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Wesker nearly hazards a guess at how many times he's paced from the back of the bar to the front, but then he remembers he doesn't care. A little more wear in the floor would be the least of this half-rotted hole's problems. He wrenches his knife out of the wall, returns to his position, and throws again. The blade buries itself a hair's breadth from a bottle of whiskey with a dull thunk, perfectly aligned with the evidence of over a dozen other throws. The gouges form a neat outline around one of the few unbroken bottles. One of the others rests atop the bar, just beside his elbow and a hopelessly dusty glass into which he's permitted himself a healthy pour. It is wholly undrinkable swill. But just now Wesker doesn't care about that, either.
Floorboards creak at the door. Whoever it is, they're not a threat. There are no threats to him here or anywhere. His patience, on the other hand, is considerably more vulnerable, and it begins to fray when footsteps pause, then approach in an uneven yet languid tread. A ridiculous Frankenstein's monster of a rifle is first to join him, propped against the bar more carefully than the battered thing deserves. The tip of its attached harpoon still glistens with blood.
Wesker's lip curls. Someone has been luckier than him today.
The Deathslinger follows with a rumbling sigh. Wesker knows him by sight and title, but that is all. He assumes he has a real name but Wesker doesn't exactly make a point of fraternizing with his… colleagues. He watches out of the corner of his eye as the man picks up the bottle Wesker chose, lifts heavy eyebrows in apparent surprise, and flicks a glance at Wesker before proceeding behind the bar for his own glass. The evidence of Wesker's frustration catches his eye on the way.
"Ought to get a dartboard if you're gonna treat this place like one," he grumbles. Two fingers of amber liquid tumble into his waiting glass.
"People might recognize it as a bar if you stocked it with anything other than utter turpentine," Wesker sneers. The Deathslinger chuckles, a sound like the scrape of boots on rough stone. Either turpentine is to his taste or he means to prove a point with the smug ease he wears as he takes a long swig. Wesker glowers.
"What's the matter?" the Deathslinger leers. "Afraid to put a little hair on your chest? Here." He pours Wesker's glass straight out onto the floor, then turns and plucks another bottle from the shelf, the one Wesker had ringed in knife gouges. As he refills Wesker's glass Wesker can just make out the label through the thick film of grime: Gold Creek. "Try that. Easier on a boy's tongue."
"I suggest you watch your words with me," Wesker says lowly. The Deathslinger's eyes are hidden beneath the wide brim of his hat, but his long mustache doesn't fully conceal the curve of an amused smile. Wesker itches to slap it from his slackjawed face.
"Wouldn't have to watch 'em if you weren't here sulkin' like a soggy pup." He drains his glass in one and reaches for the Gold Creek again. This pour is substantially more generous than the one he gave Wesker, and something about that rankles Wesker too. The man leans into one hip as he drinks, letting his breath gust out of him on a sigh. "Mm. Survivors slipped the noose, is that it?"
"I am not sulking," Wesker mutters in a tone even he knows can only be described as sulky. He skips his thanks as he takes up his own glass and sips. To his irritation the Gold Creek is markedly better than the whiskey he picked. "And I do not have survivors. Only victims."
"Knife's lookin' a little clean for that kinda talk."
"If filth is a mark of lethality then your kill count must defy calculation," Wesker says with a disdainful look at the state of the other man's clothes, but the Deathslinger just lets out another gravelly laugh.
"Ohh, a flatterer." He places an elbow on the bar, leans closer, and Wesker gets the first proper look at his eyes. They're ink dark, black where they ought to be white save for a bright, unnatural glint that Wesker refuses to recoil from. The earthen stench of booze on tobacco on his breath makes it all the harder. "Keep talkin' sweet and I'll wanna tend more than your bar."
Outrage flares hot in Wesker's cheeks but the Deathslinger has already backed off, pacing around to Wesker's side of the bar. The old man is at least smart enough to stop so the gun stands propped between them. Any closer and Wesker's piano wire patience is liable to snap. Heated tension radiates from his shoulders, the glass threatens to crack in his grip. He does not care for this game.
"The Redeemer drank well tonight, I'll admit," the Deathslinger drawls as though he hasn't spent this entire miserable conversation deliberately taking an ice pick to Wesker's nerves. He indicates the gun between them with a fond raise of his glass. "Still gotta clean 'er. Don't mind a bit of blood rust, though."
Wesker sips and says nothing. Silence. Silence and placidity. Eyes forward. The old fool will grow bored without an audience.
"Could use a fine pair of hands to help polish 'er up now the day's work is done. What d'you say? Ever handled a gun this size?"
"Enough." The last of Wesker's patience burns away as he downs what remains of his drink. So much for silence. "I have better things to do than listen to a perverted old man gloat over one lucky trial." Another rumbling laugh washes over him as he pushes away from the bar.
"Shame." The Deathslinger stands properly too, and Wesker is even more aggravated to discover it's at a height considerably taller than his own. "Come to my saloon, drink my whiskey, but don't want to play, huh?" He strides behind the bar again, takes hold of Wesker's knife, and pulls it out of the shelf wall. He turns the blade over in his hand, then locks eyes with Wesker. "Guess you're tired of losin'."
Wesker is on him in a flash. A bottle smashes to the floor, pooling whiskey at their feet as Wesker pins him to the wall. One hand fists in the front of his dust-creased shirt while the other crushes his wrist against a shelf edge, grip threatening to crack bone if he doesn't release the knife.
"I am tired," Wesker hisses, "of pretending a breath taken in your company is not a breath wasted. Now return my knife or I will finish what some five cent saloon whore started and break your jaw properly."
The Deathslinger wheezes a laugh and shifts in Wesker's hold, looking down his nose at where their bodies are pressed flush. "You wanna be my saloon whore, huh? Why I'd love nothin' more than to finish all over–"
He grunts in pain and his head snaps to the side with the force of Wesker's strike. The knife clatters to the ground and Wesker snatches it up while the Deathslinger still reels, buckled against the wall with a hand to his jaw.
"A pleasure to meet you, Deathslinger," Wesker sneers. "Thanks for the drink. I won't be back."
He sheaths his knife and spares a moment drink in the satisfaction of the man weak-kneed, dazed, and panting on his own turf. It goes down a damn sight better than the whiskey but ignites him with a fire just the same. He turns for the door. Wesker's own home base might be crumbling, slightly aflame, and shot through with surging infection, but at least it doesn't reek of death and stale alcohol.
He barely makes it beyond the bar before he's jerked back by his coat collar like a dog on a leash.
"Oh no you don't."
An arm closes around his waist and a hand around his throat. Despite his age the Deathslinger is bound in ropy muscle: Wesker can feel it flex against his back as he fights the iron grasp holding him fast to his assailant's chest. He thrashes in a fury, reaching for his knife again, but the Deathslinger clings too tight.
"No, now that won't do, boy." His tone has changed, rough and strained now from the hit to the jaw, but no less deep. "No, you'll call me Caleb. Or sir."
"I won't be made to– ah!" Wesker grits his teeth as Caleb's hand clutches firmly between his legs and discovers what Wesker himself had been determined to ignore: a growing heat and hardness, a savage, tearing want of something too beneath him to willingly acknowledge. Something he'd felt grow steadily from a flicker when the Deathslinger – when Caleb first poured him a drink.
"Feels like you can be made to do plenty." Caleb's breath is hot on his ear no matter how Wesker tries to turn his head away. "You've been blushin' red hot as a cattle brand, and truth is you've had me nice and riled since I caught you leanin' over my bar all alone. Makes a man wonder how you'd look bent over proper."
Wesker makes another attempt at escape but Caleb tightens his grip, digging his fingers threateningly into Wesker's balls. He sucks a furious breath in through his teeth and goes still again. Caleb hushes him and lets up the pressure on Wesker's neck just enough to stroke it, a wrangler soothing an as yet unbroken horse.
"There's a bed upstairs. Two of 'em actually, and I know you know it. You know it as well as I know the metal and marble hellhole you call home's got nothin' more than a pair of sleeping bags. And that don't suit you, do it, darlin'? Not a delicate thing like you."
"I'll sooner kill you," Wesker seethes, but Caleb laughs again.
"No? Too tough to let a man treat ya tender? That suits me just fine." He seizes Wesker by the hair and kicks his knees out from under him, forcing him down, pressing his face against Caleb's own erection. "Mm. Then you can kneel right here on the floor, in the dust and the dirt and the whiskey, and choke down my cock instead. Is that more your speed?" He puts the toe of his boot to Wesker's cock. "Feel more at home lappin' up my cum?"
He presses down and Wesker tenses, hiding his grimace in the front of Caleb's pants. The hardy, worn in jeans do nothing to conceal the cock straining against them, hot and impatient and insistent. Wesker pants through clenched teeth to keep from mouthing it.
"Pick your poison, darlin'," Caleb says lazily. "I reckon you can turn tail and take your chances with my aim, too. But I can promise you you won't set a foot outside that door without my harpoon skewerin' you clean through that river reed you call a spine. I'll reel ya in and have you right back here whimpering at my feet. Only difference is you'll be bleedin' more than y'need to."
Wesker thrashes again but Caleb's grip is firm: the effort knocks his sunglasses askew and he hears Caleb draw a slow breath above.
"Now look at that." He snatches the sunglasses from Wesker's face, then seizes him by the jaw and forces him to look up. "Eyes to match that lovely blush. You've been hidin' 'em from me."
Wesker's breath comes shallow and ragged as he glares up past Caleb's belt to meet his death-light gaze. This filthy half-wit cowboy is nothing. He is no one. He will do nothing that Wesker himself does not permit. He doesn't have the power. Even as he stands, steel toe of his boot positioned perilously above Wesker's aching cock, hand fisted tight in Wesker's hair, it is because Wesker has tolerated it. He has deigned to afford time enough to allow this to happen. This is patience, this is charity, this is the benevolence of a gracious god.
"Fuck me, then," Wesker spits out. "If an old man like you can even manage it."
"Oh I manage just fine, Red Eyes." Caleb's crooked mouth twists in a triumphant smile as he slides Wesker's face along the length of his clothed cock. "And you'll agree when I have you beggin' for more."
Wesker grunts as Caleb releases his hair at last.
"Lead the way," Caleb says with a jerk of his head towards the staircase. "I wanna imagine how that perfect ass is gonna take my cock on the way up."
"Keep that foul tongue wagging and I'll cut it out," Wesker snaps. He hardly makes it to the second floor landing before Caleb's hands are on him, cupping, squeezing; impatient breath huffs in Wesker's ear as Caleb steers him to the bed; the tickle of a moustache on his neck precedes the graze of rough lips.
"Don't kiss me," he growls as he slaps Caleb away, but Caleb catches him by the wrist.
"With every part of you keein' like a vixen for it?" He crowds Wesker against the ancient wire bedframe, chest to chest, a firm hand at his lower back. "But darlin', I'm only a man."
He is not a man. He is a ragged scarecrow come to life and wandered out of its field rather than rotting away where it belongs. He is too tall and his shoulders have no business here in this bedroom or anywhere else, they cut too broad a shape in Wesker's vision, and he holds Wesker's wrist too gently as he peels the glove from Wesker's hand. The sight of it makes him want to flay Caleb alive, one slice for every heartbeat wrung out of him while Caleb holds him in that inescapable, eerie gaze and touches a kiss to his wrist.
Wesker responds with a snarl and another sharp crack of his hand. Caleb grunts and staggers back, one hand pressed to his cheek, but when he looks up from under the brim of his hat again all teasing warmth has vanished.
"More wildcat than vixen, huh? Fine."
He backhands Wesker hard across the face. He sprawls out onto the mattress with a grunt of pain, but the room hasn't even stopped spinning before the old bedsprings moan in protest of newly added weight: Caleb is on top of him, heavy at his back, covering Wesker's body with his own as he yanks open Wesker's belt and takes his cock in hand.
"Spit an' snarl all you like, but you'll rut like a bitch in heat either way, won't ya? Yeah, that's it," he murmurs as he jerks his hand roughly over Wesker's cock, spreading the precum that's collected at the tip. Wesker grits his teeth against a groan and drops his head, fisting his hands in the sheets as Caleb rocks against him. They move together, Caleb's hand merciless on Wesker's cock as Wesker pushes back against him, chasing the friction, the resistance. Impatience gets the better of them both and before long Caleb curses and pulls Wesker up to a kneel.
"Look at you," he breathes.
And Wesker does. He catches himself in the cracked mirror across the room and sees not a god waiting out the pointless pleasure of a lesser being, but a man made hard, flushed, and desperate with raging lust. The sight of his cock rigid in Caleb's hand pulls a groan from his lips and Caleb matches it, pressing his own cock harder against Wesker's ass as he rocks forward.
"Fuck you're a beauty." Caleb buries his face in the crook of Wesker's neck, then lets out a frustrated growl and tears himself away. "Don't move," he rumbles. His uneven gait is more pronounced when he gets up to wrench open the top drawer of the mirrored vanity but he returns quickly enough, a tin of hair pomade in hand.
"You can't be serious," Wesker begins with a sneer. Caleb quiets him by taking him by the collar and hauling him closer to the edge of the bed.
"You got somethin' better? A slut like you ought to bring a little somethin' to ease the way wherever he goes, unless you just want an excuse to take it rough." He looms over the bed, both hands on his belt buckle, the outline of his cock obscenely visible against the leg of his pants. That infuriating crooked smile twitches under his moustache again. "That's it, ain't it? Can't let a man know how bad you want his cock unless ya make him fight for it."
"Feel free to get on with it at any time," Wesker says sardonically, but the edge of agitation in his voice undermines him. Caleb chuckles and metal clinks as he eases his belt open.
His cock is big enough that it takes some doing to pull out its length in full. Wesker's not sure what he expected – maybe something mouldering as much as this godforsaken saloon – but the sight of it in Caleb's callused hand makes him swallow a note of surprise. There's a touch more life to it than its owner, not quite the same ashen gray as Caleb's skin, but rather a dusty pink, thickest at the middle, and bent in the slightest suggestion of a curve. Wesker's own cock twitches and he realizes his lips have parted. He's staring. He presses them firmly together again and clears his throat. Caleb's smile widens.
"Where's all that fire gone, hm? Come here. Shuck off those pants and lemme stoke ya back to life."
He sits down on the edge of the bed while Wesker strips off his pants with as much haughty dignity as he can muster, and no sooner has he flung them over the side of the bed does Caleb drag him into his lap.
"There's a good boy." He groans as he shifts his hips and their cocks brush together; Wesker tries and fails to smother a sharp intake of breath. "Yeah, I'll take real good care of you." He presses the tin of pomade into Wesker's chest. "Now prep Daddy nice and good, won't ya Red Eyes?"
"Don't press your luck," Wesker snaps in disgust while Caleb's laugh reverberates between them. Caleb opens the tin himself and slathers a generous dollop over his cock. Wesker makes a point of looking everywhere but at the slow slide of the man's hand.
"We can try 'sir' again if that's more to your likin'." He shifts Wesker by the hips, slickened cock brushing just against Wesker's hole. "'Fuck me, sir.'" A shallow tease of a thrust. "'Let me ride you, sir. Pump me full of your cum like the slut I am, sir.' Say it."
"Fuck you," Wesker says instead, but his venom is cut short when Caleb grunts and shoves Wesker down. Pain and blinding pleasure burst to life as Caleb's balls meet Wesker's ass, his cock already buried deep inside. He sets a relentless pace and Wesker braces against it, teeth gritted, hating this repulsive, charmless hick as much as he's grateful for the excuse afforded by such a ruthless fuck. He doesn't have to enjoy this. He doesn't have to think about the steady dribble of precum slicking his cockhead and smearing the front of Caleb's shirt with every thrust. There's no need to remember the electric heat that jolts through him when he caves to the impulse to touch himself. The rhythmic scream of the bedsprings as Caleb pounds into him is unremarkable. Caleb's raspy amusement, bruising fingers, and indulgent animal groans of pleasure are easily dismissed. The burn of a palm cracked against his ass fades as quickly as the yelps they shake out of him. All of it is as forgettable as the voice hot and rough in his ear: That's it, darlin', work yourself just like that. Just like that, just like that. Feels good, don't it? My cock so deep in ya that ya can't tell up from down. Such a pretty, pliable little thing when you've a mind to be. Made to be used. Made for this cock. Take it. Take it.
Pleasure crests in a violent rush and Wesker cries out as he cums. Rope after thick rope arcs out of him, striping both their shirts, but he hardly has a moment to marvel at what Caleb has forced out of him before he's seized hard by the jaw.
"Look at me, Red Eyes," Caleb growls, wrenching Wesker's gaze to his. Wesker is powerless but to obey, weak in the wake of orgasm, his body limp to Caleb's unforgiving thrusts. Crimson eyes meet black and Caleb smiles. "Yeah, that's it. Nowhere else. Look at me while I fill you up."
Caleb's hips slam into Wesker and he cums too, flooding Wesker's insides with heat, fingers clutching hard to Wesker's ass to stay buried deep, to make Wesker take it all. He fucks his cum into him slowly, deliberately, until they are both dead certain.
It feels like an eternity before their senses settle. The bed gives a feeble final squeak as Wesker peels himself off Caleb and flops back on the bed, breath still coming in labored gasps. His pants are across the room. His sunglasses are no doubt lying in a puddle of whiskey somewhere downstairs. His shirt is streaked with cum and he's leaking a filthy cowboy's equally filthy spend. He doesn't care. He flings an arm over his eyes and sighs.
The metallic flick, hiss, and crackle of a lit cigarette punctuates Caleb's chuckle.
"You're a mighty fine fuck, Red Eyes. Anyone ever tell you that?"
"Shut up," Wesker mutters, and for once Caleb listens. He feels the man shift and lifts his arm just enough to find Caleb offering him a cigarette of his own. Wesker shakes his head. Caleb shrugs as Wesker replaces his arm.
A precious handful of silent moments pass between them, broken only by Caleb's intermittent smoky exhales. Wesker hasn't yet heard the man go so long without saying something insulting, inane, or both. It's a miracle. Eventually Caleb heaves a final sigh, stubs his cigarette out on the wall, and stands. Fabric rustles, a fly zips, a belt clinks.
"Come by anytime you're feelin' thirsty. I'll set ya right."
Something settles over Wesker's arm and he whips it off, bolting upward just as the corner of Caleb's duster disappears around the corner to the landing. He looks down. Caleb's hat.
Wesker flings it through the open doorway with a snarl. Caleb's gravelly laugh drifts back to him over the sound of creaking floorboards.