnight asks from his vantage point across the room.

“Nope,” Faraday admits once he’s standing on his own two feet for the first time since an explosion of his own making had landed him flat on his back in a field littered with corpses. “But I figure if he’s not comin’ to me, then I’m goin’ to him.”

“If the mountain will not come to Muhammad,” Goodnight mutters, shrugging when Faraday gives him a confused look. “Never mind. You’re going to kill yourself just trying to get down those stairs.”

“Am not,” Faraday says with a confidence he doesn’t at all feel. He feels not unlike he’s been run over by a fully laden mule cart, but there’s no reason for Goodnight to know that. “I am fueled by righteous indignation.”

“I see.” Goodnight gives him a long, knowing look and then sighs. “Well if you’re determined to be so foolish I guess I can at least have the common decency to point you in the right direction. Billy told me your boy’s been mostly helping with the repairs to the church, so you might as well start there. That is,” he adds dubiously, “if you can make it that far.”

“An entire army and a goddamned gat couldn’t kill me,” Faraday replies. “A little walk sure as shit won’t either.”

Goodnight makes a noncommittal noise as Faraday exits the room.

The stairs do present a bit of a problem, insofar as it takes him far, far longer to get down them than it normally should. However, once he’s on level ground and has taken a minute or two (or five) to get his breath back, he gets something of a second wind and uses it to propel himself through the doors of the building and out onto the street. From there, he points his feet in the direction of the church and starts walking.

*****

“It has been brought to my attention that you are mad at me.” If Faraday had thought that line would get a rise out of Vasquez he is sorely mistaken. The man doesn’t so much as blink, instead choosing to keep all his attention focused on the board he’s sawing through for repairs to the church steeple.

Never one to be ignored, Faraday clears his throat loudly. “I said –“

“I heard you, guero.” Vasquez finishes with the board he’s just split up on the saw horse and deftly switches out the two pieces for a new uncut one without so much as glancing in Faraday’s direction. “You want me to give you a medal for noticing?”

“No,” Faraday huffs. “I want you to look at me so we can discuss the matter.”

“Pity for you I am not in the mood to do either then, isn’t it?” Bracing one hand on the board to keep it solidly in place, Vasquez moves the saw back into position and begins cutting the wood with what Faraday feels is more force than necessary.

“Vasquez,” Faraday says, exasperated. “For hell’s sake. Javier.”

Vasquez’s head shoots up and the look on his face makes it clear that if Faraday could sense anything through their bond right now, he would not appreciate what he was feeling.

“You do not get to call me that,” he hisses, eyes blazing angrily. “I offered it to you before and you threw it back at me so I am keeping it!” He spits something else in his native tongue, and Faraday hides a wince.

“Now I know that’s not a nice word and it’s no fair callin’ me names when I’m tryin' to make things right.” When Vasquez’s face remains tight in light of Faraday’s attempt at levity, he drops the act. “I just want to talk,” he says, shoulders sagging. “Don’t you reckon we can do that much?”

“You already talked,” Vasquez says flatly. “Before, all the times when I brought it up. You said you don’t want this, made it very clear you don’t want me. So fine, that’s fine. I’m not gonna try and force a bond with someone who has no interest in it. You can go do whatever you want and me, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to forget I had this for only a few seconds and pretending I never had it at all when that doesn’t work!”

Angrily, he shoves the saw he’s still holding back into the board forcibly enough that it cuts through the remainder, only it’s not a clean cut and the board winds up in two jagged pieces, neither of which will be fit for their intended use. Vasquez makes a disgusted noise at the sight of them and lets out a string of Spanish curses that Faraday doesn’t need translated to tell him they could blister the paint off a barn.

In a last ditch effort to get Vasquez to focus on him, Faraday says, “My mother’s words were Excuse me, Ma’am.”

“…what?” The stream of profanity cuts off, leaving nothing but Vasquez eyeing him warily in their wake.

Faraday takes a deep breath, bringing a great swath of air into his lungs and then letting it out slowly. He locks his gaze on Vasquez and repeats. “My mother’s words were Excuse me, Ma’am.”

“So?”

“So they’re generic. Commonplace,” he adds when Vasquez gives him a blank stare. “She heard them a dozen times over before she thought she found the right person in dear old dad.”

“And was he the right person?”

“No,” Faraday says, unwilling to provide more detail than that. “He most assuredly was not, and she never found the person who was. Probably she stopped looking, but either way, she died alone and disappointed and part of me always figured that was because she believed in tomfoolery rather than trying to make her life her own.”

“So, what? You saying you don’t think soulbonds are real? You think those of us who want them got something wrong with us? Huh?”

“No, goddamnit, and stop trying to put words in my mouth!” In the back of his mind Faraday wonders if soulmates are always this infuriating or if he’s just lucky that way. “I’m sayin’ I spent my whole damn life trying to pretend I didn’t want a soulbond because I’d seen how they could go wrong, and I’m sayin' that had a negative impact on my feelings towards them.”

“Ooooh, negative impact,” Vasquez sneers. “You trying to impress me with your big words?”

“No, damnit, I’m trying to apologize. Is that so hard to believe?”

Vasquez takes the saw Faraday only just now realizes he’s still holding and lays it atop his work station. Crossing his arms over his chest, he stares at Faraday long and hard. “I don’t believe you,” he says finally.

“Yeah, I got that. Thanks.” Faraday scrubs a hand tiredly over his face, trying his best to ignore the way it makes his bad shoulder twinge. “Look, I meant it when I said it’s been brought to my attention that you’re pissed at me, but maybe what I should have said is that it’s been brought to my attention why you’re pissed as me.”

“You mean because you gave me what you knew I wanted and then almost immediately took it back? I can’t imagine why that would upset anybody.”

“Alright, ignoring the fact that I didn’t take anything back, seeing as you’re the one who’s been ignorin’ me, yes. That is exactly why you’re mad at me.”

The look on Vasquez’s face makes it clear he thinks Faraday has taken leave of his senses. “Do you truly think I need you to explain this to me? Please, continue to enlighten me as to my own fucking feelings.”

“Fine,” Faraday says, manfully keeping a lid on his own temper. “You’re pissed because you think I only reached out through the soulbond because I was sure I was about to die and didn’t see any harm in it. You think I was takin’ pity on you. You think now that I’m not dead I regret what I did and want to back out of it. And you’re wrong. About all of it.”

“Yes?” Vasquez says, voice thick and his posture defensive. “How am I wrong?”

Faraday takes a deep breath. “I reached out through the bond as much for my own sake as for yours,” he says, realizing as the words leave his mouth how true they are. “I didn’t go back on that, I haven’t tried to sever the bond, and the only way I’m going to is if you tell me to and mean it.”

He strides, albeit more limps, over to Vasquez until there’s less than a foot of space between them. “I’m still here, Vas, and I’m not goin’ anywhere unless you make me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I know you don’t,” Faraday says.

Tentatively, he reaches out with one hand and rests it gently on Vasquez’s crossed arms. “Funny thing, though. There’s an awfully easy way for you find out if I’m tellin’ the truth”

Vasquez’s eyes widen and Faraday feels his forearm tense beneath his palm. “No. You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” Faraday says as reassuringly as he can. “I truly, truly do.”

“Faraday.”

“Joshua,” Faraday counters, deciding here and now that he can be Joshua, at least where this one man is concerned.

Vasquez’s mouth twists. “Joshua,” he repeats, looking for all the world like he’s not sure how to make the name fit in his mouth.

“Very good,” Faraday says, pleased. “But I know that’s not all you’ve got in you. Not by a long shot. Let me in, Vas.”

Vasquez gives a stubborn shake of his head, his posture still tense like he’s doing the mental or emotional equivalent of battening down the hatches to keep Faraday out, which in a way is accurate. Just like how Vasquez couldn’t read him when Faraday wouldn’t let him, the same rings true now that their positions are reversed.

Unfortunately for Vasquez, he’s forgetting, or maybe deliberately ignoring, how Faraday operates. While Vasquez may have been inclined to leave well enough alone when it was Faraday who was pulling the stubborn mule act, Faraday is anything but. He’s a born needler, never backing down when he should and always willing to push things beyond their natural boundaries so long as he’s feeling inclined to do so, and right here, right now, he’s never been more inclined.

“Vas,” he says again, stepping forward until he’s well inside the other man’s personal space. “Let me in.”

He shifts the hand he’s been resting on Vasquez’s forearm, trailing it gently along the limb in question, careful of the bandage he knows is tucked beneath the man’s sleeve, still protecting the spot where one lone Blackstone bullet had managed to find its mark, not missing the way Vasquez shivers at his touch. His hand comes to rest on Vasquez’s jaw, cupping it gently in his palm, his thumb absently stroking along the thick stubble there.

“C’mon, Vas.”

Vasquez shakes his head, reminding Faraday oddly of Jack at his most cornered. “I can’t,” he says raggedly.

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I …”

“Can,” Faraday insists. He gives Vasquez a rueful grin. “Come on, hombre. Don’t do this to me now I’ve finally got my head on straight.”

Vasquez huffs a laugh, one with a faint tinge of hysteria behind it. “Your head’s never been on straight, guero. Not since I met you, nor, I’d wager, for long before that.”

Faraday grins. “Probably true, but if it’s a bet you want to place than I’m suggestin’ you put it on me.”

Vasquez rolls his eyes, but the movement is cancelled out by the way he none to subtly nuzzles into the hand Faraday still has curled around his jaw.

“Vas,” Faraday breathes.

“I like it when you call me that,” Vasquez murmurs, voice a low rumble.

“Vas, I will call you anythin' you fuckin' well please and let you do the same for me if you will damn well just let. Me. In.”

Vasquez eyes him for what feels like an eternity, if not longer. Then, his dark eyes dancing while one of those wild grins of his curls around his mouth, he nods.

Faraday knows the exact moment he drops the walls with which he’s been barricading himself beneath for days now. He feels like he does when he’s just taken a punch to the gut, only in a good way, with all the breath knocked out of him and every emotion he’s ever felt, plus a few he probably hasn’t, bursting out of him until he feels raw and exposed.

“Son of a bitch,” he groans, so overwhelmed that he can’t tell what parts are him and what parts are Vasquez. All he knows is that there’s a vast sense of rightrightright thundering through him, threatening to bring him to his knees, which Vasquez must sense because he hauls Faraday in, still ever mindful of his many healing wounds, and folds him up in a solid embrace.

“Easy. Easy,” Vasquez breathes. “I got you.”

“Jesus wept,” Faraday groans as the tidal wave of emotions continues to storm over him. “Why didn’t anybody warn me this is what is fuckin' feels like?”

Vasquez laughs at him, and Faraday doesn’t just hear it. He feels it in the way it rumbles through Vasquez’s chest and also in the way the man’s delighted amusement courses along the newly-focused bond. “You gonna try and tell me you wouldn’t have been such a pain in the ass if only you’d known what to expect, guero?”

“Callin’ me names right now is rude,” Faraday mutters, shifting slightly to take some pressure off his bad leg where it’s starting to pain him again. “I’m a recovering individual, after all.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve been here the whole time, remember?”

Faraday winces at the reminder of just what exactly he’s managed to put Vasquez through, both recently and going all the way back to their first meeting. “Sorry,” he mutters, face heating with uncharacteristic shame.

Vasquez huffs and brings his non-injured arm up so that he can hook his fingers around Faraday’s chin and force him to look him in the eye. “I don’t regret it,” he says firmly.

“You don’t regret that I got shot? Repeatedly?” Faraday says. “Well that seems a might unkind, but I guess I can’t stop you.”

Vasquez mutters something that doesn’t sound overly complimentary. Faraday raises a questioning eyebrow at him, and he translates. “You are going to be nothing but trouble.”

“Well,” Faraday pretends to think about this seriously for a moment. “Yeah.”

Vasquez throws his head back and laughs uproariously, that same delighted bellow he’d let out the night in the saloon when they’d been shouting over each other as Faraday made an ass of himself by showing off his guns. The only difference this time is that Faraday doesn’t so much as  consider trying to keep out the delight that comes flowing to him through the bond.

“Ay,” Vasquez laughs, “so much trouble.”

“Your trouble now,” Faraday feels the need to point out.

“My trouble, eh?” Vasquez says. He cocks his head to the side for a moment, his gaze travelling along Faraday’s body, considering, and then nods. “My trouble it is.”

“Don’t worry,” Faraday assures him. “There will be benefits.”

“Benefits?” Vasquez repeats, as if he’s trying the word out for the first time. His grin turns sharp and Faraday feels something almost dangerous lurking just beneath the surface of the bond, the kind of danger he’ll be happy to jump headlong into because of the excitement that’s bound to come along with it. A sudden burst of desire trails along the bond like a blaze of fire.

“Who says I meant it like that?” Faraday laughs, thumping Vasquez lightly on the chest. “You best be careful there, sir. I will know if you have any improper thoughts towards my person.”

“Improper thoughts, eh? I have those all the time, Faraday. Best get used to them.”

He telegraphs his next move through the bond, the motion coming with enough warning that Faraday’d still have the option of pulling away if he so chose. However, Faraday chooses to do the exact opposite and instead of ducking away from the kiss, surges forward to meet it.

Their mouths crash together so hard their teeth clack and Faraday’s pretty sure his bottom lip gets bitten before they get themselves properly sorted out. He’s even more sure, though, that he does not give a good goddamned and wants nothing more than to focus on the way Vasquez is licking his way inside his mouth, his intention plain.

Faraday’s kissed his fair share of men in his time and his even fairer share of women, but nothing he’s ever gotten up to has so much as come close to what he feels with Vasquez’s mouth on his, both of them battling for dominance in a dance that neither of them is willing to back down on.

“That was not a nice thing you did,” Vasquez murmurs pulling back and trailing a line of kisses along his jaw.

“Hmm?” Faraday asks, only half paying attention.

“The Gatling gun and the dynamite,” Vasquez clarifies, and Faraday groans because apparently they’re going back to this again. “I felt it happen, you know.”

“I know,” Faraday says. He does his best to use the bond to show how much he regrets that, opening it up and encouraging Vasquez in at the same time. He’s gratified to feel something like acknowledgement in response, but he doesn’t imagine it makes up for everything he’s put Vasquez through.

As if he’s putting words to Faraday’s thoughts, a pang of sorrow ratchets through the bond and Vasquez says, “I thought I was going to feel you die, either right when you threw that damn stick of dynamite or after, when I was trying to find you out on that field. I’d already felt it each time you got shot and I knew there couldn’t be much more your body could take.”

Faraday remembers how he’d felt in the moment when he’d realized Vasquez had taken a bullet in the arm and winces. If he’d felt terrible and half out of his mind with worry for something as minor as that, there was no way to even try and qualify what Vasquez must have felt after all the injuries Faraday had sustained.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, the words not ones he’s used overly often in his life, but necessary here. He further punctuates the apology with a kiss and then pulls back to add, “For the record, I didn’t deliberately set out to be that big a pain in the ass.”

Vasquez laughs as that, amusement swelling inside of him and burning off some, albeit not all, of the pain that the memory of Faraday’s injuries has brought up. “You really expect me to believe that, guero? You fought me every step of the way where you and I are concerned and I could tell full well that half the time you were doing it because you could, not because you wanted to.”

Faraday pauses to think about this before he responds. “There may,” he allows after a moment, “be some truth to that.”

Vasquez snorts. “There is definitely truth in it. More than some.” Then he gives Faraday a grin that’s far past wicked and moves to reel him back in again. “I guess you’re gonna have to find a way to make it up to me, eh?” He says, laughing as their mouths meet.

Faraday’s doesn’t know how long they kiss for, but he’s aware enough to know that he’s got his hands buried in Vasquez’s dark curls, and Vasquez is fumbling with Faraday’s belt when the unexpected sound of someone clearing their throat causes them both to jerk apart.

“Ahem!”

Unwillingly, Faraday tears himself away from Vasquez’s mouth and turns to look at where Adelaide Cooper is standing with her arms crossed in the barn doorway, one foot angrily beating a staccato rhythm against the floorboards.

“Uh oh,” Faraday mutters as he none to subtly shuffles sideways to put Vasquez between him and the good doctor like a shield.

“Uh oh is right, Mr. Faraday,” Adelaide barks. “Imagine my surprise when I went to make my rounds and check on you and Mr. Robicheaux and discovered that one of my two most injured patients, as in one of those who shouldn’t even be thinking about trying to stand up for the next week, has gone off for a wander.”

“Doc …” Faraday starts to say, only to belatedly realize he suddenly has a much bigger problem on his hands than a crazy woman with a medical license.

“You broke out of the infirmary?” Vasquez says, aghast, and Faraday can feel that and a wave of worry cresting over him even as he tries to send his own soothing feelings back. “Joshua.”

Faraday winces. “It was a minor break out,” he insists, “and one of great importance considerin’ a certain someone who was refusing to speak to me had wandered halfway across the town. In order to continue not speakin’ to me.” He adds pointedly. “Which I did not like.”

Vasquez glares at him. “You do not get to use me as an excuse to be foolish. You are going back to the room immediately. I should have known you were out of bed without permission.”

Faraday doesn’t need a damn soulbond to tell him there’s no point in arguing with Vasquez right now, so he settles for waggling an admonishing finger in Adelaide’s face as he slowly shuffles past her. “You’ve just put a crimp in a potentially very enjoyable proceeding, ma’am, and I will not forget it.”

Adelaide snorts. “You should be thankin’ me. Ain’t no way your body’s up to what you were about to try and put it through. Better some kind soul head it off at the pass before you embarrass yourself by having to give up part way through.”

Vasquez snickers at her words, even as he falls into step beside Faraday.

“What’re you laughin’ at?” Faraday grouses as they step out of the barn and into the hot afternoon sunlight. “I’m not the only one who’s getting’ the raw end of the deal right now. I’ll have you know that you’re about to miss out on some quality lovemaking.”

Vasquez’s eyebrows shoot up and Faraday immediately feels his face flush redder than a tomato plant when he realizes how one might interpret his choice of wording.

“I … well, that is. Ah hell, you know.” Stumbling over his words isn’t something that happens often to Joshua Faraday but that doesn’t mean he’s completely immune from such an occurrence.

Lucky for him Vasquez is content to leave well enough alone. He simply sends a warm bolt of contentment along their bond and rests a hand gently on Faraday’s elbow as they head back in the direction of the infirmary.

“Come on, guero,” he says easily. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

As with before, the staircase leading up the infirmary proves to be Faraday’s greatest difficulty in his still injured state.

“Whose idea was it to put us upstairs?” He grouses as he slowly makes his way up the steps, Vasquez a welcome and steady presence at his side. “Injured people should not have to deal with climbing of any nature.”

“S’quieter upstairs,” Vasquez simply. “Helps with the healing, if not so much the escaping.”

Faraday’s tired enough by the time the door to his and Goodnight’s room is in sight that he’s figuring it was the right idea to come back when he did – not that he’s ever going to admit that out loud, of course. He can hear a low murmur of voices coming from within the room, even through the closed door. Chances were good that meant Billy’d reappeared from wherever he’d stashed himself this time and has resumed his usual place at Goodnight’s side.

“I resent the fact that I’m stuck sharin’ a room right now,” he mutters. “I’m startin’ to forget what havin' privacy feels like.”

Vasquez cocks an eyebrow at him and gives him a sharp grin. “Silly thing to resent when you’re under doctor’s orders not do anything, anyway.”

Faraday sniffs. “They’re gonna know,” he says plaintively.

“Yes,” Vasquez agrees, “most likely.”

“They’re gonna make fun of us.”

“Yes, most likely. Though more you than me, I suspect.”

“I do not appreciate that sort of thing.”

Vasquez gives him a long look and then suddenly reels him in for a breath-stealing kiss, not unlike those they’d been sharing in the barn prior to Adelaide’s arrival. When he pulls back his eyes are dancing as he runs his tongue along his lush bottom lip. “Suffer through for now and I promise to make it worth your while once I can.”

Faraday needs a moment to collect himself, and Vasquez again takes advantage of his delicate state and presses a series of kisses along his jaw.

“You’re a wily cheater, Vas,” Faraday grits out, “but you’ve got a deal.”

“Good,” Vasquez replies, pulling back so that he can hook a hand around Faraday’s elbow and none too subtly direct him back towards the room. “Now, come. Time for you to lie down.”

“Been layin’ down for half my goddamn life at this point, it feels like,” Faraday mutters, but he allows himself to be pulled along anyway.

Vasquez keeps his hand on Faraday’s elbow even as he pushes the door open and Goodnight and Billy both look up from where they’re playing a game of cards. He further keeps it there as he gently propels Faraday towards his bed and only lets go so that Faraday can get himself situated comfortably beneath the covers.

“So,” Goodnight says after a long pause wherein Vasquez fusses with the bedding and pointedly drags a chair over to the bedside, “you found him then.”

“Obviously, I did,” Faraday replies, settling back against his pillows with a contented sigh.

Beside him, Vasquez kicks his heels up onto the bed, careful not to jostle Faraday much, and reclines comfortably back in his seat.

“He’s right where he’s supposed to be.”