Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The prompt was requested by TheLastFig.

Faraday doesn’t know what started it; really he doesn’t. It’s just there and it won’t stop. What’s a man to do?

Red ignores him and rides past Sam and all the rest using the excuse to scout the trail ahead as a getaway from Faraday. The others aren’t as lucky.

Billy just glares increasingly heatedly at him, especially when Goodnight reacts by stiffening up and blanching just a little. If the Cajun grips his reigns a little tighter, Faraday doesn’t notice.

Jack simply asks if it’s from a hymnal and Goodnight nearly chokes before riding ahead after Red. Faraday continues and just shakes his head.

Sam gives one long, cold, level look complete with a raised eyebrow when he recognizes it and Faraday nearly stops then.

He would have too if Vasquez hadn’t just rolled his eyes because this is the latest in a long line of Faraday’s annoying habits. The Mexican won’t say he finds the tune catchy; after all, he has more Spanish ones he can hum instead and begins doing so.

Faraday grins when he realizes he has an accompanist, even though Vasquez isn’t humming along with ‘Dixie’ but with something else instead. He knew he liked that Mexican.

Chapter Text

Faraday may as well wear a sign on his forehead that says ‘Why always me?’ for as often as he thinks that question. Ah well, he thinks now as he runs his hands over his newly developed feminine parts that he can’t quite explain how they came to be. At least he isn’t the only one.

Billy is wide-eyed and staring at his curved hips and small breasts that are strangely free in the shirt he would have normally worn otherwise. Goodnight is torn between staring at Billy’s growth spurt of hair that now falls in silky waves down to his-her?-back, and feeling his own changed body. He laughs when he realizes his goatee is gone and his jaw has rounded into the face of a beautiful Southern belle. “Well, I’ll be” is all he says and doesn’t take his eyes off the beauty that is Billy as a woman.

Jack is spouting Bible verses and mentioning demons and their magic while Red is glaring at Faraday something fierce. Sam has never blushed once since Joshua met him, but he is now while trying to maintain a modicum of privacy by holding his now too-loose shirt around his chest.

But it’s Vasquez that really does him in. Swearing up, down, and sideways Faraday is trying to dodge what he knows is unpleasant insults from the Mexican while also trying not to stare at the simply divine goddess in front of him. Tall, lean, long dark hair and eyes that could stop a train, Faraday finds himself-herself?-in utter, desperate love.

“Now darlin, is that really ladylike?” he asks when Vasquez calls him a fucker for what has to be the tenth time.

Drawing breath sharply, Vasquez reaches out and hauls Faraday against his-her?-body and his-her?-eyes flash darkly. “This is why we don’t buy strange things from stranger people isn’t it, cabron?”

“I dunno. You look pretty good to me.” Faraday grins, flashing his-her?-teeth and kicks the elixir that he’d found off a snake oil salesman back behind the bed. So what if they’re all women now? It’ll wear off eventually.

Wouldn't it?

Chapter Text

Vasquez wasn’t sure the name of the small mining town they were currently stopped in. It didn’t matter. He was sure to keep his head down to avoid anyone that may recognize him from the wanted posters that still dotted notice boards outside sheriff’s offices. Chisholm and Red similarly didn’t want to attract attention. Vasquez had left them in the saloon and had returned to his rented room above it with a bottle of whisky in hand. It wasn’t that he was apt for drinking, but ever since Rose Creek…

He made a displeased sound in the back of his throat and took another swig of the bottle. The liquid rolled in the bottle as he leaned back in his chair, burning fire down his throat as he tried to find that lull that Faraday had always been fond of. Vasquez had been trying for weeks and still he couldn’t find it.

Vasquez knew he was feeling sorry for himself and grieving over something that never really existed. He knew that Chisholm and Red were giving one another concerned looks whenever he lagged a little too far behind on the trail, or if he looked a little too far off into the distance for just a little too long. They didn’t mention the drinking but Chisholm wasn’t ignoring it either. He figured it was only a matter of time before the other man outright addressed it or told him to get lost.

Outside, Vasquez heard a group of riders go through town. It was late. The miners were probably headed back to their camp to get a few hours’ sleep before heading back into the mine with the daylight. He took another drink and realized he would finish the bottle with his next one. Was it worth it, the effort to get up and continue his new habit? Vasquez debated. He was tired; so tired it went all the way through his bones and he wasn’t sure what would make him feel better. He fully expected to die at Rose Creek or for Chisholm to go back on his word and have him taken in for the ranger’s death. He never expected to live and he never expected to be given some small measure of freedom.

He was squandering it; he knew that. He wasn’t used to having the luxury of being able to make a decision because he wanted to. He was only used to running and ducking, hiding and hunting, living on scraps and hardly anything at all. To be well cared for, well treated, loved even, was laughable and a distant, distant memory.

Except that it wasn’t.

Vasquez and Faraday hadn’t had enough time to determine what it was exactly that they were doing. It was considered wrong every which way you looked at it, but Vasquez still held a feeling that maybe, maybe if they’d had a few more moments or met in a different time or place that something could have been forged between them. Some feeling, some fondness that ran a little deeper than simply friends or acquaintances. Maybe it had just been his thinking, his own messed up projection of wanting…of being needed by someone… Maybe Faraday only saw him as a damn Mexican that could one day be his friend and no more, if even that.

Vasquez finished the bottle and pushed himself to his feet. He stumbled, catching himself hard on the table. It had gotten dark; the lamp having burnt out long ago. He reached around on the table to find the other bottle he had brought with him but he was having trouble finding it in the blackness. He heard footsteps outside his door and when the door slowly opened, he figured Chisholm was checking on him before bunking down in his own room.

“’m fine, amigo. Buenas noches.” Vasquez was pretty sure if Chisholm was able to understand any of that he would have had to get very good at deciphering the slurred speech of Mexicans. But the person at his door didn’t leave. Vasquez sighed and hoped it wasn’t some fool looking for trouble; even in the dark, his gun was close enough at hand that he could still use it, even if he were drunker than a skunk.

He turned slowly and squinted. There was lamplight from the hallway but it was only helping aid his stupor of being able to recognize vague outlines and not actual details. Squinting or no, Vasquez knew it wasn’t the Marshall at the door but nor was it their Native friend either.

“I said I was fine.”

“Yeah, you look it.”

Vasquez stopped inching his fingers for his gunbelt at the man’s voice and he started to go down for the floor, his legs going out from under him altogether. The other man was quick, not quick enough to save one of Vasquez’s knees from hitting the chair he recently vacated or the cry of pain that came from it. Faraday was able to still put an arm around the man’s waist and take a decent amount of his weight.

“Easy now, I got you.” Faraday more or less got Vasquez onto the bed but the Mexican fought against him, reaching for the matches on the table. “What? What do you want?” The American asked and Vasquez thrust the box of matches into his hand.

“The lamp. Now.”

Faraday seemed to translate that well enough because a moment later and there was the sound of the match catching, brightening the room for a moment and Vasquez lost the ability to breathe. There, for that brief moment until he turned away, was Joshua Faraday’s face. When he turned back around, the lamp had created a warm glow that confirmed that Vasquez wasn’t dreaming.

“How-- How are you alive?”

Faraday laughed, if an amused exhale could be considered such. Vasquez paled and moved to the other side of the room, quickly becoming sober.

“I never died in the first place. Got damn close and not for lack of trying though.” The other man replied when he saw that Vasquez wasn’t calming down. “Mrs. Cullen made sure the doc knew who he was going to answer to if I didn’t pull through.”

Vasquez stared at the man in front of him and couldn’t believe his eyes. Faraday looked more or less the same, with a few scrapes and scratches evident on his face that Vasquez could only imagine how bad they had been at first. He was also favoring his left leg and hadn’t once looked at the bottle that Vasquez left on the table.

“It took a week or two to find you all or I’d have been here sooner.” Faraday added when still Vasquez did not speak. “D’you want me to go?”

Vasquez made a pained sound and shook his head quickly. “No. No you sit, guero.”

Faraday eased himself slowly into the chair that Vasquez had left as the other man sat on the bed to face him. Vasquez couldn’t take his eyes off the other man’s face, something that seemed to make him uncomfortable the longer he did it.

“Am I that ugly now?” He half smirked but the Mexican shook his head.

“You were never ugly, guero.” He reached out then to brush his fingers along Faraday’s jaw. He barely let the pads of his fingers touch one of the red raised marks on the other man’s face. To his credit, Faraday didn’t jerk back but his lips thinned at the gesture.

Vasquez left his hand on Faraday’s face and kept eye contact with the man. Something stirred in him and he felt his eyes begin to water, but he refused to look away.

“It’s alright, Vas. I’m right here.” Faraday took Vasquez’s other hand and put it over his heart to feel the beat under his balm. “Right here.”

Vasquez let out a breath, a pained and tortured sound. He looked away at last and blinked, swallowing past the thickness in his throat.

“Will you still be in the morning? When the coffee wakes me up?” Vasquez asked quietly and heard Faraday shuffle in the seat.

“Yeah, about that…” He looked over accusingly at the American and Faraday held his hands up. “All I was gonna say was I didn’t have any where else to stay so I was hoping you’d share your room.”

Vasquez stared at the other man for a moment before growling and hauling him out of the chair and onto the bed. He didn’t mean for it to turn into anything other than a way to get the other man to shut up, but it did. Vasquez leaned down and kissed him with all the weeks of sadness and loss he had felt. To his surprise and relief, Faraday didn’t push him away and even kissed him back.

Faraday shifted under him after several moments to move further back on the bed and make himself more comfortable. He didn’t let go of Vasquez but held him close once he had adjusted.

“I’m right here, Vasquez.” Faraday met his eyes in the lamplight and Vasquez couldn’t help it. He shifted lower to kiss him again, even as the tears slipped from his eyes.

Vasquez told him—mostly in Spanish but partly in English too—what he had wanted to say and do since he thought the other man had died. He told him he had missed him, he might even love him, and that he never wanted Faraday to go. He kept talking and talking until the alcohol from earlier caught up and he began to get drowsy. He fought his exhaustion but Faraday stopped him with a light squeeze to his shoulder.

“Vas, get some sleep. I’m right here and I’ll be here when you wake up again.”

Vasquez watched Faraday through half-open eyes. “Promise querido?”

“I promise.” Faraday leaned up to kiss him again and Vasquez responded to it. “Go to sleep.”

Vasquez nodded slowly and laid back down, making sure to keep his arm around Faraday’s waist and head over the other man’s heart. Faraday kept his arms around Vasquez as the other man began to pass out from exhaustion. The last thing he heard was Faraday saying that he loved him too.

For the first time in a long time, Vasquez was able to sleep peacefully.

Chapter Text

Billy is not the only one to have bad dreams, and it is often Goodnight that has them. More often than not, it is Billy who is roused from his sleep with a sharp elbow flailed out of panic, or rushed, slurred words of a man pleading for mercy from the demons only his mind knows. Billy doesn’t dream often and its even less likely that he remembers his because he doesn’t consider them important. There are a few that he remembers and that is usually only because Goody was involved in them in some way, but most he forgets.

One is reliving the most perfect day, the two of them together by a cabin they had found in the woods and a stream running nearby. Even in his sleep, he can feel the warmth of the sunlight on Goodnight’s skin as Billy’s fingers trailed over the man’s chest. He can feel Goody’s sharp inhale and the strength in Goody’s arms as he is pulled into a kiss. Not passionate, not frenzied, but no less perfect. Out in the wilds, there was no need for secrecy or shame. Only the two of them in the world and Billy had never known peace like it.

Another is deeply rooted agony mixed with painful amounts of hope, and Goodnight, always Goodnight. It’s a memory that he relives, Billy is sure of that despite knowing at the time he was too drugged to know much of anything at all, on some nights where he doesn’t know what triggers it or else he would stop doing so. It’s his memory of waking up in a makeshift hospital in Rose Creek and having to be reminded that Goodnight was gone, dead, lost to him forever. He can feel his wounds but it’s nothing to the loss of his heart, and he isn’t aware of much as tears slip from his eyes and down his cheeks. He doesn’t think anyone can see him, but then in the darkness, a voice calls out to him and Billy thinks it’s an angel at first, only for it to change to Goody’s face as the soft lilting accent says ‘hey now, chere, I’m right here. There’s no need for those tears.’ Billy usually wakes up about then and somehow Goody knows, and pulls him close. Neither of them speak about that awful day, but Billy is glad that the angels returned his Goodnight to him.

But sometimes…after drinking, after a fight with Goody or without, or maybe after too much opium, sometimes Billy’s mind puts other things in place of peaceful sleep.

His childhood is a shroud of mist he doesn’t remember. There’s a mountain but it’s lost in the giant expanse of never-ending ocean and tribes of people with skin darker than any he had ever seen before, before arriving in the white man’s world. He doesn’t remember these very much since he has tried to forget everything before Goodnight and so they become more or less shadows, phantoms in the night that he need not remember because they don’t mean anything anymore.

Sometimes he runs through those shadows, looking for Goodnight but he isn’t there. He can hear the slurs from the white men’s lips and he ignores them. Sometimes Chisholm accompanies him, or on other times of this repeating dream, it’s Red, and together they push past the idiocy that exists in the waking world. Most of the time he is alone and always looking for Goody but can never find him. When he wakes from those, he never calms until Goodnight holds him and promises that he will always, always be there.

They are never apart; appearances be damned, for this very reason.

Tonight, it’s one he remembers. Another memory, only this one has only the agony and none of the hope and Billy knows it’s a dream, knows how it ends, but he can’t wake up, he can’t wake up. He is laying on the bundles at the top of the bell tower in Rose Creek. The pain has hit him and he can feel himself losing consciousness because the blood loss is rapid and spreading, but it doesn’t matter. Goody is falling backwards, falling, and falling, and the rail splinters and he goes off the ledge and Billy can’t see past his love falling from the tower. He can’t move, he can’t get up to check-- To reach out for-- To save him… Billy can’t move and he can feel himself dying, the last remaining breaths being drug from his chest in a painful rattle that is full of blood as he chokes on it. But it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t, because Goodnight is gone and they’ll never be together again. What world is this now that his sunlight and warmth are gone?

‘Oh, Goody—’ he breathes his last and stares at the fallen flask that bore the fleur-de-lis. He won’t wake up; he won’t see Goodnight again. Billy Rocks dies alone up in the bell tower full of holes and his own failures, forever lost to the reaching hand of Goodnight Robicheaux.

Everything goes dark and Billy no longer can tell if this is a dream or if he really did die that way. It doesn’t last long before a sharp sting crosses his face, and he’s moving before he knows what he’s doing. His fingers have extended and wrapped around the handle of his trusty knife. He can’t see but something causes him to stay his hand, to go against his first instinct to thrust upwards with the blade extended. His reward from the darkness is a voice, the most wonderful sound he’s ever heard.

“Easy, chere.” He feels it now, Goody’s hand cradling his head as the other man leans over him. Billy can feel the other man’s weight on the bed, supporting himself by his elbow, as he lays next to him. “Easy, mon amour.”

The dark is still too strong or Billy’s eyes are taking too long to adjust, he isn’t sure, but he still can’t discern the differences in the shadows. He lets go of his knife and reaches forward once his arm is untangled from the blankets and reaches up. His fingers make contact with the top of Goody’s head and he slides down, past the man’s ear, and finds his cheek. Billy’s thumb brushes over Goodnight’s lips and the older man places a gentle caress to his skin. Billy exhales and lets himself relax back into the straw mattress.

His hand lingers on Goody’s cheek and the other man leans into the gesture as he shifts closer.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Billy shakes his head and moves his hand to pull Goody closer. He kisses him instead, their lips finding their match in the darkness perfectly. Goodnight shifts to hold him close as he lays down next to him. Billy lets himself be pulled into the embrace and rests his head on Goody’s shoulder.

“Lay here awhile with me.” Goodnight’s voice murmurs into the quiet.

“Forever.” Billy promises. He isn’t sure, but he thinks he can feel Goodnight’s smile as the other man presses a kiss to his hair.