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Even after the reverend and Mrs Grimshaw had done their best stitching him back together, John Marston was in a rough shape. Javier hadn’t seen him without the bandages yet after he and Arthur had dug him out of that damn snow, but considering how he had looked like on that mountain, he was sure to be left with at least a few scars. On the ride back John had been unusually quiet - apart from the few pained grunts and whines near Javier’s ear, when Boaz’s gallop had shaken him -, and despite the worry for him, Javier’s stupid, stupid heart had fluttered like some exotic song bird in a cage he sometimes saw being sold in fancier stores. Though the grip around his waist had been weak and Javier couldn’t feel the warmth that usually radiated from John’s lanky body, the arms holding onto him like he was his last lifeline were his, John Marston’s, in all of their paining familiarity. After facing the very real possibility of never seeing him again - or worse, finding his frozen corpse buried in snow -, even seeing his face bloody and bruised couldn’t dim the relief and the warm, silly, stupid happiness that seeing John Marston always made bloom from his chest into every part of his body.
And now, with the only part of his face visible under the bandage bruised purple and his only uncovered eye bloodshot and unfocused, his dirty hair limply spread around his head, hands resting on the thin blanket thrown over him twitching from cold, the warm happiness was beating in him like another heart had manifested next to his old and battered, flesh and blood one. He wanted to take his pale hands and rub them between his own until warmth returned to his digits. To press a gentle kiss against the back of his palm and guide them back under the blanket. But there were people present, talking in low voices just beside them. Would they mind? Surely not, not in this situation, not on this mountain.
John was looking at him. Javier had no idea what was going through his mind, if there even was anything. He thought about all the times they had kissed, in secret, always hurried and chaste despite the passion burning through both of them. Full of hunger and maybe, Javier hoped, feeling. The burning, golden light that he sometimes feared everyone could see glowing just beneath his scarred skin. That he wanted to give John, to make him beam with it. Sometimes he even dared to dream John felt the same, that he wasn’t just imagining the stolen glances the other man threw at him over the fire, how sometimes he looked so lost before leaning in to kiss him. Just as lost Javier felt. But John never talked. Neither did he. They weren’t that kind of people.
He sat down on the stool someone had left by the cot. John followed his movement with his eye, and with what seemed like great effort, turned his head slightly to keep his eye on him. His expression was relaxed, eye staring at him, dark grey lined with red, unblinking, and Javier figured he had been given something to help him stomach the pain. A stringy piece of hair fell onto his face, and he wanted to brush it away from his open wounds. He wanted to be tender. He wanted to care for him. But Javier Escuella wasn’t like that. John Marston wasn’t like that, either. He was sharp angles and bony elbows that dug into your stomach, he was hard words spit out like he spat out his chewing tobacco, uncaring and forgotten once they had hit the ground below his boots. He wasn’t a person who would let himself be taken care of or who cared for others. He was a man. And so was Javier.
Instead of saying any of those million things that came to his mind and tried to burst out his mouth when he looked at John, he said: ”You’re still alive.” Or someone else said, with his voice, someone harder and cooler than him. Someone with knives and guns and lovers, but never love.
John blinked slowly, his eyes never leaving Javier’s. There was a gentleness in the way his split lips spread into a smile Javier doubted would ever make its way onto his face were he sober.
”’M so happy,” he slurred. ”You came.”
They looked at each other in silence, Javier’s foolish heart jumping around in his chest, his lips fighting off a smile that would never fit the face of Javier Escuella. After a while, John’s eyelid started drooping and he seemed to slip into blissful unconsciousness. When Abigail entered the cabin with Jack at her heels, Javier got up from the stool to let them hustle over the poor man. He slid through the door of the cabin, into the white afternoon, and was blinded by it for a moment. While he blinked the image of the mining village back into his vision, the snow fall prickled his face and melted on his heated skin. It took him a few tries to light a cigarette as the wind kept blowing out the match.
Lenny was standing on guard by the fire outside one of the cabins. There was nothing else to do, and the poor boy seemed to be shivering, so he took the rifle from his hands and sent him inside to get warmed up. He threw his cigarette butt into the fire before adding a log to it. It was cold and wet and it took a good ten minutes for the fire to even consider touching it. The wind died down and the snowfall no longer felt like needles on his face. Big snowflakes fell lazily on the ground around him, and without a noise, settled on his clothes and the brim of his hat.
The sky was white, as was everything beyond the cabins of the abandoned mining village. If one didn’t know better, there might not have been anything outside the little group of rundown huts and the silence of falling snow. It was easy to forget the gunfire and blood they had left behind as well as the gunfire and blood Javier was pretty sure would await them once they’d descend from the mountains and the summer would bring on whatever it would bring on.
The fire cast a warm glow around it. The flames reflected on the surface of Javier’s eyes as he stared at it, a snowflake every once in a while touching his face and melting on contact with his skin. He was burning, too, and he felt like running back inside and telling him, telling John how he felt about him and letting anyone bored enough to get into their business hear it if they had to.
But what if John’s words were just drug induced nonsense, what if it had meant nothing after all? What if he didn’t want to hear that from Javier? And what he wanted to tell John Marston wasn’t how someone called Javier Escuella would talk to someone called John Marston. That wasn’t how a man talked to another man. Men didn’t tell each other they loved each other, or brush other men’s hair or feed them stew when they were too weak to eat by themselves. Men tolerated each other, made jokes at each other's expense, maybe patted each other on the shoulder and said ’you’re okay’ when they were two bottles of whiskey deep and things like that could be easy to let slide. Genuinity wasn’t for them, not for Javier, not for John.
He moved the rifle from hand to hand, stomped his feet to keep the blood flowing. I Wondered why it was that a man couldn’t be gentle. Why the men in camp, he included, made fun of the silly romantic stories Mary-Beth was writing, when he sometimes wanted to be like those people in those stories. Full of love and care for love itself. He wanted to relish in it, in the warm glow around John, and wanted to do his best to keep it burning. But that wasn’t for him.
Still, Javier wanted to go back and tell him how happy he was to see him safe. How happy he was to be with him. But he would still have time for that in the future, right?