Chapter Text
Hunted. He was hunted.
Past the bodies of his former gang members rotting in the mud, Cole limped towards the horses.
All his life he had found a particular release in rage, blazing through his dreary surroundings like hellfire, but in the embers there was always damnation. A line of fire went through his life, from picking fights at school, hanging with the wrong crowd, breaking the hearts of his father and sister, to being in a gang, pissing off the wrong folks and leading said gang to their deaths.
Jim Milton, that fool of a farmhand, would've killed him if not for Angus Geddes, the bigger fool of a farm-owner's son, insisting that Cole's life be spared. A few hours after the fight Cole had woken up beaten to hell but was coherent enough to guess that the ranch-owner himself would not be as kind as his son, nor would any of the other ranch-owners who had bad experiences with the Laramie Gang if word got out about Cole surviving.
And so, together with Dasher, Cole fled from Hanging Dog Ranch and on towards the Grizzlies.
The lush riverscape turned into a cold dry forest. Snow powdered and then covered the black branches. He wore every piece of clothing he'd taken with him, and he still felt like his balls were freezing off. He ate stale pemmican and any oatcakes that Dasher could spare. Cole's chances of escape were low, but rage fueled him. Rage was what he defined himself by.
Due to the quietude of snow, he heard his hunters coming from a mile off. Branches snapping all around him like in a tale of an evil witch. Horses galloping and panting like they came bearing news of his apocalypse. Riders laughing as they spotted him, followed him and surrounded him, whipping him with their lassos. One caught him and threw him off Dasher.
"We almost didn't recognize you," one of them said while the other two tied Cole up. The man was holding up what initially appeared to be a newspaper but was Cole's bounty poster. "Look! This face here looks like a man's, but you act like a rogue bull."
Caught. He was caught.
Of course he fought the bounty hunters. On horseback. Then on the ground. In ropes. And then in a hogtie thrown over Dasher. He screamed that they'd be sorry. He slurred that they'd regret messing with him. He whispered that they were cowards who ganged up three on one.
He kept the noise up all day. He could tell they were going back to Big Valley. Strawberry, maybe. To hang, probably.
In the evening, the bounty hunters made camp in a clearing not quite so thick with snow, leaving Cole a distance away from their horses and the fire they made. The hogtie left him in a strange kneeling position on the ground, with his elbows up and wrists tied behind his head, connected with a rope that went to his ankles, which were also tied together. It was hailing lightly, and each frozen drop that hit his lips and tongue gave it enough moisture so he could try to shout once again.
"Hey," one of the bounty hunters said, walking closer. "If you don't shut up soon, we'll have to teach you a lesson."
Cole didn't shut up. When he raged, he felt free, like the heat of fresh embarrassment and the cold of old shame mixed together and exploded like a chemical reaction. He raged both against the bounty hunters and their bullets and ropes and cutting remarks, and against the snowy forest dripping around them.
A second bounty hunter came up to the first one. It was the same one who'd held the bounty poster. This was the boss, Cole could tell by the way he walked and through how he cracked his knuckles, audible through his winter gloves.
"I guess we gotta show you what happens to animals who don't know when to stop."
"Fuck you," Cole said, among other things.
"Want me to roll out his bedroll, boss?" the first bounty hunter said. "Make it easier on the knees?"
"Nah. It's better in the cold."
There was something in the air as the two of them approached that was grimier than the texture of cold air.
"Say, little troublemaker, you ever been taken in the ass before?"
They laughed as the blood drained from Cole's face.
"I'll kill you – I'll – hmmf!" His own handkerchief was shoved into his mouth.
The grip on his hair had happened so fast. Every time he shoved forward it was twisted. When he finally relented, he froze as the bounty hunter opened his jacket and touched his chest as if looking for tits, gloved thumbs rubbing against his nipples, which utterly dumbfounded Cole.
"I don't mind them flat, girlie."
"Hurry up," the boss said.
"Shit, sorry."
And then Cole was shoved stomach-down on the ground.
"Not this again," the third bounty hunter said from a distance away.
"You sure you don't want a piece of this?" A boot was placed on Cole's ass, moving the flesh around through the fabric of his coat and pants. "It ain't much, but out here it'll be hotter than our hands."
"I don't like the screams."
Cole tried to shake the boot off and scream, but the ropes and gag left him writhing and humming uselessly.
"He ain't screaming yet. But fine. Just keep the fire going. The cargo needs to be set straight and quit giving us headaches."
Without further prompting, a weight settled on top of him. His coat was pulled up, the leather exterior of it engulfing him, only stopped by his bound wrists but long enough to cover his head. It made him more afraid that he couldn't see anything but black fabric as the boss found the waistline of his pants. They were loose and came off in a single icy swipe. It was so cold Cole almost didn't register the knife before he heard his union suit being cut open. The wool of the bounty hunter's pants itched as he rubbed himself against Cole's exposed ass. Somehow the knife felt like a smaller threat than the rubbing motion. Cole wiggled like a worm on a hook.
"Hey, André, keep him still?"
A shadow moved around him. The other bounty hunter held his shoulders to steady him.
"Breathe in," the man instructed. "It always hurts the first time."
Cole froze as something hard was pressed between his ass-cheeks, spread apart with rough hands.
"Easy," the boss said.
It was not easy. It felt like a red-hot poker was shoved between his legs, in and out bursts through the tight ring of muscle which he only associated with where shit came out and nothing had ever been inside of. The pain was indescribable, but Cole tried on instinct:
"MmmMMM!"
"Fuck this," the third bounty hunter said loudly. "I'll go on guard."
"He's too soft for this business," said the boss and emphasized his statement with a harsh thrust, the first one of many.
Cole continued to try to scream through the gag.
Fucked. He was fucked.
Each thrust sliced up his insides. Thick, warm liquid – blood? – ran down his inner thighs, warm like the tears burning behind his eyelids. He grew quieter and weaker except for the little mms he made each time the man bottomed out. His chest hurt.
Stop, he tried to say, but only managed muffled vocals. Please stop.
"Think he'll bite?" the man in front of him said, touching where Cole's lips met the gag.
"Yeah. Pure animal. Needs to be bred first, but we can try again later. Wait for your turn."
The blood dried too quickly. The boss cursed before he pulled out, and a spitting noise followed, then more curses because it was not slick enough. Cole whimpered. His ass-cheeks were roughly pressed together, and it felt like blood being pressed out of an open wound, which it probably was. Another curse from the boss: not enough slick there, either.
"Hang on," the first bounty hunter said.
He grabbed the front of Cole's face and squeezed his cheeks together until drool dripped out of the gag.
It felt like he was bleeding on both ends. His jaw was so sore he could barely mumble as the bandana was handed over to the boss.
"Use this."
"Good idea," the boss said.
It was followed by the sound of liquid being wrung from fabric, hitting Cole's hole; greasing him up with what remained of his insults; using spit to make his ass wetter before pushing back in. The slide was slightly easier, but the easiness was not at all welcome to Cole. It felt like his body was welcoming the man, wanting it, or at least ceasing to fight. Ceasing to rage.
"I'm nicer - ahh - to you than I should be. I could be worse. Way worse."
Worse than this? Cole couldn't imagine it. His world was pain and little else.
Even the heat, when it came, was painful. Rushing into a beaten place and so far up into his ass he felt the come soar in the bottom of his belly. The man behind him grunted as he finished himself with a few more uneven thrusts, getting it all up in there one last time, then pulling out. Cole felt semen trickle down from his asshole. He did not scream, or speak, or whisper. He coughed. He had no voice left.
Standing above him, the two bounty hunters didn't say anything. They didn't need to. Cole swore he could feel them smiling.
Until there was a cut-off shout coming from somewhere behind them, most likely from the third bounty hunter.
"Huh," the boss said and sounded like he had lost his smile. "Junior probably just saw a funny-looking deer or something. I'll go looking. You take your turn. Fuck knows I don't want to see you getting your rocks off."
The second-in-command muttered something under his breath, then got into position behind Cole.
"Sloppy seconds, huh? Troublemakers like you are all the same in the end, all dumb and used up."
He grabbed Cole's hip with one hand guided himself forward with the other, meeting resistance.
"Feels like I'm doing you a favor, giving you a use."
He didn't even need to rub himself into action: he was hard enough to fuck himself inside, huffing and puffing while Cole cried out.
"Ah! Ah! Ah!"
"Aaah yeah," the man answered when deep inside him.
The pace was less brutal than the boss', but meaner, thrusts small and hard. The man's cock was already slicked with something or it was just as slimy as the rest of him. He was similarly set on his own climax, but he used more time getting to it.
Cole tried to zone out, find a bullshit happy place, even if he'd always been crap at that sort of stuff.
The man must've noticed him biting his tongue and hiding his face, because he slowed down.
"Come on, be a good girl for me, Emily."
Cole tensed as if shot. Hearing that name made him clench around the man who groaned in pleasure.
"Oh, that's better. That's real nice."
The hands on his hips tightened possessively as the man kept fucking him, and Cole wasn't fighting anymore, his shattered mind occupied by a single question.
How the hell does he know that name?
"You like that, little Emily? Ohhh yeah, you do."
Cole couldn't help but tense up again. No one had said that name to him in months. The last time it'd been a gang member who had known Cole when he was younger and who got cocky around the campfire, Hey, is your sister still single, and ended up with a broken nose. The ropes cut into Cole's wrists and ankles with how much he pulled against them, yet he remained immobile and spread open. The bounty hunter was on all fours, and he spent time just rubbing himself around inside Cole, like he wanted to carve new spaces to fuck. He was making soft noises as if Cole's terror and confusion made him harder.
"Come on, girlie. Say you love my cock and that you need it to set you straight, and I'll stop."
Cole pressed his eyes and lips tightly shut. His hair was pulled upwards. The bounty hunter's breath smelled like rotting teeth and acrid coffee.
"Say it, or I'll find your precious Emily, and I'll make her say it while I take her ass, her cunt, and her mouth too even if I gotta pull out her teeth to do so, unless you fucking say it. Say it!"
Pain won against pride.
Cole always damned everyone, but at least he could try to save her from getting treated like this.
"I love -"
Shot. He was shot.
The gunshot rang through the woods, impossible to say where it came from.
I love you, Emily. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
In the moment after his final prayer, revealing something he would have rather not known about himself, a small eternity passed.
Then the bounty hunter slumped over him. Something warm splattered onto the back of his head. He turned and blinked at the trickle of blood getting into his lashes, thick and red and pouring from a reddish black hole in the man's head. The man's eyes were open, looking up towards the bullet hole, jaw slack.
Cole realized his ass was currently full of a dead man's prick.
Shivering. He was shivering.
He began to thrash around, but it hurt worse when the man was shoved to the side by an external force. It turned out to be a fourth man standing behind Cole, tall, young and dressed in blues and browns, wearing a red bandana matching his cheeks, though the rest of his face was pale in horror. Angus Geddes. Kind of hard to forget the name of the son of the owner of Pronghorn Ranch after what he did for Cole, but for a moment he simply wished he'd become a pulp underneath Milton's fists than to have been seen. Or maybe Angus was here to kill Cole?
Maybe not. That face looked like it had aged years in seconds, and he kept glancing between his gun, the body in the snow and Cole. Cole knew that look, the look of a first-time murderer, the denial and guilt. If the other two bounty hunters had gotten a similar treatment, the kid had gotten a three for one deal.
Angus took a step closer.
"No!" Cole breathed through clattering teeth. No more.
"I'm not here for revenge," Angus said. "Not anymore, at least." A noise of frustration. "Just let me ..."
There was the sound of a knife against rope, and then Cole's arms fell slowly forward due to their stiffness.
His wrists were still bound, and he stared at them for a couple of moments, before he started biting at the rope.
"I - "
"Stay away!" Cole cried out.
To his surprise, Angus stopped. Like the bounty hunters hadn't.
At first Cole thought the increasing shivering combined with the tightness in his chest and throat was only from the cold. Then a wretched cough tore itself out from his mouth. He coughed and shuddered and coughed some more until he realized he was sobbing. There was no crying, just mucus hanging from his nose, tickling for each time he jerked in emotions he couldn't really feel except by how much they stormed in his body. Several moments passed. Eternities, the lot of them.
"You're freezing," Angus said, sounding upset and not vindictive. "There's a fire over there. Let me cut you loose."
Cole shook his head among the shaking. He was covered in dirt by now. He'd rather be covered in snow. Dead in a ditch somewhere. As he should be. He tried to will his body to move, but he ended up rolling to the side in some laughable defensive manner when Angus reached out to help and Cole's panic skyrocketed.
"Relax! I ain't gonna ... I'm not them. Please let me help."
"S-Stay away ..."
Crying. He was crying.
Hotter than the icy trail of tears, Cole could feel the men's action towards him more now, like a fist scraping inside him. And yet it was what he focused on as he finally reached out, letting Angus cut his wrists loose first, then his ankles. He focused on the pain inside him, trying to get it to fan the rage, but as he limped towards the fire while avoiding Geddes' outstretched arm, he felt despair.
Cole moved in another, slower world than Angus, who scurried to the horses to retrieve a bedroll and some blankets and put them near the fire before Cole got there. It was almost funny, but he didn't laugh, he just collapsed and made a cave of the blankets like he was hibernating. He stared into the orange flames, barely able to react as another blanket was thrown on top of him. His body wouldn't work properly, but he ended up curling up, the fire now a presence at his back.
"I know you won't want to, but you have to take off the wet clothes," Angus said. "You might get hypothermia."
"Hypo ... what the.. ."
"Freezing to death," Angus explained somberly.
Cole stilled. He didn't know if he wanted to die, but he didn't know if he wanted to live, either. He'd already died once tonight and he couldn't stand the thought of more violations and apologies, not when it felt like saying sorry to ... her ... had felt like it ripped his understanding of himself apart. The ending of his violent night with the bounty hunters had been a violation in its own right. Cole knew he acted like a bastard and he kind of wanted to be seen as one, to own what he was to others, but he'd never admitted to himself how sorry he was he couldn't change for the better like Emily had wanted him to. Regardless of what he wanted, maybe he should die, for putting her in danger ... Was she still in danger? If so, he had to ... Shit, the cold was making his head turn soft ...
With little bursts of motion, he tried pulling and kicking his shoes, pants and union suit off, the wettest - and dirtiest - parts of his clothes. Angus had to help him do it, and it cut Cole deeply every time they touched, though the younger man was strangely clinical about it, maybe from taking care of animals back home. But Cole knew he wasn't an animal because he felt a shame that was more complex than the rage of a bull. At least he remained hidden underneath the blankets, but he still felt horribly exposed. The jostling made him so tired that Angus had to do most of the work, hand movements precise and nimble and he got him into a union suit, woolen pants and a sweater that smelled like farm-work and medicinal herbs, with a touch of ... ink and paper? At least they didn't smell like shitty coffee like the bounty hunters had done.
As if sensing his discomfort, Angus packed the blankets back around Cole like a barrier between them, but he also held them in place with strong and careful arms. Cole felt a dull kind of horror, caught between the need for warmth, and the need to never be near another human being again, ever. But at least they were face to face and not front to back.
And as if continuing to read his mind (or at least his body language), Angus said, "Your teeth are still clattering. I don't think we have any other options than body heat."
"No," Cole said, maybe just for the novelty of talking to his captor.
"If there was another way to get you warm, I'd take it, I ..." he raised his hand, expression growing pained when Cole flinched, and he touched his own bandana to take out a necklace with a cross on it, the gold of it shining on top of the red fabric, "I swear I wanna help you."
"Then just let me d-die," Cole said, falling back into despair. "Do what you should've done after I messed up that ranch of yours. Come on. Do it."
"I won't," Angus said, and if there had been any uncertainty in the beginning, it was now gone.
"I know you want to, just - "
"Don't tell me what I want," Angus said, softly and harshly at the same time, and it was the softness in his voice that shut Cole up more than its harshness. Maybe it was the New Austin accent, which Cole found nice though he'd never admit it.
"I don't want you dead," Angus continued. "I just wanna get you back on your feet. When you're warm enough, I'll back off. I swore it on the cross, and I don't break my oaths."
"I do," Cole said dully. "I swore to my men that taking your land was gonna be an easy job, and now they're dead."
"You aren't, though," Angus said after a brief pause.
The warmth felt nice though the proximity was horrible, but it helped a little that Angus didn't move around but simply held the blankets around him. He was careful, not holding too tight as to be restrictive, but tight enough so the warmth didn't escape. Like Cole’s new clothes, the younger man smelled like farm work and medicinal herbs, but most of all, he smelled like a bookshop. Cole was very aware of bookshops even if he passed them quickly. Lingering would be admitting how he wished that he read and wrote better than he did. Anyway, it was kind of a nice smell, old paper and ink. It was so odd out here in a snowy forest that Cole could disappear in it, before an involuntary twitch put him back into the hurt of his body.
Angus' heat and the blankets helped, but the various pains in Cole's body didn't stop, nor did the woozy feelings and the exhaustion.
"You're a believer, right?" he mumbled into the dark. "Think I'll go to hell for this? For ... You know."
"For wanting to die after ... being tortured?" Angus asked. "No."
"But you people think sodomites go to hell, don't you?"
"I don't know. I don't think I believe in hell, to be honest."
"I do," Cole whispered. "I'm living it."
Cole had experienced damnation time and time again, when he was laughed at for being dumb until he raised his fists to fight, but he had never been humiliated so intimately as half an hour ago.
But Angus didn't mock or lecture him for neither his words or his earlier experiences. When Angus raised his chin slightly so that it was caught by the light of the flames, Cole peeked out from the woolen cave and saw that Angus' eyes were blue like a lake and tinged with sympathy. It baffled Cole. He knew how to react to pity, but not sympathy.
"Do you have anyone I could take you to? Who could help you?"
"Sure, I got friends at every corner," Cole said sarcastically, before his eyes widened and he tried in vain to sit up. Panic filled him. "They ... Emily, she ..."
"What's wrong?" Angus said.
"He ... the last one ... He knew about my sister. Maybe they all knew about her. I dunno how. I ..."
"Emily, right?" Angus said, and for the first time, he sounded disgusted. But when he saw how Cole flinched, his face grew even more pained than the last time it'd happened. "I'm not mad at you," he said quickly. "But even before I dealt with those other men, I ... I heard ..."
"Don't say it."
"Okay," Angus said, and a tension Cole hadn't been aware of unlocked in him. "But as to why they knew who your sister was, your bounty poster didn't say anything about it. Let me think for a moment. Do you keep anything about her on your person? Or on your horse?"
Cole frowned. He didn't go through the few physical memories he carried on him all that often. Only on special anniversaries and when drunk did he flip through his old photographs, quickly and with blurred eyes, so that the house by the lake could be anywhere and the family could be anyone's. But even then, he could barely stand to look at the photo at the bottom of the bunch, of him and Emily together, young and with wild hair. Wasn't there something written on the back of that photo? He thought he remembered but he was not sure.
"Old photographs," he answered slowly, unused to being honest.
"Wait here, I'll take a look!" Angus said and pulled away, the eagerness youthful where he'd up until now acted older than he looked.
The rush of cold air was so sudden that Cole almost asked him to stay, but he bit his own tongue last second. He felt like a fool, but aside from the fire at his back the forest was so black and cold around him, he didn't bear the thought of being alone. He closed his eyes tightly and focused on hearing Angus moving around through the crackle of the fire. From the clothes and blankets Cole inhaled the scent of animal and hay and milder times.
He startled as something papery was put in front of his face, thinking it was a bounty poster, even if Angus had told Cole he wasn't interested in that. Then the two strangers in the picture melted into familiar figures, side by side on the porch of Cole's childhood home next to the lake. It always felt bad looking at good memories in a worse present, but it had never been as bad as it was now. His mind sunk to the dark bottom of that old lake.
"The man over there had a bunch of photos in his pocket," Angus said, the eagerness from before having become relief, but it quickly grew calmer. "That one has Emily's name written on the back of it. Yours too. That's probably how he knew. So it was probably empty threats. I'm sure she's safe. But is she somewhere nearby? Is that why you didn’t want me to take you to her, you thought they ... Wait. Are you ...?"
Somehow, a few more tears had appeared, unwelcome but falling all the same.
"I'm dead to her," Cole said roughly.
"I didn't mean to pry," Angus said, the regret clear though he couldn't hold himself back, "But I'm sure she doesn't think - "
"She does. It was the last thing she said to me," Cole said before he snatched the photo from Angus, intending to throw it into the fire but hesitating at the last minute.
The silence was heavy. Angus' tall form lowered himself next to Cole so they were of equal height, not as close as he had been, but it was strangely soothing.
"There's no sense in dying twice," Angus said, and his voice in combination with his lowered position did something for Cole, because no one ever bothered to be patient with him. Not with his rage, nor with his stupidity.
"I guess not," Cole said, and put the photo of him and Emily into the pocket of his new pants, fully realizing that his clothes belonged to Angus and his life did, too. Sort of, at least. Angus hadn't tied him up again. No, the man was busy making them some coffee.
"We got a long ride ahead of us," he said, sounding distracted.
Cole's heartbeat quickened. He got a bad taste in his mouth. A smarter man might've waited, lived in the uncertainty just to live a little more before the end.
"You said you weren't interested in killing me," he said, because he wasn't patient like Angus. "That mean you giving me over to the law?"
Angus didn't answer, looking like he was focusing intently on the coffee.
"Answer me."
A long inhale, ending in a sigh. "I don't know. Most likely they'll hang you. That'd make me a murderer, no matter how they look at it. Or an even bigger murderer than I already am."
"You could just let me go," Cole said, shrugging one shoulder, like the fate that awaited him in the wilderness wasn't an almost certain death.
"You didn't get far on your own. And there will be more hunters coming. Your bounty's pretty high." Each sentence was spoken more slowly than it needed to be, even as Angus was busy pouring the coffee into two cups carved from wood, clearly an artisan product, showing their difference of upbringing. The drink itself was warm but not scalding.
When Cole took his first sip, he spat it out like a small spray towards the fire, expecting coffee and tasting something similarly bitter but very green.
"What the hell is this?"
"Green tea?" Angus answered, not managing to extinguish the twinkle of humor in his eyes.
"Green - ? Ugh. Whatever." Cole slurped some of the tea, uncaring that some of it ran down his chin. It sent a warmth through the places where the blankets couldn't reach. He almost felt ready to threaten the kid again, but instead he said, "You gonna rub my shoulders, too?"
"No. That'd be foolish. If you're frozen enough, it can tear the skin from the inside."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Huh." Cole drank the tea up. His lips feeling numb and tongue not faring much better, he asked, "You fancying yourself a doctor or something? That why you go around following and saving the lives of guys like me? Guys who ought to be punished quickly and severely?"
"I do enjoy reading about medicine. And I'm not opposed to killing when I need to. And as far as I saw it," Angus sounded serious, "you've already been punished. Both by Milton and by those ..." a flicker of anger; not an anger like Cole's, but colder and more clinical, "men."
Cole said nothing. Though he had no strength to match it, he could feel the tension in Angus' breath, rising and falling.
"Listen," Angus said finally. "There's a cabin across the river from Pronghorn Ranch. It's ours, but it's remote. You can stay there and recover. You look pretty beat up, and I dunno how severe the damages from their - or Milton's - beatings were. You could have broken ribs, for all I know."
Cole shakily stood up, while Angus matched his movements and held out his arms to show that he could help catch him if Cole allowed it.
"You can say no," Angus said, some of that warmth coming back into his voice, a slight boyish teasing at the edge.
"I can say no," Cole mumbled, intended to be ironic but coming out as a careful statement.
Angus frowned before a look of regret crossed his face, and when he apologized, Cole just shook his head. He did not blame Angus for the teasing comment that his earlier violation gave a more complex implication. But it felt nice, seeing the pain inside him bloom on another person's face through sympathy, not hidden by rage or terror. Cole felt as though ghosts rose out of his own skin to meet the ones rising from Angus'.
Past the bodies of the bounty hunters frozen stiff in the snow, Angus helped Cole walk towards the horses.
Haunted. They were both haunted.