Work Text
The deserts of Nueva Paraiso were shockingly cold at night. Which felt very odd, antithetical to the desert John had prepared for.The nipping desert air cut at John’s face, as if the sandstorm kicking up wasn’t already messing with his plans. He shivered under his thin serape, pulling the fabric closer to his chest, as well as drawing bandana tighter, narrowing his eyes.An ugly thought reared in his head, as they did often nowadays. Neither John nor his horse would survive long if the storm got any closer. Paired with the biting cold winds of nighttime in the desert, he didn’t have much time to find shelter.Stumbling across the rocks, barely seeing anything in front of him, he shrunk when he heard voices on the road up ahead. Most likely rebels, or the government. Hard to tell from the low voices the group spoke in. John tacked it up to being three or four riders heading his way, meaning he desperately needed to get off the road. Now.Pulling off the road, he grabbed the reins from where he was holding them in the saddle, quickly leading his horse behind a staggering of rocks making up a cliff wall.John held his breath with an ache pestering his lungs, listening for the group of riders. He slunk across the rocks edge, squinting his eyes to make out any shape.As a gift from god, or perhaps one of his greatest curses, John ran his hand over the edge of the rock, and felt nothing. The rock wall had indented to form a cave, serendipitously large enough to hide him and his horse. Ushering the steed into the cave, he tied her up, the mare letting out a large huff.Gathering his tent from the saddlebags, he tied it in a way against the cave walls that would block the sand or cold air from seeping into the area too much, protecting him and his horse as well as a tent could. Laying his bedroll out, he decided apprehensively against a fire until a few hours passed, making sure that whoever he might’ve had the chance of running into was long gone.Too late.John fumbled his revolver as he heard a click of a hammer, the noise rattling the teeth in his skull. Slowly, he raised his hands up in surrender.“It’s you.”John whirled around uncharacteristically to meet Javier’s burning eyes, and even moreso burning revolver on his temple, the metal of the gun staying icily cold against his skin.He eyed Javier up and down slowly, the sight of his old friend steeling his heart in his chest like a locked safe being dropped into the ocean.Javier had, well…Gotten older. As had he.His hair was longer, more shaggier. John admittedly payed special attention to the gray hairs that curled around his ears, framing his crestfallen face nicely. Gone were his colorful clothes that John remembered fondly from so long ago, replaced with a brown ensemble - torn boots, worn jacket, even more worn eyes shone brightly, so contradicting his body expression and facial expression entirely.“Don’t have anything to say to me, Marston?” Javier teased, the barrel of his revolver still pressed like a deathly kiss to his temple.“I’m not sure what I would say to you.” John admits apprehensively, Javier letting out a small laugh.“I know you’d tell me what you’re here for, as a start.”John sighed deeply, letting the breath in burn his lungs just to lift the strain on his hammering heart, if only for a little while.“Seems like you’ve figured it out, already.”Javier scoffed, the hammer of his revolver shuttering back into place as he holstered the gun with a huff, pacing out towards the edge of the cave.“Shit, Johnny. Of course I do.” He snarled. “You wouldn’t be here for anything else.”“Then I have nothing to say to you.” John said blandly, his hand still steadily resting on the leather of his holster.“No, ‘I’m happy to see you?’ No, ‘I’m glad you’re here?”To John, Javier sounded close to pleading, if just one of those answers would melt away the glacier wedged between them, would have both of their brick walls come crumbling down and they could act like nothing had changed in the twelve years the two had been apart.“Lying’s regarded a sin, Javier.” John retorted icily.“So’s giving up on your family.” Javier spat back.“You would know all about that, wouldn’t you? Takin’ Dutch’s side like that back then. Did none of us mean anything to you?” John cracked slightly, the bitterness staining his tongue like blood.“You left Dutch.” Javier argued. “Arthur, too. You all stopped meaning anything when you left his side to run away from your commitments. From your duty. You meant something to me ‘till you stood on the opposite side.” John scoffed angrily, getting in Javier’s face with a sneer. “And where was that sentiment when Dutch left Arthur to die on that mountain? That we should all stick together, that our gang were thicker than blood?” Javier’s face paled, shrinking away from John’s glare only slightly.“I know he was there. I know Micah and Arthur got into a fight and I know Dutch could’ve broken it up. But he didn’t. He took Micah’s side. Look how that ended up for everybody.” John scoffed, turning away from Javier.“Micah?” Javier asked quietly, managing to shove down the twisting anger rising in his throat.“Dead. I did it myself.”Javier managed to take a little solace from that. Though the two had fought for the same thing, he didn’t feel any remorse for the other’s fate.“No Arthur there to finish the job for you?” Javier teased lightly, with no real heat to his words, although they scorched the inside of John’s throat as he struggled to make a noise.“Arthur’s dead.”Javier’s eyes went glassy as John noticed he struggled to take a breath in shakily.“I met up with Charles.” John said in a hushed voice, breaking the silent tension hanging around their heads, Javier’s eyes meeting his. “He escaped. Made a life in Saint Denis running street fights.”“Well. Never thought I’d see him going for those. Always seemed he’d do it only out of necessity.” Javier lamented with a light laugh.“Said he was gonna go up to Canada to start a new life. Away from all of this. That was about four years ago.” John said quietly, biting the inside of his cheek roughly.“Get any telegrams from him? Updating you?”“I found him dead in front of Arthur’s grave a month later.”“Oh.”“He took Arthur’s death the hardest. Y’know, since…” John trailed off, noticing Javier’s forlorn look. “They were close.”“Shit. Could’ve said the same thing about us, Johnny.” Javier admitted with a sigh.John’s heart raced painfully in his chest, the pounding drumming against his ribs. He for one, knew that like Arthur and Charles, their tale would not hold a happy ending. John was destined to capture Javier, and Javier was destined to end captured - which both of them understood where it would take him. To the end of a rope.“What happened?” Javier questioned, honestly and truly. He shifted closer to where John had sat down in front of the cave’s mouth, a small shiver running through his body from the chill.John slid closer to the other man, the body heat shared between where the two touched warming both as the storm raged outside the cave.“Not sure we can try to blame it on much.” John admitted. Javier apprehensively reached for John’s dry hands, intertwining the pair’s fingers together in a last, desperate attempt to relive what once was. John’s eyes meet Javier’s sadly, the two sharing an understanding look.“You took your side, and I had to take mine.” He finally sighs, lightly squeezing Javier’s hand back. “You knew I had to get my family out. And you had to…leave with yours.”“Abagail? Jack?” Javier asked, “Why aren’t you back with them?”John swallowed roughly, standing up quickly to put as much space as he could between him and the man, going to fiddle with something in his saddlebags. Javier’s expression melted into a hurt amalgamation of the soft look he had previously been sharing with John.“You try to relive what we had, ‘till you remember your wife.” Javier scoffs angrily. “I don’t know why I’m here. Why I’m trying to get anything past you. We both know what you’re here for, why do any of us think that this’ll change anything? That it’ll repair what we had?”“Had a daughter with her. Few years after we left.” John interrupts. “She died. Abagail went with her.”Javier bit the inside of his cheek roughly, going quiet.“Tried my best to keep Jack alive, y’know. Since it was just me ‘n him. Government agents shot him down two weeks ago for tryin’ t’ defend me. And I meet the end of the rope if I don’t. If I…” John strangles down a constricting sob that was twisting up his throat.Javier meets John where he stood, cupping his cheeks softly with as much care that his rough, desert-worn hands could show to the other man.John symbolically met Death at two hell-torn gates, neither of them pearly enough - Oh no, the ones that John deserved were sculpted so graciously from all the blood he had spilled.One gate would open when John met his death at the hands of his family. If Javier shot him where he stood. If Bill’s gang would get the best of him. If Dutch got the upper hand.The other would open at the end of the rope that awaited so tantalizingly should he fail. Should he want to stay just a second more with the family who left and betrayed him.Javier met his lips softly with his own, John’s tears tasting salty against his mouth, John achingly surging back to greet the comfort that he was granted, hands wrapping around Javier’s midsection to bring the two crushingly close together. John’s mind felt foggy as he kissed Javier back ever so enthusiastically, making up the time that the two had lost in desperate nips against his lower lip.The two pulled apart gently as Javier guided John back to his bedroll, John shooting him a rather apprehensive look.“Rest, John. Nothing else.” Javier reassured, pulling the other man close on the bedroll, holding the cowboy in a crushing hug more than a cuddle of sorts.“We’re gettin’ old, ain’t we, Javi.” John mumbles into his hair, his arms now wrapping around Javier’s middle and bringing him close against his chest.“You could say that.” Javier sighed, relaxing into the cowboy’s arms as the two drifted off to sleep.…When Javier awoke to the dawn’s light wisping across his eyes, he knew something was off. Where he laid, the tent above his head was gone, replaced with the sight of the cave’s ceiling.Javier sat up abruptly, avoiding the harsh reality, the want to look over to where John had previously been curled against him, hoping, praying, that he would still be lying there now. But nonetheless, the bedroll was cold where he once laid. His heart ached for the previous night, aching for the companionship he had now let slip through his fingers.He stumbled out to his horse, noticing a small paper flying in the desert wind and breezing against his saddle horn.Javier ripped the note off the horn, relishing every letter scrawled in that ever so familiar handwriting. Although his chest ached for what would come next, he managed to pack up the bedroll that had been left with him, trotting off towards Nuevo Paraiso. The words on the page rumbled around in his head, with promises dying on his lips as he met the sun rising across the horizon.
“See you soon, cowboy.”