![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustWell, here’s one of the Porn Battle prompts, finally come to fruition: No actual porn involved, though, freakishly. Guess it just turns out like that, sometimes…
3:10 to Yuma, Ben/Charlie, Yuma prison (for sunisshingnow)
That second time Ben Wade ended up in Yuma (the whole business about Velvet, plus a bit of gunrunning and minor shit-disturbance on the side), Charlie Prince decided to sucker-punch a Pink and get himself thrown in as well—the better to aid in Ben’s escape, he said, once the time came. Problem was, it didn’t come quite as soon as either of them’d been expecting.
As befitted a former cavalry station, Yuma kept its inhabitants outdoors as much as possible, working them like cattle. Neither congenial nor convivial, the place ran on the rockpile principle: Forced, perpetual, useless labor, with the cells only kept locked at night. A rifle at every corner of the quarry that served as a yard. Though Ben wasn’t too over-fond of sweating, as a rule—unless it was done between sheets—this roundelay was nothing he hadn’t had before, and nothing he couldn’t handle; he built up calluses quickly, and had soon relaxed enough to let himself halfway enjoy the way shovelling and picking all day was already starting to shave a few inches off his widening gut.
Didn't surprise Ben much that what Charlie initially responded worst to was less having to break rocks or wear chains than having his well-chosen finery replaced with a convict’s uniform. He was no stranger to hard work, after all—his own background had probably once demanded far more of it on a daily basis than Ben’s ever had, scrabbling to extract a living from some holler’s dead soil and praising God out loud, while all the while cursing Him inside. So he drove in his pick with a will and never complained, pushing himself far harder than he should’ve and ending each shift covered skin-deep with dust, gold beard gone grey before its time; came shuffling back to their mutual prison all dazed with fatigue and hatlessness, sunburnt lobster-red.
“Don’t have to…do that…” Charlie told Ben, listlessly, trying his best not to flinch too obviously as he used a wet rag to flense the worst of it away, strip by strip. But Ben just fixed him with one cocked brow, inquiring (in a tone which, though civil, brooked no opposition)—
“You wouldn’t be tryin’ to school me on what I can and can’t, now—would you, Charlie Prince?”
Barely audible: “No. Boss.”
“Well, good. As for this, you’re no earthly use to me if you get yourself so’s you can’t even ride, are you? For ‘The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil, and stripes the inward parts of the belly’; Proverbs, 20:30.”
“Uh huh.“ After a pause: “What’s that even mean?”
A fair question, if inconvenient, since Ben couldn’t recall whether the Good Book offered much clarification on the subject. So:
“Means stay still and take it, ‘fore it gets any worse,” he answered, shortly. Knowing that Charlie would.
Still, there were other dangers, and they raised their heads soon enough. It wasn’t that Ben feared for his second-in-command’s virtue, exactly—for even without his Schofields, small and fine as he was, Charlie was a force to be reckoned with. The very first man tried to pin him against a cliff wall got an eye almost put out well before Ben caught up with them, leaning neatly in from behind to slip an arm ‘round the bastard’s unprotected bull-neck and squeeze down hard—and all as Charlie just kept on wrestling against that tree-trunk grip, snarling and snapping in the amorous con’s face like a rabid dog.
What rankled most (Ben thought) was probably less the brawl itself, the insult of the man’s attention, Charlie’s inequitable position—God alone knew Ben’d seen Charlie in similar straits often enough, and worse, without him ever yet developing enough of a sense of self-preservation to back down, let alone turn over—than the fact that instead of breaking it up, the guards’d just stood there watching, and laughed while they did it. Taking bets.
“When Campos gets here—“ Ben murmured, sidelong, as they lined up for chow; but all Charlie had for that was a half-snorted cat-sneeze exhalation of breath, shoulders jerking impatiently upwards. Replying, similarly low:
“—if he ever does—”
“Aw, c’mon now, Charlie. Ain’t you the exact same fearsome young man you was last month? ‘Cause from where I sit, there’s nothin’ changed but the circumstances…and the location.” Adding, with a sly grin: “So think on that a while, and buck up.”
And Charlie tried, certainly—from what Ben could see, at least. But he knew his second-in-command well enough to reckon just how deep the mounting melancholy might spread, if given opportunity to take root: Boy probably hadn’t been anywhere he couldn’t ride away from at barely a moment’s notice since the War’s end, after all, and wasn’t made to flourish in a cage, either. Wild things never were.
Nights, it got cold; nothing new there, aside from the bars—and the company. That same evening, after roll-call was done and the lanterns put out, Ben found Charlie already asleep—curled in on himself in the cell’s corner, shivering. So he bent to thread both arms under his own and hugged him tight, lending his warmth almost without thinking (except to smile a bit at this unlikely bid for saintliness, this Bad Samaritanism). And the next morning, he surfaced from dreams with Charlie Prince still wound ‘round him like they were bottom of the pile on a three-dog night, breathing slow, mouth dream-soft and slack…his snores loud enough to stir the hair on Ben’s chest, ever so slightly, where it poked from the half-unbuttoned collar of his prison uniform’s shirt.
He expected mockery at the least, punishment at the most, when the trustee came to unlock ‘em. But one good thing about Yuma, it seemed, was that laissez-faire cut both ways—and when it came to how the prisoners chose to keep ‘emselves warm, ‘long as nothing they did involved making a break wall-wards, the guards seemed pretty much happy enough to leave everyone to their own devices.
A week after that, Campos finally came (with Apache Joe in tow), and blew the gate to smithereens; Ben and Charlie let the guards pick off most of the first wave, using them as cover to gain the bunkhouse, where that same trustee—seeing them coming—had already unlocked the cabinet, and threw them their weapons. Then they were over the wall and onto horseback, shed of the damn place at long last; dug in their heels and made for the hills with Charlie laughing all the way, like he was touched, or drunk.
That’s some sunstroke, Ben thought, and found he was laughing too, almost as loud. So Goddamn glad to be free and clear, 'specially so with Charlie at his side...
“Don’t aim to go back there anytime soon,” Ben told him, later on, as they drank Splitfoot Joe out of good (and bad) whiskey. “You?”
Charlie’s answering smile was more than half snarl. “Shoot my own damn self, first,” he said, succinctly, “’less I’m out of bullets. But then, that happens, I guess you’ll just have to do it for me…like I’d do for you, you asked me. Boss.”
Ben poured Charlie another shot, clinked bottle to glass, took a slug—then dumped the rest in the fireplace, along with the bottle itself; a smash of glass and the flames blazed up blue, bleaching them both ‘til they almost looked related.
“Deal,” he said.
THE END
3:10 to Yuma, Ben/Charlie, Yuma prison (for sunisshingnow)
That second time Ben Wade ended up in Yuma (the whole business about Velvet, plus a bit of gunrunning and minor shit-disturbance on the side), Charlie Prince decided to sucker-punch a Pink and get himself thrown in as well—the better to aid in Ben’s escape, he said, once the time came. Problem was, it didn’t come quite as soon as either of them’d been expecting.
As befitted a former cavalry station, Yuma kept its inhabitants outdoors as much as possible, working them like cattle. Neither congenial nor convivial, the place ran on the rockpile principle: Forced, perpetual, useless labor, with the cells only kept locked at night. A rifle at every corner of the quarry that served as a yard. Though Ben wasn’t too over-fond of sweating, as a rule—unless it was done between sheets—this roundelay was nothing he hadn’t had before, and nothing he couldn’t handle; he built up calluses quickly, and had soon relaxed enough to let himself halfway enjoy the way shovelling and picking all day was already starting to shave a few inches off his widening gut.
Didn't surprise Ben much that what Charlie initially responded worst to was less having to break rocks or wear chains than having his well-chosen finery replaced with a convict’s uniform. He was no stranger to hard work, after all—his own background had probably once demanded far more of it on a daily basis than Ben’s ever had, scrabbling to extract a living from some holler’s dead soil and praising God out loud, while all the while cursing Him inside. So he drove in his pick with a will and never complained, pushing himself far harder than he should’ve and ending each shift covered skin-deep with dust, gold beard gone grey before its time; came shuffling back to their mutual prison all dazed with fatigue and hatlessness, sunburnt lobster-red.
“Don’t have to…do that…” Charlie told Ben, listlessly, trying his best not to flinch too obviously as he used a wet rag to flense the worst of it away, strip by strip. But Ben just fixed him with one cocked brow, inquiring (in a tone which, though civil, brooked no opposition)—
“You wouldn’t be tryin’ to school me on what I can and can’t, now—would you, Charlie Prince?”
Barely audible: “No. Boss.”
“Well, good. As for this, you’re no earthly use to me if you get yourself so’s you can’t even ride, are you? For ‘The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil, and stripes the inward parts of the belly’; Proverbs, 20:30.”
“Uh huh.“ After a pause: “What’s that even mean?”
A fair question, if inconvenient, since Ben couldn’t recall whether the Good Book offered much clarification on the subject. So:
“Means stay still and take it, ‘fore it gets any worse,” he answered, shortly. Knowing that Charlie would.
Still, there were other dangers, and they raised their heads soon enough. It wasn’t that Ben feared for his second-in-command’s virtue, exactly—for even without his Schofields, small and fine as he was, Charlie was a force to be reckoned with. The very first man tried to pin him against a cliff wall got an eye almost put out well before Ben caught up with them, leaning neatly in from behind to slip an arm ‘round the bastard’s unprotected bull-neck and squeeze down hard—and all as Charlie just kept on wrestling against that tree-trunk grip, snarling and snapping in the amorous con’s face like a rabid dog.
What rankled most (Ben thought) was probably less the brawl itself, the insult of the man’s attention, Charlie’s inequitable position—God alone knew Ben’d seen Charlie in similar straits often enough, and worse, without him ever yet developing enough of a sense of self-preservation to back down, let alone turn over—than the fact that instead of breaking it up, the guards’d just stood there watching, and laughed while they did it. Taking bets.
“When Campos gets here—“ Ben murmured, sidelong, as they lined up for chow; but all Charlie had for that was a half-snorted cat-sneeze exhalation of breath, shoulders jerking impatiently upwards. Replying, similarly low:
“—if he ever does—”
“Aw, c’mon now, Charlie. Ain’t you the exact same fearsome young man you was last month? ‘Cause from where I sit, there’s nothin’ changed but the circumstances…and the location.” Adding, with a sly grin: “So think on that a while, and buck up.”
And Charlie tried, certainly—from what Ben could see, at least. But he knew his second-in-command well enough to reckon just how deep the mounting melancholy might spread, if given opportunity to take root: Boy probably hadn’t been anywhere he couldn’t ride away from at barely a moment’s notice since the War’s end, after all, and wasn’t made to flourish in a cage, either. Wild things never were.
Nights, it got cold; nothing new there, aside from the bars—and the company. That same evening, after roll-call was done and the lanterns put out, Ben found Charlie already asleep—curled in on himself in the cell’s corner, shivering. So he bent to thread both arms under his own and hugged him tight, lending his warmth almost without thinking (except to smile a bit at this unlikely bid for saintliness, this Bad Samaritanism). And the next morning, he surfaced from dreams with Charlie Prince still wound ‘round him like they were bottom of the pile on a three-dog night, breathing slow, mouth dream-soft and slack…his snores loud enough to stir the hair on Ben’s chest, ever so slightly, where it poked from the half-unbuttoned collar of his prison uniform’s shirt.
He expected mockery at the least, punishment at the most, when the trustee came to unlock ‘em. But one good thing about Yuma, it seemed, was that laissez-faire cut both ways—and when it came to how the prisoners chose to keep ‘emselves warm, ‘long as nothing they did involved making a break wall-wards, the guards seemed pretty much happy enough to leave everyone to their own devices.
A week after that, Campos finally came (with Apache Joe in tow), and blew the gate to smithereens; Ben and Charlie let the guards pick off most of the first wave, using them as cover to gain the bunkhouse, where that same trustee—seeing them coming—had already unlocked the cabinet, and threw them their weapons. Then they were over the wall and onto horseback, shed of the damn place at long last; dug in their heels and made for the hills with Charlie laughing all the way, like he was touched, or drunk.
That’s some sunstroke, Ben thought, and found he was laughing too, almost as loud. So Goddamn glad to be free and clear, 'specially so with Charlie at his side...
“Don’t aim to go back there anytime soon,” Ben told him, later on, as they drank Splitfoot Joe out of good (and bad) whiskey. “You?”
Charlie’s answering smile was more than half snarl. “Shoot my own damn self, first,” he said, succinctly, “’less I’m out of bullets. But then, that happens, I guess you’ll just have to do it for me…like I’d do for you, you asked me. Boss.”
Ben poured Charlie another shot, clinked bottle to glass, took a slug—then dumped the rest in the fireplace, along with the bottle itself; a smash of glass and the flames blazed up blue, bleaching them both ‘til they almost looked related.
“Deal,” he said.
THE END
