Chapter Text
The grass was golden in hue, holy and unbound by the wind, slowly gracing its way through the long stalks, whispering against the cool soil beneath with gentle kisses. The field looked like a delta, the way the long grass stretched in patches along the rolling hills. The sun didn’t beat down as it usually did, instead opting for a soft blanket of warmth that was pleasant and welcome.
Dallas pats along his horse’s neck, pulling an apple from his pack and offering it, stretching across so she could better see it from the side. She took the offer silently, but her tail swished with enjoyment. He could hear the way it beat against her own legs, some strands coming up to hit the back of the saddle.
It had been a year since he had been home. Distracted by one too many things on his initial excursion, delayed by more, and to add insult to injury a little bit of lostness for a short while, he missed the ranch something terrible. With every gust of wind, he imagined it picking him up and sweeping him across the mountains and back into his little oasis, far from civilization and hidden away from anything else similar. There, his daughter and his fathers would be waiting for him with open arms.
He kicked his horse into speed with a call, and burst westward, where he could find home again in sweet blissful solace.
* * *
The sky was a deep blue, crimson along the edges before he even hit forest. The mountains taunted him in their tall stature, coming into focus but never offering their base to him. Stars twinkled and laughed at him, teasing and constant in their effortless dances.
He lit a small fire and pitched a tent, patting the ground beneath with a fury before joining Kaia by the nearby stream. She huffed at him and sat down near the tent, saddle clinking sadly. Slowly, he filled his canteen, splashing in the water with frustration. It was in these quiet nights, accompanied only by frogs and crickets, the occasional owl, and sometimes the howl of a coyote or wolf, that he knew just how much he’d messed up by leaving. Knew he was a terrible son, a terrible father, for leaving them behind because of some stupid adventure.
The day he found Clementine, he swore off of outlaw life, settling for something a lot more peaceful and a lot less dangerous. But he was a young man, now almost grown, and he still felt the strong itching sensation, the wild calling like this strange alluring feeling. He wanted the wind in his hair, he yearned for it daily. To feel like he was running from something, to feel like he got away. A sharpshooter by nature, by talent, by instinct. The thrum of it left him reeling every time.
And then, just as the lovely thought of that came, he was back to his original moping. What kind of a father was he, having thoughts like this even on his way back home? What kind of son was he, to leave his fathers worrying and unaware of his wiles? Sure, he had helped plenty of folk along his way, but that was just the unspoken rule among outlaws, surely. To be kind.
What a joke he was.
He drank from the canteen bitterly.
* * *
Now, he had been on the road a very long time. He had seen all kinds of people, all kinds of stories, and most certainly all kinds of prettyness and ugliness alike. But never had he seen hair just as red as his own Clementine’s, vibrant as apples and shimmering like a river under moonlight. The stranger himself was sleeping against a rock, sweat dripping down his neck and staining his shirt like a foreigner in July. Pretty eyelashes stuck to his warm cheeks, and pale skin burnt pink laid everywhere his white dress shirt couldn’t reach. The collar was high, or at least would have been if the shirt hadn’t been unbuttoned and laid his chest bare.
“Excuse me, mister?” He called out from his place on Kaia.
The man groaned airily, head lolling to the side. Now this just wouldn’t do, a pretty thing like him, alone and dying.
Dallas hopped off, approaching the man and purposefully kicking the ground enough to let his spurs be known, canteen swishing as he shook it above the man.
“Ya speak English? I got water.”
“Please…” The man rasped, eyes opening blearily to reveal the most crystalline green eyes Dallas had ever seen. If it weren’t for the circumstances, Dallas wouldn’t turn the opportunity down to lean against a tavern wall and drink the sight in.
He passed the canteen over, which he had filled the night before in his self-pitying stupor. The stranger gulped it down generously, sighing with bliss as soon as he was finished.
“What’s yer name, stranger?” Dallas asked.
“Argenti.”
“Ya not from here?”
“No… no, not at all.”
“Well. Ya wanna hitch a ride somewhere where ya won’t lay like dryin’ clothes on a rock, bakin’?”
“Please.” He said again.
And that was how his trip got ten times less lonely.
Now, at first, Argenti had seemed a quiet man. Dallas took him for the brooding type, that was, until he asked for a second swig from the canteen. Dallas gave it to him without question, and that was when the talking started, and thereafter didn’t stop.
Hundreds of questions, stories of his journey leading up to drying up like a fish, affirmations and praise dripping from him like honey, thick and sweet. There wasn’t a moment of silence after that second swig, and Dallas didn’t hate it. The contrast of being alone for so long and having someone like Argenti hanging from him like this was truly baffling. The man was so intrigued, so unaware and enthusiastic still. He didn’t have to know what he was loving to love it, he just had to know that it could be loved.
He talked about the way the sun hit the grass, the way the rivers twisted and curled beneath them, how the hills barged up into rockier terrain as they approached the mountains. He praised every piece of meat Dallas brought him for dinner, every herb foraged and practically every breath taken. Don’t even get him started on Kaia. The horse enchanted him, like he was witnessing a god bare down on the earth, each step lacing the land with magic. It all amused Dallas like no other. He hadn’t laughed this much since Clementine first started stringing words together.
By the end of the day, Argenti had mellowed out. More of a silent admiration took hold of the man, gasping at every bird with bated breath. The mountains were growing steeper, and Kaia began to slow down with exertion. Dallas guided Argenti off of her, stepping down and instead holding her curb strap and leading her the clearest direction. Checking the stars, bright in their constellations, clear as clear could be in the wilderness, they stretched on in the lanternlight hanging from Dallas’ hip.
“What are you looking for, my ranger?”
He chuckled and hid his smile by looking at the ground, but offered a swift reply even still, “Was lookin’ at the stars. Tells the direction we’re goin’. I didn’t exactly have the funds to purchase a compass when I- uh. Left town.”
“And where did you learn such an admirable skill?” His hand grasped Dallas’ shoulder, eyes sparkling in the light of the moon, glowing with the lantern. It was like the color gold refused to leave the man. Golden in the light of the sun, golden even when the only light was an oil lamp. Golden in the dark.
“My Pa taught me, mister. Say, did ya never learn? Ya seem like the type.”
“No, I can’t say I have. I had never even considered the stars in such a way. How fascinating. Truly a feat of human ingenuity.”
“What kind of a literature wack like yerself wouldn’t know natural navigation??” Dallas laughed at the irony, tripping over a rock and clearing his voice with embarrassment.
“I wouldn’t exactly refer to myself as a ‘wack’ for literature, per se. I take more of a shine to scripture and history myself. Although, I’m finding that what I may have known before would not exactly apply in most cases.”
“Ha! Rapunzel’s realizin’ there’s more th’n the tower, eh?” He drawled.
Things got quiet for a bit, with the two men and the horse trudging their way up the side of the mountain as carefully as they could. It wasn’t much of an incline, as they weren’t headed with the goal of reaching the summit, but there were some parts that proved more difficult than others.
“My ranger, I grow exhausted. I don’t mean to burden you, but may we rest?”
“‘Course. Sun’s been gone for a little while now, anyway. Might as well save the oil.”
He gave Argenti the tent, while he opted for leaning against where Kaia had plopped down. Her breathing lulled him to sleep, and as he pulled his hat over his face, he felt the itching under his ribs ebb with peace.
There isn’t much to say about sleeping under the stars, at least if you ask any person with a roof over their head. Dallas had spent over half his life blanketed by the graces of Mother Night each night, the glow of the moon hitting its face in its cool dewy feel. In his honest opinion, there was nothing better.
The sounds of nightlife– and not that stupid city shit, but night life– comforted Dallas like no other. The crickets chirped and some of the fireflies swirled around in the tallgrass nearer to the water. The branches above shivered and swayed in the soft, warm winds. Each gust brought the smell of the night flooding into each of Dallas’ senses. It wasn’t something overwhelming, like how the winter cold piercing the lungs might be, but instead more like a brushing-of-fingertips type of gentleness. Hesitance. The sound of an inhalation just before spoken word.
Argenti lightly snored, a welcome new sound to the night's symphony.
* * *
When the sun rose, so did everything else. It took longer for Argenti to wake compared to Dallas, who had always been used to rising early with the sun. A morning mist fluttered and whispered across the vast expanse of mountains, a dewy feeling that embedded deep past the layer of skin and settled like silt onto bone. Flemmy stickiness, plaque and algae. The mist gave a pathway of sunny beams that shone their blessings onto the land, ethereal.
Dallas had met many a man, but none quite like Argenti. The men that drifted in and out of Dallas’ life had red, bulbous noses and a certain nasal-y tone that rumbled and raged. These men were tall, although at times some may have been short, but all had a rasp and a gurgle. All had a red-faced ugliness to them, yellowed teeth and a guffawing laugh. Pores wide open on their faces, dead glints in their eyes just beneath the glaze of slick expressions.
Argenti was none of that. He was an endless expanse of smooth cleanliness. Toned, refined, borderline regal. He nearly died in a dress shirt, for God’s sake. Dallas would be blessed if he had died in less. Argenti’s hair was the purest silk, flowing, curling like the petals of a rose, glimmering and luscious. His smile was moonlight off of water, teeth white against blossoming pink cheeks. Spring incarnate. His eyes and his voice were calm and soothing, every word from him dripped with a sickening genuinity.
Needless to say, Dallas was entranced. Seduced, even! In the purest sense of the phrase. He found himself staring, listening, waiting for the next word from him and hanging onto every one given. Argenti would laugh and for a brief moment, Dallas could feel the land before them with an acute awareness that drugged him beyond repair. He was hooked; line, sinker, and all.
The scariest thing about the whole ordeal was that he wasn’t even particularly afraid. Sure, he had seen the horrors and transgressions of man against men in the name of righteousness– he knew the circumstances in which he was raised weren’t necessarily safe to talk about, with the fondness his fathers had for each other– and he was plenty aware of how it may have affected his … view on certain things. He had seen atrocities done in the name of removing his kind. And yet… he was not worried. Not in the slightest.
Not when he got to look at Argenti crane his neck upwards to look at the birds, not when he got to drink up the sight of muscles bowed and crooning in reverence. He felt as though despite the rest of his life being spent a full man, he was suddenly starved, malnourished, and by God downright ravenous. And as that thought came, Dallas felt the terror finally rear its head.
He was an outlaw, sure, but he never felt like that kind, before.
The growl of his stomach was his saving grace. He retreated to the woods to hunt, and cursed to himself at his own stupidity.…although, there was no harm in indulging his own thoughts, when there was none around but himself and the world. Thoughts of laughing and shining hair and the urge to be around the other man, well, they were between him and the earth beneath him.
By the time he dragged the pheasant back, he was already branded with the searing iron truth of a lovesick fool.