Work Text:
In hindsight, they probably should have known stopping here was a bad idea. Javier was no fool, he knew the opinions people held about foreigners, especially in small backwater burgs. Most in the bigger cities begrudgingly tolerated him, though even there it was always with some degree of suspicion. Less friendly were the little boom towns and mining villages; those were the kinds of places where a man like him might just go missing if the wrong people took exception to his "dirty" presence in their "clean" settlement.
Pah! Que absurdo.
Still, he hadn't figured on Van Horn being one of them when he and Lenny dropped in for a quick drink at the saloon - and that mistake would end up costing them dearly.
They'd just finished a small job right outside of town, robbing some place apparently known as the "Van Horn Mansion." Whatever it might have been in the past, it was now a mansion in name only, reduced to rotting remnants and broken windows with nothing but a few baubles, a couple of dollars, and two (now deceased) squatters hiding out and drinking in the basement. Dutch had told all of them to avoid making trouble in Rhodes, since he and some of the other boys were doing their best to ingratiate themselves with the local law and get in good with the Gray family while Hosea worked his magic on the Braithwaites. That was fine with the pair of them; neither wanted any trouble in a place like that, Lenny in particular, and they didn't need any encounters with the local "militia" roaming around Lemoyne either.
Eventually they'd decided the best choice was to just leave the state altogether and head a little further north instead. It was good to get a change of scenery, and they hadn't been able to spend any time alone in quite a while, so Javier considered it killing two birds with one stone. Thankfully they'd managed not to draw attention to themselves during the robbery. The second the mansion's current occupants moved to draw their guns they'd sealed their fate, Lenny and Javier's knives buried to the hilt in their throats before they could even draw breath to scream.
Then they hightailed it out and ran northwest, eventually crawling into the upstairs window of another abandoned house west of town, although they weren't there for more than a few minutes. The place may have been abandoned, but as soon as they turned around and found themselves face-to-face with whatever cobbled-together abomination the previous owners had stitched together out of animal parts and left on display upstairs, they were climbing right back out again. Both decided they would rather take their chances with the law over whatever that was.
After kicking around in the woods just long enough to be sure they weren't followed, they turned and made their way back into town, ready to unwind with a few drinks and maybe a game of poker before finding somewhere to bed down for the night. Van Horn was as poor and rundown a town as he'd been to in a while, and those were usually pretty safe for people like them to stop in. The patrons generally kept to themselves, and the bartenders were too happy to receive an extra dollar or two to care about the color of the men paying.
But judging by the glares they received from a group of men in the far corner the instant they set foot in the door of the saloon, that might not be the case after all. Javier sighed. Of course. It seemed even in this town crawling with drunks, vagrants, and all sorts of criminals, being black or Mexican was somehow still a step too far.
"You sure you wanna stop in here, Javi?" Lenny asked quietly, probably more aware than Javier was of the looks they were getting. "We can always keep ridin', find somewhere else."
"Nah, it's fine. We aren't causing any trouble. We'll have a couple drinks and be on our way. I just want to relax a minute before we find somewhere to pitch a tent for the night." He winked at Lenny after that last statement, grinning at the way the younger man immediately got flustered and ducked his head in embarrassment.
"Alright, sure. Just a couple, though."
"Of course, mi amor. I heard the kind of trouble you and Arthur got up to back in Valentine, I'm not looking to repeat it."
Lenny laughed and shook his head. "Good, because neither am I."
Both of them sipped their drinks for a while, chatting some but mostly quiet, just enjoying each other's company. They weren't brazen - or stupid - enough to display their affection openly in a place like this. But if Javier's fingertips accidentally brushed Lenny's knuckles while reaching over for his glass of whiskey, or Lenny's knee just happened to bump into Javier's when he stood at the counter to order a beer, who could really blame them?
After about an hour and enough alcohol to feel pleasantly warm and buzzed, Javier turned to Lenny, about to ask if he was ready to go. But he stopped at the troubled look on his lover's face.
"¿Qué es?" He was thankful the other man had been picking up Spanish so easily; it was invaluable for moments like this, allowing them to communicate in a way the majority of people around them wouldn't understand.
Lenny kept his eyes focused on the drink in his hands, but quickly flicked his eyes in the general direction of the table in the far corner as he asked, "¿Ves cómo nos miran?"
"Sí, los veo." Javier sighed softly, shifting in place as he felt the unfriendly gazes burning into his back again. "Estos tontos están empezando a molestarme."
The corner of Lenny's mouth rose ever so slightly. "Lo sé. Yo también."
"Oh, just what we need," one of the men said loudly from the other side of the room. "A greaser and a funny-talkin' darkie. What's the matter, boy, too stupid to even speak English?"
Javier's fist clenched at his side immediately, his other hand tightening around the neck of his beer bottle as he turned to look at the four men who were now making their way toward the bar. "You got a problem with us, amigos?"
"You tell me, amigo," the apparent leader of the group spat mockingly, puffing out his chest as the other three moved up to stand threateningly behind him.
"Watch it, Danny, I don't need no trouble," the bartender warned from behind the counter.
"And you won't have none," the man, Danny, growled back. "Only trouble I'm seein' around here is about to be dealt with. Goddamn Mexican street rat's bad enough, but bringin' one of them -" he jabbed his fat finger toward Lenny's face, "- into a place like this is where I draw the line."
"Is that right?" Javier snarled, his fingers dropping down to his belt to curl around the hilt of his knife. He didn't care about the insults against him; they were actually pretty mild, compared to some he'd heard. But he wasn't about to tolerate Lenny being spoken about that way right in front of him.
Lenny noticed immediately. "Javi, cálmate," he muttered quietly. "Puedo soportarlo."
Telling Javier to stay calm apparently had the exact opposite effect on Danny and his friends, though.
"What the hell did you just call me?" he snarled at Lenny, and Javier tensed, poised to strike as he realized there was no way this wouldn't end in violence.
"I didn't call you anything," Lenny said flatly, his voice level but his muscles coiled just as tightly as Javier's. "I was speaking to my friend."
"Don't you goddamn lie to me, you mouthy little n-"
That was as far as Danny got before Javier's fist smashed into his jaw, knocking several of his teeth loose and sending him sprawling onto his back on the floor. And that was all it took for the entire bar to devolve into an all-out brawl. Lenny and Javier dove into the fray, trading punches with Danny's posse of friends and dodging chairs and bottles the other patrons saw fit to fling across the room. The bartender yelled for them all to stop, to take it outside, but of course none of them listened. Everyone screamed obscenities, Javier among them, and one man on the other side of the room was thrown through a window while another was busy having his face bashed into the piano.
Furious as he was, though, Javier fought mostly fair, and kept his hands off of his guns. He didn't mind teaching some ignorant fools a lesson, but he didn't particularly want to kill anyone tonight. At least, he hadn't wanted to - not until he heard the sound of shattering glass behind him, followed by an agonized howl of pain from Lenny.
He whipped around immediately, and the sight that met his eyes made his heart drop into his stomach. Danny had apparently had time to get up from the floor, and while Lenny was occupied with one of his friends, the fucker had taken the opportunity to sneak up behind him and smash a whiskey glass right into Lenny's face as hard as he possibly could. Lenny's eyes were closed, scrunched tight as he reared back and brought his hands up to cover them, and Javier couldn't tell if he had gotten glass in them or not through all the blood and alcohol streaming in rivulets down his head and neck.
In that moment, Javier saw red. Without a second thought, he whipped out both of his revolvers, putting a bullet in every one of those bastards' heads before they could even see it coming. He shoved his guns unceremoniously back into his holsters, and then he was grabbing Lenny's hand and dragging him toward where they'd hitched the horses outside.
"Come on, come with me," he coaxed, praying Lenny would still be able to see but not willing to stop and check when he heard the sound of more angry bar patrons streaming out of the doors after them. He pushed Lenny up into Boaz's saddle without a second thought, firing a couple of warning shots behind them in case any brave fool got it into his head to try and follow. Then he hauled himself up behind Lenny and wrapped an arm around his waist before kicking the stallion into a gallop, putting as much distance between them and Van Horn as he could. Maggie, Lenny's mustang mare, followed behind without needing to be told.
"You'll be okay - No, no, don't touch it," Javier scolded gently, pushing Lenny's hands back down when they rose toward his bloodied face again.
"I think it -" Lenny hissed and groaned in pain. "Think it's in my eyes. Shit, Javier, I can't see!"
"I know, it's okay," Javier did his best to reassure him, despite the fear the words struck into his own heart. They'd all heard the stories about John's father, and how he'd been blinded in a bar fight in this exact way when John was just a small child. "I'll look at it as soon as we get somewhere safe, just don't touch it. Almost there now, okay? Estarás bien, lo prometo."
"E... Estaré bien..." Lenny repeated shakily. Javier just squeezed his hand and pressed a kiss into his hair.
A few minutes later, although it felt like hours, the pair of them were once again climbing into the upstairs window of that horrifying abandoned house, Javier still guiding Lenny by the hand since he still had no idea how badly damaged the younger man's eyes might be. He settled Lenny on a stool beside the surgical table in the center of the room, ignoring the nauseating collections of animal parts strewn around everywhere in favor of looking through the drawers for some tweezers, gauze, and a bottle of alcohol. If nothing else, at the moment he was thankful that whoever had owned this place possessed such a wide array of medical tools.
Once he'd found what he was looking for, he dipped the tweezers into the bottle of rubbing alcohol and then struck a match on his boot, holding the ends of the metal prongs into the flame and burning away the alcohol to sterilize them as well as he could.
"Alright," he said softly, dropping his tools on the table and pulling up another stool to sit in front of Lenny. "This is going to hurt, but I promise I'll be as quick and careful as I can."
"I trust you," Lenny said without a moment's hesitation. And damn if that didn't melt his heart, just a little.
True to his word, Javier was as gentle as he could be, using the tweezers to remove the tiny fragments of jagged glass embedded in Lenny's skin. He worked slowly, carefully, the blood that had dripped down his partner's face making it difficult to see many of the smaller or deeper pieces. It was a delicate balancing act; he needed to be able to see the splinters to remove them, but he also had to be extremely careful when he wiped the blood away, or else he might push them in deeper or catch on them with the gauze and cause worse injury.
Lenny remained calm and still through it all, though, keeping his eyes closed and staying silent except for the occasional sharp breath or stifled groan. The way his fingers gripped Javier's knee like a vise gave away how much pain he was actually in, but Javier certainly didn't hold it against him. Despite being just nineteen, he was handling it better than half the men in the gang would have - better than Javier might have, truth be told.
Finally, there was just one piece left that Javier could see - a huge, nasty-looking shard sticking out of his cheek just below the left eye. It was so close to the lower eyelid that at first he couldn't quite tell if it had pierced through, and his heart pounded as he raised the tweezers up to grip it and slowly began to pull straight back. One slip here could be disastrous, and he knew it. But thankfully his hands held steady, and Lenny didn't so much as twitch, probably able to sense by feel alone how dangerous this one was.
"¡Uf, mierda! There we go!" he exclaimed when the last fragment finally slipped free, tossing it and the tweezers into the kidney-shaped metal basin where he'd been discarding all of the others. "I think that's the last of them. Open your eyes, mi amor, can you see?"
Lenny took a deep breath and held it as he slowly opened his eyes, blinking against the bright overhead lights that hung over the surgical table. After a moment, he let it whoosh out in a relieved sigh, and Javier did too, as soon as he saw the grin spreading across Lenny's face.
"Yeah. Yeah, I can see," Lenny said confidently. His eyes were still red and irritated from the whiskey that had splashed into them, but they were clear, and when he spoke they looked directly into Javier's. "And I gotta say, you're quite the sight for sore eyes."
Javier laughed, the sound still slightly frantic after how worried he'd been, and cupped Lenny's cheek in his palm. "You are too. You are too. Although that," he said, gesturing to the bear... pig... thing on the wall behind them, "is not."
Lenny turned around to look too, and then flinched back hard enough that he almost fell off of the stool. "Jesus! I forgot that was there. Almost makes me wish I couldn't see, after all."
"Don't even joke about that," Javier chided him, although he couldn't help smiling. "Now that you're alright, though, why don't we get out of here, find somewhere less... terrifying?"
"I'd love nothing better."
The two of them made their way back out of the window for the second time that day - and, they hoped, the last time ever. As they approached the horses, prepared to ride all the way back to Lemoyne if that was what it took to find a safe and comfortable campsite, Lenny put a hand on Javier's shoulder, stopping him just before he could lift his foot into the stirrup.
"Lenny? Something wrong?"
"No. Nothin's wrong, I just..." He leaned in and wrapped his arms around Javier, pulling him into a quick hug and breathing out a shaky sigh against his shoulder. "Gracias, por... Gracias."
Javier smiled, his heart swelling in his chest again. "Por supuesto, cariño," he whispered, returning the hug and leaning in to kiss him softly. "Siempre."