Disclaimer: I don't own; I borrow with the odd exception.
Author's Note: Flames are welcome. This is dedicated to the beautiful and ever inspirational Cheap Indifference. She was the inspiration behind this. Please point out any and all mistakes. There is no slash in this little number. I'm hoping it displays the sort of friendship Dallas and Buck have. There is a possibility that I am way off in left field, but fuck it. Read, enjoy, and take it for what it is. Reviews would be really lovely!
June, 1964
His ma said he'd have nights like these. She just never said why or how often or how bad they would be. Her excuse was that there are some things in life he needs to figure out for himself.
It could be worse. He could be moping over some dumb bitch that has a habit of running out on him. Instead, all he has to worry about is how many shots it's going to take for him to stop feeling and stop thinking and stop breathing if he's lucky. Luckily he's never had a problem remembering where the bathroom is.
Buck hands him two Aspirin that he washes down with a cold glass of water. He can tell from looking at him that he's sorry, and he wants to tell Buck that it's not his fault. Buck didn't force him to get up on that horse, and if anybody is to blame, it's himself. Because he should've seen this coming. He knew the horse spooked easy and was ornery—that was why he chose it. That's why it's his horse and he's stupid for not seeing the inevitable. He's gone and cost Buck a good chunk of money that he doesn't know how he's going to pay back, and even though Buck has said over and over again that he's just glad he ain't dead, he can see it in his eyes. He regrets putting him up there and it hurts. He's never fucked up this badly.
It's like Mack used to say, back when he still called him "dad". Leave work at work and home at home. And up until now, he'd thought he'd been doing a pretty bang up job of keeping the two separate. That's what makes him a good rider, keeping his head clear and staying focused, because jarring his attention from the track for even a millisecond will always result in this, and he's been scared of this—of losing—right from the start. He can handle the bleeding and the fractures, but he's always been a sore, sore loser. Buck says that shit happens and sometimes people have off days, even him, but this is a first. He's usually so goddamn careful, staying a good fifty steps ahead of every other jockey out there, and that's what makes him better than everybody else. That's why he wins and that's why Buck is willing to risk his skin on some fifteen-year-old kid nobody else would ever give the time of day to. He knows he's made for this.
Makes him feel pretty lousy when he thinks about it. It could've happened to anybody, and he knows that, but it happened to him. The horse didn't just spook—it rolled clean over him and tossed him damn near thirty feet. He hit the ground fast and he hit the ground hard. And it was Buck at his side first, shaking him and sounding calm as ever as he told him to get his ass up. It wasn't until he got a look at the goof did he see how frantic Buck was. He'd told him once upon a time ago that he'd seen enough riders die out there to know that he couldn't take a fall like that lightly. But he'd had to laugh it off and tell Buck, the goof, that he was made of steel.
He's starting to believe that less and less. Even though he was only trapped under that horse for a second and a half, he saw his life reel out behind his eyelids. And it wasn't until he felt and heard Buck that he knew he was still alive. There was a ringing in his ears and the sour taste of blood in his mouth that seemed to choke him the longer he laid there. And Buck must've known this, because he had him up and in one of the trailers that solely served the injured before he had his wits about him again. He refused to let anybody who wasn't Buck get a look at him; he didn't trust anybody else.
"You still with me, cowboy?" Buck sets another glass of water in front of him. "You're startin' t' scare me."
"I ain't gonna pass out, if that's what you're thinkin'." He rubs his temples and screws his face up. "Ain't the worst bump to the head I've taken."
He straightens up as best as he can and grinds his teeth against the hurt, knowing he deserves everything he got today and worse. It figures that Buck would be the one to get him out of a tight spot because he's gone and fucked up again. That's the way it's been since they were kids—he did the fucking up and Buck did the straightening out, and it hasn't changed. He doesn't think that it ever will. Buck is destined to keep on cleaning up after him no matter how hard he tries to not mess up. But that's what he's best at, isn't it? Now he has a debt to pay and it's eating at him because he's the one person he thought he'd never fuck over. At least not this badly.
It's all he blabbed about on the drive home. Kept saying that he didn't have to worry because he'd fix this, and although Buck told him over and over and over to forget about it, he's not letting this go. He's had his back through so much bullshit that he figures it's about goddamn time he returns the favor. He knows his riding—his winning—is the reason Buck has been able to keep this little tavern afloat for so long after his granddaddy went and kicked the bucket, and maybe it's too much on him. But he claims that he doesn't trust his own brother nearly as much as him, and he wonders what he did or what he proved to him. It could be him being stuck in his little world of idealism and trying to find the best in some kid that doesn't have a hope in hell of making anything useful out of himself. Buck knows he has evil tendencies and has been on the other side of his ill temper and bad judgment more times than he can count on two hands. He's seen him do things no normal person with any sort of conscience or moral would do and knows just how fractured his fragile state of mind is because of it all. But he has never judged him for it, and that is why he feels this loyalty toward him.
Buck hands him a lit smoke and grins. "Remember that time we was up in Wyoming…"
"Christ almighty." He nods and washes a hand over his face, biting against a smile. "I couldn't fuckin' tell you how we made it outta there with our sanity. But I swear I ain't never sharin' a goddamn room with you again."
"Maybe you oughta not flood yours next time, huh?"
His face falls as he shifts, trying to alleviate the pressure settled into all the wrong places of him. "Warn't my fault."
"No, o' course not," he snickers. "The toilet plugged itself."
He rolls his eyes and manages a laugh, and it's genuine in a way that only Buck can get out of him. It's pathetic. "Shut your mouth and pour me a drink," he says tightly, leaning against the bar heavily.
Buck wrinkles his nose. He's always had something about him mixing his pain killers with his alcohol. Says that he's asking for an early death, and he's never been more right. He'd hold his breath if he didn't think it'd take too long and be too painless. He wants to feel it when he dies.
"If you start frothin' at the mouth, you can't blame me," he tells him, giving him a severe look as he takes the shot glass from him and slams it home.
He puts his head in his hands, staring at his cigarette, letting the smell make him nauseous and dizzy as something heavy starts to settle in the air. "If I start frothin' at the fuckin' mouth, you got my permission to take me out into the back forty and shoot me with your granddaddy's precious little rifle."
"Duly noted." He sighs, adding to the heaviness, the unease that hits him hard sinks into his swollen joints. "Where was your head at today, huh?"
And there it is. He clenches his jaw and averts his eyes, because Buck has had him thinking all night that he wouldn't ask. Otherwise he'd have some cock-and-bull story prepared to feed him and give him the impression that everything is just peachy. But instead he starts tapping a finger on the top of the bar, bracing himself as the wheels in his mind come to a grinding halt. The cigarette is starting to burn at the filter, and the smell has him bogged down like he's trudging through the mud, searching for a lie he can tell but having no success in finding. He's been caught off guard and Buck knows it. There's no point in trying to lie—he'll call him out on it and put him in an even tighter place than he is now. He thought he had Buck convinced he was okay. Busted up, but okay.
"It ain't nothin'," he mutters through the heaviness.
"It's somethin'," he says. "Don't try and bullshit me, Dallas."
Spinning the empty glass between his hands, he doesn't know what to say. It's becoming less about convincing Buck that it's nothing and more about convincing himself. "I didn't leave home at home."
He swallows and stares off somewhere over Buck's shoulder, hating to admit it. But it's true. Home was up there with him on the back of that horse, wrapped around the reins, swimming in his sweat and the dust, thundering in his ears with the echo of all those hooves. It made it impossible to focus on anything else. He could feel Mack breathing down the back of his neck, making every single hair on his body stand on its very end, and all he could hear was the way his ma screamed. He still can. And he's still thinking about how he couldn't do a damn thing about any of it, just lay there and pray to whatever higher power that was watching that she didn't end up dead because of him.
Buck leans forward and swallows audibly, giving him no choice but to look at him. "What've I always told you?"
"If I ain't in no condition to ride, I ain't gotta ride." He scratches at his jaw. "I thought I was."
"How's Annie…?"
Sitting back, he needs more air and more space than Buck is giving him. He forgot how much he knows about him, all his demons and all his secrets. He's told him things he'd never think to tell anybody else, with the obvious exception of Jane, simply because he listens, and even he needs someone to just listen every now and again, even if he doesn't have much to say.
"She went to stay with her sister," he tells him, and he feels like he's on auto-pilot. "To be perfectly fuckin' honest, Buck, I don't think she's comin' back this time."
"Your ma ain't gonna run out on you, Dal," he tells him as he pinches the bridge of his nose. "She's your ma…"
He presses his lips together and narrows his eyes at the bar top. The only person he's been able to talk to lately has been Jane, and despite her best efforts, a lot of the time he finds himself getting too worked up too fast for them to get very far. And there's something different about talking with Buck, something he doesn't like because it's compelling, whatever it is.
"Sometimes I wish she would…" he trails off and shrugs with the shoulder that hurts less. "Sometimes I wish she'd just fuckin' leave and not come back."
"And you'll be sayin' the exact opposite when she does."
He puts his head on the bar, knowing that he's right. He always tells himself that he wants her gone and that he'd be better off if she did leave and really didn't come back, and up until now, he'd been so sure that he could live without her if he had to. And isn't that what Buck has always made him do, or done for him? Put things into a gross perspective that anchors him into reality and makes him realize how wrong he is? He knows that no amount of conditioning could ever prepare him for living without his ma. She is quite literally all he has and he feels all of this guilt collecting and pooling and ebbing inside of him because he should be able to protect her the way she's been protecting him for the last fifteen years of his pathetic little life.
"What the fuck am I supposed to do?" And he's asking honestly because Buck seems to have an answer for everything.
But his shoulders slump and he shakes his head, and it's in that moment that he knows there isn't a damn thing he can do. "Remember that she's a grown woman. It's noble—"
"Noble?" He'd slug him if he could lift his arms properly. "You mean to tell me that you'd fuckin' sit by and watch your ma try and take that shit with her mouth shut?"
He shifts—he's said too much, left himself too open. He can feel the cracks in the base of his composure, splitting apart the foundations he's tried to keep cemented together.
"I guess that's right where we differ, ain't it?" Buck says. "I'd be the one leavin'."
"You always have been real good at avoidin' all your fuckin' problems, Buck."
Buck pushes a drink at him and rolls his eyes. "Why stay if you ain't doin' nobody no good by bein' there?" He shrugs like it's just that easy and makes all the sense in the world. "Just takin' up space and money. 'Sides, she's grown, like I said. You gotta take care of yourself."
He's right. He hates it when he's right. He hates that he's smarter than him, and he can't stand that he gives a hang about him, because it makes him stupid and it makes him weak.
"Tough times don't last, Dallas," Buck says. "You're a tough kid, and your ma is a tough lady. She'll be okay."
That almost puts him at ease. If Buck says she'll be okay, then she'll be okay—he wouldn't lie to him. He wouldn't. But even as he sits there, in the heaviness and the nighttime mugginess drifting in through the open windows and the screen door, and the crickets start to chirp and the frogs start to croak, he can't shake the feeling that something is wrong. Maybe it's with him and maybe it isn't, but something isn't right.
"You oughta come by and see her when she's back," he says quietly. "She'll appreciate that."
"Maybe." Buck clasps him on the shoulder carefully and gives him a hard look. "You ain't always gotta leave home at home. I know I put my foot in my mouth a lot, but my granddaddy taught me how to listen real well."
"It ain't gonna happen again, Buck." He grimaces and shakes his head. "Home ain't got no business bein' on the track with me."
Buck snickers and walks around to the other side of the bar. "Don't you worry your blond little head about it," he says, letting Dallas brace himself against his shoulder before starting toward the porch. It's too nice of a night to be inside. "You're gonna be my first choice every time."
And he knows he means it.