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Tombstone fanfiction! 1085 words!

I’m actually fond of this piece. Normally I nitpick my writing too much but this was enjoyable to write and I found myself continuing along at an easy pace. So much better than struggling and searching for the words. The only thing I’m a little concerned with is the cohesiveness, as with the majority of my pieces, because it doesn’t flow in the most straightforward of ways.

Here’s what I attempted: a progression from the beginning of Kate and Doc’s relationship up to the near end.

I personally think there’s a difference between the man “Doc” and the man “Holliday.” I’m supporting this opinion by referencing the movie where Ringo only ever refers to John as “Holliday” (and lunger, on a few occasions) but, to my knowledge, Kate never does.






-

Doc’s pale eyes tear through her like the burn of a bullet. His long fingers play with the neck of a whiskey bottle, and though the sweat on his skin comes from sickness rather than exertion, he speaks with all his usual melodic honey. “What do you want?”

“I believe that’s my line.” Kate’s words take the shape of bruises, her mouth slippery with sin when she pulls on a cigarette. With a smooth exhale of smoke, she unfolds her legs, trailing her palm pointedly up her thigh.

The gunslinger has a laugh that doesn’t quite fit him. Too brash for his Southern drawl, and it causes his chest to rumble with coughs afterwards. Still, he takes his guns off his narrow hips, unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt with noble, precise motions. His fingers are legendarily fast – it takes him but a second to untie the laces of her corset, to slide his thin hands over her warm skin.

Doc makes her dizzy. A lightheadedness she normally attributes to heat and cheap gin. It’s his hunger that speaks to her.

Kate knew, long ago, that she wanted to swallow the whole world so long as he got swallowed up too.

-

He is not her first lover. He is not her third, tenth, or even fortieth. She found a trade between her thighs far sooner than she found him, after all. She knew the sour milk taste of semen and how most men only need a good four thrusts for a quick coin. But Doc did not mind. He favored the slope of her hip and the long stretch of her neck. Liked the husky quality of her Hungarian tongue, and she grew accustomed to his snake’s rasp voice and the smoky raw flavor of him.

“Go home, darling.” He tells her after a long evening. The sun is rising, but the birds are quiet. Feasting on the remains of some poor man shot dead in the dust, a few hours prior.

Whenever Kate isn’t around him, she feels an absence growing in her. So she speaks of separation and the ache of it. Doc keeps a bemused smile on his lips, working the keys of a piano softly, and lets her stay. He’s well versed in fine literature, and so he understands the framework of a tragedy, recognizes futility but respects how loneliness can dampen any man.

-

Before Tombstone, she shoots a man in Dodge City.

It’s not the first time she’s caused a man to die, but this time is different. This time she shoots to protect someone else rather than herself. Doc is quicker than the devil, and the man was a clown to assume differently, but Kate was closer. The poker table was overset and between the people falling, the scattering of money and cards, she had aimed and pulled the trigger before the fool could place a finger on his gun. Her bullet struck through his throat. There was sputtering and blood and the gurgle of death, then there was simply Doc’s hand helping her from the floor.

They take the money from his wallet, and Doc buys a round of drinks for everyone in the saloon, saying dead men don’t pay debts.

-

After that, he takes her everywhere.

They ride into Tombstone before the sun sets. Her mare is slick with sweat and Doc’s face is ashen.

There’s a lingering scent of death in all the dry air.

-

This isn’t Doc, she thinks, but Holliday. A man with molasses-slow cadence and royal hand gestures. He has a reckless, manic energy about him. He straightens his silk vest, and the sweat on his forehead is heavy, his glacier eyes too sharp to be human.

Kate wears a violently scarlet dress. She presses against him in the saloon and hums low in her throat. His hand near her hip dips down and wrinkles the taffeta fabric. He isn’t really feeling her though – he’s concentrated on the man in front of him, the cowboy with the wolf eyes and arrogant mouth. Johnny Ringo - oddly elegant sprawled against the oak edge of the bar, not nearly as lanky or boneless as her sick suffering man.

She places her lace-gloved fingers on his wrist and lowers her eyelashes, sways to the music of a poor piano player. She does not warn Holliday, and she wouldn’t know how to contain him if she tried. Instead, she keeps against his spine, a constant pressure that is difficult for him to shake.

He shoots back his bourbon and throws down a card. His poker table (they’re all his, once he sits down to play) shifts uncomfortably. Holliday’s luck is as legendary as his ability to cheat, but no one bothers to suggest that a gunslinger as quick as him could be untrustworthy. He’s a gentleman, he would remind them, while tapping his pistol.

Sly as a jackal, Ringo approaches. “Nice whore.” He says, but he doesn’t look at Kate. She’s blazing, wearing all of that red, but he keeps his eyes on Holliday.

“Ain’t she just a peach?” The Georgian drawls, lifting his eyes. Kate slips her fingers further against his wrist and feels the dampness of his skin through her gloves.

She looks at Ringo, at the sash he wears so proudly, at the cawing, crowing way his silence seems to speak. It’s born from hunger, and it’s the same restless noise that’s inside all three of them. She wonders what it would be like to fuck a man so far gone as him (Doc still holds desperately to his life, prefers struggling breath to none at all) and if Ringo would taste of sulfur. If she would feel anything while taking him inside of her, or if his great, angry emptiness might consume her.

She feels crushed just looking at him, but she smiles and leans into Holliday’s fingers when he touches the side of her neck possessively.

Ringo taunts with his eyes, but his mouth is a hard line refusing to relax. He keeps his predatory style even when walking away.

-

By the time the Earps arrive, Doc is using his walking stick more often and all his handkerchiefs are stained pink. The pain in his lungs is barely tempered by the liquor anymore, and Kate thinks that Holliday is showing himself regularly, flashing bright near the poker table with blood on his lips.

She calls herself a good woman and keeps placing her fingers on his wrist.