Weston’s Wild West Whump - 2
I DID IT! I FINISHED IT. Holy cow. XD Anyway, it’s a bit of a longer piece. Today, we learn a bit more about Weston, we’re introduced to Graham’s men Dee and Sunders, and we discover Graham is not someone you want to mess with. Enjoy! :D
CW : Animal corpse used as a metaphor, bribery mention, broken bones (and the symptoms that accompany them), concussion, cowboy shenanigans, gun mention and threat (not real), hogtie threat (not yet realized), knife mention, mild cursing, somewhat degrading language, thieving mention, touch of low self esteem, vaguely implied unsafe home life.
(I’m new to content warnings, so if I’ve missed something, please don’t hesitate to let me know! :D )
Tagging: @milk-carton-whump, @unicornscotty, @abitefullofwhump, @alliecat5594, @ihaveacrushonjester (Let me know if you want to be added or removed from this list!
2 - Good Ol’ Righteous Cowboy
Weston has only met Graham twice before this. Once, last week when he came to investigate the ranch’s missing cattle. “Sheriff Graham Miller,” he’d introduced himself. The way he’d carried himself, charming and self-assured, Weston was sure the culprit would get theirs, and if Johnson was lucky, he’d get his cattle back before Weston moved on.
And then Weston found that handkerchief caught on the barbed wire fence, “G.M.” embroidered on it in a stunning shade of blue. As far as leads went, it was pretty thin, but that blue thread and those initials—there was no way it could be a coincidence.
Which is what led him to his second encounter, dressed in Johnson’s clothes, pretending to be a wealthy man in search of some cattle for his father’s failing ranch. Of course, Weston was nowhere near wealthy, and his father’s ranch, he’d remembered with a shudder, was doing just fine, but wearing Johnson’s Sunday best, he sure as hell looked the part.
But with Graham being the one to show him around, he could only see so much. Weston was walked past rolling pastures and prize-winning cattle, sure, but no proof.
Which is what led him to his final attempt at getting it, not exactly a third encounter but one that led to it—this one—kneeling in front of two of Graham’s men, a lasso tight around his middle and with his right ankle throbbing painfully with every heartbeat.
Despite their lack of history, when one of Graham’s men pistol whips him across the face, it feels strangely personal. Weston can feel the malice, sees the satisfaction on the left’s face when his own snaps sharply to the right. The shock of it almost overwhelms the burn. Almost.
Weston stays there for a second, hunched over with his eyes squeezed shut, reminding himself to breathe, letting out a pained groan instead. Another breath, this time bracing. He shakes off the stinging pain and rights himself with a tight lipped smile.
His tongue darts out over his bottom lip, tastes blood. Yeah, he’s sporting a split lip now. He winces at the pain, more an ache than a burn now, and blinks back involuntary tears.
When Weston raises his eyes again, the man has his revolver in hand, arm pulled back to strike him again. God, he hates to admit it, but he flinches, tucking his face into his shoulder, waiting for the blow.
He hears the grunt of effort, expects his view to whip right again in a burst of pain when he hears, “Stop playing with him, Dee. Get his legs.” When Weston doesn’t feel the strike, he allows himself a glance in the direction of the voice.
It’s the man on the right, face stony with purpose.
The man on the left, “Dee” Weston assumes, shoots the man a venomous glare, then turns to look at Graham, who’s digging into the saddle bag of one of the horses.
Graham’s not paying attention when the butt of the gun slams into Weston’s temple.
Weston hits the ground hard, landing heavily on his shoulder, cheek pressed into hot rocky dirt. His head, oh God. He gasps against the blinding pain, eyes skewed shut as he gapes like a fish out of water.
“Dee.” Between the ringing in his ears and his ragged breaths, he hears it, a low reprimand but not a surprised one.
Weston forces his eyes open to look at the two men now looming over him, but he ends up shutting them again. When did the sun get so damn bright?
“You wanted me to get his feet, Sunders.” Sunders. That’s got to be the other man’s name. And—wait, they’re still talking. Focus, Weston, focus! “ —think he was gonna let us tie him up that easy? Graham likes Randy clueless. The sooner he’s tied up, the less questions we gotta answer. Get me?”
Randy? Who the hell’s Randy?
Weston lies there for what feels like ages before the more important thoughts make their way back to him. Graham’s here. Dee and Sunders, they’re going to tie him up. His ankle’s shot, he’s got that lasso around him that’s not going to let him go anywhere.
And all three of them are armed. Great.
Weston worms his arm out from under him and eases himself up until he’s propped on an elbow. For a moment, the world spins. Forget cotton. His head’s full of sloshing water, distorting and disorienting and all too heavy for what it is.
He wants to lie back down, let whatever’s going to happen happen. He’ll feel those ropes dig into the tender skin of his wrists and bite into his swelling ankle. Will they make him walk? No, not with a hogtie. He’ll more likely be draped over the back of a horse and taken back to the ranch, where—
Where what? Who knows what’ll happen back at that ranch? And what the hell is he thinking, lying back down and giving in? He shakes his head with a sneer. If he’s going to that no good sheriff’s ranch, he’s going angry, not complacent.
So he pushes himself up until he’s sitting again, lightheadedness be damned, and squinting at Graham’s back, legs stretched out in front of him, he calls, “You needed three guys to get a hold of me, Graham?” It comes out a groan, nowhere near as snarky as he wants it to be, but it’s dripping with sarcasm nonetheless—and based on the smile that sneaks over the sheriff’s face, it catches his attention. “Why, I’m flattered. ‘Course, I probably should’ve expected as much.”
Dee’s at eye level in an instant. He grabs a fistful of Weston’s shirt and jerks him forward, lips curled up in a snarl. “Why, you—”
But Graham just laughs from his spot by the horses.
Dee’s eyes, still shining with murder, flicker with confusion, and Weston’s gaze snaps over to Graham, doubled over with warm, genuine laughter. What the hell?
The grip on Weston’s shirt wavers as the seconds tick by. Finally, Weston clears his throat and says, “Sure, I find your stupidity funny, too, but—”
Graham’s gun is trained on him before he can finish.
“Dee,” Graham says, motioning with his revolver. It’s a command. Dee barely spares Weston a smug grin before pulling his hands from Weston’s clothes and stepping into place between Graham and Sunders.
Graham squares his shoulders and, accent thicker than Weston’s ever heard it, he says, “What’s funny is you talking about stupidity.”
Weston knows he should be scared, and he is. He feels it, unadulterated fear, making its way to his shaking fingers, twisting knots deep in his stomach, watching him stare down the blackened barrel of this gun, telling him, Give up, give in. Maybe he’ll let you walk away.
It’s so damn tempting.
But Weston has already given in to too many people like Graham with the promise of walking away too many times, so despite everything, he balls his trembling hands into fists, meets Graham’s eyes with a pained smirk, and says, “Please, do tell.”
Graham grins.
“Good ol’ righteous Weston Casey.” He shrugs past Dee and Sunders and makes his way towards Weston, digits lazily fingering his gun’s trigger, blue eyes scanning him and the barely concealed shock on his face. “Yeah, I’ve heard about you. Hardworking, dependable, new in town. You rolled on in here just last month, didn’t you?”
Weston doesn’t answer. Instead, he changes the subject. “What do you mean, ‘righteous’?”
Graham stops by Weston’s feet and sits back on his haunches, eyes trailing idly over his body. “I mean your absurd morals,” he says. “I’d heard about it before, but I saw it clear as day when I came to Johnson’s ranch yesterday. You were angry for him.” He laughs to himself, toying with the trigger thoughtlessly.
But the hammer’s still standing tall by the frame, not pulled back. So the gun’s not cocked yet. It never was. That’s good news.
“It’s a damn shame,” Graham continues. He’s looking at Weston’s face again, a tiny knowing smile on his lips. Did Weston’s realization show? “The bribe I would’ve paid you—beyond generous. Not that you would’ve taken it.”
“What’s this got to do with stupidity?” Weston cuts in. He’s stalling at this point, he knows it, but he needs something—anything—to distract him from the fear bubbling just beneath his surface.
“Well, we’re talking about you, aren’t we?” Another flick over the trigger as Graham’s tone shifts, almost amused. “A good, quiet stranger rolls into town, surely minding his own business when something not quite right goes down. A few cows go missing. Nothing special, nothing new. Cattle go missing all the time around these parts. But being him, he decides he wants to investigate.”
Graham’s voice darkens then. Weston forces himself to be still under Graham’s scrutiny as his eyes travel over his left leg, then to his right. Then to his right ankle, swelling like a cow’s carcass in the summer sun under his jeans. “And he finds out a little too much,” Graham continues. “And he gets in a little too deep. And he decides he wants to do the right thing. Which, in itself, is not a stupid thought.” Graham glances back up at Weston. “But his—your—morals, they get in the way of some really great opportunities. A guy like you would fit into this cattle rustling operation real well.”
At that, Dee’s expression visibly sours behind Graham, but he stays quiet. Smart or scared?
“I know you won’t take the bribe,” Graham says lowly, “but how about a fair trade? Your work for my money, plain and simple.”
Weston scoffs to himself. His heart is in his throat pounding so loud he can hear it, but it’s not even a question. He meets Graham’s eyes through his mop of hair and says, “Over my dead body.”
He means it.
Graham stares at him, and for a second Weston thinks he might burst out laughing again. But he just smiles, more to himself than Weston, seemingly thinking something over.
He tucks his gun back into his holster, shoots Weston a big grin. And then his gloved hands shoot out and twist his right foot hard.
Weston’s broken bones in the past. He’s felt that wet snap of the initial break. He’s felt the numb shock before his brain catches up with his body. He’s felt that nauseating pain that accompanies every jostle and movement of the site.
But he’s never felt anything like this.
Weston shrieks, white hot blinding, agonizing pain that he feels all the way to his fingertips in sharp, involuntary spasms. Overwhelming, all encompassing. In this moment, Weston is pain.
Too much, too much, too much! It’s blaring in his head like a siren, that fear. His face goes hot, then cold. Tears run down his cheeks, but he’s too focused on gritting his teeth against another wail to care.
“See, I gave you a chance just then,” Graham says over his cries. “I offered you a job, nice and respectable like, and you turned it down—and for what?” He leans in close to Weston, a hand still twisted in the fabric of his pant leg. “A few meaningless morals? If you ask me, that’s awful stupid of you.”
Graham wrenches his ankle again, and even though Weston knows what to expect, it’s just as awful as the first time—worse even. Bone grinding on bone, leather on swollen, hypersensitive, hot-to-the-touch flesh.
He throws his head back with a broken sob. “G-Graham—!” Weston doesn’t know why he says that. He doesn’t even realize it’s him saying it, not in his current state, concussed and half delirious with pain.
But he definitely hears “Yes, Weston?” through the haze, barely registers Graham’s hand leaving his leg.
The twisting’s stopped, Weston knows it, but the pain hasn’t. He still feels it, twisting, twisting, the rough seams of Graham’s leather gloves on swollen skin. And he feels dread, prominent, telling him this isn’t the worst to come, not by a long shot, that only makes it hurt worse.
He hasn’t felt a dread like this since his last month at the family ranch.
As the worst of the pain melts from his limbs, just enough for it to be bearable, his wits start to come back to him, and it occurs to him that he cried out Graham’s name in an agony-induced panic. Then Graham had asked him a question: “Yes, Weston?” His stomach drops at the thought.
What had he been looking to say? Would he have begged? “G-Graham, please stop! Please!” Or would he have bargained? “G-Graham, I won’t tell a soul, I swear!” Maybe, Weston realizes with a thick swallow, he would’ve accepted Graham’s terrible offer, helping steal cattle for the man he’s grown to hate in the last twenty-four hours to save himself. “G-Graham, I… I’ll do it.”
Graham had called him righteous.
Weston is a coward.
“Weston, you wanted to say something to me?” Graham is grinning, blue eyes glimmering with mirth. He wants to know what he was going to say just as much as Weston does.
Weston stares at his feet. His ankle is back to that constant throb, but the muscles in his foot and calf are still twitching and seizing from Graham’s rough hands. “Yeah, I did,” he says quietly. “I wanted to tell you, ‘Graham…’”
He shakes his head, sets his jaw, meets Graham’s eyes with a steely gaze. And then he spits at him, fueled by what little fight he has left, “‘Graham, get your damn hands off of me.’”
Righteous. Coward.
Liar.
Graham stares at him for a long moment before rising to his feet, that stupid smug grin still on his face when he looks back down at him.
“I like you, Weston. I really do,” he says, vaguely apologetic, “and you’ve made a lot of stupid decisions today that I could forgive you for. But that decision you made just now, making an enemy out of me? Real stupid.”
Graham turns on his heel and shoulders his way past Dee and Sunders again, only this time he stops between them and, in a voice just loud enough for Weston to hear, he says to them, “Now, I know I told you two to get him trussed up.” The look Graham gives Weston is chilling. “So tell me, what’s he still doing with his hands free?” Graham casts a final glance at Weston before Dee and Sunders make their way towards him for the second time.
This time, they don’t hesitate. Sunders pockets his knife, walks behind Weston, and tugs his arms behind his back, holding them together by the wrists. “Grab the rope from my horse, Dee,” he calls.
But Dee is standing by Weston’s feet, smiling a malicious smile. “His legs first,” Dee says.
Weston can’t see Sunders’s face, but he can hear the exasperation in his voice from behind him when he replies, “There’s no way he’s going anywhere on that ankle now.”
“I know that.” Dee crouches down by Weston’s feet, eyes running down the length of his right leg. “But I want to start with his legs.”
Sunders sighs and drops Weston’s arms back to his sides, already aching at the joints from the position.
“I’ll hold him down.”
Sunders takes his spot next to Dee and puts pressure on Weston’s thighs, holding him still while Dee goes for Sunders’s rope. If Weston didn’t know better, he’d think they were trying to help him.
But he does know better, and he knows their intentions are anything but pure.
He could shove them off, Weston realizes from his spot on the ground. He could, and if he tried, he could get a good solid kick on Dee when he gets back if he uses his left leg. He’d sure as hell deserve it.
But watching Dee take his place by his feet again, Weston doesn’t. Smart or scared, righteous or cowardly—Weston doesn’t know anymore. He just glares at Dee.
Dee smiles back at him. “You got him, Sunders?”
“I’ve got him.”
“Good.”
Dee feels the rope in his hands, tests its strength with a few sharp pulls. Then he turns to look at Graham.
Graham nods at him from by the horses.
When Dee turns back to Weston, he’s grinning from ear to ear, eyes twinkling with mischief.
“I’m gonna enjoy this.”
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