#cowgirlnatural

[mrcowboydeanwinchester]

☀️ Cast No Shade 🐎

jomary fic - 5193 words - rating: T - western au - read on ao3

There isn’t much to Saint William, the motley one street town that the surrounding ranches flee to when their occupants need to get supplies, food, or drunk. Luckily for Jo Harvelle and Mary Campbell (barmaid at the Roadhouse Saloon and stablehand of the Singer Stables) their occupations fall well into these categories. And so: while they are not content, they are earning, and there is much to be said for that for two young women in a small town nearing the bottom corner of Nebraska.

Jo and Mary: cowgirls, sapphics, and gender extraordinares. They're running and they're kissing and, most importantly, dicussing their names and shattered pasts.

i cannot thank @kerryweaverlesbian enough for betaing this fic. i really couldn't have done it without you <3

written for my josjoyousbday celebration!!

It’s early evening on a scorchingly hot July day when Jo Harvelle drops by the Singer stables. The temperature has only just become bearable. Jo tugs her bandana down from around her mouth as she wanders along the ramshackle wooden stalls. The dust outside is unmanageable, what with the lack of rainfall for almost a month now, but inside it gets just that bit easier to breathe. Whether that’s truly from the break in the dust or simply because her mother isn’t standing, hovering over her shoulder is probably up for debate. 

Either way, Jo takes her time making her way through the long corridor of the stables and greeting the horses on either side of her. The town is small enough she knows all of them pretty easily. She gives a congenial pat to Eileen’s broad bay, Sam, who looks to be more moose than horse. Conversely, she keeps a wide berth of Cas, Meg’s horse, who Meg always complains seems to have come out the farm with a crack in his hoof.  

She produces an apple from her pocket for Claire. Claire had been Jimmy Novak’s horse, before Jimmy got himself killed on some holy mission several years ago while Claire was young. Claire is now in the habit of bolting for the fields the second she sees an open gate, and Bobby once explained to Jo it was likely because of the trauma of losing Jimmy. 

“Horses,” he’d said, “are surprisingly human creatures.”

Since then, Jo has felt a particular kinship to Claire, and an apple shared between them is a ritual she likes to think does them both good. Today, though, that ritual is cut short, as Jo spies movement in another stall out the corner of her eye.

There’s one horse, in the stall beside her own, that Jo hasn’t seen before. She’s a gorgeous Arabian mare, with a hide so black she looks like she’s been dipped in rich ink. And she’s tall, too: Jo can’t see her legs from here, but she knows they’ll be lean and strong. This is a horse built for running. But no one runs through the meager, fatigued town of Saint William if they can help it.

So who’s here running? Who from? Or, Jo ponders, who to?

Jo is so deep in thought over who could possibly be the owner of that beautiful horse, the fact the door to her own horse’s stall is slightly ajar slips her by. It continues to slip her by until she goes to unlatch it, and finds the wooden panel bangs restlessly against the post. It then swings away, freely, revealing a skirt-covered behind bent over a rake. The person the behind is attached to appears to be turning the hay on the stable floor, a shortish head of blonde hair almost indistinguishable from the hay around her. 

“Holy hell!” Jo splutters, managing to bang the stall door into her fingers in the shock of her surprise. She hisses a curse. By the time she’s shaken her hand out and opened up her eyes again, the girl has risen to her full height and is looking on apologetically.

“Sorry,” she says, in a drawl somewhere between sweet and gravelly; like a siren with dust in her throat. Jo likes it. “I didn’t mean to startle you- is your hand alright?”

Nodding, Jo manages a small smile. “Sure. May I ask what you’re doing with my horse?” Her tone comes out perhaps a little sharper than she intended, as the girl recoils away slightly. But still, the girl’s in Jo’s stall, Jo reckons, and even if it’s a free country she has the right of way.

Her horse isn’t a horse to be trifled with, either. Everyone knows that. A dashing gray Quarter horse, Blade had been raised alongside Jo such that they were more like brother and sister than horse and rider. She’d named him Blade while she was young enough for her father to be alive, and quite rightly, too: his hide shines, almost metallic silver in the sun. 

“I was clearing his stall out, miss. I’m the new stablehand.”

Jo folds her arms. “I ain’t heard of no new stablehand.”

“Well, I am one,” the girl rebuts, with a certain amount of her own spunk. “You can ask Mr Singer if you really want, but all you’ll hear is that I arrived yesterday and started work today.”

“Where are you staying?” Jo quizzes.

“Mr Singer is letting me board.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Lawrence. Kansas.”

“Why are you here?”

“My parents died,” the girl says, and lowers her chin in such a way Jo instantly knows this part of the conversation is over. 

The girl opposite her is not much older than Jo herself, if at all. Her hair falls around her face unevenly, like she hacked it off herself in some dingy saloon mirror; strangely, something like jealousy rises in Jo’s chest over that surely undesirable image. The skirt she’s wearing is tattered around the hem. Similarly, her shirt is crumpled and mud-stained, visibly wearing at the elbows and collar. This is the appearance of a girl who hasn’t got much, and so Jo is inclined to believe her.

“I’m sorry,” Jo says, scuffing the toe of her boot along the floor. “I’ve lost my Daddy too.”

The blonde girl nods. She opens her mouth as if she has something more on the topic to say, but then seems to change her mind. She lets whatever idea she had go with a little puff of breath and instead says, “Mr Singer was a friend of my pa’s. That’s why I’m stayin’ here, so you know. I ain’t some nobody.”

“No,” Jo mutters, and she can feel her cheeks reddening. “I didn’t think you were. I was surprised to find you here, is all. Bobby didn’t say anyone new was coming.”

“Well, I’m here,” the girl says with a shrug. A hint of a smile catches on her lip as she takes the moment to rather blatantly look Jo over, from tip to toe. Jo feels like she’s being inspected, or studied, or something. Like if the girl were to take an exam on her now, she’d get all the answers right. “Might be a good thing too. I’m Mary Campbell,” the girl, now Mary, announces. 

Jo nods, feeling her own cheeks dimple. “Mary,” she repeats softly, feeling the name in her mouth. It’s a little plain, as all the girl’s names seem to be in these parts, but it fits her, Jo thinks. There’s always more to a Mary than meets the eye.

“And what’s your name?” Mary asks, turning back to her work in the stall. Blade doesn’t seem to mind her presence at all, happily munching from his food box. If nothing else had made Jo trust Mary already, that sign alone would have.

“Everyone calls me Jo,” Jo supplies in turn. She pushes the stall door to, so she can lean against it and peer over as Mary works. As Mary bends over again, it’s another one of those moments where Jo wishes women got to wear unforgiving denim jeans like the men did. 

“That short for anything?” 

“My mamma seems to think so,” Jo huffs. “But it’s really just Jo. Jo Harvelle.”

“Alright then. Howdy, Jo Harvelle, it’s nice to meet you.”

**

There isn’t much to Saint William, the motley one street town that the surrounding ranches flee to when their occupants need to get supplies, food, or drunk. Luckily for Jo and Mary (barmaid at the Roadhouse Saloon and stablehand of the Singer Stables) their occupations fall well into these categories. And so: while they are not content, they are earning, and there is much to be said for that for two young women in a small town nearing the bottom corner of Nebraska.

A year after Mary’s surprise arrival, the July sun scorches the land as surely as it did the very first time Jo and Mary met. Jo pulls her hat from her head and fans herself with it a little as she slips into the Singer Stables, in a move now so habitual she barely thinks about it. The late afternoon’s fingertips are starting to loosen their grip to the cooler breeze of evening. Only just, though. 

“Hey honey, I’m home,” she calls out among the seemingly empty stalls. 

Blade snorts fondly at the sound of her voice. A second later, Mary’s blonde head pops out of the stall beside Blade’s, the stall now belonging to the horse which had stolen Jo’s attention that day a year ago. 

“Hey,” Mary says, a smile curling across her lips at the sight of Jo. Her gaze drops from Jo’s eyes as she rambles closer, drifting across her chapped lips instead.

“Hey,” Jo agrees, falling readily into the kiss Mary presses between them. It’s too chaste, like a tequila shot; leaves Jo wanting a chaser, wanting more. But still, it’s kinda perfect. 

Since Mary ran into Jo’s life, it’s been far more kinda perfect than it ever was before. 

The contact is over, but still they stand in each other’s orbit, neither of them wanting to pull away. The heat seeps through the skin and straight to the stomach, on days like this. It doesn’t matter that to stand so close means yet more warmth. Not when the rising devotion in Jo’s stomach has her singing for intimacy. 

“How’s Baby?” she murmurs, lips still close enough to Mary’s cheeks to grace her sun-weathered face. Jo feels, easily, how the hairs on both of their necks rise and stand like a freshly lit flame. 

Mary grins, turning away to gaze at her horse so tenderly it almost makes Jo jealous. The Arabian mare stands, gleaming black as ever. “She’s good,” she says. “Wheels need oiling a little, maybe, but she’ll run.”

Jo laughs, feeding her fingers between Mary’s buckled hands. 

They’d fallen into a relationship in the brisk air of last October, rather in the same way the Earth turns. One day, they weren’t ferociously making out in the back corners of local barns and yet, the next they were. 

One thing which Jo had noticed almost from the first kiss though, was how crooked Mary’s fingers were. Like they’d been broken and trampled and never given the time to heal right. But it was a hard question to ask, how a girl got all her fingers broken and crudely healed again by the ripe old age of 19.

Jo had chanced it once, and got the blunt reply that “my parents were bounty hunters. They wanted me in on the family business. But sometimes, the bounties hunt you back.” Then Mary had dipped her chin again, in the way that Jo knew meant she was starting to pour salt into a wound not yet healed. 

It hadn’t taken much to put two and two together and realize that bounty hunting was probably how Mary’s parents had wound up dead. It also took a single glance at Mary to see she was glad to be out of it. It must be a terrible thing, Jo mused, for that kind of death to feel like an escape. But if the paper she had seen crumpled on Bobby’s desk was to be believed, it seemed that her parents’ death had almost been Mary’s. 

Now, with her fingers entwined around Mary’s, still broken, Jo wonders - and not for the first time - what it’s like to come back from the brink of death. How it would be to come back, and not know if you’ve come back wrong. 

But then again, Mary’s fingers have healed in all sorts of finicky, wrong ways. And Jo loves how exquisite they are all the same.

“Tell me you’re finished up here, and that you’ll take me somewhere fun,” Jo hums.

“Can do, cowboy,” Mary chuckles.  “Let me get my hat and we can go.”

Mary brushes off the hay from her skirt, gives one last caring look over all the horses, and sets her brown hat firmly on her head. Then, she grabs Jo’s hand and marches them back out into the staunch heat of the unbroken street.

“You know what I fancy, in this shitty weather?” Mary asks loosely as they wander up the road. Past Rufus’ grocers on one side, past the doctor’s office Garth runs on the other. 

Jo shrugs, always happy just to let Mary chat on in her own conversation. Contrary to what her mother might think, Jo doesn’t always need to be talking. She’s more of the quiet type, really. It’s easier to hear more about others, that way. And perhaps to hide more of yourself.

Then they’re along past the Sheriff’s office, where posters with crudely drawn pictures scream ‘WANTED’ for a Nick, a Uriel, a Ruby. Sheriff Jody and Deputy Donna wave from inside, friendly-like, as Jo and Mary pass by. 

“Now, you mayn’t like me for this but I think it’s an awful good idea,” Mary stipulates, and Jo begins to see where they’re headed, and feels the excitement drain from her bones. 

“Come on,” Jo moans, feet still moving weakly towards the top of the street.

“More than anything in the whole world, what I want right now is a drink,” Mary says triumphantly, pointing towards the beaten up, almost knocked down sign reading Roadhouse Saloon.

Jo sighs. Her breath comes out lukewarm, and the heat suddenly turns her stomach more towards apathy than any romantic notion. 

“I’ve just spent the whole day in that saloon, I don’t want to go back,” she huffs, pushing her weight against the direction Mary is still towing her in. 

“Think of it - a nice cold beer at the end of a working day-”

“Think of it,” Jo lays out clearly. “My mother.”

“Just imagine her as a coyote, she won’t attack you as long as you don’t provoke her,” Mary assures her. She gives Jo’s hand another encouraging pull. “Come on, please.”

Jo shakes her head with a definite grump, but there’s a smile growing on her face, and she knows she’ll probably give in.

“Come on, Josephine,” Mary laughs, dragging her towards the Roadhouse. “Let’s have a bit of fun.”

Jo halts at that, though. The name that slipped through Mary’s mouth oh so easily. 

“My name ain’t Josephine,” she says, tugging her hand free from Mary’s. She stops in the street, still, a few feet from where Mary now stands. All trace of amiableness gone, Jo scuffs the dust with the toe of her boots.

Mary turns to face her. Her hat has fallen from her head and so rests at the back of her hair, caught on the string around her neck. The ashy strands of her bangs glint in the dry sun. Her smile hasn’t faded; “yeah, I know, you’re just Jo-”

“No,” Jo says. “I mean, my name ain’t Josephine. It’s Joanna.” She heaves a sigh. “Joanna-Beth.”

Mary’s mouth forms the ‘oh’ before Jo hears it. It’s frustrating, that even like this, when Jo has this restless anger shifting about in her, Mary still looks so downright kissable. She stands a little awkwardly, like she wants to close the distance between them but doesn’t know how to. “Sorry, I didn’t know. I just kinda assumed…”

“I know,” Jo shrugs simply. And just like that, the anger dissipates again, like there was no reason for the itch ever to be there. “I didn’t tell you. But now I have.” 

The street is empty around them. A part of Jo’s brain cries out that this feels somewhat like a shootout; Mary shot first, and she hit the heart now bleeding on Jo’s sleeve. But why her name is causing this consternation, Jo isn’t really sure.

“‘S not really a big deal,” she says, stepping forward to be closer to Mary again. “I’m still just Jo, really.”

Mary hesitates, for a frightening second, like she has something more to say on the matter. And maybe she should. Almost a year they’ve known each other, and only now does she know Jo’s full name. 

But then her face curves back upwards into a smile. “Yeah, you’re just Jo. And as it happens, I like Jo quite a damn bit.” She leans in conspiratorially. “So it works out.”

Jo feels a fresh blush ignite her cheeks, and Mary offers out her hand. Under the sun, her pale palm seems to radiate its own light. Mary wiggles her fingers tantalizingly. Broken, but exquisite. Just-Jo takes her partner's hand, and lets her drag them both into the saloon.

**

A week later, Jo and Mary are collapsed under a tree, nestled in a dell between the swathes of long grass. The day is hot again, but not like before, not unbearable. Just managing to err on pleasant: in the shade the yellowing tree is casting, it’s particularly nice. 

Their horses are grazing in the field nearby. They’d ridden out of Saint William until it was nothing but a blur on the horizon, flickering feverishly in the warm air. Now, it’s one of those days which are completely spontaneous and entirely planned all at the same time - like neither of them knew it would happen beforehand, but once it did, there was never another option. 

Mary is slumped against the trunk of the tree, wide brim of her hat pulled low over her head. The slight wind plays mildly with her short hair. She hasn’t bothered to put it up, what with the ride being easy and the day not being wildly hot. 

The deft waving of the sun-bleached strands are somewhat hypnotic to Jo, as she lays perpendicular to Mary, with her head in her lap. Staring up at her from below, Jo is blearily reminded of the globe in the table of the town’s’ schoolroom. When she was young, she’d sit by it on the floor in class and gaze up at the countries no one properly saw from above. Antarctica, Australia. And now, looking up at Mary, she feels equally let in on a secret. It’s like Mary becomes the whole world.

“I have a question for you,” Mary says, breaking open a very comfortable silence. Apart from their voices, the only other sounds are the occasional snorts of Blade and Baby; a swish of their tails as the flies get too close. 

Mary’s been running her fingers through Jo’s hair, just softly, molding little rivers of hair over Jo’s forehead and brushing them aside. With her other hand, she’s working her way leisurely through an apple, and the faint tang of the fruit wafts in the air around them.

“Sure,” Jo says, rising a little from the half-doze that Mary’s gentle brushing of her hair had instilled in her. “Ask away.”

“You haven’t got to answer it,” Mary assures her, and for the first time Jo realizes that Mary is unsure about whatever it is she wants to say. Her hat casts a long, steady shadow over her face so that Jo can’t quite see the detail of her eyes. If she could, she isn’t sure what she’d see.

Jo props herself up on her elbows and tilts her head up towards Mary’s. Mary pulls her hand away from Jo’s hair, and leaves it hovering in the air beside them. Like static - Jo doesn’t have to see it to know it’s still there. Closer to her face, Jo can feel the heat radiating off Mary’s cheeks. 

“Okay,” she murmurs. Her voice comes out a little lower than the intended, and maybe she just wants to but she feels Mary shiver a little with it. “What’s the question?”

“Why do you want everyone to call you Jo? I know it ain’t up to me, but. Joanna-Beth is such a pretty name.”

Jo nods. She hums, to buy time with an answer more than anything, and settles back down in Mary’s lap. Mary’s hand hovers over her head, as if she’s unsure she can touch her again. Jo finds Mary’s gaze in the cool wash of the shade and shoots her a smile. With the brim of her hat all around her head, Mary looks like she has a halo. But not one made of light, one made of chestnut felt. A cowgirl angel. Mary places her hand back along Jo’s parting, running her fingers lightly against her hair again. 

“Do you like the name Mary?” Jo asks. It’s not in lieu of an answer: she’s building up to it. Mary, as she understands almost everything, seems to understand this. 

“Well I guess I don’t mind it,” Mary answers fairly. “I don’t know- it’s a common name, easily. A lot of girls in this town are called Mary. Makes me feel a little plain. But then again, it’s never really been a problem for me. My name was just something given to me, and I never thought about not taking it.”

Jo hums again. With one of her hands, she searches in the grass around her for a second to find what she wants. When she curls her hand around a blade good enough, she gives it a sharp tug and brings it to her mouth, letting her jaw work around it. Something to do while she thinks of what to say.

Mary knows this all, knows she hasn’t got to go on to fill the silence, but she does. “I guess, now, if there’s one thing I don’t like about it, it’s about how Mary is a mother’s name. Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ, all that. Now I love Christ as much as the next woman, don’t get me wrong-”

Jo huffs a laugh.

“-but I don’t want to be giving birth to him. I don’t want to be a mother like that. And when you’re called Mary- why, feels like that’s what you were put on this earth to do, I guess.”

“I don’t think you were put on this earth for that at all,” Jo intercepts, finding her voice again. She’s well aware it’s a weakness, but she can always find her voice when she’s not talking about herself. “I think you were put on this earth to ride horses and leave this town and settle on a nice ranch and watch the sun go down over the mountains.”

She should’ve really said ‘you were put on this earth to do whatever you want to do,’ because that’s what she means. But she knows Mary enough to know that everything she just listed is what Mary wants to do. Lord knows Jo just wants Mary to want her by her side for all of it too.

“Thanks, Jo,” Mary murmurs. Her fingers are constant along Jo’s hairline again, but the rhythm seems to change, now. Becomes a thank you as much as a you are loved.

“And to answer your question myself,” Jo begins, because she believes in fair play, even if it does take her a while to get there. “I’ve never liked Joanna-Beth. It’s just never felt right. My mother always calls me that - ‘specially when she’s angry with me. She’s always been proud of calling me it, though, ‘cause she thought of the name herself. Loves it. Took her a long time to call me Jo.”

Jo takes a breath then, reading herself for the monologue. Sometimes, she gets the feeling she’s just a body built of dams, waiting to burst. Every joint is a blockade, and every day she’s trying to keep every one of them closed. But sometimes, when someone asks the right question, it’s hard to keep even one of them shut. That’s why she talks so little, and then all the time. She never could do anything by halves. 

“But my daddy, ‘fore he died- he loved calling me Jo. Always said I should be whatever I wanted to be. Lookin’ back, though, maybe he just wanted a son. Maybe I want to be his son, I don’t know. But I can remember him saying it. I can remember his voice saying ‘Jo’, and not much else of him. So maybe it’s a way to keep him alive.”

Mary sighs darkly. “I know that feeling,” she says. “My name is the only thing my parents gave me that I have left.”

Jo reaches her hand out and grasps Mary’s, giving it a tight squeeze. The loss is fresher for her still than it is for Jo - it’s been over a decade since Bill Harvelle died. It’s been not even two years since the Campbells were murdered.

They stay like that for a while, Jo’s hand locked around Mary’s. A sign of sympathy and empathy and all that’s between. Jo’s still got the straw in her mouth, and she chews it, roughly and repeatedly while she thinks of her own question she maybe shouldn’t ask. It’s an odd one, she knows that. But if Mary doesn’t want to be a mother, maybe she’s more like Jo than Jo could’ve previously hoped.

Jo coughs, roughly. The words are scratchy in her throat, like she’s forcing them out.  “Did you ever want to be a son, rather than a daughter?” Jo asks. She’s trying not to think about how hard that was to say.

Mary pauses, resettles herself against the tree. “What do you mean?”

Jo can sense her face flushing red under Mary’s question. But now the words are in the air with the scents of grass and apple and she can’t take them back.

“I don’t really…” she trails off. Are there even the words in her to be found to explain what she means? “I don’t think I’ll be able to say it right. But I mean- do you sometimes think you like girls more than you want to be one?”

It’s Mary’s turn to hum, now, as she works the question over in her mind. Jo picks at the stubs of her nails while Mary does so; for all that Mary’s patient with Jo’s silence, Jo can never quite repay her with the same grace.

“I think being a girl in a place like this is hard,” Mary says, eventually, carefully. “There’s aplenty of times when I’ve wished I were a fella just to get by a little easier, or so another girl would want me how I want them. But I don’t know if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t think I know either,” Jo sighs, restless. “It’s hard to tell the difference.”

“To tell the difference between what?”

“Well, between wanting to be with a woman, wishing I could do what a man does, and being seen as a man myself, I guess.”

Mary places her apple on the ground, and presses her fingers purposefully to her own lips, and then to Jo’s. Jo can taste the bittery sweetness of the apple’s flesh even as Mary’s fingers leave her mouth. 

“What were that for?” Jo asks, helplessly falling into a smile

“‘Cause I see you got a lot happening in your mind, and I want you to know I love you for all of it.”

The words find residency in Jo’s heart and sit there, twinkling, making her feel a way she could never quite dream of describing. “Oh,” she smiles breathlessly. “Thanks.”

Mary is gazing fondly down at her, her own cheeks dimpled. She takes a breath, and twists a strand of Jo’s hair around her finger. Whether to fiddle or to keep Jo close, Jo isn’t sure. “Listen, I don’t know if this will help or not,” Mary begins. Maybe Jo would follow Mary through the darkest mine and deepest ocean, or maybe Jo just believes whatever Mary says will help. “But bein’ with you… makes me want to be a woman more than anytime else. I love loving you like this. And if you feel like you need people to see you a certain way- well I see you an’ I think you’re perfectly lovely.”

Something seems to slot into place, then, like the out of tune piano at the Roadhouse finally hitting the right chord. The words resonate, bringing the world out into a harmony which rings, rises, and then falls quietly back, like nothing has changed at all. But Jo knows it has - and she also knows the flush on her cheeks is reaching a furious red. “I didn’t just say all this to get complimented.”

“I know,” Mary laughs, and it sounds like singing. Her siren song. “But it’s true. If Joanna-Beth is strictly off limits, then I’ll call you Jo ‘til we’re sat watching the sun go down over those mountains.”

Jo furrows her eyebrows. “Well, it’s just… everybody calls me Jo,” she says, worrying at her lip. But then she thinks of that perfect chord resonating out across the long grass which Mary’s words caused. In that moment, she didn’t mind how long her hair was, because it was Mary working her fingers all the way through it. And she stares back up at Mary’s face, where the whole world is haloed by her chestnut hat. “But you ain’t everybody.”

Mary grins. “No?”

“No,” Jo replies firmly. “You call me whatever you see fit.”

She gets up properly, then, pulls the straw from her mouth with abandon and threads her fingers through the hand Mary had been carding through her hair. On her knees, Jo crawls to where Mary has her back against the tree. Mary peels herself forward, tugging Jo in with gravity until they’re both closer and closest to one another’s faces. 

When their threaded hands move tenderly towards each other’s cheeks, Jo cannot tell which of them is leading the movement. They’ve merged, become one, the gossamer strands of blonde hair fluttering between them belonging to either of them.

“Just call me-” Jo pants, losing her voice as her longing overcomes her.

“What?” Mary asks. Her breath is hot and palpable against Jo’s wet lips. 

Jo swallows. “Just call me yours.”

There’s a moment of just looking, where their gazes are shared with such intensity it’s like the air is honey between them. Then, they crush together, the honey dissolving as their lips meet one another’s with all the urgency of a world on fire. 

Or maybe a world in flood, as everything else falls away, is carried away around Jo as she melts entirely into Mary’s desire. Mary’s hat is knocked aside with the force of their kisses, and she drags her hands up and away to throw it plain off her head before rushing her crooked fingers right back to tug on Jo’s hair, caress her cheeks. 

The world is thrown open in bright sunlight - now, Mary casts no shade. The light blossoms in Jo’s eyes with the sudden change and the world is rendered white. White for bliss, white for desire, white for absolute stone-sure adoration. The shade was comfortable but this, oh this. This is a perilous serenity.

“Mine,” Mary whispers. She dips her head to press her lips to Jo’s neck and draws a sweet nectared whine from Jo’s throat. God, let her leave bruises. “Cowgirl, you’re all mine.”