#still! look at me. expanding my horizons. Nobody tell me all of these bands are extremely popular starter bands for these genres ill cry

[vamptastic]

waogh

[shootybangbang]

[Talking Bird] Ch 16: In which the plot finally makes an appearance

[Ao3 Link]

[Content Warning]: suicidal ideation, mild gore

[Note]: this fic has gone through some serious revisions — mostly expanded scenes/dialogue. The chapters most heavily affected are 1, 2, 3, and 7, but I’ve added a changelog to the end notes of each previous chapter detailing the edits that have been made. To save you some time though, here are the three main things to note:

The reader character does not have the bonds

The reader character refers to Arthur by his last name due to unfamiliarity

The horniness from last chapter has been moved to a future chapter. sorry!

This chapter is also pretty long in comparison to the others. From here on out, the chapters will probably be 2000+ words.

———

You look out into the plains, at the last pale band of light disappearing beneath a horizon of prairie grass and dark, looming buttes. The shadows of the scant trees stretch long and thin, their branches like a thousand spindly fingers grasping, searching. The landscape is dimmed to a tableau of reds and blacks, anything not illuminated by the fire slowly sinking into the featureless canvas of night. All of it blurred and indistinct behind a curtain of rain.

It’s a prettier sight by far than any you’ve had in St Denis. Or San Francisco. Or anywhere else you’ve lived, really.

And yet it hangs like featureless gauze behind the endless reel playing out over and over behind your eyes, spinning round like the printed images on a zoetrope.

The O’Driscoll’s hands wet with blood and mud. His eyes wide and uncomprehending. Trying to put himself back together the way one might a broken toy, sieving his viscera between his fingers and scooping it into the cavity of his chest. That initial, stunned bemusement giving way at last to the dawning horror of his own end.

And accompanying it, the numb realization that what bothered you more was the bare abstraction of the act. The burden of this sin weighing heavy with all the others, its addition tipping some moral scale, and —

“Hey.”

Morgan’s voice, jarringly brusque against the murmurings of your own private judge and jury, is almost mercifully irritating.

“What do you want?” you snap.

“Get up,” he says. “Start strippin’ the wet bark off the firewood.”

“For chrissakes, at least give me a second to catch my breath.”

“Why, so you can keep sittin’ there feeling sorry for yourself?” He leans one hand against the stone wall of the outcrop and drags himself back to his feet. The barest shadow of a grimace flits across his face as he straightens his back. “C’mon. Sooner we get set up proper, the sooner we can get back to ignorin’ each other. Then you can sulk all night in peace.”

The cottonwood branches are covered in cracked, ash brown bark that scrapes rough against your palms and fingers, rasping the skin raw as you hold the wood firm for carving. One of the downsides of living easy for so many years, you suppose — all the protective calluses atrophy to nothing, and what remains becomes susceptible to old and familiar hurts. But habits run deeper than skin, and what the mind forgets the body keeps.

As you work your way through the firewood, Boadicea nickers and paws impatiently at the dirt.

“I’m sorry girl,” you hear Morgan say. “Been a hard day for us both.”

You snort contemptuously. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as he unhooks the horse’s bridle and lifts away the saddle, then starts grooming her with a battered looking brush, brushing with quick, circular motions, going against the grain and fluffing up her coat to dry out her fur with a solicitous measure of care that seems wholly unfitting of a man of his temperament and occupation.

Boadicea makes a low, rumbly noise in the back of her throat that sounds almost like a purr. She dips her head down and chomps at the yellowed prairie grass lining the floor of the outcrop, tearing up mouthfuls with a sedate contentedness that makes you sorely wish you could share in her circumstances.

A sense of fatigue more complete than any you’ve ever felt before settles over you like heavy snow. For the moment, you feel blank and washed out, stripped bare of all pretense.

“Morgan,” you admit. “I don’t have the bonds.”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I know.” He unpacks his canvas roll and yanks free from it the saddle blanket of coarse, undyed wool, then unfurls it over the horse’s back, pulling it over her flank and adjusting the fit. “Figured as much before we left Strawberry.”

“Oh.” At this point, you haven’t even the energy to be surprised. “Huh.”

For a long while, the only sound is that of the knife scraping against bark and the intensifying patter of rain, fat droplets coming down hard and fast.

In a small voice, you ask him, “You’re not really gonna sell me to a brothel, are you?”

He scoffs. “What makes y’think that ?”

“Thought you seemed too… too decent to do something like that.”

“Me? Decent?” Morgan lets out a low, disbelieving whistle. “Thought you’d know better by now.”

He turns partway to face you. In the dim light of the fire only half of him is lit bright enough to see, the rest tapering sharp into dark silhouette. For the lapse of a heartbeat it’s as if all the irreverence and bravado has been ripped away like a sheet of paper, and underneath a viciousness, a suppressed violence that you’ve been too blind to see.

This whole time you’ve been treating him like a dog, when the teeth at your throat are those of a wolf.

Your mouth goes dry and your fingers tighten around the knife in your hand. You stare up at him like a deer caught in his sights — blind panic rising up in your chest and throat like cold water. You swallow hard and try to force it down so you can maintain at least a semblance of control.

“Mr. Morgan…?”

“You ain’t been half as scared of me as you should be,” he says. “holed up with a wanted man, nobody around for miles. Some of the men I’ve run with, they…”

He lets the sentence trail off, the implications clear enough without him saying so. Then he shakes his head, and there is a weariness in him, a kind of cynical exhaustion that ages him far beyond his years. “Girl,” he says. “You keep at this line of work, I guarantee you’ll be dead in a year.”

Morgan slicks his fingers through his wet hair to keep rainwater from dripping into his eyes, and you can see that the hangdog look is back on his face, all his suggested cruelty vanished like smoke. He shifts his attention back to the saddlebags. “No, I ain’t decent,” he continues. He pulls out a tin cup and the individual components of what looks to be a collapsible grill. “But I ain’t so far gone that I’d hurt a woman. Or sell one.”

“But you’d ransom one.”

“Figured it out, did you?” he says. “Thought you might.”

He sits back beside the fire and pieces the grill together, twists its winch tight and positions it over the fire. Then he fills the tin cup with water from the canteen and sets it atop to heat.

“If you don’t hurt women,” you say slowly, your right hand still holding the knife tight as a vise. “Then what’re you going to do to me when you find out I’m not worth ransoming?”

“Doubt that’s gonna be a problem.”

“Why not?”

“Had a brand new Mauser on ya. You know how much those things cost?”

Mentally, you kick yourself. Looks like begging the gunsmith to lend you the best pistol he had in stock has come back to bite you in the ass.

“The gun’s not mine,” you say quickly. “It’s a loan.”

“Those bloomers in your room were real silk. You gonna tell me those were a loan too?”

“You — my bloomers?! Why were you going through my bloomers, you fucking degen—”

Of all the things you’ve accused him of today, somehow this is the one that actually rankles him. “You think I like rummaging through women’s underwear? Had to go through ‘em to get to your billfold.”

You flush hard enough that even the tips of your ears feel hot. “I… I saved up for those bloomers. Not that I’d expect you to understand the importance of—

“That shirt’s custom tailored, ain’t it? Those boots, too. And that’s good leather right there. Far too good for your typical drug mule. Either you come from money, or you got rich friends.”

There’s not much you can rebut here. All you can manage is a lame, “You don’t even know who I am .”

“Got a friend not too far from here who’s plenty familiar with St Denis. He’ll know.” Morgan holds his hand out towards you. “Gimme that knife a second.”

The knife is the only scrap of protection you’ve managed to grab hold of through this entire ordeal. You squeeze its handle tight.

He lets out a short, impatient sigh. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it by now. So c’mere and hand it over.”

You’ve known men who take a certain vicious pleasure in abusing women. Merchants with cringing wives. Clients with kind faces who’d leave working girls battered and bruised. There’s usually a certain mien about them that sets you on edge and that Morgan, brusque as he is, thoroughly lacks.

You brush the wood shavings off your lap and approach him. When you reach his place beside the fire, he tilts his head upwards to meet your eyes, the look on his face calm and expectant. A self-assured confidence that you’ve seen many times before, in the guises of many different men. It sends a familiar shiver of resentment down your spine.

You could cut out his eye right now. You could sink the blade into the thick cord of his neck. And he’d shoot you dead just for trying it — oh, you’ve no doubt of that — but it’d be quick and it’d be painless, and here comes that pathetic urge again, that little whisper coaxing you deeper, deeper towards the welcoming dark —

But equally pathetic is the nagging insistence that always stays your hand, that strident, desperate plea born from bodily instinct. The shared fear of all life from the inevitable. Cowardice — that’s what it is. A cowardice you’ve never been able to shake, a resentful, stubborn tether that you’ve bitten and clawed at over the years, but that still stays looped firm around your neck.

( And what about Mei? What about her son? )

You hand him the knife, and he receives it without incident.

The water in the tin cup is boiling. Morgan slips the point of the knife through the cup’s metal handle, and delicately removes it from the grate to cool. As you stand there, wet and cold and resentful, but not sure what else to do, he saws the top off a can of beans and sets it on the grill to warm, then pulls something out of his satchel and tosses it in your direction.

Somehow, you manage to not fumble the catch. It’s a can of peaches.

“Don’t eat ‘em yet,” he says. “I wanna take a look at your arm first. Roll up your sleeve for me.”

You grimace. One of the pros of tailored shirts is having sleeves that actually fit. “It doesn’t roll up that far.”

“Then I’ll cut it off for you,” he says, putting the knife to the shoulder seam.

“Like hell you will. This is my last decent shirt.”

Morgan shrugs. “No way around it, unless you wanna take it off.”

A shirt nice enough to present a veneer of respectability costs at least $4. Your usual tailor’s fee runs about $2, plus tip. That’s $6 total: the equivalent of two week’s worth of food for Mei and her son. Good food — white rice and cabbage, maybe even a bit of pork belly. Not the bits of offal scrounged from the butcher and wilted produce she’d resort to otherwise.

You hold out your hand and say, “Give me something to cover myself with.”

Your time spent reading Ovid in college would have probably been better served learning to dress like him, you think to yourself as you try and try again to wrap Morgan’s blanket around yourself like a toga.

“I said I’d give you a minute to yourself,” he says. “It’s been more than three now. I’m gonna turn around.”

“Just ten more seconds,” you respond, hastily tucking the corner of the blanket into the horizontal swathe pulled taut across your torso.

The sheer amount of irritation he manages to convey in the sigh he lets out is really quite impressive. In it, you can somehow hear him rolling his eyes.

When you finally let him know you’re ready, he takes one look at you and has to stifle a laugh. “You could’ve just wrapped it around your chest. Woulda been more practical.”

“Oh, excuse me for wanting to preserve what’s left of my dignity,” you snap, keeping one arm pressed against your chest to keep the whole improvised garment from falling apart.

“Alright Caesar, c’mere. Let me see.”

The cut looks like an angry red furrow ploughed through the field of your skin. Its edges are ragged and torn, separated like poorly cut cloth. In between, the wound itself gleams red and raw, with particles and fibers mixed in with blood and indeterminate tissue.

Earlier, when you’d gingerly untied the makeshift bandage and taken off your shirt, you’d taken a silent moment to survey the damage, wondering with horrified fascination if it was perhaps your own muscle you were glimpsing, that particular facet of your body surfacing through its dermal barrier for the first time.

“I’m gonna hold your arm,” Morgan says. “That ok with you?”

You nod, a little dumbfounded that he of all people would have the foresight to ask for permission.

He lifts your arm towards the firelight so he can better examine the wound, and in doing so handles you with more care than you can remember any lover ever giving you. You tell yourself that it’s a rebuke of your own terrible taste than an indication of any extraordinary kindness on his part, then forcibly dredge up the memory of his gun at your back for good measure.

“You’re gonna have a hell of a scar after this,” he says, running his thumb along the unbroken skin below the cut. “No inflammation, which is good. I’ll patch you up the best I can, but we’re still gonna want to check on it every couple hours to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

He gets up to rummage through his saddlebags and returns holding a roll of gauze and a bottle of clear liquid. “You’ll be wanting this,” he says, handing over the latter. “This’ll hurt.”

You take a swig and nearly choke on it. “What the hell is this?”

“Grain alcohol.”

Grimacing, you bring it to your lips again and take in two more mouthfuls of the stuff before handing it back, gulping it down quick to get the burn of it down your throat and off of your tongue.

Morgan hovers his hand over the tin cup to test its temperature. “This needs to cool down first. Gives you some time for that liquor to set in too.”

“I think it’s going to my head already,” you admit.

Heat is spreading from the warm pit of your stomach to your neck and face, branching through your veins as sure as blood. The thud of your heart, previously an imperceptible thing, now asserts itself like a metronome.

He glances over at you and whistles low. “Not much of a drinker, are you?”

“Not usually.” You press your palm against your cheek. “Am I turning red?”

“Gettin’ there.”

It’s strange, settling into this oddly comfortable limbo between cordiality and aggression. Your sustained caution of him is beginning to wane so steadily that you have to consciously remind yourself the only reason he hasn’t shot you dead or at least seriously injured you is due to the fact that you’re worth more intact than otherwise.

“So,” Morgan says. “What’s someone with silk bloomers doin’ all the way out here runnin’ opium to Strawberry?”

“It’s a very long and stupid story.”

“Then give me the short version.”

You stare at the ground as though it’ll offer you some way to condense the sordid affair of your life into a couple easy sentences. He’d asked the question with what sounded like genuine curiosity instead of interrogation, and for once you feel inclined to blurt out the whole of it, like a girl in confession.

You want to tell him about how small the missionaries had seemed when you’d waved at them through the train’s grime-smudged window, not knowing it’d be the last time. The tweed jacket tossed carelessly onto the floor, and the cool, smooth sheen of mahogany against your skin. Feng fishing you out from the dark water lapping at the docks. The money, the opium, the blood.

The sight of the Heartlands for the first time, its blue horizon impossibly vast.

“I owe someone a lot of money,” you say finally, fiddling with a piece of grass between your fingers, tearing into halves and halves and halves. “He said it was either this or the brothel.”

“And you chose this. Runnin’ dope to those poor bastards working the railroads.”

It’s not the first time you’ve heard this particular tone of voice. The kind that implies its speaker’s higher moral ground as it categorically condemns you. But coming from him makes its sting especially hard.

“I don’t force them to buy it,” you say hotly. “It’s not just me that’s at fault here.”

“You ever seen a dope addict? They ain’t got a goddamn choice —”

“Well, d’you know what the average lifespan of a Chinatown whore is?” You don’t bother waiting for a response before plummeting to the answer. “Two years. After that she’s either dead from syphilis or suicide. At least with the opium I’ll die out here in the open and not in some squalid closet of a room that smells like piss and men.”

The liquor is starting to hit hard , and a part of you is fiercely grateful for it. It’s been a long time since you’ve been given an excuse to scream out the inequities of your life to someone, and a man who’s holding you for ransom seems as good a target for your vitriol as any.

“You think that just ‘cause it’d be better for the greater good or some shit, they should get to fuck me over? Is that what you think?”

Morgan seems a little taken aback. “I didn’t say th—”

“I don’t give a shit about the addicts. I don’t give a shit who’s life I’m ruining, as long as it isn’t mine. I don’t… I don’t care about anyone else because I’m a terrible excuse for a human being. That’s what you want to hear me say, right?” At this point, you realize that you’ve transitioned into a hysterical rant, that you don’t properly mean half the things you’re saying, but saying it out loud feels good nonetheless, like sucking venom from a festering wound. “But people like you don’t get to tell me so. Because at least I don’t hold people at fucking gunpoint . I don’t rob banks or kidnap women or beat debtors. I’m not a fucking murderer like you—”

The last statement barely clears the air before the image of the dead O’Driscoll, sprawled across the ground with his belly torn open, flashes through your head. You immediately clap your hand over your mouth, as if doing so will let you swallow back your words.

“No,” Morgan says, “You ain’t a murderer. And that’s why you won’t last long.”

“Good,” you seethe. The hot sting of tears begins prickling again at the corners of your eyes. “I don’t want to.”

He raises his eyebrows and regards you with a vague, detached kind of pity that makes you almost wish he’d just outright condemn you instead, then touches his fingers to the tin cup. “Water’s cool enough now, I think.”

You feel like a petulant child who’s just thrown an ineffectual tantrum. Rendered self-conscious and obedient for the time being, you allow him to secure your elbow with his hand and begin irrigating the wound with warm water.

“Jesus fucking god,” you hiss. You reflexively try and jerk away, but he holds you still and tells you to stop squirming, his grip firm as iron.

It’s the worst pain you’ve felt in years. Like a lick of flame passing over your skin, echoing its progenitor again and again as he washes the cut with a series of short, measured trickles of water, flushing away the combined grime of dried blood, dust, and lint.

“You think this is bad,” he says, unscrewing the bottle of grain alcohol. “Wait’ll I sterilize it.”

If the water was flame, then the alcohol is a streak of molten lava, wet fire soaking through the wound in a rush of white-hot burning pain. You don’t scream — you let out a weak, choking sob so pathetic that you cover your mouth again in an attempt to stifle it.

But you’re a little drunk and your subconscious recognizes this as an excellent excuse to cry, and so it lets flood the tears you’ve kept stoppered up for hours now. You whimper, meet his eyes briefly, then start bawling.

Your crying before hadn’t seemed to bother him, but now he looks almost comically alarmed. He must think it’s the physical pain sending you into hysterics, because he starts trying to comfort you the same way he did Boadicea when he’d led her into the river.

“You’re doin’ good,” he says, cajoling you in a soft, affectionate voice. He sets the bottle of alcohol on the ground and pats you awkwardly on the shoulder. “Just a little more to go, and we’ll be done.”

Another agonizing, scorching splash of fire. He doesn’t chide you this time when you try to pull away.

“Shhhh… I know, I know. Hurts like a bitch, don’t it? I’m gonna give it one more rinse, and — yeah, there we go. You’re alright.”

Morgan wraps the bandage over your arm with deft, practiced fingers, and you wonder briefly how many times he’s had to do this for himself, with no one to soothe him. Though better that than the shoddy job you’d done on him six weeks ago, frantically patching him up with just the barest idea of what you were doing.

He ties off the bandage, then picks the can of peaches off the ground, pops open its metal lid with the tip of his knife and proffers it to you like a peace offering. “Here. You’re hungry, right?”

It’s very hard to cry and eat at the same time. You decide to concentrate on the latter.

After tapering your sobs down to a series of quiet, resentful sniffles, you begin gulping down mouthful after messy mouthful of sliced peach. It’s the first morsel of food you’ve had in over ten hours, and you wolf it down so quickly you hardly taste it. Just an impression of cloying sweetness mixed with something faintly aromatic (cinnamon, you think) lingering as an aftertaste.

The old instincts of hunger are hard to shake off. All decorum thoroughly discarded, you raise the can to your lips and drink down what syrup remains, tilting it nearly perpendicular to the ground to get at the last few drops.

“My god,” Morgan says. “I seen dogs with better manners.”

“If you’d fed me earlier, then I— what’re you doing.”

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” he asks. He holds his bandolier in one hand. The other is working at his shirtcollar. “I’m gettin’ the hell outta these wet clothes.”

You clutch at the empty can of peaches as his union suit reveals itself in a revelation of blue. A blue which, you admit to yourself with an uncomfortable surge of appreciation, suits the shade of his eyes extremely well. But when he begins unbuckling his belt, you quickly avert your eyes. “Really?” you ask. The scandalization you probably ought to have felt from the very moment he’d begun undressing finally begins to surface. “Your pants, too?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m keepin’ the union suit on.”

“Are you usually this brazen with the women you kidnap?”

“D’you usually sit around half-naked with the men who kidnap you?” he asks, jabbing his thumb towards your own discarded shirt, which you’d spread out neatly beside the fire to dry.

“That’s different,” you hiss, knowing very well that it isn’t. “I had a medical reason.”

“Yeah, and so do I. I don’t wanna get pneumonia.”

He has a point. You look down at your own sodden trousers, which cling to your skin in a cold, wet embrace, and your internal scale of comfort versus propriety tips decidedly towards the former.

“Turn your back again,” you tell him.

“What for?”

“I’m gonna take my pants off too, and I don’t want you trying to sneak a peek at my bloomers.”

He laughs, then winces and gingerly splays his fingers across his ribs. It’s the first sign of real levity you’ve seen from him. “Oh, that is the last thing on my mind right now, girl.” There’s a tired grin on his face, and were it not for the events of the day, you might have almost found it endearing. “Besides, you ain’t hardly my type.”

“Well that’s good to hear,” you reply, a little offended. “Because I’m not interested in men with terrible taste.”

But he does as he’s told, and when you’re satisfied with the oblique angle of his range of sight, you let the borrowed blanket fall from your shoulders and pull the ribbon securing your braid free. You rake your fingers through your hair until it hangs loose, then gather the ends of it in one hand and twist it tight to wring out the rainwater. Only then do you pull the blanket back over your shoulders and begin to undress.

First, your boots. Then the knee-length woolen socks, which have left their cable-knit weave as an imprint on your skin. After glancing at him one more time to make sure his face is turned discreetly away, you unbuckle your belt and wriggle your way out of your trousers. It takes some maneuvering, and some thoroughly indecent posturing, to finally get them off. You leave your cotton bloomers on, figuring that the warmth of the fire will dry the thin material soon enough.

When you look back at Morgan, you find that he’s since turned back towards you. Not to gawk, but to get a better look at his own wounds in the firelight.

His union suit is half-unbuttoned. Most of his bare chest is visible, and along with it, the bruises from the ricocheted bullet. A mottle of blue and violet, like a spill of ink that radiates from the negative imprint of the flask that took the impact in his place. And right below it, a glimpse of your own handiwork.

When you’d first found him, the cut had spanned diagonal across his torso, trailing shallow from his chest and biting deep near the ridge of his hip. Most of it’s healed over since, but the edges are angry and inflamed still, and you can see the fading marks of your inexpert stitches laid like railroad tracks over the land of his skin.

“Don’t worry, I ain’t looked at you,” Morgan says. He probes gently at an indigo patch and inhales sharply. “Too busy lickin’ my own wounds.”

If you look closer, you can see the remnants of multiple scuffs and scratches. A history of violence storied across his body, told in the pale lettering of scars, many of them recent. An unwelcome pang of guilt settles itself low in your belly. It looks like he’s been on the road for a while, healing sporadically through long stretches of hard journeying. Hard journeying made worse, no doubt, by your theft of his bonds.

“You… uh. You want me to keep carving off wet bark?”

“Nah,” he says distractedly, still trying to determine the depth of the damage left behind. “Should be fine leavin’ the rest of it to dry out by the fire.”

You draw the blanket tighter around your shoulders, then root around your head for something, anything to talk about. Anything to get this burgeoning sympathy for Arthur Morgan out of your head.

“Your friend in St Denis,” you say finally. “He’s not gonna know much about me if he doesn’t speak Chinese.”

Morgan absentmindedly scratches his chin as he begins buttoning his union suit back up. “Wouldn’t put it past him. I know he’s had dealings with ‘em in the past.”

Something clicks in the back of your head. Long overdue recognition like puzzle pieces fitting together. “What’s his name?”

“Josiah,” he says.

“Josiah,” you echo. The spark of some fit of emotion is beginning to rise in your throat. “Josiah… Trelawney?”

His bewildered face is enough to confirm your suspicions. Relief, anger, confusion — all of them flood you at once with such intensity that you have to take a moment to squeeze your eyes shut. When you open them, you take a deep breath and swallow hard. “Josiah Trelawney’s the son of a bitch I sold your bonds to.”

———

Massive thanks to @reddeaddufus for editing not only this chapter, but the entirety of this fic. This whole thing would be a lot more disjointed if it weren't for her.

Definitely give her fic Red Dead Pursuit a look. The main character is extremely compelling, the plot is fast-paced, and the porn is A+. Her writing style is also a delight to read.

[lyssismagical]

could you please write something irondad were peter gets caught sneaking out when he was supposed to be at home because he had gotten in trouble earlier in the day. thanks in advanced!

This kind of went on some little adventure away from this lol but hope you still enjoy :)

There’s nothing he can do but hold on as the two halves of the ferry fall away from him, held together by him and two webs that’ll snap any second now. The bad guys got away, civilians are everywhere, and there’s nothing Peter can do.

And then he hears it, the Iron Man suit arriving on scene to clean up the mess he made.

“Iron Man?” he calls out, keeping his voice pitched lower than his regular squeaky teenage voice. “Is there anything I can do?”

The cold Iron Man mask turns to him, eyes glowing blue. “I think you’ve done enough.”

It’s like the nail in his coffin.

See, his dad doesn’t know he’s Spider-Man. He doesn’t know what Peter does instead of going to Academic Decathlon and instead of band and when he’s ‘studying at Ned’s’. Tony doesn’t know and now that Peter’s gone and fucked everything up…

“Mister Stark!” he shouts, swinging to the top of the ferry just as the older hero finishes melding the halves of the ferry back together.

But he doesn’t even get an answer. The suit just stares at him for a second and then turns and flies back towards the city, leaving Peter by himself on the ferry.

Nausea rolls in his stomach as he shoots a web at the nearest helicopter, swinging hard towards the city as well. He doesn’t want to find out the casualties, doesn’t want to see the blame pointed at him, doesn’t want to know the FBI’s wrath.

His head feels split in two, the same way the ferry had been. He wants to see his dad, wants to be comforted and hugged and told that he’s doing a good job even if he messes up like he did today. He wants help, wants his worries about the alien tech to be heard.

But he doesn’t want Tony to know. He doesn’t think he could handle seeing the anger, the disappointment, the betrayal written across Tony’s face. He doesn’t want to know how that conversation would go. He can’t lose Spider-Man.

He finds himself sitting on the edge of a roof on the edge of the water, overlooking the mayhem out on the horizon.

“Is everyone okay?” he asks when he hears the telltale Iron Man suit landing behind him.

“No thanks to you,” Tony says, anger already coloring his voice.

The irritation snaps within him and he stands up, turning on the suit. “No thanks to me? I tried to tell you and you wouldn’t listen to me!”

“I did listen to you, but obviously you didn’t listen to me. Alien tech isn’t for some vigilante in a onesie to deal with. I was looking into it.”

“What was I supposed to do? Just watch them hurt people?”

He doesn’t know why he’s so angry, why his hands are shaking so badly, why he can’t seem to look the suit in the eyes.

But, like he’s sealing Peter’s fate, Tony steps out of the suit onto the rooftop, face set in stone.

“Mask off.”

Peter’s face crumples, he knows he’s made a mistake, made it too obvious. “Mister Stark- I- I don’t-”

“Mask. Off.”

There’s no room for an argument, so Peter tugs the mask off his head, letting his hair fall into his eyes as he ducks his head.

For a long few moments, nobody speaks, silence thickening between them.

And then, “This, whatever you think you’re doing, is done.”

“Dad, please, you don’t understand- I-”

“You’ve been lying to me for what? Four months? Five? Academic Decathlon, Band, weekends with Ned, afternoon studying sessions,” Tony’s saying, but Peter won’t look up, can’t look up from where he kicks at the ground, swallowing thickly. “So, yeah, I do understand, and you’re done.”

His lungs won’t expand properly anymore, but he still makes himself lift his chin, eyes trained on Tony’s tie, so he won’t have to see the disappointment on his face.

“I don’t even get to explain myself?” he says, voice small and young. “I don’t even get to try to talk to you? I- Dad, it’s-”

“I’ve been really lenient with rules for you, Peter.” Tony never calls him Peter. It’s always kid or some silly pet name. “The only rule I’ve ever had for you, one rule, is that you keep yourself safe. I never gave you a curfew, I never looked through your phone, I never made you have a guard or security detail. I’ve been so lenient. One rule, Peter, and you broke it.”

Peter runs a hand through his hair, tugging on the ends to try to think past the tears that threaten to fall. “Please, I-”

“No, this is where you zip it. The adult is talking,” Tony stresses. He lets out a humourless laugh and it cuts Peter deep to the core. “I gave you one fucking rule, Peter, one rule, and you decide to do the complete opposite? And you still expect me to give you the benefit of the doubt? That’s not how this works. You’re going to give me the suit and whatever tech you’ve taken from the lab, and you’re grounded until I say otherwise.”

There’s nothing Peter can say, no arguments he can make, and Tony steps back into the suit anyways.

“Happy’s waiting,” is all Tony bothers to say before he flies away.

Curling up in the backseat of the car, Peter cries. He just wanted to help and now his suit’s going to be taken and irrational fears begin to crawl up his throat and settle in his mind.

*“Homecoming’s in a few days,” Peter says. It’s been a few weeks since Tony found out he was Spider-Man and they’ve been walking on eggshells around each other since then. Tony’s been so busy with The Move upstate that it hasn’t even been hard to avoid him.

Tony looks up startled, he blinks a few times like he’s making sure Peter’s real and then he gently pats the couch cushion beside him.

Peter sits down, not on the cushion Tony offered, but the one over from it, leaving a wide space between them. He can feel Tony’s disappointment radiating off him and tears spring to the teenagers eyes that he refuses to let fall.

“I’m not trying to make your life miserable, buddy,” Tony murmurs quietly. “I’m not trying to be a bad guy here. But, kiddo-”

“Please don’t,” Peter says, eyes trained on the couch where he picks at a loose string. “I don’t want to talk about it. Can I have a break from being grounded to go to homecoming?”

Tony sighs heavily and something in Peter’s chest seizes expecting the worst, hating himself for even bothering to ask.

But, surprisingly, “Yeah, kid, you can go, but please, for the love of god, just have a normal night, okay?”

“What am I supposed to do when you took everything from me?” It’s snarky and Peter knows he’s just pushing Tony away to try to pretend he’s not hurt by all of this.

“Pete-”

“Never mind, I promise I’ll have a normal night. Thanks for letting me go.”

He ducks into his bedroom before Tony can say anything.

*It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t planning on getting into trouble, he swears, but when his date’s dad turned out to be The Vulture? How in the world was he supposed to just get out of the car and enjoy the dance?

And then the warehouse collapsed.

He pushes the thoughts out of his head, choking down a sob as he stumbles away from the fires, maskless and bleeding and pain flaring in his body.

He wants his dad. He wants him so badly, but his phone is in Toomes’s car and he left his watch with Ned at school and he’s meant to be at stupid homecoming. Tony probably isn’t even worried about him yet unless any of it has hit the news.

Tripping through the sand, Peter lets out a quiet sob, desperation overtaking the fear of how angry Tony will be when he finds out Peter disobeyed every rule once again.

Webshooters empty, suit torn to pieces, mask gone, tech free. Peter’s running out of options.

And then, like a beacon of hope, a grim old gas station just over the edge of the beach and across the street.

Feet dragging and stumbling, blood trailing behind him, Peter makes it to the dusty telephone booth on the side of the gas station. He doesn’t have any money on him, but there are old coins left on the ledge.

The call nearly isn’t picked up and dizziness is washing over Peter to the point where he has to sit down against the brick wall, phone cradled in his burned and bloody fingers.

“Hello?”

“Dad?” Peter cries, dam breaking when he hears Tony’s voice. “I- I need help, please, I- I’m sorry, I-”

“Peter, baby? Where are you? I thought you were at homecoming?” Tony murmurs, voice soothing and gentle.

The teenager presses the phone closer against his ear, trying to provide any sort of comfort. He’s crying in earnest now, shaking and black spots dancing across his vision.

“I- I made a mis’ake,” he sobs, wanting nothing more than for his dad to make the pain disappear. “I- Dad, please, I-”

The sound of the Iron Man suit and wind rushing by the phone settles something within him, the desperate part of him, knowing his dad’s coming for him. Despite everything, his dad’s coming.

“I’m coming, okay?” Tony reassures. “I’m on my way and you’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.”

The last part is what gets Peter’s shoulders to relax for the first time since he became Spider-Man.

“Dad?” he repeats carefully. He’s using most of his energy trying to stay conscious, so he doesn’t make it past the one syllable.

“I’m coming, buddy, I’m coming. I love you, okay? I don’t say it enough, but I love you and I’m so proud of everything you do, you know that, right?”

Peter opens his mouth to respond, but the I Love You Too gets caught in his throat as his vision goes dark.

*When he comes to, the only thing he knows for sure is that he’s so fucking sorry.

He scrunches his nose and blinks his eyes open slowly, almost immediately closing them again when the pain washes over him.

“I know you’re awake, buddy,” Tony says, somewhere near Peter’s hospital bed. He squeezes Peter’s hand gently. “You feeling okay?”

Peter hates how quickly he crumbles, tears falling from his eyes and running into his hairline.

“I’m sorry, Dad, I’m- I’m so sorry. I- I-” He cuts himself off, swallowing thickly and squeezing his eyes tighter shut.

Tony’s thumb runs soothingly over his knuckles. “No, bud. I’m the one who should be sorry. If I had just helped you instead of grounding you. If I had just thought for even a second, you wouldn’t have been out there fighting Toomes by yourself… I just- I’m sorry, Peter.”

“S’okay,” Peter murmurs, words slurring as he turns his head into Tony’s palm. “’m I still grounded?”

Tony chokes out a teary laugh, thumb brushing across Peter’s cheekbone. “We’ll compromise, okay? But not until you’re out of a hospital bed… I just- The only thing I wanted was for you to be safe. That’s all I wanted. I needed you to be safe. So seeing you out there, on the ferry, I just… I don’t know. I trust you, I just, you’re my kid.”

“Just wanted to be like you,” Peter murmurs, opening his eyes and for the first time in what feels like a long time, looks at his dad. Instead of the disappointment, the anger, he’d been expecting to see, all he sees is love and adoration and pride.

“You’re so much better, kid.”

[rebustein94-blog]

Wanting to Believe

You know, nobody can really explain the Marfa lights. Nobody can tell for sure why they appear on the horizon almost every night or what they are. They remain, in fact, one of America’s last great unsolved mysteries. These flickering bursts of color against the dark. Orange, green, white, red. Just there, against the hills. And they’re so simple, you’d think somebody would have gotten it by now. But no. Quite the opposite, actually. Marfa revels in how vast and unexplained their night sky is.

Which maybe they should.

See, one night in 1883, a man was riding along outside what is now Marfa, Texas. He saw, up on the hill, strange lights flickering. He figured they were campfires, and when he later found out they weren’t, it blew his mind. He told someone else, and it blew their mind, too, I guess. That second guy told someone else, I assume, and on and on and now we’ve got this entire viewing platform a few miles outside Marfa, built exclusively for tourists to stand and watch the skies after the sun has set. In the hopes that they, too, will experience the unexplained. 

And people have. People do. Thousands of people have reported seeing these lights.

When I walked up onto the platform last night, the thing was packed with people. The sun had just tucked itself under the horizon, leaving behind bright pink streaks above us. I was there for over an hour, and by the time I left, the pink had curled away into the night. A spiderweb of clouds remained, and large patches of stars blazed through them.

Did you know that all the stars we can see only make up, like, a single percentage of our galaxy? Which in turn only takes up a pinhead-drop amount of space in a wall-less room? Is just one of infinite galaxies, surrounding infinite stars? And that the universe is actually still expanding from the original Big Bang, meaning more pinheads are being created all the time, and that almost none of it has been discovered or explored?

Did you know that?

Anyway, there were the stars and me and a lot of other people, waiting for the UFOs or whatever to appear. A large group of elderly was off to my left, further down the platform. They were led by a hunched and waddling crow of a woman, who squawked and shouted every word she said. 

“There they are!” she hollered, pointing off to our right.

Not about to miss anything, everyone on the platform followed her finger. Whether they were in her crew or not. Sure enough, four orange dots glimmered on the hill. A fifth blinked red next to them.

“Five of ‘em. Ya see?!” She moved between the members of her group, poking them and thrusting her claw at the hills. “Over there! One, two, three, four, five!”

For a minute, I was speechless. I mean, there they were. I’ll be damned.

But the red one blinked on, then off, then on again too regularly. And, kind of all at once, everyone on the platform realized it was just a radio tower. Except the Crow.

“I never in mah life,” she said. “You can’t say that’s not real.” 

“Oh, sure,” said her companions. “I see ‘em. Of course.”

“Unbelievable!”

“Mmhm.”

“Little white and orange ones. Ya see? They ain’t campfires.”

“Wow, yes. Indeed. Mm.”

And, slowly but surely, it dawned on me that the orange and white lights were cars on a highway. 

But the Crow continued to waddle around, shouting about the strange ghosts in the hills. Trying to take everyone’s breath away. After a while, a man who had been standing next to me, wearing a baseball cap and a thick mustache, looked at the ground. He rubbed the toes of his boots into the dirt. Sniffed. Calmly, he strode over to the woman. He approached her, cleared his throat

“Ma’am?” he drawled. “That’s a...highway over there. Those are cars.”

“But there wouldn’t have been a highway there in 1883,” she protested. “The man who saw the lights wouldn’t have seen that.”

“That’s...true.” The man scratched his head. “Um. But there is one now.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said quickly. He gave her a little nod, and sauntered off, head low.

She was quiet for some time. The lights kept dancing, miles away. Just as her group was leaving, she said softly, “But they ain’t moved. Cars’d be movin’. Those lights is still...”

Another group replaced the pack of elderly. They were all Texans except for a couple from Colorado, who had come to visit some relatives. The Colorado couple kept pointing to things and trying to believe them.

“I think I saw a flash of green,” the woman said.

“So hard to tell,” said the man, sounding sad.

By that time, the sun was really gone and everyone had abandoned the right side of the view, where the highway apparently was. Now, all eyes were pointed left where, if you looked fast enough, you could catch glimmers of green. I’ll admit, I saw a streak of white shooting down into the valley that I can’t explain. I’ll carry that with me, silently. But other than that...

“You know me,” some guy in the new group was saying. “I don’t believe in anything. Ghosts, creatures. UFOs. But I like to see ‘em. You know. See if--”

“There!” The Colorado woman shot up a hand. “I saw a little... Did you see it?”

They all leaned forward, hushed. 

“Could have been a satellite,” someone whispered. “But I don’t know...”

“I didn’t see it,” said the guy who didn’t believe in anything. But there was a bend to his voice. Something in him that clearly gave in and made him squint into the darkness just as hard as everyone else.

Nobody said anything for a few moments. Just watching.

The nonbeliever broke the silence. “Y’all ready to go?”

And, with a collective sigh, they left. 

Personally, I didn’t see anything. Except maybe a white streak.

You know, I was thinking about Santa Claus while I was out there on the platform. My mother tells me that, in third grade, I ruined Santa for one of my friends who didn’t Know. Whatever memory I had of this has burnt up and drifted away, so I just have to take her word for it. Third grade was the year I found out, so maybe I needed to shove my anger and betrayal onto someone else. Or maybe I felt superior. Or I just felt bad they didn’t Know.

Either way, even after I Knew, and everybody Knew, it didn’t really seem to matter. Because the next year, they did this complicated calculation on the news on Christmas Eve to figure out how long it takes Santa to travel around the whole world in a single night.

Why would they do that if they knew he wasn’t real?

***

The night after the lights, I was leaving from the train station in Alpine, which is about twenty miles east of Marfa. When I got there, I could hear mariachi music coming from somewhere around the back, by the tracks. As I rounded the corner, I came upon a large cluster of people, all milling about, listening to a three-person band and eating donuts. 

“Well,” I thought, surprised. 

Feeling oddly invisible and out of place, I wove my way through the crowd. I sat on the curb. Plopped my bags down next to me. And that was about the time I realized nobody else there had bags. 

“Well,” I thought. 

A woman standing nearby honed in on me. She leaned over. “Bet you’re glad you’re traveling today, huh?”

“What’s going on?” I asked. I felt like maybe I was about to be sacrificed to the train. Or swept up in a colony of traveling swingers. I don’t know. 

“There’s a gallery inside,” the woman explained vaguely. 

“Oh, cool,” I said, wanting our interaction to be over so that I could be confused by myself.

I didn’t see where the guy came from, which makes this story even better, I think. As far as I’m concerned, he strode up with sure feet and tall pride out of the very dust of the desert and a forgotten time. He was taller than I am. Wore khakis and cowboy boots and a bright blue Amtrak jacket. Brilliant green aviators hid his eyes. And he had this perfect, hypnotic Texas drawl. 

In any case, he appeared next to me. 

“Where you goin’ to?” he asked. 

“El Paso.” I was still squatting on the curb, and staring up at him. 

He nodded solemnly. “Good place.” He looked around at all the people. “I spose you’re wonderin’ what’s goin’ on here today?”

“You know, it crossed my mind.” 

“Well.” He hitched up his pants. “You got three groups of people here. One is travelers. Two is people who work with Amtrak.”

He never explained the third.

“See, we’re trying to expand this line,” he continued. “You can get to anywhere from Alpine. People don’t realize that. It’s an important stop. You got New Orleans. Los Angel-ees. Chicago. We’re petitioning to get the line to come through here more often. So they just refinished the station here. As a kind of incentive. What they’re most proud of is the bathrooms.”

“So today’s the grand opening?”

“In a sense.” He licked his lips. Raised his eyebrows. “We got donuts inside.”

I figured it was probably time to stand up. So I did, and slapped the dust off my thighs. Talking up at him had been staring to make me feel off-balance and small. 

“I heard,” I said, “that this new national budget proposal is getting rid of the long-distance lines. Is that just a whisper on the wind, or...?”

His face went blank. He gazed over my shoulder down the tracks. 

“Yeah,” he said sadly. “They try this every five years or so. But our governor always stops it from happening. We’ve had tons of men from around here--in Alpine-- in DC. And they keep us alive. But...we’re not as strong as we used to be, you know. And now, we’ll be hanging on for dear life for the next few years.” His voice got very low at the end. He shrugged. Stared off into the distance for a moment. Just as I was about to say something, his aviators snapped back to me. “How long were you here for?”

“Just a few days. I saw the Marfa lights last night. Or...didn’t.”

He put his hands behind his back. Nodded thoughtfully. 

“Have you seen them?” I asked.

“I think they’re an optical illusion,” he said confidentially. “I seen green and red flashes. Don’t know what it is. But I don’t think its aliens.”

“No?”

“Well, why the hell would they be hanging around Marfa, Texas for over a hundred years?!”

And he laughed a low, gentle laugh. 

Just then, a new light came from down the tracks. Blinding against the mid-morning sun.

“Ahh,” he breathed. He turned to everyone standing around the station. Cupped his hands and called, “Train’s comin’!”

There was a rush of excitement. Everyone went up to the railing against the tracks and leaned over. I followed their gaze. That bright white spot was coming towards us, moving in quickly from the east.

“This never gets old,” the man murmured to me. His voice was wistful and faraway. “I feel like I’m in an MGM movie. With the music... Just beautiful.” 

As the train thrummed into the station, everyone had their phones out. They snapped pictures and waved to the conductor. In the heat and wind of the engine, the man I had been talking to stood with one boot poised on the curb. His hands folded neatly, elbow resting against the railing. He smiled lightly, and looked, for all the world, filled with the ancient, instinctive grace of the frontier. Which was beautiful, and almost sad.

As I was getting onto the train, I looked for him among the beaming, pride-bursting Amtrak employees. But he was gone. 

As we churned our way out of Alpine, I saw a massive, shining pile of car bumpers in someone’s backyard, right up along the tracks. As I watched, a long, lean man, smoking a cigarette, tossed another bumper onto the pile. A young boy stood next to him. The man clapped his hands together. He took the cigarette from his mouth and, slowly, held it out to the boy. The boy took it. The train moved on, and they vanished. Left behind in the debris and dirt of their life in Alpine. 

I really don’t know why I would have told my friend about Santa Claus before he deserved to Know. 

(El Paso, TX)