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konstantyaTitle: Sharp As Glass and Twice As Bright
Fandom: Original Work
Genre: Western, drama, romance?
Characters/relationships: Outlaw Heroine/Deputy Hero
Rating: R
Word count: 852
Summary: Unexpected follow-up piece to this story. Weird, dark enemies-to-lovers in the Old West. Originally inspired by a pulp magazine cover. Full content warnings on AO3.
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
“It was pretty stupid of you,” Utah said, albeit not unkindly, “to provoke that deputy like you did.”
Evie turned to him, squinting at the late afternoon sun that shone from the same direction. “Oh, like you wouldn’t have done the same,” she teased.
He threw her a dry look from under grey eyebrows. They matched his grey beard and a mid-section that had gone paunchy with age. “I’m afraid he’s a little young for me,” he drawled.
Evie grinned, turning back as their horses ambled slowly along. Up ahead by a couple hundred yards or so was Bear, scouting solitarily as he was wont to do, his long hair tied tightly back in characteristic Hopi fashion. Julio was gone, having high-tailed it across the Mexican border as soon as he was able. Evie would miss him, and especially the humor he’d brought to the group, but there was no denying that he was safer down there than he would have been otherwise. He even had some family—distant though they were—that he could turn to for help. Which was more than the rest of them could say.
Evie gazed out at the horizon. Her flippant attitude about the incident aside, Utah was right; provoking that deputy had been stupid. She’d been getting more reckless lately, she knew—taking more chances, acting more bold. Maybe it really would end with her neck in a hangman’s noose. And would that really be so bad? A quick drop and a sudden stop, and all her earthly troubles would be gone.
She didn’t like it when she started thinking so morosely—and that, too, had become more commonplace over the last couple months. She couldn’t help but feel there was something ghoulish about it, and she shivered despite the desert heat. If Utah noticed, he didn’t say anything.
“Maybe I should give up this racket,” she mused, with deceptive casualness. “Find something else to do.” Before she inadvertently got the only two people she could claim as friends killed with her self-destructive thrill-seeking.
“Like what?”
“Acting?” she suggested. They’d crossed paths with enough traveling troupes in their time, and the nomadic lifestyle, at least, would be familiar. She suspected she’d never again feel comfortable staying in one place, anyway. Those days were long gone, buried with her parents and girlhood. Evie fluttered her eyelashes and tilted her head impishly, as if she was wearing a flowered bonnet instead of battered fur felt. “Don’t you think I could make it as an actress?”
Utah smirked at her in that fond, fatherly way of his. “I think you could do anything, if you set your mind to it.”
What was worse was that that was probably true. Evie almost shivered again.
They continued on for a while in silence, and then Utah belatedly asked, as if it hadn’t previously occurred to him that she might actually be serious, “Do you want to be an actress?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.” Which was a lie, in all honesty. At the present moment, she wanted a good fuck. It had been too long, and it was an easy patch for a bout of ennui. She remembered hard thighs and blazing eyes, and imagined full-on riding that deputy in the chair they’d tied him to. In an ideal world he’d fill her so deliciously, so deep and thick it would be on the brink of painful, and she’d use him for her pleasure before leaving him high and dry and thoroughly unsatisfied. Then he’d really want to murder her. She blushed perversely, glad both the wide brim of her hat and the orange glow of the setting sun disguised it.
What was his name, she wondered. And what had led him to working for a corrupt cur like Harper?
Evie shook the questions off. They didn’t matter. And with any luck, she’d never see him again. His vow to hunt her down notwithstanding, the West was a big place, and the lot of people were such fools when it came to a pretty young woman. Even supposing a description of her did get out, townsfolk weren’t automatically suspicious of her the way they were with other outsiders. She’d learned long ago that people had a tendency to see only what they wanted to see. And no one wanted to see a fetching white girl as an outlaw, even if she did breeze in in dusty trousers.
Except, perhaps, for that deputy, and the fact that he’d apparently been able to look beyond her physical appeal was another point of curiosity when it came to him.
Bear was waving back at them. He must have spotted a likely place to make camp for the night. It was just as well; the day was almost gone, and hopefully with what little natural light they had left she would be able to make her way through some of the clothing repairs that had been piling up.
And in turn would be able to keep the memory of a pair of firm, conflicted lips off her mind.
-----
A/N: More world-building! Utah is into men (but apparently not massive age-gaps), and Bear is Hopi. And both of their names are, in fact, nicknames, not their given names, in case you couldn’t guess. [Insert joke here about the bear of the group not being the one called “Bear,” pfft.]
No promises that this will ever reach a satisfying conclusion or that Evie and the deputy will ever truly get to the “lovers” part of “enemies to lovers.” I do have some vague ideas, but—much like this piece—I’ll have to give them time to properly percolate.
Anyway, I at least hope you enjoyed this continuation, short though it may be!
All other fics can be found here.
Fandom: Original Work
Genre: Western, drama, romance?
Characters/relationships: Outlaw Heroine/Deputy Hero
Rating: R
Word count: 852
Summary: Unexpected follow-up piece to this story. Weird, dark enemies-to-lovers in the Old West. Originally inspired by a pulp magazine cover. Full content warnings on AO3.
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
- Sharp As Glass and Twice As Bright (continued) -
“It was pretty stupid of you,” Utah said, albeit not unkindly, “to provoke that deputy like you did.”
Evie turned to him, squinting at the late afternoon sun that shone from the same direction. “Oh, like you wouldn’t have done the same,” she teased.
He threw her a dry look from under grey eyebrows. They matched his grey beard and a mid-section that had gone paunchy with age. “I’m afraid he’s a little young for me,” he drawled.
Evie grinned, turning back as their horses ambled slowly along. Up ahead by a couple hundred yards or so was Bear, scouting solitarily as he was wont to do, his long hair tied tightly back in characteristic Hopi fashion. Julio was gone, having high-tailed it across the Mexican border as soon as he was able. Evie would miss him, and especially the humor he’d brought to the group, but there was no denying that he was safer down there than he would have been otherwise. He even had some family—distant though they were—that he could turn to for help. Which was more than the rest of them could say.
Evie gazed out at the horizon. Her flippant attitude about the incident aside, Utah was right; provoking that deputy had been stupid. She’d been getting more reckless lately, she knew—taking more chances, acting more bold. Maybe it really would end with her neck in a hangman’s noose. And would that really be so bad? A quick drop and a sudden stop, and all her earthly troubles would be gone.
She didn’t like it when she started thinking so morosely—and that, too, had become more commonplace over the last couple months. She couldn’t help but feel there was something ghoulish about it, and she shivered despite the desert heat. If Utah noticed, he didn’t say anything.
“Maybe I should give up this racket,” she mused, with deceptive casualness. “Find something else to do.” Before she inadvertently got the only two people she could claim as friends killed with her self-destructive thrill-seeking.
“Like what?”
“Acting?” she suggested. They’d crossed paths with enough traveling troupes in their time, and the nomadic lifestyle, at least, would be familiar. She suspected she’d never again feel comfortable staying in one place, anyway. Those days were long gone, buried with her parents and girlhood. Evie fluttered her eyelashes and tilted her head impishly, as if she was wearing a flowered bonnet instead of battered fur felt. “Don’t you think I could make it as an actress?”
Utah smirked at her in that fond, fatherly way of his. “I think you could do anything, if you set your mind to it.”
What was worse was that that was probably true. Evie almost shivered again.
They continued on for a while in silence, and then Utah belatedly asked, as if it hadn’t previously occurred to him that she might actually be serious, “Do you want to be an actress?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.” Which was a lie, in all honesty. At the present moment, she wanted a good fuck. It had been too long, and it was an easy patch for a bout of ennui. She remembered hard thighs and blazing eyes, and imagined full-on riding that deputy in the chair they’d tied him to. In an ideal world he’d fill her so deliciously, so deep and thick it would be on the brink of painful, and she’d use him for her pleasure before leaving him high and dry and thoroughly unsatisfied. Then he’d really want to murder her. She blushed perversely, glad both the wide brim of her hat and the orange glow of the setting sun disguised it.
What was his name, she wondered. And what had led him to working for a corrupt cur like Harper?
Evie shook the questions off. They didn’t matter. And with any luck, she’d never see him again. His vow to hunt her down notwithstanding, the West was a big place, and the lot of people were such fools when it came to a pretty young woman. Even supposing a description of her did get out, townsfolk weren’t automatically suspicious of her the way they were with other outsiders. She’d learned long ago that people had a tendency to see only what they wanted to see. And no one wanted to see a fetching white girl as an outlaw, even if she did breeze in in dusty trousers.
Except, perhaps, for that deputy, and the fact that he’d apparently been able to look beyond her physical appeal was another point of curiosity when it came to him.
Bear was waving back at them. He must have spotted a likely place to make camp for the night. It was just as well; the day was almost gone, and hopefully with what little natural light they had left she would be able to make her way through some of the clothing repairs that had been piling up.
And in turn would be able to keep the memory of a pair of firm, conflicted lips off her mind.
-----
A/N: More world-building! Utah is into men (but apparently not massive age-gaps), and Bear is Hopi. And both of their names are, in fact, nicknames, not their given names, in case you couldn’t guess. [Insert joke here about the bear of the group not being the one called “Bear,” pfft.]
No promises that this will ever reach a satisfying conclusion or that Evie and the deputy will ever truly get to the “lovers” part of “enemies to lovers.” I do have some vague ideas, but—much like this piece—I’ll have to give them time to properly percolate.
Anyway, I at least hope you enjoyed this continuation, short though it may be!
All other fics can be found here.
