Phoenix Chapter 8/?
Jun. 28th, 2010 12:59 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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wl_fanfictionPhoenix
By: pd
Edited by: Glyph
Disclaimer: I own the OC's and the story, not the gentlemen.
Rating (per chapter): R for sexuality and violence
Pairing (pc): Brad/OFC, mention of Dan/OMC
Summary (pc): There are many snakes out West. Some even walk on two legs...
A/N: Sup peeps! Just wanted to say thank you for all of the comments, they're awesome and make my day ^__^
Peec
pd
Traitor
While Ryan spoke quietly with a then hopeful Wayne, Brad Sherwood sat in the middle of the dimly lit saloon that made up the downstairs of the Black Café, ignoring the pretty, if a little tired looking girls trying vainly to tempt him. Everything there had once been varnished and lacquered to a shine, once upon a time, but like the girls, everything had been ridden too hard for too long.
His gaze wandered to his companions, if he could call them that, sitting at his side with women in their laps and drinks or cards in their hands, seemingly without a care in the world. He couldn’t find it in him to laugh along with them, even if he could find their idiotic, bush-whacker humor ‘funny’. Never mind his own humble bastard roots of a silver-panning father and a saloon girl mother he’d gotten pregnant during one of his visits. No, if you asked him, he’d been properly born a god-fearin’ Christian, just like the rest of decent society, and at this point, he’d managed to almost make himself believe that, too. Almost.
No, the only thing he took with him when he left that tiny one room shack by the stream in the mountains was the image of an aristocratic ancestry. His mother always spoke of her daddy, his grandpa, as a rich southern gentleman, living in a proper climate where it was rarely cold and the summers were thick with water, even in the very air. Quite different from Nevada, where the dry, dusty plains stretched for miles from the foot of their mountain range until the rainy season swept everything away.
With his noble heritage firmly rooted in his mind, he struck out on his own and joined the army at the tender age of 11, drumming his way through the ranks until he shot a man point blank in the face for trying to take his drum away during battle.
That was where he’d met Ryan, himself only 15. He was everything Brad wished he were, well-spoken and learned with a well-to-do background from a shoe-maker father in New Mexico. It was Ryan whose bullet had taken the top of a soldier’s head off near the end of the Mexican-American War, seconds after Brad blew a hole through the man’s forehead.
They’d watched the remains drop, and glanced at each other with matching maniacal grins before turning to the rest of the battle. Ryan became his guard, more or less, both of them fighting their way through holes in the action grown men couldn’t have gotten through. It had earned them both medals a-plenty, and the nicknames Guadalupe and Hidalgo… They never knew why until much later.
Brad glued himself to Ryan’s side after that, learning all he could. He spoke like Ryan did, ate like he did, hell, he’d have probably shit like the boy if he’d known how… He’d loved Ryan so much…
Brad scowled darkly down at the battered table top and rose abruptly, interrupting one of his companions mid-recitation of a particularly shady exploit, and grabbed the bottle from one of the floozies hand. Everyone stared, and he gave them a look that had them hastily backing off, hands raised. He sniffed and rolled his neck before addressing his friends. “I’m going to bed.”
“O-okay… boss…” one replied, but Brad was already halfway up the stairs.
In the long upstairs hallway that smelled of dust and the hair-raising, sour smell of old sex, he paused by a bench containing two younger girls with heavily rouged lips and battered feathers trying vainly to frame their faces. One, with slightly darker skin and bright blue eyes, smiled shyly up at him and rose, toddling over on her heels. She was new to the game, obviously, and smoothed a hand up his arm and squeezed his thick bicep. “Lonely, handsome?”
He snorted and wrapped an arm around her waist, startling a girly yip from her as he walked them into his room and kicked the door shut behind him, locking it before setting her and the bottle down. “What’s your name?” he asked softly, brushing strands of soft, dark hair from her face.
She shivered, blinking long black lashes up at him, and smiled nervously. “Christine.”
He gripped the back of her head tightly, cupping it completely in his hand, and she started for a second when she felt his shirtsleeve touch her lips. Then she calmed, watching him, utterly passive under his quiet gaze as he wiped off the red stain, brushing the last of it away with the roughened ball of his thumb before he stole a soft kiss from her. “Christine… Christine, Christine, Christine…” he whispered, going to his knees before her, unhooking the corset that held her gossamer skirts tight to her wonderfully curved frame. He buried his face in the slightly scratchy fabric and feeling the heat of her stomach just beneath, his hands trailing down to wrap around her ankles easily, sliding up to her knees, fingernails scratching the sensitive skin there.
She shuddered now, her hands going to his broad shoulders, making soft noises of encouragement, but his mind was stubbornly elsewhere. He struggled to bring it back, picking her up again and tossing her onto the good sized mattress that had seen better days, stripping quickly and hungrily taking in her shivering form as she watched from the bed.
The view did nothing for him, because all he saw was Ryan kissing Isabo, that dark night in the barn by the light of a single candle. He shivered, as though the rain were still pouring down on him as he watched his hero do something as disgusting as kiss her. Didn’t Ryan know that good, upstanding folk like them weren’t supposed to behave that way?
He grunted as he thrust into her wet velvet heaven, aided by generous amounts of spit before he rolled them, forcing her to dance over him as he rocked up and up inside of her, desperate to chase away the images. For her youth, she was quite good at riding a man, and soon she’d brought him slamming back down to earth as he filled her with his hot seed, his grip on her hips pinning her to him until he had nothing left to give.
She collapsed onto his chest as he slumped into the pillows, panting, sweat rolling down them both as she turned and placed a kiss on his neck, fingers tracing through his chest hair. “That was wonderful,” she whispered breathlessly.
He swallowed thickly, pulled away from her embrace and sat up, rubbing his face tiredly. When she tried to hug him from behind, he rose and grabbed the bottle of alcohol, now slippery with his sweat. Spitting the cork across the room, he took a huge swig. The whiskey was cheap and disgusting, rot gut, and mixed with his sweat unpleasantly, but it burned on the way down and hit his empty stomach like nitro. It wouldn’t take long before he passed out completely.
It took him a moment before he remembered she was still here, and he turned to her, wiping a hand across his mouth. “Get out…” he whispered hoarsely.
She gaped at him for a moment amid the scattered sheets, then flushed hotly, rising with a glare at him that bounced off his uncaring back as she gathered her clothes, seed trickling down the inside of her thigh. He sat on the bed after she’d slammed the door shut and set the bottle on the end table next to the small lamp, his head in his hands.
Once again, he was aware of the feeling that his life was spinning so far out of control, and he knew all of it was wrong, that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be, but he also knew it had been too late for quite some time.
He took another drink from the bottle and snuffed the light, but he wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while, either.
As Brad drank himself into a spinning oblivion, Dan Patterson sat in the quiet alcove he’d been seated in inside one of the many plush meeting places at the Midnight Runners.
There was only one way into the adobe room, lined with padded benches covered in good leather. The light was smoky, as was the air, perfumed by his excellent cigar currently smoldering to ashes, unnoticed and forgotten. He was staring into space, trying to figure out why Carey had insisted on meeting here at such a late hour. He did have someone to go home to, even if it was only his ‘valet’.
Just then the thick curtain of dyed linen and clay beads was swept aside, admitting the sweating banker himself, who smiled his bright, triangular smile and waved half a bottle of whiskey in offering. “Sorry I’m late, old boy, but I had to close up shop, too. Drink?”
“Yes, please. It was no problem, but Mr. Carey-”
“Please, it’s Drew to everyone, sir,” he said amiably, though Dan noticed he never raised his voice high enough be heard beyond their table.
“As you like, but I still don’t understand why this could not wait until our own daylight hours.”
“That’s true, but I don’t think that this is the kind of conversation that would be welcome to other ears,” Drew said frankly.
Dan’s eyes narrowed behind his own spectacles. “I don’t seem to understand your point, Mr. Carey, please. Explain.”
“I’ve recently come into the knowledge that you will be funding the Union cause with campaign money donated by my employers, correct?”
Dan’s eyes flew wide. “How could y- that’s privileged-”
Drew held up a hand. “It doesn’t matter how I’ve come by the information, because I’m going to ask you nice and peaceably to stop the money transfers.”
“I will not!”
“I’m afraid you will, as I’m your banker and didn’t even send the money draft through,” he replied, giggling a little at the irony of it, as well as the look of fury on Patterson’s face.
“How dare you! As the Mayor of this town, I’m entrusted as well as excepted to support this country however I am able, so send the bloody money order in or I’ll have you arrested!”
“Your golden boy of a sheriff has no power behind him anymore, Patterson, remember?”
Patterson’s fury stopped bubbling over and he fixed the banker calmly sipping his drink with a hard stare. “It was you who had him removed and reinstated, wasn’t it? Why?”
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry your wispy little head about it, Dan,” Drew smiled.
Dan rose from his seat, his palms flat on the table, and thrust his face into Drew’s, anger thick in his voice and growing when the large man didn’t even bat an eyelash. “Oh, I think I do, Drew. As Mayor, I want you out of here by morning or I’m having the cavalry that is so conveniently arriving tomorrow arrest you on several charges of fraud, and forgery, because I sure as hell didn’t sign his bloody discharge papers! And god knows wha-” his tirade dribbled to a halt as Drew simply held up a blotched and abused looking photograph.
It had been taken at night, peering down into his valet’s bedroom window, and so it was difficult to make out, but not difficult enough. Patterson could easily see himself being shoved into a mattress by his ‘valet’, taken from behind, and enjoying it. He’d always wondered about the flash that had happened before that lightening storm had arrived…
The picture disappeared in the blink of an eye, and he sat slowly, his world cut out from under him. He blinked slowly and realized Drew was snapping his fingers in front of his nose, the picture nowhere to be seen. Drew smiled his pleasant smile when Dan’s eyes finally focused on his. “I take it we have an understanding now, Dan, right?”
Dan swallowed hard, trying to keep his gorge down, managing only a nod.
“Wonderful!” Drew said happily, pouring them both another shot. “Then here’s to a new partnership, and hey, if everything goes well, you could be the governor of the next territory of… well, whoever wins this thing.” He shrugged, chuckling and knocking his drink back without a care in the world.
By: pd
Edited by: Glyph
Disclaimer: I own the OC's and the story, not the gentlemen.
Rating (per chapter): R for sexuality and violence
Pairing (pc): Brad/OFC, mention of Dan/OMC
Summary (pc): There are many snakes out West. Some even walk on two legs...
A/N: Sup peeps! Just wanted to say thank you for all of the comments, they're awesome and make my day ^__^
Peec
pd
Traitor
While Ryan spoke quietly with a then hopeful Wayne, Brad Sherwood sat in the middle of the dimly lit saloon that made up the downstairs of the Black Café, ignoring the pretty, if a little tired looking girls trying vainly to tempt him. Everything there had once been varnished and lacquered to a shine, once upon a time, but like the girls, everything had been ridden too hard for too long.
His gaze wandered to his companions, if he could call them that, sitting at his side with women in their laps and drinks or cards in their hands, seemingly without a care in the world. He couldn’t find it in him to laugh along with them, even if he could find their idiotic, bush-whacker humor ‘funny’. Never mind his own humble bastard roots of a silver-panning father and a saloon girl mother he’d gotten pregnant during one of his visits. No, if you asked him, he’d been properly born a god-fearin’ Christian, just like the rest of decent society, and at this point, he’d managed to almost make himself believe that, too. Almost.
No, the only thing he took with him when he left that tiny one room shack by the stream in the mountains was the image of an aristocratic ancestry. His mother always spoke of her daddy, his grandpa, as a rich southern gentleman, living in a proper climate where it was rarely cold and the summers were thick with water, even in the very air. Quite different from Nevada, where the dry, dusty plains stretched for miles from the foot of their mountain range until the rainy season swept everything away.
With his noble heritage firmly rooted in his mind, he struck out on his own and joined the army at the tender age of 11, drumming his way through the ranks until he shot a man point blank in the face for trying to take his drum away during battle.
That was where he’d met Ryan, himself only 15. He was everything Brad wished he were, well-spoken and learned with a well-to-do background from a shoe-maker father in New Mexico. It was Ryan whose bullet had taken the top of a soldier’s head off near the end of the Mexican-American War, seconds after Brad blew a hole through the man’s forehead.
They’d watched the remains drop, and glanced at each other with matching maniacal grins before turning to the rest of the battle. Ryan became his guard, more or less, both of them fighting their way through holes in the action grown men couldn’t have gotten through. It had earned them both medals a-plenty, and the nicknames Guadalupe and Hidalgo… They never knew why until much later.
Brad glued himself to Ryan’s side after that, learning all he could. He spoke like Ryan did, ate like he did, hell, he’d have probably shit like the boy if he’d known how… He’d loved Ryan so much…
Brad scowled darkly down at the battered table top and rose abruptly, interrupting one of his companions mid-recitation of a particularly shady exploit, and grabbed the bottle from one of the floozies hand. Everyone stared, and he gave them a look that had them hastily backing off, hands raised. He sniffed and rolled his neck before addressing his friends. “I’m going to bed.”
“O-okay… boss…” one replied, but Brad was already halfway up the stairs.
In the long upstairs hallway that smelled of dust and the hair-raising, sour smell of old sex, he paused by a bench containing two younger girls with heavily rouged lips and battered feathers trying vainly to frame their faces. One, with slightly darker skin and bright blue eyes, smiled shyly up at him and rose, toddling over on her heels. She was new to the game, obviously, and smoothed a hand up his arm and squeezed his thick bicep. “Lonely, handsome?”
He snorted and wrapped an arm around her waist, startling a girly yip from her as he walked them into his room and kicked the door shut behind him, locking it before setting her and the bottle down. “What’s your name?” he asked softly, brushing strands of soft, dark hair from her face.
She shivered, blinking long black lashes up at him, and smiled nervously. “Christine.”
He gripped the back of her head tightly, cupping it completely in his hand, and she started for a second when she felt his shirtsleeve touch her lips. Then she calmed, watching him, utterly passive under his quiet gaze as he wiped off the red stain, brushing the last of it away with the roughened ball of his thumb before he stole a soft kiss from her. “Christine… Christine, Christine, Christine…” he whispered, going to his knees before her, unhooking the corset that held her gossamer skirts tight to her wonderfully curved frame. He buried his face in the slightly scratchy fabric and feeling the heat of her stomach just beneath, his hands trailing down to wrap around her ankles easily, sliding up to her knees, fingernails scratching the sensitive skin there.
She shuddered now, her hands going to his broad shoulders, making soft noises of encouragement, but his mind was stubbornly elsewhere. He struggled to bring it back, picking her up again and tossing her onto the good sized mattress that had seen better days, stripping quickly and hungrily taking in her shivering form as she watched from the bed.
The view did nothing for him, because all he saw was Ryan kissing Isabo, that dark night in the barn by the light of a single candle. He shivered, as though the rain were still pouring down on him as he watched his hero do something as disgusting as kiss her. Didn’t Ryan know that good, upstanding folk like them weren’t supposed to behave that way?
He grunted as he thrust into her wet velvet heaven, aided by generous amounts of spit before he rolled them, forcing her to dance over him as he rocked up and up inside of her, desperate to chase away the images. For her youth, she was quite good at riding a man, and soon she’d brought him slamming back down to earth as he filled her with his hot seed, his grip on her hips pinning her to him until he had nothing left to give.
She collapsed onto his chest as he slumped into the pillows, panting, sweat rolling down them both as she turned and placed a kiss on his neck, fingers tracing through his chest hair. “That was wonderful,” she whispered breathlessly.
He swallowed thickly, pulled away from her embrace and sat up, rubbing his face tiredly. When she tried to hug him from behind, he rose and grabbed the bottle of alcohol, now slippery with his sweat. Spitting the cork across the room, he took a huge swig. The whiskey was cheap and disgusting, rot gut, and mixed with his sweat unpleasantly, but it burned on the way down and hit his empty stomach like nitro. It wouldn’t take long before he passed out completely.
It took him a moment before he remembered she was still here, and he turned to her, wiping a hand across his mouth. “Get out…” he whispered hoarsely.
She gaped at him for a moment amid the scattered sheets, then flushed hotly, rising with a glare at him that bounced off his uncaring back as she gathered her clothes, seed trickling down the inside of her thigh. He sat on the bed after she’d slammed the door shut and set the bottle on the end table next to the small lamp, his head in his hands.
Once again, he was aware of the feeling that his life was spinning so far out of control, and he knew all of it was wrong, that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be, but he also knew it had been too late for quite some time.
He took another drink from the bottle and snuffed the light, but he wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while, either.
As Brad drank himself into a spinning oblivion, Dan Patterson sat in the quiet alcove he’d been seated in inside one of the many plush meeting places at the Midnight Runners.
There was only one way into the adobe room, lined with padded benches covered in good leather. The light was smoky, as was the air, perfumed by his excellent cigar currently smoldering to ashes, unnoticed and forgotten. He was staring into space, trying to figure out why Carey had insisted on meeting here at such a late hour. He did have someone to go home to, even if it was only his ‘valet’.
Just then the thick curtain of dyed linen and clay beads was swept aside, admitting the sweating banker himself, who smiled his bright, triangular smile and waved half a bottle of whiskey in offering. “Sorry I’m late, old boy, but I had to close up shop, too. Drink?”
“Yes, please. It was no problem, but Mr. Carey-”
“Please, it’s Drew to everyone, sir,” he said amiably, though Dan noticed he never raised his voice high enough be heard beyond their table.
“As you like, but I still don’t understand why this could not wait until our own daylight hours.”
“That’s true, but I don’t think that this is the kind of conversation that would be welcome to other ears,” Drew said frankly.
Dan’s eyes narrowed behind his own spectacles. “I don’t seem to understand your point, Mr. Carey, please. Explain.”
“I’ve recently come into the knowledge that you will be funding the Union cause with campaign money donated by my employers, correct?”
Dan’s eyes flew wide. “How could y- that’s privileged-”
Drew held up a hand. “It doesn’t matter how I’ve come by the information, because I’m going to ask you nice and peaceably to stop the money transfers.”
“I will not!”
“I’m afraid you will, as I’m your banker and didn’t even send the money draft through,” he replied, giggling a little at the irony of it, as well as the look of fury on Patterson’s face.
“How dare you! As the Mayor of this town, I’m entrusted as well as excepted to support this country however I am able, so send the bloody money order in or I’ll have you arrested!”
“Your golden boy of a sheriff has no power behind him anymore, Patterson, remember?”
Patterson’s fury stopped bubbling over and he fixed the banker calmly sipping his drink with a hard stare. “It was you who had him removed and reinstated, wasn’t it? Why?”
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry your wispy little head about it, Dan,” Drew smiled.
Dan rose from his seat, his palms flat on the table, and thrust his face into Drew’s, anger thick in his voice and growing when the large man didn’t even bat an eyelash. “Oh, I think I do, Drew. As Mayor, I want you out of here by morning or I’m having the cavalry that is so conveniently arriving tomorrow arrest you on several charges of fraud, and forgery, because I sure as hell didn’t sign his bloody discharge papers! And god knows wha-” his tirade dribbled to a halt as Drew simply held up a blotched and abused looking photograph.
It had been taken at night, peering down into his valet’s bedroom window, and so it was difficult to make out, but not difficult enough. Patterson could easily see himself being shoved into a mattress by his ‘valet’, taken from behind, and enjoying it. He’d always wondered about the flash that had happened before that lightening storm had arrived…
The picture disappeared in the blink of an eye, and he sat slowly, his world cut out from under him. He blinked slowly and realized Drew was snapping his fingers in front of his nose, the picture nowhere to be seen. Drew smiled his pleasant smile when Dan’s eyes finally focused on his. “I take it we have an understanding now, Dan, right?”
Dan swallowed hard, trying to keep his gorge down, managing only a nod.
“Wonderful!” Drew said happily, pouring them both another shot. “Then here’s to a new partnership, and hey, if everything goes well, you could be the governor of the next territory of… well, whoever wins this thing.” He shrugged, chuckling and knocking his drink back without a care in the world.
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