OOM: Room #100

[ikissdhimbck]

[following this:]


That didn't go the way she planned.

"I would indeed have asked you to be my queen..."

All through settling Concession and finishing her chores, running into Master Albus, and the hoopla she started with Ben Hawkins, it's been on her mind. Not the queen business so much — Can you imagine, daddy? Me, a queen? — but the look on Teja's face when he said it. The look on his face when she left the forge.

"I shall not mention these things again."

Steam curls into the room as she emerges from the shower, chasing away the chill of rain and hail and her own cold heart.

It's been a long time since somebody's looked at her like that. Not like she's just a pair of pretty blue eyes and long blonde hair, but the kind of woman they could wed. The kind of woman they'd be honored to wed.

She comes out wearing her silk robe, and it hugs her thighs as she walks; it's heavy and damp under her hair. She's feeling penned in, hot, and the bottle of bourbon on the table is looking more and more like a good idea.


Turning him down was the right move. It's for the best, and she knows that. It's more than just her virtue or her barren belly, things that would be enough out west to send men like Teja packing. She's an outlaw, a criminal, and how's she supposed to tell him that men end up six feet under when she gets too close? Or how she's still in love with Doc, and will be to the end of her days? And, on the subject of love and the end of days, how's she supposed to tell him she sees Sam's ghost following her from place to place?

It's not Teja, it's her. She can't love nobody.

She finishes her first glass, and goes to the table for another.

Though, the more she thinks about it, she reckons it is about Teja. Because he's different. This isn't like Gene Hunt; that would only ever be physical, safe, because he didn't love her and there was no danger he ever would (and furthermore, he's gone and disappeared and god knows if she'll ever see him again; as hurt as she was to be stood up, she's spent the last eight months thinking about all the ways a copper can be killed and she wouldn't ever know). Teja looks at her with affection, and that? That's dangerous.


"I can fix that."


She turns, third glass sloshing in hand. Eyes wild.

The room is empty.

She only sees Sam when she's outside Milliways. Sometimes he's standing there like the day she kissed him in the rain, rucking his brow in surprise, not knowing what to do with his hands for the first time in all the years she'd known him. Sometimes he's leading Mary Lou, hitched to his onion cart. Sometimes he's rowing, and those are the times she hates the most because it's hard not to see him half blown away, or taste his blood on her tongue. But never when she's here.

"Sam?"

She doesn't know why, but never when she's here does he come to see her.

She lets out a breath, shutting her eyes to the brightness of the room and the sick climbing the back of her throat. The thing is, she's been riding for miles across Texas these past six months with the words her daddy said ringing in her ears.

"You were s'posed to be ... better."

Can you imagine, daddy? Me, a queen? It makes Joseph Waller and his three general stores seem like small potatoes. There wouldn't have been any of that fussing about dowries and occupations. I can just see you now, pulling your hand down your face like someone just hit you with a bucket of cold water. Me, a queen.


That's the thing about getting what you wish for. Just one more day with him, just one more, and All Hallow's Eve provided. Suddenly, the memory of his last words being you take care of yourself out there is rewritten, and all she can see is his disappointment when she thinks of him.

The thing is, his ghost has chased her across every lonely plain from Beeville to Yorktown.

The thing is, she was supposed to be better.




The thing is, she's so damn tired of being lonely, and she didn't think anyone would ever think of her that way again.


The neck of the bourbon bottle hits her glass indelicately, as drink number four sloshes to the rim. She climbs into bed, and convinces herself she didn't trip on that silk robe.

The world just tilted for a second, but it's all right now.

Comments

[good_dug]

Between lounging on the couches downstairs, begging food from various patrons, and spending what little time he could outside running gleefully around the forest chasing bunnies and pretending to be a horse again, Dug has had a Good Day. It was only made better by the discovery of his Octoplushie (which seems to go missing on a regular basis; if Dug didn't know better he'd say it was trying to run away from him) in a dark corner of the bar under a chair cushion, and a marathon chewing session on said plush.

But now it's getting close to bedtime. Dug's paws are heavy as he climbs the stairs to Kate's room, tentacled stuffie hanging from his mouth. It makes it a little difficult to press the button Miss Bar rigged up at exactly nose-height, but eventually he manages it and the door swings open to admit him.

He gets about a foot across the floor towards Kate and the bed before he registers that her familiar scent seems...different. He stops, sniffs the air, squints at her face and tries to figure out exactly what it is.

It comes to him a moment later, along with memories of the Cone of Shame and how it feels when the pack turns away from him as one body, how it feels when he is a Bad Dog. It's sadness, he thinks. Kate's sad.

And that's not right.

[ikissdhimbck]

She hears him come in. Usually it's with a clamor and skidding claws as he starts to chase the cats and remembers he's not supposed to, but not before knocking over food dishes and banishing Roz to higher ground. The calm is strange to the point that she wonders if she imagined the door opening. She's drunk, but not that drunk; so she sits up, waits for the world to stop turning ass over teakettle, and looks at him.

"Howdy, Dug. Come t'stay with me t'night?"

[good_dug]

Her voice is a little different than usual. Dug's ears twitch curiously and he cocks his head to one side, watching her before he answers "Yes. I am tired." It's been a long day, after all.

He pads across the remaining distance between them quietly for once, not bounding or leaping. When he reaches the edge of the bed he hesitates briefly. When he is sad at home, he thinks, usually he goes out to chase squirrels in the trees. Here he usually gets some food from someone, or finds someone to play with him, or pet him. That always helps. But he can't pet Kate and he's not exactly sure what she likes to play, so that's not going to work. But there's something else. He's always, always happy when he has his Octoplushie. It squeaks, and sometimes it moves, and people can toss it or he can kick it along the floor or just settle down and chew it. It's perfect. And it's in his jaws right now.

Rearing up, Dug plops his front paws onto the bed and leans his head down, dropping the battered, dirty, somewhat slimy Octoplushie into Kate's lap. Then he stays there, his front half standing up on the bed so he's about at head-height, watching her with bright brown eyes, tongue hanging out in a quiet doggy grin.

There's one more thing that always makes him feel better. Even when the worst things happen -- when the bird gets away, or when the bar comes falling in around his ears -- there's always something even better than toys.

"You are my master," he says, and offers her a quick lick to the cheek.

"And I love you."

[ikissdhimbck]

When the purple plushie falls in her lap, she thinks maybe he wants to play. She stares at it for a while, willing the legs to stop moving, wondering what's gotten into him. Or maybe she's just too drunk, and she's imagining things, and she should get up and put the cat dishes away before he raids them, and dig out his favorite pig ear, and





and the doggy kisses are unexpected. Before she knows it, her vision's blurring.

There's a hush through the room, the sound of jars clinking and Mary Lou's bell, her daddy whispering you were supposed to be better. A hundred fights and bitter words wind up in a cyclone, turning in on itself before it goes out with a puff, and the room is still.

Her lips twitch as her fingers graze grossly wet fabric.





"You've been chasin' Miss Ellen's cows 'gain, haven't you?"

[good_dug]

It's awkward balancing on his hind legs for too long, even if it does give Dug the perfect vantage point to sneak a couple more tiny licks in. So he clambers onto the bed, pulling himself up stiff-legged until he can slither the majority of his body onto the mattress, front half lying in her lap. From here he can direct the business of licking to her fingers, although the first couple of tastes are sharp and bitter with traces of something he's never tried before and doesn't think he likes much.

"No," he says. Maybe there's a hint of a pout to it. He's a good boy. He knows he's not supposed to chase cows or horses (or cats but he sometimes forgets that one). "I am a good boy."

There's still that strange note in her voice he doesn't think he's heard before, the smell from her skin and her breath he recognizes vaguely from the bar but can't name, the impossible to describe feeling that makes him think of puppies when they get to the age where they know enough to wander off but not enough to wander back again, when they sit and cry until their mother comes to drag them back by the scruff. It's funny. He's never really thought of Kate as a puppy before.

"You are a good master," he offers. The licking kicks up another notch, tongue slurping quietly away at her fingers. "You have never tried to sell me or put the Cone of Shame on me or only given me kibble."

Which is in his mind pretty much a crime, especially when there's such a bounty of food as exists at Milliways.

[ikissdhimbck]

"Well, y'could stir — y'could sure stand t'lose a pound'r two."

She chuckles softly, pulling one hand free to rub behind his ears. Her legs will be numb in three minutes if he sits on her that long, but she doesn't try kicking him off.

"Y'get treats 'cuz y'are a good boy."

Her face falls.

"But a quiet boy. What's th'matter?"

[good_dug]

He drops his head a little more heavily into her lap, eliciting a faint squeak from the Octoplushie as he rolls his head into her fingers. At the other end of the bed his tail beats rhythmically.

"I am tired," he points out again. "I played outside and inside and I chased rabbits and I splashed in the lake and I chewed on my toy."

And maybe if Dug were a person with any sense of human tact that would be it, but he's not and it isn't.

"And you are sad. Why are you sad?"

[ikissdhimbck]

Come to think of it, there are a pair of perfectly fresh muddy paw prints on her robe when he rolls away. She decides not to look at the rest of the room.

"I'm sad — "

Her voice hitches.

She smiles gently, and rubs his belly.


"I'm sad 'cuz I didn' have y'here with me. I missed you."

[good_dug]

"Oh."

Well, that makes sense to Dug. He misses Kate sometimes, when she isn't around and he doesn't have anyone to play fetch with or the people who are scratching his ears don't know the little secret spot that makes his leg twitch. He yawns hugely, head sagging a little more as he wiggles to give her better belly access.

"That is okay. I am here now." He yawns again, eyes drifting shut, the steady thumping of his tail growing lighter as the waves of pleasure drifting through him make him sleepy.




After a while, one eye cracks open. "Kate?"

[ikissdhimbck]

I am here now.








"Hm?"

Her hand stills, a strange look in her eye when she glances at him.

[good_dug]

His eyelid drifts slowly closed again. Already halfway to unconciousness and sweet dreams, his paws twitch gently against Kate and the bed. In his mind they chase the bird all through the steam-sweet jungles of home and even though they never catch it that doesn't matter, because when they collapse laughing to the ground it's Kate's hand that's soft on his fur, and Kate who tells him what a good boy he is.

Dogs don't smile.

That doesn't stop Dug.

"You are a good master," he says drowsily. And sleeps.

[ikissdhimbck]

Maybe — 

Maybe the thing is, she's not as alone as she thinks.

It doesn't make her any less cursed. It doesn't mean she wasn't supposed to be something better. It doesn't even make it feel right turning Teja down and not telling him why. Tomorrow, she'll be lonely again. She'll want for something to fill the hole in her heart.

But tonight, she is a good master, and it's no small thing to have a safe and happy dog curled up on her lap.

No, it's no small thing at all.

"Dug? M'legs ... "


Nope. Certainly no small thing.





"Dug?"