you're too young & eager to love

More Tombstone fandom writing. I will make it a fandom if I have to do all the writing myself, damn it.

This is really Kate-Doc centric. It was supposed to slide into Ringo-Doc-Kate, but it felt too disconnected because I carried on with Kate and Doc too far. The next piece will totally be a threesome, mark my words! As an ending, I tried to hint in that general direction ... not that any reader would know that without me first making a note of it.




His drawl is Georgian, refined with peach sweetness. His clothes have the tailoring of wealth, the silk fabrics and diamond cufflinks, consistently polished boots in a town of dust, and Doc manufactures the lean cruelty of a gunslinger. Legends are started from men like him; he kicks up myths with every nocturne he plays.

Kate is a necessary decoration, as pivotal to his bearing as his whiskey or ruined lungs. A rust-hued Hungarian, a woman who argues more with her eyes than her mouth. A whore, by any other name.

He is more attracted to her ambition than her profession.



He coughs, tastes blood, spits, and tastes more blood. He has to press his mouth to the inside of his wrist, like trying to blot away an ink stain, but he starts coughing again.

Kate’s fingers stop circling his chest, and she reaches for the lukewarm tea by the bedside. “John?”

Sweat starts to bead across his forehead, his skin an ashen color of old lace, and he smokes from his still lit cigarette with softly trembling hands. “Pardon?” The edge to his voice is subtle but sharp.

She slides her palm across his chest again, where the heartbeat is only a flutter beneath his cotton undershirt, and adjusts. “Doc?”

He makes an agreeable noise, reassuring her choice, and turns his mouth to the spot below her ear. She can feel the way he tries to silence another fit but ignores it when his hand cups her breast. Her hair is fragrant, half-swept and long, and it no longer smells like the brothel he found her in. Her touch has changed, become more intimate with they’re partnership, and she whispers to him the words he likes to hear - her foreign accent a touch of the Old World in a new bustling West.



Sometimes, his lungs will burn too hot, and his pride will bristle while his body turns into a savage traitor.

He wants to watch her then, drinking longingly from golden liquor bottles. The steady way she unlaces her dress, the almost soundless habit she has of stepping out of petticoats, and she keeps only her lace gloves on while her fingers pluck and travel down her body. Whispers of fabric against her cream skin, the flutter of her eyelashes cutting daggers on the tops of her cheeks. She keeps his gaze until he beckons, draping his fingers around her hip like he’s claiming territory and maybe he is, maybe he deserves to.

Doc likes the vulgar crush of her mouth, the common taste of her skin, and just the steady pull of her breathing is a comfort.



Most nights, they sleep without touching. Only her hair will spread to his side, the mattress always a little damp from the sickness and the terrors that rise with his subconscious.

Neither of them is prone to much needing.

So, they live above saloons or casinos, in hotels, anywhere where the rooms are either loud or expensive enough to afford privacy. They travel often, and Kate leaves him only seldom. They become a myriad of relationships: caretaker, employee, friend, prostitute (but never spouse). Doc keeps her close, and she knows his interactions are limited, the eccentricities of his person making him difficult, the tuberculosis turning him into a shell, so she plays each part with determination.

She finds it’s not too different from whoring, and the money with him is better. So’s the company.




Kate’s uneducated but she’s whip-smart, handles preparations with foresight, and follows loyally. Keeps her skirts light around her legs, her palm warm on his inner thigh when they sit together at the theater, her thighs accustomed to a horse and her tongue silent of complaints.

Doc fills her head with stories and quips and at night he’ll lull her with the piano. Smooth, swift strokes on the keys, till she finds herself swaying subconsciously, pressed against his back on the piano bench. He radiates heat whenever he plays, his energy focused and calculated, and it’s like muscle memory to him - he doesn’t even need his sheet music, let alone his eyes. These days, it’s easier than breathing.

“Chopin,” he explains to her. “A fellow man of ill health, darling.” He clears his throat, pointedly. “The poet of the piano.”

Kate doesn’t know composers or poets, but the music seems to pacify him too, and she’s contented by the arch of his spine against hers.



In Tombstone, a storms rolls in with the horizon.

It feels familiar.




It’s Kate that sees Ringo first, and she steps protectively close to Doc, a hand on his shoulder and her eyes sharp. There’s a hunger burning from him, she can feel it, and she thinks Doc does too. When Ringo stares, she whispers into the gambler’s ear, her voice sulfurous.

Doc grins, full-lipped and feeling better with the dry air. Ringo flicks his gaze from Kate till he meets the other man’s eyes, though he’s really watching his mouth move, replying, “I’m a real daisy, my dear.”

Ringo smirks, and he isn’t sure why.