#carlyle “sandy” sanderson

[onggi]

Rattle Me Good

Sandy’s a real fighter sometimes, got the fire in his eyes that don’t go out ‘til he’s filled you with holes where all your organs used to be. He’s silent but quick to anger and you never know what exactly set him off because sometimes he’ll go off for no reason at all. Like a gun without the safety on. Loose screws.

I like to play the banjo a little. Wouldn’t say I’m much good at it — wouldn’t say I’m much good at anything — but I know enough that Sandy don’t blow a hole right through me when I pick it up and get to strumming. Sometimes I take requests, sometimes I don’t, and I never, ever sing. Not after that one time when Sandy was shaking like a goddamn leaf under the midnight sky and I said, “want a lullaby?”, only I weren’t really joking, and he slugged me in the jaw and went real still like, black eyes burning like coals.

He didn’t say nothing, but I knew what that stare meant. That’s your warning shot, Dusty. Next one’s gonna be a killer. I knew that stare because I’d been on the other end of it a thousand times, usually accompanied by a puff of cigar smoke and the click of a buckle.

That’s why I’m kinda hesitant like, watching his eyes flicker back and forth like he’s a horse about to spook in the middle of the saloon. Usually he’s mighty calm in one of these here establishments, soothing whatever’s kicking in his head with the taste of the finest booze a traveller’s stingy budget can afford you. Not today.

Sandy don’t talk much. And even when he does, he don’t say much, like everything’s hidden beneath five hundred layers of shit you gotta dig through to get to the root of the thing. I’ll be the first to say I ain’t the smartest, so most of it goes over my head, only sometimes I don’t think he really wants to be understood so much as just wanting to talk to someone. He’d prob’ly slug me again if I said that out loud, though.

I oughta ask if he’s alright. Something’s clearly setting him off, even if I don’t know what, and it might be better for us to leave anyhow since I’m almost done with my scotch and he’s not touching his. I’m stupid enough to open my mouth, the words not even formed in my head yet, but God himself intervenes in the form of a toothy bastard slapping Sandy on the back.

“Carlyle,” he croons with a smirk, and by God is that one helluva smirk. The kinda smirk that you only really see a handful of times, and you remember it each and every time, because the angle is always slightly different.

Toothy’s dark and muscular, wiry and strong like a bull. His eyes glint with trouble and his ears stick out like sails catching the wind. His nose, broad and flat, is perfectly straight. I rub at my own nose self consciously — broke it a few too many times as a kid, I’d like to say, but the reality is I never stopped breaking it and it never healed right anyhow.

“Jim.” Sandy’s voice is all gritty like, harsh and coarse like his name.

They’re on first name basis and I can’t figure out whether that’s closer or not-closer than nickname basis.

Jim seems to take that as an invitation to sit down at the bar, pushing his shoulder right up against Sandy’s like he’s got no fear in his goddamn life. They make a real picture, the two of them, thick and strong and big, bigger than me. Sandy’s still not touching his scotch, but his fingers are clenched around the glass tight enough to shatter it.

I’m praying it don’t shatter.

Jim reaches for Sandy’s scotch and their fingers are on top of each other, interlocking for a moment, before Sandy lets go and the glass is conceded. That smirk is still there, half a mile wide.

“Haven’t seen you ‘round these parts in years.” Jim takes a sip of the scotch. I feel something stir within my gut, like I oughta be defending Sandy’s territory or something, only it’s just a glass and Sandy let him have it anyhow.

Sandy just grunts in response, jaw clenched.

“This your new boy?” Jim tilts the glass in my direction and I sure ain’t making up the way his eyes kinda laugh at me. I know I’m smaller, a little rounder, but it ain’t fucking fair to come in here and take a shot at me while acting like he owns Sandy. He don’t own Sandy.

No one owns Sandy.

I don’t wanna speak for him, but he’s not saying jack shit, so I gotta speak for myself.

“Yeah, I’m his boy.” Louder than intended. “We’re partners.”

Jim looks like he’s aching to laugh at me.

“We’re partners and I don’t know who in the goddamned hell you are, so maybe you should.” Scram. “Introduce yourself.”

Fucking shit, Dusty, every single time. Not an assertive bone in your body.

But maybe it was the right thing to say, on account of how Jim draws himself up like he’s taking a deep, deep breath and he switches over to swilling the drink in its glass, chewing on the inside of his cheek a little. He’s big and shiny and all the things a cowboy oughta be, all the things Sandy is, and Sandy’s an asshole but he’s not this asshole. I wanna make Jim sweat a little.

“I’m Sandy’s old partner,” he says, and it’s not kind like, not at all. “You better leave him before he sells you out. He always does.”

And, what? I’m thinking, I’m really trying, but the Sandy I know don’t sell out nobody, not for anything. The Sandy I know don’t even talk to nobody, let alone turn on ‘em like a rattlesnake in the grass, dangerous and ready to strike where it’ll kill you.

I talk before my brain tells me how stupid I’m being.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it’s not my Sandy.”

Everything happens very quickly. Sandy slams his hands on the bar and stands up, tense as anything, and his eyes are murder. The other patrons mind their own business until there’s a scene, but Jim don’t appear to have any friends with him — or at least not any that’ll throw a punch for him — so they mostly just watch. And Jim himself, splayed out on the barstool with his legs spread wide, smiling like this is what he wanted all along. I just played into it somehow.

I’m expecting Sandy to go crazy on Jim, slug him in the cheek or maybe the jaw. Break his nose. Do something. Because he called Sandy a turncoat, and Sandy ain’t no turncoat. He ain’t no traitor. And cowboy’s honour is big between men, even if it only goes so far.

Instead, Sandy pins me beneath his scary murder eyes and says, “Enough.”

The bang of the warning shot glaring past my ears. I feel ‘em ringing.

“Alright, Sandy.” I know my smile’s prob’ly shaky, on account of my shitty feelings getting in the way, but I know how to placate someone, at least a little. Maybe it makes me less of a man to bow instead of standing ‘til I break, but I don’t care. “Alright, we oughta call it a night, huh?”

I turn to Jim. He’s not smiling anymore, his gaze stormed over like the dust that swirls up in the desert.

“Was nice meeting you, Jim.” Placid. He don’t respond to me, only stare at Sandy like he can’t figure him out no more.

When we’re outta there, Sandy’s half a step ahead of me, always slightly out of reach. I almost wanna reach out and grab him by the arm, but that warning shot’s still ringing ringing ringing like a bell that won’t quit. Sandy stops in the dark place between two houses and then he’s facing me, coals burning in his eyes.

“Why’d you say that.” Not really a question, even though it’s phrased like one.

“I don’t know, why’d you let him say all those things in the first place?” I lick my teeth. “Calling you a traitor and all when you’re not.”

Sandy’s got me by the collar then, nose inches from my face. “You don’t know what I am.”

He’s taller than me. My collar’s gonna rip if he pulls on it much harder, steaming and huffing like a stallion about to buck his horseman right off. I’m so close to his face but I can’t meet his eyes, not when they’re gonna burn right through me and only leave ash behind. So, I look at his dark eyebrow, pinched inwards. I look at his cheekbone, sharp and cutting. I look at the meat of his cheek, barely scarred with acne if you look real, real close, and then I trace my way down his pointy nose. He’s like a bird with that nose, a real fucking beak of a thing. Right now, it feels more like a blade.

Abruptly, he lets me go, and I watch all the fight bleed out of him.

“Oughta call it a night,” he grunts, and everything’s clicking back into place. What just happened ain’t gonna happen again.

On the quiet walk back to our room, I think a little. Jim, with his glowing dark skin and smiling eyes. Sandy, gruff and red and angry as the devil. I can imagine them together, cutting a real smart figure against the landscape of the west, enough to be in a painting. But that’s not the Sandy I know. The Sandy I know, the one right in front of me, I know exactly what he is.

He’s just a man. Fallible, as weak as any other.

He’s no hero, no gunslinging maiden saver. He’s no actor. He’s no knight in shining armour — don’t even shine his boots most times.

And he’s certainly not Carlyle.

That night, I put myself to bed and I dream of things that I forget about in the morning, save for the feelings that linger. Warmth, contentment, safety.

Then it’s back to work.

[onggi]

I Never Knew A Stranger

The first time I meet Sandy, it’s like this:

I’m in town with some of my boys, except really I’m their boy, on account of how I’m really just one in a hundred cattle ranchers working for Big Nigel. He don’t pay much, but it’s more than I can get anywhere else, and I get to see the whole world in all her beautiful little ways from the back of old, sweet Deborah. The boys like me enough, tolerate me more than enough, and pay me attention less than enough, so it ain’t too hard for me to sneak away when they get so drunk that they start clamouring for the women.

See, I love women. I love their noses, soft buttons or sharp prickling needles, and I love their voices, gritty and warm or high and musical. I love their chests, soft to touch, and I love their thighs, thick with meat or skinny as a rib. But I ain’t never found the pleasure in laying with a woman thus far, and it ain’t right for a guy like me to be letting a lady down like that, a good honourable woman. It’s much easier for me to just wriggle outta there before the boys get rowdy, especially since Deb’s the sensitive sort, don’t really like being tended to by strangers. She gets mighty huffy the next day, all betrayed like.

I’m on my way to Deb, I swear it, but I’m the sort to get distracted real easy, and that’s when I see him.

He’s like a shadow creeping slowly out from behind you, stretched five different ways by the setting sun and none of them really as human as they oughta be. He’s thick, built like a fucking brick wall, and dammit if I don’t catch myself staring at him, the way his silhouette cuts through the sunset like a knife. The brim of his hat shadowing his face, that beaky fucking nose, thin mouth pulled tight like my momma’s always did before she pulled me by the ear and shrieked Thomas! loud enough to scatter the cattle five miles away; all of it makes one helluva picture, dark and red like one of them fancy wax seals stamped on an envelope.

He’s doing something with his hands, all nimble and delicate like, though it mostly just looks suspicious seeing a guy like him hanging around in the shadows, looming like a big old tree. I’m trying to figure out what he’s doing exactly, but then his gaze snaps up to meet mine.

Dark black eyes like the devil. Scruff on his chin, the kind I can never really grow out. He’s everything I ever imagined a cowboy to be back when I was just small town Thomas, never outta my momma’s sight.

“Awfully sorry for staring atcha, partner.” I wave, but it’s too fucking awkward when he don’t respond, so I drop my hand. “It’s only on account of the fact that I ain’t never seen you ‘round before and I’m familiar with these parts, if you’ll be seeing what I mean.”

Silence, dead as the bone white carcass the boys and I passed on our way into the town. Drought, they said. Drought, they always say. As I look at this beast of a man, my throat feels dry as ever.

His hands are still for a moment before he stashes whatever it was he was fiddling with in a pocket. Bites his lip. Then looks away, a visible dismissal.

Only thing is, I ain’t one to leave quietly when I’m dismissed, so I roll down my sleeves and saunter up easy as pie, hoping I’m looking just a smidge more respectable than I usually do. He don’t acknowledge my presence, even when we’re both stood right up against each other, way closer than respectable, and he don’t even glance over when I give him my best Sunday smile.

See, I’ve never been one to back away from a mystery. My Aunt Gemma used to say, if the cat’s outta the bag, it’s because Thomas opened it. And she weren’t wrong, not one bit, because when I was a boy, I used to wonder what happened to the cattle come their first birthdays. Learned not to ask my daddy any questions long time before, but he saw the way I hung around the calves petting and feeding them, so he prob’ly thought it was about time I learned the way of things. He took me by the shoulder and held me so tight I thought I would break as the men cut down little Mikey, my favourite pretty boy from the year before with eyes so round and dark I could swim in ‘em. When the blood wet my shoes, I told myself I’d never fall in love with one of them babies again, not knowing what would happen in the end. But I still named them every year without fail and cried into momma’s skirts when they were led into the slaughterhouse one by one.

“Folks ‘round here call me Dusty. What’s your name?”

He looks at me with his big black eyes, wary like he’s about to bolt. I got half a mind to put my hands up and whoa, whoa like he’s a big horse, but even if he’s a beast of a man, he ain’t no horse. If anything he’d be a wolf, lone hunter. They say wolves travel in packs, though. This guy ain’t got no pack, no siree.

“Carlyle Sanderson.” It’s gruff, punctuated heavily by the stiffening of shoulders, but it’s enough.

“Alright then, Mr Sanderson,” I say, gnawing on my own smile so hard it feels like I’m gonna bleed. “How ‘bout I call you Sandy?”

I weren’t knowing then that the thing he’d been fiddling with was a ring. I weren’t knowing what would happen next, or the day after, or years later, blood dripping down my brow. Into the slaughterhouse, one by one.

I weren’t knowing any of it.

And yet I named him anyway.

[onggi]

rattle me good : a gunsmokers fic

original work, mature, m/m. thomas "dusty" mactavish/carlyle "sandy" sanderson.

Dusty and Sandy run into an old acquaintance of Sandy's at a local saloon. Sandy doesn't stick up for himself, so someone ought to.

cowboys ; implied/referenced abuse ; minor violence ; alcohol ; first person pov

read on ao3.

[onggi]

az has decided that the ship name for sandy and dusty is going to be "susty" .

[onggi]

thinking about my cowboy ocs dusty and sandy and how az said they sounded like a comedy duo 😭

thomas mactavish/dusty has big golden retriever energy. terrible hat hair. sandy blonde in the way that looks like it was bleached by the sun. freckles and green eyes and he turns bright red instead of tanning.

carlyle sanderson/sandy is super stoic and a huuuuge hardass. he’s more jaded, dark auburn hair (thanks az) and dark eyes. he comes across as more of a loner but somehow dusty has attached himself to him like a limpet. HATES when people call him “carl” so of course dusty does it to piss him off.