#my farmgirl is showing 😆

[johnwickb1tsch]

A Walk in the Clouds/Don John crossover outline that's turning into a fic Part 5 ~

Paul Sutton x fem!Reader x Don John triangle

You grow up at Las Nubes vineyard, and have to go home to your dying father. You take your fake new husband, Sgt Paul Sutton, with you... Warnings: His Hotness don John being a bully 🙃 <----Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 chapter map

-Life moves at its own pace at Las Nubes. True, it is a vineyard, but it is also a working farm, a self-reliant symbiosis of the land, the beasts, and the men and women who tend them. There are sheep and chickens and pigs and of course, the pride of the land owning Californio: horses. There is always something to be done, when you are not tending your father, so when the chance comes at the siesta break you pounce on it to write a little in your diary. Everyone else is asleep, or at least resting during the hottest part of the day, and its almost as though you have the place to yourself by the duck pond in the shade of the courtyard. You throw them little morsels of stale bread, smiling at the happy way they wag their tails and mutter as they nibble. 

The hens enjoy themselves, at least, until the drake decides yet again that it’s time to bestow his special attentions. There is one hen in particular he favors, and you wince as it looks more like he’s trying to drown her than make love. The poor thing has a little bald patch on the back of her head from him biting her to hold on as he rides her. 

“Leave her alone,” you say, poking at him with a stick to dislodge him from the poor girl. She shakes it off and goes back to her bread. He makes his complaints to you, but retreats to the far side of the fountain. 

“Poor bastard. You didn’t even let him finish.” 

You jump a little at the sound of don Juan’s voice, not having expected to see anyone around. Warily you watch him as he takes the seat next to yours, his long legs sprawled out before him. He wipes his face with a handkerchief; he’s been doing something in the fields, perhaps, or out with his prized stallion. He seems tired, but content; whatever chore he labored at must have gone well. 

“He’s too much of a pest,” you say. “He needs to be sent to the cook pot.” 

Juan smirks over at you. “But then where will my ducklings come from?”

You make a sound between your teeth at that, and he goes on, “I like him. He is exactly what God made him. He does not have to apologize for it.”

It’s true, that he’s a handsome fellow, with his iridescent emerald green head and the proud curl of his drake feathers on his behind. “He looks like pato asado to me.”  

“You would take his life?” poses Juan, clearly enjoying playing the foil. He was always like this, even when you were children. Always taking the opposing side, for the sake of being contrary. “For being a man of passions?”

“For hurting his females for the sake of indulging his passions. He’s supposed to protect them.”

“Ah, well. Everything comes with a price.” 

You look over at don Juan, devastatingly handsome, even in a dusty work shirt open at the collar, his long legs encased to the knee in well-worn leather boots. Once you might have sold your soul, to possess this man for yourself. 

Now you realize, some prices are too high. 

“What do you want, Juan?” you ask cautiously. You can tell that strangely he’s in one of his more playful moods. That doesn’t mean you’re safe by half.

“Just to talk.”

“About?”

He leans in across the table, his dark eyes raking over you. You hate it, how that still gives you such a guilty thrill. “I have a proposition that may interest you.”

“Is this a proposition you would not like my husband to overhear?”

Now it is he who makes the frustrated hiss between his sharp teeth, sneering. “Come off it. You are no more married to that man than I am the Pope.” 

“Señor, how you offend me.” 

He narrows his eyes to slits, but a smirk pulls at the corner of his proud lips. He is enjoying himself–and that worries you. “I understand you, y/n, better than you think.”

You’re afraid that might be true.

“Oh?”

“I have always known you have a heart not easily tamed. Perhaps it is why I have always loved you.”

“Juan…”

“Marry me, y/n. Be the mistress of this place. Of your own destiny. I will give you your room with your typewriter in the tower, overlooking this.” He holds his arms wide, encompassing the entirety of Las Nubes. “There is no better view, no better place to be on this Earth. Your only master shall be me.”

Many things can be said of don Juan. If there is something you know he does truly love, it is Las Nubes. He is a man of this land, and you understand he truly cannot fathom wanting to be anywhere else. 

Then, you realize that he must have been spying on you and Paul in the pool that night, and that maybe he really does know everything. 

Once, being crowned reina of this estate might have been your fondest dream, something so far out of your grasp there was never any sense in even thinking of it in the light of day. Now…you know that binding yourself to Juan would be like offering your ankle up for a gilded ball and chain. 

He would destroy you, little by little. Maybe not even maliciously, but in spite of himself. He is what he is, and you are what you are. 

It would be war. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” you say, tracing a finger over the edge of your little diary, unable to meet his burning eyes while your heart beats too fast in your throat. “I���m already married, and you are engaged.”

“To some girl I’ve never met, two-thousand miles away? What is she to me, but a dowry? We don’t need it. The harvest was generous; the land blesses us as always. We take care of Las Nubes, and she takes care of us.”

You can feel his eyes boring into you, and it sends an uneasy thrill down your spine.   

“I’m sorry, señor. You’re too late. Don’t marry her if it displeases you. But you must find yourself a different bride–I am taken.”

You physically feel the change in the air, as his jovial bonhomie shifts to blackness, like a thunderhead looming. Yet somehow it surprises you when he moves like lightning, snatching you up in his unforgiving arms, his grip on your wrists bruising. “WIllful girl. I offer you this highest honor, and you throw it back in my face? I will prove that you are lying to me,” he tells you, his voice low in your ear. He takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of your fear. “And then, I will claim what is mine.” 

“Let go of me.”

“What if I don’t?” he demands, delighted by the thought of a fight. You can see the spark in his eyes. Despite his anger; this is fun for him, and you know a marriage to this man would never know peace. He would terrorize you for nothing if not his own amusement. Maybe he would give you a room in the tower–but its more likely he would lock you in it. 

“Y/n?” Again, Paul rides to your rescue, approaching from somewhere beyond the wall. 

Before you can answer this time, don Juan presses his mouth to yours in a punishing kiss, your teeth clashing in his furious bid to claim you. This time, he remembers to retreat before you can bite him too, releasing you so abruptly you fall back into your chair. With a dramatic sweep of his arm he knocks your diary into the fountain before stalking away on those long legs. “How clumsy of me!”

You shriek, diving for the little book. 

That is how Paul finds you, on your knees by the water, crying over your inked words now obliterated. 

“Y/n?” He falls to his knees beside you, at first not understanding, searching you for injury. “Are you alright?”

You hold up the little book, half the pages now more resembling a watercolor painting. “It’s ruined.” 

“Oh.” He frowns, not wanting to belittle this thing that clearly distresses you, but not understanding nonetheless. “Can’t you…write it again?”

You know you’ll never be able to recreate exactly what you’d put down there. You won’t be able to remember what you wrote, in the throes of feverish inspiration, the manic fugue of the cosmic muse whispering through your writing hand. 

Amidst your own daily musings, you’ve been writing a story about a spirited young lady who meets a handsome veteran on a bus. 

You shake your head, crestfallen, and Paul’s frown darkens for you. 

“What happened?”

You don’t know if he saw the tailend of don Juan turning the corner before he made the scene, but a part of you fears that if you tell on the master there will be a fight. “I dropped it,” you say meekly. 

For a moment, you can tell he wants to argue, but because he’s a better man than anyone here, he lets it go. “Ok, sweetheart. Let’s go see if we can get it dried out.”

You are beginning to see this miraculous thing about Paul. When you are dead set that a thing is doomed, he still finds hope. Although you’re mostly certain the diary is ruined, you still feel better returning to your room with his arm around your shoulders. 

Maybe you can rewrite it after all.