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Mattie had not been pleased to hear from Wyatt that he would be indisposed for the night. He’d offered that she was plenty welcome to sit, enjoy a drink or some talk while he dealt cards, but she hadn’t taken to the notion. Nothing awaited her at the cottage besides the pretty bottle of laudanum she kept hidden under her pillow, and they each knew it. There was nothing Wyatt could do but let her hand slip from his and watch how her skirts swirled about her as she departed.
And for all his talk of work, the Oriental was near-empty that evening. There was Milt behind the bar, a few stragglers scattered around, and then, at the second-most poker table, there was Doc and whatever idiot who had yet to walk away opposite him. The poor young dealer who’d been left for dead between them looked all but glad that neither party had yet to fold for the night.
Doc was about under the table himself, but it was his pride that kept him in the game. Wyatt knew well enough, though, that it wasn’t for the sake of proving himself to some young kid who had likely forgotten where he even was seated, but rather for the sake of precedent. Doc Holliday didn’t lose at cards to nobody— not to the President, not to the Devil, and certainly not to whatever mother’s son now dared face him.
Kate was nowhere to be seen. For once she wasn’t at Doc’s side or atop his lap, not there to offer encouragement for him to further indulge, to stroke his ego and purr in his ear. Wyatt supposed there were few that could truly maintain pace with Doc, but that meant there were just as few who could coax him to a stop. Wyatt settled his hat and duster beside Doc’s Inverness on the coat rack and began over toward his friend.
“Doc,” he greeted, but his attention remained occupied by the cards and drink. “What do you say we close up? It’s gettin’ late.”
“Oh, Wyatt,” Doc said slowly, drawing out his name in that way he always did, blending the syllables over his tongue, though perhaps that was all the whiskey would afford him. “Quite rude of you to interrupt so.”
Wyatt scoffed, though he fought a smile. He took stock of the table then, seeing how Doc’s cards drooped toward his chest as he sat low in his chair, how none of the items tossed to the table’s center were of Doc’s possession. Bits of jewelry, a switchblade, crumpled banknotes like tinder for a fire.
Since Doc wouldn’t relent, Wyatt went instead for the kid. He must have been just as drunk or infinitely more stupid to still be playing against Doc Holliday. “I think that’ll be all for tonight, son. We’d be happy to receive your patronage again sometime soon,” Wyatt said, pulling the kid up from his chair. His legs bowed beneath him like long prairie grasses, far too drunk to put up any kind of fight as he was led outside. His eyes had already slipped shut when Wyatt lowered him to slump against the saloon’s exterior, gentle in the dust, away from the muddy tracks out front. His belongings would be waiting for him inside once he’d sobered up the next day.
Milt seemed quietly appreciative, rounding the bar to shoo out the dregs of the evening’s patronage for Wyatt to lock up, then gathering abandoned glasses from the tables and atop the piano. Perhaps there even was a smile of amusement upon his face at the gaze Doc leveled at Wyatt as he crossed the floor. A languid sort of fire resided there, embers made playful in their unassuming power, subdued only for the sake of their great bond. Doc Holliday was a man one wanted on his side; to face opposite him bode ill for anyone smart enough to recognize it.
“Let me get you upstairs,” Wyatt said. “Wouldn’t want you spillin’ your blood over Milt’s clean floor for pride’s sake.”
Doc glanced down to where he’d laid his hand— a straight flush, Wyatt saw. “And if I should choose to meet Hypnos at this table?”
“I’m sure he would meet you anywhere, Doc.”
Doc’s eyes glimmered with a stifled smile. He’d always delighted in a sparring partner what could hold his own in a battle of wits, and Wyatt would always try his damnedest to present a formidable opponent.
“He tells me he’d like to meet you upstairs,” Wyatt continued. “I’d like to help you get ready, is all.”
Doc’s blinks came slow, his eyes dark with wide pupils as he looked to Wyatt in consideration. “You’ve always respected an appointment. It is... becoming.”
Though the Oriental was empty, and Milt likely hadn’t even been within earshot, Wyatt felt his heartbeat pick up from its usual trot into a canter. Doc could always talk any such way without encountering issue. Milt of all folks was quite used to hearing Doc’s illustrative metaphor, his allusions, his colorful insinuations— there would be no sideways glances from those who knew anything of Doc Holliday, and Wyatt knew plenty. He reached to get a hold on Doc’s shoulders, but it was Doc’s hand that came to be pressed into his for leverage as he stood from his chair.
A bottle of gin and two cigars sat waiting at the end of the bar top, there on the way to the staircase that led to the second floor. Milt had evidently grown familiar toward their affinities, their preferences— gin against whiskey, cigars versus cigarettes, single- or double-bedded rooms. So Wyatt wished Milt a good night and swept up the offerings as he and Doc shuffled by.
The staircase was hardly wide enough for them to each climb it side by side. Wyatt did his best to bear the brunt of their unsteady rhythm, his shoulder knocking into the wall with every other step.
The door was soon shut behind them, the oil lamp on the nightstand lit, and Doc seated on the bed’s edge. It was a great canopied thing, making one wonder how it even was brought into the room, layered with down-filled coverlets and pillows, dripping with heavy harrateen from its posts. Wyatt had no choice but to ignore the sweat that had well and truly broken out over Doc’s skin; he would tolerate no worrying, no nagging. And when he began to cough, Wyatt moved to the window, pushing it open to let in the cool night air. He took the opportunity to cut the cap of one of the cigars, light its head with another match, and take a pull, letting the smoke drift from his mouth to wisp over the street.
He remembered Doc once silencing him with his silver tongue, years ago when a tickle had first fluttered in Doc’s chest, stunning Wyatt like a spray of buckshot. Wyatt had only sought to ascertain if he was well; they were the sort of cough that left a man red-faced and dizzy, after all. Doc had looked him steady-on and said, “There is but one doctor between us. Your concern is of no cure.”
It had been successful in muting Wyatt’s trap for some time on the matter, though Doc’s wit wasn’t the only method he’d deployed to shut Wyatt up since they’d known each other. Wyatt was by no means a chatterbox, but it certainly did any man good to have the mouth occupied with something other than gab every so often. Humility was a muscle that would waste away should it not be exercised.
“Damn it all,” Doc cursed as his coughing subsided.
Wyatt leaned against the window frame, doing his best to direct his smoke outside. “Surely you don’t mean that.”
“You wish now to talk sentimental, do you?”
Wyatt set his cigar down, balancing it carefully on the windowsill as he turned to free himself from his waistcoat, laying it atop the room’s chair. Next came his gun belt, which he unclasped to drape its heavy weight over the chair’s back. “Why else would I have brought you up here?”
“Mr. Earp. Quite... scandalous implications from a man of your standing. You are lucky I don’t acknowledge them.”
“I’m lucky enough anyhow.”
“Thank the Maker for that.”
Wyatt stepped to take another pull, but he spotted Doc beginning to paw at the buttons of his own waistcoat. Quickly abandoning his cigar once more, he stepped to Doc’s aid.
“I take it back,” Doc said, his breath warm over where Wyatt had rolled up his sleeves at the room’s stuffiness. Wyatt soon had his waistcoat undone, next moving to unbuckle Doc’s shoulder holster and cross-draw belt. “Damn it all, Wyatt.”
“Oh, yeah? Tell me off, then. Tell me to stop.”
Doc was quiet. Wyatt continued through the lapse, unpinning his cravat, wrapping the diamond-tipped pin in the handkerchief from Doc’s pocket and returning it there. He slid the waistcoat from his frame, its blood-red pinstripes shimmering in the low light like something magic. Wyatt then eased down on one knee to pull Doc’s boots from his feet, minding their spurs as he set them aside.
“I should,” Doc eventually said, eyes cast downward to watch as Wyatt untied his cravat. The black satin glided beautifully in his fingers, though Wyatt could feel how its underside had grown damp with the exertion of the day. “You are... you are Wyatt Earp. You have other matters to attend to, I’m sure of it.”
He decided against a reply, curiosity holding his tongue still as he placed the articles neatly atop the vanity. It was always a pleasure to hear Doc muse aloud so.
“Wyatt. I won’t subject you to this.”
“You’re not subjecting me to anything, an’ you damn well know it.” He returned before Doc, finally able to begin at the buttons of his shirt. “What’s so awful about me—”
“Only the Devil could manage to be so overt,” Doc cut in, taking hold of Wyatt’s hands to pull them away from their work. “Does it not satisfy you to... ask my clothes from me? You disguise your need with a mask of charity?”
That earned a true grin from Wyatt. “A mask of...” he repeated, trailing off into a chuckle. He could feel by comparison how warm his own hands were in Doc’s. There was only amusement in Doc’s gaze, Wyatt saw— that sort of look he got at the prospect of a challenge, at the opportunity presented by some disbeliever. And though his eyes were perhaps a bit more tired around the edges, evidence of the disease he refused to entertain, they held the same flicker of mischief they always had. “Now, Doc, would you get into bed with an angel? You’ve let me undress you nearly to your skivvies, and now you pipe up?”
Doc broke into a downturned smile before nodding over to the window. “Your cigar.”
Wyatt considered it with a glance as the tangle of their hands came to rest down in Doc’s lap. “I’ve got another. Besides, you just like watching me smoke.” Before Doc could speak, his lips just barely beginning to part, Wyatt raised his brow. “Don’t deny it, either.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
The concession was satisfying enough for Wyatt to return to the window and pick up the cigar. Leaning his weight against the window frame, one leg over the other and a hand in his pants pocket, perhaps he made a show of bringing it to his lips, letting his tongue peek out, beckoning Doc’s attention. The cigar’s foot crackled to life as he drew a breath through it, glowing like a branding iron in the dim bedroom.
“Overt as the Devil, indeed,” Doc drawled from where he’d settled back into the pillows.
“By all means,” Wyatt began, interrupting his smoke with a drink, the gin tinkling against the bottle as he tipped it back. The liquor nipped at him as it trailed down, leaving a steady warmth in its wake. “Go ahead. Take care of yourself. If I’m too Devilish for you.”
Even from his distance, Wyatt could see how Doc’s throat bobbed. He’d only succeeded earlier in opening up his shirt to the second button, but he spotted how Doc had foregone an undershirt when he’d last dressed himself.
“You’re Doc Holliday,” he echoed to him. “I don’t doubt you know how.”
It had grown warm in recent weeks. Wyatt should not have been surprised to see that it was not simply an undershirt that Doc had foregone, but a union suit, revealed to him as Doc moved slow to his button fly at the apex of his just-barely spread legs, slipping one after the other through their buttonholes.
“Is this your... repayment?” Doc questioned. He reached to the nightstand, retrieving the little glass jar of petroleum jelly they had neglected last to stash away. There was the subdued scrape of its lid being twisted open, and then Doc was dipping a finger inside. “Am I withholding something you desire?”
Wyatt centered his weight between each of his legs, turning so that his back leaned against the wall. Ash fluttered through the air. “You’re not holding anything yet.”
“Touchy subject,” Doc chided low, “though you do wear such intensity well.”
“And what if I finish this cigar before you have?”
“All good things come in pairs, Wyatt.”
Smoke seeped from Wyatt’s grin, pushed out by the huff of his laughter. He swept the hair that had fallen out of place back against his head, wetting his lip as he sought to recompose himself; these sorts of exchanges often left him quite receptive, never mind the way that Doc’s eyes had darkened, the way his mouth was surely to slacken as he slowly began to stroke himself. The interest of Wyatt’s cock had been thoroughly piqued, there beneath twill cotton.
“You’re not going to—” Doc faltered with a grunt— “to join me?”
“If I did,” Wyatt began, taking care to keep his words level, despite how they wanted to pitch upward, buoyed by arousal, “you’d be right. What with my... mask of charity an’ all.”
Doc managed a chuckle, and the brief flash of his smile was a caress to Wyatt’s soul. “It’s too late for that, lawman.”
“Can’t fool you, can I?”
“Never,” Doc agreed. “You are my friend, after— after all.”
No other man could have spoken to Wyatt as Doc did, not while they looked at Wyatt as Doc did. His hand moved now with a quickened pace, urged on by what surely built within him, and his chest rose and fell with some force, lungs working with the demand placed upon them.
“Perhaps I should clean—” Wyatt paused to clear his throat as he started across the bedroom, eyeing the glint of Doc’s nickel-plated Lightning, the dreamy glimmer of his ivory-grip Peacemaker— “should clean your revolvers. Haven’t seen you—”
Doc’s words halted him. “Keep at the cigar.”
He couldn’t keep the smile from his face. He’d only offered the service with the intention to tease, and it sounded he’d been successful. Wyatt realized himself then to be no different than he’d been at age twenty; Doc seemed to elicit such giddiness from him like no other, as if it was something that he brought into the air when he entered a room, that offered room for some stifled part of Wyatt to breathe.
“I did not know you to— ah— to carry your Buntline in your trousers, Wyatt,” Doc teased in return. Sweat now glimmered in the hollow of his throat, and Wyatt knew just how it would feel to bring his mouth there— how it would taste, perhaps being the more apt. “I know that long barrel anywhere.”
He wished to draw closer, but there was no way to reconcile the cigar smoke and the sensitivity of Doc’s lungs but stay at the window. “Damn right. I’d say you know better’n anyone how I handle my gun.”
Doc’s hips bucked sharp up from the bed. The speed of his reflexes was certainly not limited to his gun slinging, Wyatt knew. Doc was beginning to lose his composure, though. His brow was set in a deep furrow, his hips rolling in time to aid the blur of his hand, his cock flushed and rigid. Wyatt was admittedly impressed at Doc’s ability to carry on their sort of conversational volley; had he been in Doc’s position, he supposed Doc would have to entertain himself only visually.
Wyatt tapped ash from his cigar for it to fall to the street below. With his other hand he finally pulled out the knot of his own neckerchief, tossing the article to where he’d earlier laid his outer garments. Then he could begin to open up his shirt front, through which the night air was a welcome sensation. With one last drag, he nudged his suspenders from his shoulders.
“Stubborn tonight,” he observed in Doc’s direction, as if he merely was taking stock of an unruly stallion. Wyatt stepped to drop the head of the finished cigar in the vanity’s empty basin. “I don’t know what other act to put on for you.”
And it was then before the vanity that an idea came to Wyatt.
The cap of the second cigar was quickly cut for its foot to be met with the flame of a second match. His steps toward the bed were punctuated by the quick, firm strikes of his boot heels, propelled on by his excitement. Doc’s efforts slowed in confusion as Wyatt brought a knee onto the mattress to lean over him. After taking in a particularly indulgent drag, his free hand came to hold Doc’s jaw, and understanding flashed in his eyes.
“Damnation,” he ground out, and Wyatt dipped to close the distance. The cigar smoke passed from Wyatt’s mouth to Doc’s, hot and earthy and thick for him to savor, though only for a few moments. It washed over Wyatt’s face as Doc released it, whose panting quickly resumed thereafter. “And— and hellfire.”
“C’mon, Doc,” Wyatt urged, impatience coloring him, because mask be damned if he wasn’t to see him finish. With his cigar hand braced at the mattress’s edge over Doc’s shoulder, he reached between them and took hold of his cock. His own twitched at the feeling of it in his hand— its weight, its warmth, its pulse. “Don’t let up.”
Though he tensed around a groan, Doc managed to reach over himself to pluck the cigar from Wyatt’s fingers. And even as Wyatt stroked him near the edge of completion, Doc offered it to his lips with a shaking hand. So he accepted it, holding it then in his teeth at the side of his mouth, taking care not to drop ash onto Doc.
Doc seemed unable to keep any part of himself still, and it was in this way that Wyatt knew he was soon to finish. “Again,” he choked out, eyes darting to the cigar’s length.
Wyatt obliged, and with Doc holding the cigar after Wyatt had puffed from it, Doc was granted his wish as they connected. Wyatt kept his mouth upon Doc’s, though, and he felt some of the smoke escape through his nose. “S’good, isn’t it?” he murmured. “You just like seein’ me suck on ‘em, don’t you?”
And then Doc’s features froze, screwing tight as that final spark ignited, all of his abdominal muscles contracting to push his cock once more through Wyatt’s fist with a harsh breath.
There on the bed, it was too dim to quite make out where Doc’s release had fallen, but Wyatt could hardly find it within himself to care. He only had eyes for Doc’s silent pleasure, writ so clearly upon his face, contained only to his physicality; evidently he could offer no sound, no turn of phrase that Wyatt so admired. But he figured he could stand to be denied when faced with such a pretty picture.
“Mercy,” Doc breathed, blinking hard to stare past him. An abashed smile came to him though when he focused upon the smile Wyatt wore in turn. “Why do you... look at me so?”
Wyatt climbed over Doc to fall to his side with a chuckle, surely then dropping ash into the bedsheets. And then he couldn’t help himself— it took hold of him, some bright thing in his chest, radiating out like the year’s first warmth. He laughed, well and truly so that he shook with it, soon needing to wipe the tears from his eyes. “Doc Holliday...” he said, pausing to catch his breath with a cigar puff and a contented sigh, “beneath me, asking for mercy.”
“Damn you, Wyatt,” Doc conceded, and Wyatt knew he’d succeeded in ruffling him. “No one would believe you even if— if you were blue with it.”
“You ask for mercy and damn me both?”
“I have many dimensions.”
“Do any of ‘em let you give me a hand?”
Doc’s eyes had slid shut, but one peeked open at Wyatt’s request. “Now you demand charity of me?”
“Figured I’d drop the mask,” he smiled in self-satisfaction. “What good is it if you can see through it?”
“And what would be said of you?” Doc posited as he propped himself up on an elbow to look down at Wyatt. “A retired peacemaker in bed with— with a lowly gambler.”
“Just—” Wyatt paused to pull in a quick breath at the hand that snaked to open his fly— “just keepin’ an eye on the townsfolk.”
Doc’s eyes glimmered at their charade. “It seems they are just as certainly keeping an eye on you.”
“Well, that’s...” he began through a chuckle, finding it difficult to maintain conversation as he watched Doc open that little jar once again, spreading some of its contents over his fingers and palm. “That’s...”
“Don’t let me stop you,” Doc said, glancing to the cigar that Wyatt had nearly forgotten, becoming so accustomed to the feeling of it between his fingers. He slipped his hand into his trousers, and Wyatt’s heart raced as if he was a child. He could only wait with bated breath as Doc’s hand paused just below his navel over the hair that crept up there, evidently playing at something.
There was no other option but to indulge Doc; he commanded it of Wyatt without so much as a word. Or rather, perhaps Wyatt couldn’t bear to not see Doc’s wishes made real. Though Doc was flesh and blood like the rest of them, there was something about him that drew Wyatt in like a magnet, the strength of his convictions crumbling all too easily under Doc’s gaze. So of course, Wyatt played along. He brought the cigar to his mouth and took a pull.
It was then that Doc’s hand closed around him, giving a sure stroke up the length of his cock in approval. It was like a breeze over the beginnings of a brush fire, coaxing the sparks into a blaze, and Wyatt released the smoke from his mouth around a soft groan. Christ, it was good.
“Look at that,” Doc murmured, delight ringing in his words like music. “Makes a man want to write a sonnet.”
“Fuck, what’s—” Wyatt faltered with a grunt, his head rolling back into the pillows— “what’s a sonnet? Tell me.”
“A sonnet,” Doc said, “is a sort of poem. Real flowery and lovey. Summer days and darling buds.” He spoke with reverence, as if he truly was finding inspiration in what he saw before him. Wyatt sucked in a breath as Doc paused to rub underneath his cock head, slow and feather-light, and Wyatt had to disagree— he’d never known a summer day to feel as this did.
“Shit,” he ground out, then sweating just as much as Doc. He could feel it dampen his temples, the small of his back, the plane of his stomach. Wyatt focused upon Doc fleetingly through the haze of his pleasure, seeing his brow to be furrowed as if in thought, his lips parted even with nothing to beckon them so. Doc’s fingers were a blissful glide, like— like— Lord, Wyatt was utterly beholden, held wonderfully captive by the hands of a fellow sinner. “Not gonna— fuck, gonna make it much longer.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself, Wyatt. Not to me.”
Staring into Doc’s eyes was surely akin to staring into the muzzles of his twin revolvers. A man’s fate lay on either side of the promise they offered, and there was little he could do to dissuade Doc’s fingers from the triggers.
Everything began to feel too much and not enough at once. Wyatt was being made short work of, and he could hardly find it within himself to even feign embarrassment. His teeth were sure to crack under the force he gritted them with, receiving solace only when a groan was pulled from him.
“You’re nearly there, I know it,” Doc encouraged, though perhaps with an inciting edge. “C’mon, lawman. Shoot.”
And Wyatt did. He tensed so completely he ached with it, a hand finding Doc’s thigh to grip his trouser leg. “Fuckin’— fuck!”
Only once he began to settle back into himself did Wyatt feel the room’s stuffiness upon him like a quilt, each breath a task in itself. Framed by his opened shirt front, his chest heaved as those subsequent waves washed over him, like something one might experience in the dusky dens owned by the Chinese. Wyatt had no need for any such drug, nor would Doc stand to hear that he’d wasted good money on something that could be provided at no cost.
“Knocked dead,” Doc mused slowly, looking over Wyatt with— Wyatt tried for a moment to place it, the nature of his inflection escaping him until he spotted the smile that pulled at Doc’s lips, however slight.
“Is that... pride I hear?”
Doc hummed in consideration, a low timbre as familiar as anything Wyatt knew. “As if I am not made better by your acquaintance.”
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“Perhaps,” Doc conceded through a sigh. “I’m surely at my hardest on nights like these.”
“Christ above,” Wyatt grinned, pushing his hair from his face. Doc chuckled with him, always pleased when his efforts to fluster him were met with success. Wyatt then hauled himself from the bed, plucking up the cigar head from the floor to toss it with the other in the vanity basin.
The curtains were drawn over the window before he shed the last of his clothes, pushing his shoulders from his shirt, balancing as he pulled his wool socks from his feet, stepping from his trousers. Sets of their clean underclothes sat folded in the chest of drawers, but for now, they’d relish lying skin upon skin until the dawn roused them.
Doc had opted to drape his own shirt and trousers over the headboard, Wyatt turned to see. He granted himself one last drink from the bottle, returning to the bed to offer it to Doc. “You could say this has all been something of a nocturne.”
Doc accepted the liquor. “How so?”
Perhaps Wyatt was feeling a bit self-congratulatory, but it seemed that Doc did not smile as freely around any other man as he did him. “Oh, you know... like a lullaby of sorts. An ode to— to—” And Doc let him flounder, knowing precisely what Wyatt meant yet refusing him the aid of articulation. At the sight of Doc’s amusement, Wyatt wasn’t too upset by it. He soon found his words, anyhow. “To Hypnos.”
“He’s calling, you know.”
Wyatt blew out the lamp and joined Doc in the bed once again. “Seems we’ve made him wait long enough.”
“Oh, I’ve found him to be quite patient,” Doc assured. “He’ll get what he wants from us eventually.”
Wyatt felt that he too would happily demonstrate such patience if it were Doc he waited upon. What a privilege it was, to have a friend to anticipate at all. Though the bedroom was dark as pitch, Wyatt could picture Doc’s face clear as a tintype— the shape of his jaw, his nose, the way in which his hair mussed against the pillow. And when first light would fall over them, in those moments when Doc looked elsewhere, he’d be granted another chance to memorize the harmony of his features.
What a privilege the work was.