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He’s fifteen and a killer, and the only thing standing between him and homelessness is John Dutton, who’d taken one look at him, all scrawny and bruised and with his father’s blood still flaking off from underneath his fingernails, and seen something in him that convinced him that Rip might be a good fit for his ranch.
It had seemed a good deal at the time. A little pain in return for a place to stay and a chance to prove himself. No fighting. No stealing. Just hard work and dedication to a set of clear rules that were easy enough to follow for someone like Rip, who’d grown up under the fists of another man whose temper was as fast changing as the weather up in the mountains of the Yellowstone.
And besides that, there’s the fact that John Dutton is a bit like the Sun. Even just from that short moment beside him on the back of a truck —an old sandwich shared between them and a pact made real by nothing but their mutual understanding that John Dutton owns Rip now, body and soul, all for the price of a bit of food to fill his aching stomach and the promise of what might just turn out to be an actual future and not a dead-end trip to jail— Rip feels like he’s been burnt at the edges by the heat in John Dutton’s eyes.
It feels good, to be seen. He feels like a flower, stretching towards the light, impossibly far away but still sharing its warmth. When later that night, the man presses a red-hot iron against Rip's chest, Rip can’t help but revel in the pain even as it drives him close to unconsciousness. Dutton’s serious face softens, just for a moment. Maybe he’s fucked in the head, Rip thinks, but it feels good to be seen. The branding is worth it, just for that.
That night, the old wrangler called Pierce, who had broad hands made unsteady by the half-bottle of Bourbon he’d drowned after Dutton pushed Rip into the bunkhouse and told Pierce to help settle him in, and whose drawl is full of disbelieving cuss words after Rip tells him that he doesn’t just look young, he really is only fifteen, yes sir that’s right, confirms what Rip had already known just from the weight of John Dutton’s eyes on his freshly burned skin.
“Looks like you already learned, kiddo, but we’re no better than cattle to the Duttons,” Pierce says, pulling down his shirt to reveal his own brand, pale and shiny and probably older than Rip has been alive. “Worth less, even. Just do as your told, keep ‘yer head down and work ‘yer ass off.”
And Rip tries. He really does. Shovels all the shit he’s been told to shovel, even when the brand on his chest bubbles and the skin breaks open from his movements tugging on the barely healed edges. He bites down every complaint that wants to escape him. Every gasp of pain. And follows all the tasks he’s given, no matter who by.
Then, one day, he finds Beth in the stables when he arrives early before anyone else is usually awake. Her lips are down-turned and sour, and she looks at him the same way her father did when he first picked Rip up from the barn he’d been crashing in. As if she’s weighing him, deciding if he’s worth the effort.
If John Dutton was like the Sun, too-hot if you ever got close, Beth Dutton is like the moon, Rip thinks. She’s cold. But still breathtaking in her intensity. Maybe once she’s fully grown into herself, she will burn as bright as her father.
For now though, Rip can immediately tell that she’s just as broken as he is. They’re both young, and lost in their own recent grief, and the only thing between them and the big uncaring world out there is John Dutton.
“Heard you killed your father,” she murmurs as she pulls a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her bra and offers him one.
Rip doesn’t smoke but he feels compelled by the way her green eyes focus on his face.
There’s no judgment in her voice. Just a statement of fact. That’s why he takes the offering, averting his eyes from the glimpse of dark lace that’s revealed now that she’s tugged down the neckline of her dress. His ears are hot. His mouth dry. The first hit of cigarette smoke only makes it drier and he coughs, helplessly staring at her when she laughs at his clumsy attempts at sucking in the smoke.
He takes another drag. This time it goes down a bit smoother.
“Well?” She asks.
“Well, what?”
“Did you kill your father? Or didn’t you?”
Rip purses his lips around the cigarette. He’s heard the rumors of what happened to Beth’s mom. Knows that Beth blames herself, for how she died. Has heard the whispering that her mom told her it was her fault, just before she breathed her last breath. He’s not sure if it’s his place to try and comfort her, and really, he wouldn’t know where to even start and so he nods, “Yeah. I did.”
“You’re very honest about that.”
If he could lie about that horrible day, and forget it all, Rip would probably choose to do so, he thinks, but that’s not really an option when everyone in the valley has known about it since the day that he arrived. “It’s not a secret. I wouldn’t be here, if I hadn’t done it.”
Beth hums. Silence falls between them, until Beth flicks away the rest of her half-smoked cigarette and steps closer to him.
Rip’s back hits the wall of the barn as he instinctively tries to sidestep her advance. It’s not that he’s scared of her, he tells himself, but the last thing he needs is being found in a compromising position with the bosses’ sixteen year old daughter barely a couple weeks into his stay. Keep ‘yer head down, his head echoes with Pierce’s advice. Easier said than done, Rip thinks, when you’ve got Beth Dutton advancing on you like a mountain lion on the prowl.
She moves slow and with purpose. There’s a sharp glint in her eyes when she leans in and gets on her tip-toes to whisper in his ear, “Did he fuck you? Is that why you killed him? Couldn’t take your Daddy’s special love?”
Rip’s entire body goes hot and then cold and then hot again. He pushes her away, a bit too much power behind the move, and she stumbles backward and lands on her ass in the hay that covers the floor of the barn in haphazard piles.
“What the fuck,” Rip says, unable to form any other words. “Why would you—“
Beth throws her head back and laughs, wild and breathless and roaring, and Rip is overtaken by the realization that she’s crazy. Batshit. He can’t take his eyes off of her.
“Never mind, never mind. You just look the type, hah!” She snorts, still giggling in between words. “Pretty boy like you who looks at my Daddy the way you do, it’s an easy mistake to make.”
Rip swallows down the knot that suddenly forms in his throat and croaks out, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Beth grins up at him, now lazily lying back on the floor, her blond hair tangling with the sun-bleached hay underneath her. She winks at him and then lets her legs fall open in an obvious tease, her dress sliding up her thighs until Rip can glimpse just the edge of her panties before he turns away and wills down the hard-on that’s beginning to stir in his pants. Crazy or not, there’s something highly attractive about Beth, no matter how insane she might be.
“This is just what I mean,” she murmurs, and then there’s a sound from behind him, first as though fabric were sliding over skin —please, he prays to the god he doesn’t believe in, don’t let her get fully naked, I’m not sure what I would do if she got fully naked— and then as though she’s getting up, her footsteps quiet on the padded floor, but undeniably getting closer to him. Then there’s heat against his back, her arms around his middle as she cages him in between her arms, less of a hug and more of an attack, arms too tight, the whole thing too sudden. “Poor little lost boy, alway horny, always hungry. You look at my daddy as though you’re about to come if he ever praised you just right, Rip. I’ve observed you for a while now, always running about and following orders. Like a dog, begging for scraps.”
His dick is a lost cause at this point even through her insane ramblings, straining hard against his jeans, and she obviously knows that this is happening because there’s another chortle of laughter from behind him and then her left hand wanders close, closes in on him, tightens its grip just short of painful.
It takes all the willpower Rip has, not to come in that very moment, and he shudders helplessly in her grip. Sue him; he’s fifteen, he’s never had a girl this close. It’s overwhelming, and scary and Rip doesn’t know how to react.
“Well, let’s just make one thing clear, huh? My daddy may own you, but I own him. I killed my mom, you know. And he knows I did. Only thing is, he don’t know why.” Beth leans up and bites his ear, “Do you wanna know why?”
Rip shakes his head because fuck no, what he wants is to stay out of whatever the hell is going on in the Dutton household. He’s not had contact with any of the others except for John, and he seemed sane enough, even if a bit too serious and too in love with his ranch, but if Beth is anything to go by? There’s no telling what other insanities lie buried in this family.
“Sure you do,” Beth murmurs. She tucks her right hand into Rip’s front pocket and pushes a balled-up knot of what feels like fabric in there, leaves it flush to where his still inexplicably hard cock is pressed to his thigh, throbbing in an enticing mixture of arousal and fear, dripping an embarrassing amount of precum. “But maybe I’ll tell you next time—“ she pulls away as she draws out that sentence, loosens her grip on him and walks over to the large double doors of the barn where she stops and turns to look back at Rip. “I’ll be watching you though. Don’t think I won’t be following your every step.”
He knows he looks like a mess: cock straining, lungs burning, confusion and anxiety most likely clear from both his body language and his face. He still finds himself inexorably drawn to meeting her eyes.
They’re still sharp, still predatory. But Rip isn’t all that sure that he’s the prey she’s got in mind anymore. There’s something about the way she drawls out “Daddy,” that underlines where the root of her insanity lies.
“I wasn’t gonna do whatever you think I wanna do to your father,” he says. “It’s not like that.”
Beth scoffs, “I trust my own eyes more than I trust your word, kid. I’ve been where you are. I’ve looked at him the same way. It starts like hero worship. Puppy-love, if you so will. But my Daddy, he’s like the Sun. He shines his light on you, nourishes you, helps you grow strong and tall and one day you wake up knowing that you can’t live without him anymore.”
Rip feels his heart speed up. Her words are far too close to things he himself has thought about John Dutton before to make him comfortable right now.
Beth nods her head knowingly, “Yeah, see?” and then she grins and huffs, “Maybe you don’t need no telling. You already know.”
There’s nothing to say to that. Rip stays silent.
With a wicked glance at him, Beth inclines her head towards the door where the faint sounds of people starting their morning routines can be heard. “Better clean up, before anyone thinks you’ve been having your wicked way with the horses in here, eh? Wouldn’t that be a hilarious rumor to go around the bunkhouse, hah, you’d never hear the end of it.” She starts to leave, and then throws him a last curveball before she steps outside into the early morning sun.
“Stay away from my Daddy,” she says. “Or rumors will be the last of your problems.”
The door falls shut behind her, and with it a door inside him that locks away the last remains of his brittle self-control. It takes him less than a second to get his dick out. It’s weeping fat globs of pre-cum already, and it won’t take him long to shoot his load all over his hands.
He uses his left hand to curl around his shaft almost too tightly, while his right goes into his pocket to fish out what she’d left in there. Black lace, same make as the edge of her bra he’d glimpsed earlier. His mind whites out for a moment. Whether in anger or hunger, Rip can’t quite tell.
The lace is rough and scratchy under his fingers though, and there’s a small wet spot in the middle that can only be one thing — Beth Dutton’s own juices. It’s almost instinct after that for Rip. He feels a sudden urge fuck his cock into the fabric that had been so close to Beth Duttons cunt. Did she get wet as she touched him, Rip finds himself thinking madly, as the lace rubs agonizingly over his sensitive and blood-flushed skin. Or did she only get wet when she started talking about her daddy? Or was it her crazy talk about Rip’s father fucking him that did it? His daddy didn’t even love him in a normal way, so why would he have ever—Rip breaks off his mad thought there and digs a punishing fingernail against the sensitive spot on the underside of his cockhead and feels tears gather in the corners of his eyes as he comes with a low animalistic groan and sinks to his knees, empty and fucked out and buzzing.
He thinks he hears a high pitched laugh from just outside the door, but he ignores it.
He tucks himself back in and goes back to trying to live by his mantra, head down, work ‘yer ass off, and adds a new item to the list of things one should do while on the Dutton ranch. Stay away from Beth Dutton.