ikissdhimbck | OOM: Milliways grounds

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OOM: Milliways grounds - lunch with Tommy

It's Tommy's first day working in the stables. Kate sets him up with a grooming bucket and shows him what to do, handling her morning chores between bringing him horses — though she works a little more aggressively than usual. It's just been a few days since Tommy fought with Voodoo, and despite his claims that he feels much better, the bruises have mottled and turned uglier colors. Kate's temper hasn't abated, and likely never will. God help Voodoo if he ever tries approaching her.

Once it's time for afternoon tea, Tommy suggests they go someplace quiet to eat together. It only takes her a moment to decide on the field out beyond the lake where she likes to take Beaut from time to time. Instructing him to finish up and put his tools away, she heads out first, on horseback. It's a typical sight around this time of day, so nobody else is likely to suspect she'll be meeting someone.

When Tommy does mosey along, he'll find her just a few paces away from the beaten path in a great field of dandelions and poppies. Beaut is grazing freely while she's unpacking a basket of food on a large checkered blanket.

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If being a modern woman means grinning and bearing it when a man demeans her, no matter what his 'intentions' are, Kate'll be happy to stay exactly as she is. 'Cuz the thing is, it don't mean a goddamn lick whether she's from the past or the future, is a Victorian or an alien, no lady deserves to be called a bitch or sexually ridiculed after the very argument where she expresses discomfort and rage over that topic. Every time somebody suggests she don't understand because she's from a different where and when makes her feel like a relic, like she's stupid or there's something inherently wrong with her, like she should be ashamed — and all that does is make her want to shoot every man in the goddamn bar if they so much as hint at disrespecting a lady.

There is no excuse for Voodoo's behavior. Not for Kate.

So she glances at Tommy, watching the rage percolate behind his eyes, unclear as to what she should say. She's reminded — not for the first time — of the night he fought with his brother, knuckles torn and eyes wild. Nothing will ever rub that sight from her memory. It's one of the bigger reasons why she never mentioned Voodoo was the author of that note.

Edited 2013-10-09 15:51 (UTC)

White noise. Everything is white noise, and his train of ragethought has gone past Why would he do this? to Where is he so I can kill him?

For a few seconds he paces in short, quick strides, crushing dandelions under his boot heels every time he makes a sharp turn.

Suddenly he stops, facing Kate, and he points at her belt.

"Lemme borrow a gun. I'm gonna shoot 'im myself."

How they dance around each other fascinates her. She thinks about his incredulous, pleading language to pull her back when she was set to go after Voodoo's hide just days before, and now his blind fury while she wades by in an eerie calm. She tilts her head, eyeing him, arms still crossed.

She could take out her gun, hand it to him, let him be done with the situation for good. She could plead with him not to act too rash. She could ask why it's different now, why he couldn't let her march off the other night to confront Voodoo, but, now he's got a reason, he's going to accept that mantle. She could do any number of these things.

What she does, unflinchingly and with eyes turned a little grey, is give him the steady sort of look a young boy gets from a parent when he asks to ride a horse that's just too much for him.

"Y'sure y'know how t'handle it?"

"I'll learn on my way to the bar."

He makes an impatient 'gimme' gesture with his hand. His clipped tone is just as impatient, with an underlying irrationality that goes hand-in-hand with his anger.

Would he really shoot Voodoo? At this very second, he might.

Edited 2013-10-09 17:21 (UTC)

It's that irrationality in him that Kate's protective of the most. She trusts him to be able to take care of himself, to make hairpin-trigger decisions in the heat of an emergency, but when he works himself into a tither he makes all the wrong choices, getting both himself and other people hurt along the way.

(It's, unfortunately, something she's intimately familiar with herself.)

She wraps her hand around his wrist, holding it where it is, grip strong from years of taking care of business. Her gaze is steady.

"Then we'll take care'a this together. Or not at all."

His arm tenses in her grip, his first reaction being to pull free-- but he stops short of it when he meets her eyes and hears her words. Clear-cut, black-and-white, no room for anything in between.

She'll see and feel a flicker of hesitation.

You're not doing this. If this goes down, I'm the shooter.

Uncle Teddy's words before he gunned down the man who killed Tommy's son.

Tommy never could take a life. Not even in revenge.

His arm relaxes in Kate's grasp and he he looks away, pained, frustrated, and still angry.

Beaut gives voice to their shared frustration with a loud harrumph. Could be she's contributing; could be she just had a bee up her nose.

Kate's grip slackens fractionally.

"Tommy—"

She doesn't know what to say. There's so many ways the next three seconds could go. Each humor hovers over her head, ready and waiting for her to snatch one, pick a trail, plow ahead. But she doesn't know where to reach.

Stepping forward, she rests her forehead against his breast.

"I need you."

To listen. To be on my side. To be smart. To be here.

She chips away at his ire until he's forced to hear the echoes of his conscience. Usually he's too busy acting out of rage to heed it or anyone else. But with Kate-- she seems to be the only one who can temper him. Even when they argue, they still seem to be the only ones who can temper each other.

She leans against him, and he melts.

Swallowing his waning anger, frowning deeply, he folds his free arm around her shoulders and bends to kiss the top her head. He's only seething now, his heart still pounding in his chest as he tries to calm down.

"Can we just-- I dunno, shoot 'im in the foot or something?"

He'll feel more than hear the laugh he pulls out of her.

"All right."

Whatever you say, honey. Whatever it takes.

She takes another step into him, turning her cheek against his chest. Releasing his wrist, she keeps her arms slung low over his hips, thumb tucked into his belt loop.

"I hate 'im for hurtin' you too, y'know."

The soundless laugh does wonders in calming him, one corner of his mouth even twitching in response.

Wrapping both of his arms around her, he lightly rests his chin on the crown of her head and stares out across the field, blinking slowly in the warming sun. But the furrow between his brows isn't quite gone yet, the muscles in his jaw still a bit tense.

"It ain't even just that. It's-- those months we were apart, I thought-- I mean, I was actually mad at you 'cause I thought you said I was treating you like a whore, but-- Jeezus Christ..."

She shakes her head. It's kinda awkward with her pressed against him like that, so she takes a step back, but keeps her eyes lowered.

"I've never been spoken to like that. I felt dirty, an' vulnerable. Ashamed. S'why I needed us t'be more careful 'bout no one knowin'. Voodoo, or anybody else who could—"

She shakes her head again, fingers curling in denim.

"I'm doin' wrong. Livin' in sin."

"Honey..."

He draws her back into his arms, wanting to keep her close.

"You're not, though. At least, not to me. But since we got back together I've never told anybody about us. I promised you that. Nobody needs to know."

He understands better now. And he may not be able to convince her that she's not doing anything wrong, but he can still try to keep her safe from something like this happening again.

She lets him draw her back in.

"I don't regret it. I jus' don't want all them eyes judgin' me."

She's still got a lot of issues to work out when it comes to her place in society, and whose opinions matter. She looks out across the field at nothing at all, voice dropping to a whisper.

"Last time that happened, I got somebody killed."

He'd be lying if he said he didn't care what people thought of him, but sometimes the ones with the biggest egos have the thinnest skin.

He soothingly runs a hand up and down her back. Nobody else is listening except for Beaut and the occasional buzzing insect.

"...Sam?"

She nods.

"If I'd done things different he might still be alive. I gotta live with that. I know the two'a us weren't wrong. I know it in my heart. It's everybody else in that godforsaken town that's wrong, but I couldn't keep 'im safe. Right or wrong, I couldn't keep 'im safe. Couldn't keep any of 'em safe. Couldn't keep you safe. M'always makin' the wrong choices that get somebody killed."

Tommy rests his hand on her head, curling his fingers through her hair.

If I'd done things different

he might still be alive.

He sighs deeply.

"Listen. Things just happened the way they did, and you couldn't change them then, and you can't change 'em now. But don't ever listen to anybody who tells you that you were wrong, or that it was your fault. I know it's hard, though. When nobody's there to tell you that it ain't, you start believing it. Even when you tell me it ain't my fault that Jimmy died, or Connor-- it's hard to hear it. But-- y'know, for that moment in time, you start to think-- maybe it really isn't."

Her fingers tighten in his waistband. It isn't his fault Jimmy died, or Connor. But nobody gave him a choice, neither.

She rubs at her face. It's a little red, but mostly just from being pressed up to him the way she was.

"Did I tell you what the sheriff said when I ran t'get help?"

It's been a long time since Kate first told him that story. He's silent and thoughtful for a while, trying to recall.

"I don't-- I just remember that that was what led you to get your name in the papers."

Kissin' Kate Barlow.

"What exactly did he say?"

She wraps her arms around her middle.

"They was burnin' down my school. Didn't know why at the time; jus' that none'a the children showed up that mornin', an' Trout Walker came leadin' in a lynch mob, callin' me a Devil Woman, sayin' I'd been poisonin' their children's minds. I'd rejected Trout not too long before, an' he weren't used t'people sayin' no t'him. So when they started pilin' the books an' tables in the middle'a the room, settin' 'em on fire ...

"I ran t'the sheriff an' told 'im t'stop 'em before they destroyed the whole school. He told me not t'say nothin' bad 'bout Trout Walker. Called me pretty. Told me t'kiss 'im. He was drunk as a skunk; said he always got drunk 'fore a hangin'. That's when I figured out someone had seen Sam an' I kissin' the day before, told Trout, an' — sheriff said if I could kiss 'the onion picker', why couldn't I kiss him? Said he'd make me deal; one sweet kiss an' he wouldn't hang my boyfriend. He grabbed me, an' I remember feelin' my stomach in my boots. This awful light an' queasy feelin', like I weren't no longer in my body. I wrenched myself away t'find Sam, but — we didn't make it far.

"When I ran, he said, 'the law will punish Sam, an' God will punish you.' He was right. Sam died, an' I've — I've been wishin' I was dead ever since. That — feelin'; that horrible, floatin', helpless feelin' — s'what I felt when I got that note, an' them things. If I was prepared t'stop bein' a bitch, we could have 'makeup sex', so long as I let him on top'a me. That's what it said. I felt the sheriff's hands all over me, all over again."

Though she wraps herself in her own arms to protect herself, he keeps close but lets his hands slip from her. He listens quietly, letting her tell her story in full. And as she reveals details she'd never told him before, with emotions she'd never trusted to show him before, it's as if he's seeing her in a whole different way. Not better, not worse-- but a little more whole, more of who she really is inside.

(to thine own self be true)

And then the anger rises again. Anger at what they did to Sam, and to her. Anger that she had to go through such pain.

stop bein' a bitch

makeup sex

on top'a me

Anger at Voodoo.

Tommy flashes back to that Christmas Eve and the way Kate wouldn't let him into her room. And when he did force his way in, she pulled away from him. Wouldn't let him touch her. And he comes to the sickening realization-- she was still feeling the sheriff's hands on her. She'd gotten that fucking letter, and she was going through all that awful shit again.

God he feels like a complete jackass now.

Jaw clenched, he turns his head and glares out across the field toward the path that would lead past the stables and back to the bar.

Fuck you, Voodoo. Fuck you.

But instead of heading off on a rampage, he turns back to Kate, eyes hard but pained and apologetic, sorry that he can't change the past for her. Sorry that he can't take the pain away.

"Jeezus Christ, honey..."

Slowly, with just a bit of hesitation, he reaches up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. If he could promise her one thing, he would never, ever do anything that would make her fear his touch.

She's still.

And then—

she covers his hand with hers, keeping it pressed to her cheek. Her brow is furrowed, teeth working on the inside of her lip, but nothing about her hints at being afraid of him.

"M'sorry I didn't tell y'earlier, I jus' — y'were so hurt 'bout your brother, an' I didn't want t'—"

She shakes her head.

He quickly shakes his head as well.

"No, that-- I wasn't-- I shouldn't have--"

Palm pressed to her cheek (and grateful that she takes his hand), he keeps shaking his head, unable to process just how fucked up everything had become because Voodoo decided to be an asshole.

Inhaling a sharp breath, he holds it for a second, before leaning in to press his lips to her hair, exhaling a sigh at the same time.

She closes her eyes.

"We can go back now."

Her voice is barely a whisper. She uncurls the arm slung across her belly, pinching the front of his shirt, giving a gentle tug. It's as affectionate as she can be right now.

"Finish our lunch, if — if y'wanna."

"'Course I do, honey."

He wraps his fingers around her hand at his shirt, squeezing it firmly, warmly. Giving her something (someone) to hold onto, if she wants to.

She doesn't move for another second or two.

Something about this moment is steadying. His hand in hers, her hand in his, the open air and space and freedom around her, just breathing, Beaut somewhere at her back, hoofbeats muted.

Eventually she nods, turns to press a kiss to his palm, and releases his hand. The other two can stay entwined as they walk back to their blanket.

"Y'don't, ah — y'don't have anywhere t'be tonight, do you?"

OOM: Milliways grounds - lunch with Tommy

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