Chapter Text
The happiest place for Doc has always been wherever Wyatt is.
It didn’t matter where in the country or what dangers awaited them or how badly his illness was troubling him. Day or night, rain or shine, Doc will be happy anywhere that his friend is with him. Even in Tombstone, hot and murderous and choked with desert dust. He came here for the heat, hoping it would help his lungs, and got a load of dust to the face in return. It makes him cough more often than not, and no matter how much he seals his hotel room he can still find it on the floor under the windows. Today, though, the place they are in has no dust. Wyatt had said, let’s you and me go somewhere and find out how you’ve been doing. Doc would have said yes regardless, but then Wyatt told him where they were going and his decision was cemented for him. They took horses from a corral in town and left, going west to a valley full of grass and small white wildflowers. A far cry from the hardscrabble dust and dirt of Tombstone. Eventually they tied their horses to a tree near a pond and went wandering. Now that they’re out of the dust, Doc starts coughing a little, as if his lungs are trying to clear themselves out. “Y’all alright?” Wyatt asks him, laying a hand on his back.
“Fine,” Doc manages to choke out. “My lungs are quite enjoying the lack of dust.”
“Yeah?”
Doc nods. He likes this place much better than Tombstone, and if he had the money to build a house and the energy to go back to the town for necessities, he’d gladly live here. It’s sunny and warm and the clean air is heaven on his lungs. Once the coughing is over he finds that he can breathe somewhat easier, and the burst of energy it’s given him is something he never thought he’d see again. He strolls along at a sedate pace—his friend sticks close by, never walking too fast or too slow. The air is warm and balmy, but not as hot and dry as in Tombstone. His boots squelch a little in the soft grass, and every now and then a wildflower will brush against his leg. There’s a small copse of trees up ahead, and Wyatt says, “Let’s sit down.”
“Oh my, Wyatt,” Doc drawls, “you won’t even put out your coat for me.”
Wyatt just scoffs, taking a seat and lying down against the base of a tree. “We’re men, we don’t need fancy stuff like that. Unless you’re a woman in disguise.”
Doc winks. “Guilty as charged.” He sits down too, right next to his friend. Wyatt looks like he belongs here, far more than Doc himself. He’s rugged and natural, a perfect specimen of the human race. Maybe he could be induced to live off the land, tilling a farm in the middle of nowhere. Shirtless and muscled with no care in the world.
“Come here,” Wyatt says, waving a lazy arm in his direction. “Come lie with me.”
Doc knew this would happen at some point. They’d get somewhere private away from the judgmental eyes of others, where they could be together without fear, and enjoy the physical closeness they couldn’t have anywhere else. He does what his friend says, lying down with his head on Wyatt’s chest. Occasionally Wyatt will say, why don’t you let me do the same to you? Doc keeps brushing it off, but mostly because he doesn’t want his friend in such close proximity. That way Wyatt would be able to hear the weak fluttering of his heart, and the permanent strained quality of his breathing. It’s been like that for years, but he’s still embarrassed about it. If Wyatt heard it, he might realise how sick Doc really was. “Do I want to know what the great Wyatt Earp has been doing this past year?” Doc asks drily, smelling his friend’s soap.
“Of course you do,” he says airily. He’s right, anyway, since Doc would gladly listen to Wyatt talk about his life for hours—that’s exactly what happens, Wyatt spooling out the past year while Doc listens. Any other time he’d be bored and restless, but Wyatt’s voice has a very unique calming quality. He’s not sure how that happens, even now. “So what about you?” Wyatt asks, once he’s done. “You still a dentist?”
“No. It turns out patients don’t like being looked after by a lunger.” Doc feels a pang of regret, then it fades. There’s no sense being bitter about it; the fact that he was able to be a dentist at all is still a miracle in his eyes. “That’s just how it is, I’m afraid.”
“Then they don’t know what they’re missing,” Wyatt says drily, and it makes Doc smile. Nobody else talks to him like this, easy and natural as if they really are just two ordinary men in a field together, with nothing between them. They fall silent then, and Doc is reasonably sure his friend is half-asleep. The only noise is the birds singing around them, and the wind moving between the trees. So beautiful and quiet and unspoiled. Doc feels a wave of sadness go over him, as it often does now. He’s dying, and soon this beautiful place and the person he’s snuggled on top of will be inaccessible to him. Even when his life finally ends it won’t be here, in this peaceful, tranquil place. It’ll most likely be in a dark hotel room filled with smoke and the smell of whiskey, in bed alone as he drowns in his own blood. He’s known this as fact for years now, but being here has weakened his resolve. His death is very quickly approaching and it scares him now. There’s not enough time. Not enough time to do everything he wanted, not enough time with Wyatt. Without warning tears build up and begin trickling down his face. The only thing he hates about being with Wyatt is that he goes abominably soft. All through the years as he sickened and people flitted in and out of his life, he was able to keep it together. Unfortunately, anytime he’s alone with his friend he’s liable to break down in the most embarrassing fashion. Maybe it’s because Wyatt makes Doc feel safe, makes him feel like he won’t be taken advantage of for showing the slightest shred of human weakness. Maybe it’s just the love Doc has for him. In any case he’s crying now, and he can’t stop it. He’s trying his best not to sob audibly, but Wyatt notices anyway. “Aw, hell,” he says, though kindly. He helps Doc to a sitting position, asking, “What’s getting you so upset?”
Doc lets out a shuddering breath. “There’s not enough time,” he sobs, his voice small and broken in a way that he despises. Doc Holliday was not a small or broken man, yet here he is. In a way being with Wyatt makes him into something he doesn’t like, which is an odd thing to wrestle with.
“Not enough time? For what?” Wyatt reaches out, laying a hand on his back. “We’ve got hours, we can be here as long as we…” He trails off, seemingly realising what his mistake was. “It’s not that. Is it?”
“No,” Doc admits, drawing his knees up to his chest. He really should calm down, before his lungs take exception to his distress. “All this will come to an end, Wyatt. And I haven’t gotten enough of it yet.” Even just saying that out loud makes him cry. Why did it have to be this way? Why did his life have to get stolen from him when he was still a child? Fifteen is too young to get sick with such an illness as this, and yet it happened. His grave was marked before his life even really started. Doc sniffles, digging around in his coat for his handkerchief. Wiping his nose, he adds, “It’s all slipping away from me. It’ll be all gone soon.”
Wyatt’s voice instantly grows softer. “What’s slipping away from you?”
Doc looks at the sky, noting the rich blue colour and the fluffy white clouds. So beautiful, so fragile. “I don’t know. Nature. The sun, the sky, the clouds. You.” It’s not fair! cries out a tiny voice in the back of his mind, one that’s been squashed by everything he’s experienced over the course of his life. Doc Holliday is not a man for fairness; he never has been, he was never able to be. His mother died and took him down with her. His stint as a dentist only solidified that tenet in his mind. Life isn’t fair. He’s used to that, as much as he might not like it. Right now, though, rage and despair and hopelessness are surging through him as if from a geyser. If he wasn’t here, he would have found some other way to deal with his feelings. He would have gambled or drank or smoked. He would have gotten on a horse and ridden as far as he could in one direction. Instead he’s in a beautiful valley with the only man he can say he loves, and everything’s converged to make a mess out of him. Suddenly it occurs to him what’s going on. If he was still a dentist, he would have considered it to be like the abscess at the root of a broken tooth. The problem is that he misses Wyatt. His friend is right here, but Doc misses him anyway. The illness has already put distance between them, in the future if not now. Doc will die soon, and Wyatt will keep on living. So many years lost, because of his damned illness. Can Doc say that, though? He’s not even sure he has the words to speak. All he can do is sit here with the hot tears running down his face. “Talk to me, Doc,” Wyatt says gently, his hand coming out and gently stroking an errant curl of hair off of his forehead. It’s such a familiar phrase, one he said to get the lay of any situation. Asking Doc what he was thinking. The phrase serves the same purpose now, but for a much more personal sort of situation. “Tell me what’s going through that head of yours.”
“I can’t,” Doc sobs, as much out of inadequacy as despair. “I don’t know how.”
He fully expects mockery or at least some censure to result from that admission. Doc Holliday was never lost for words. He always knew exactly what to say and how to say it. It was his one defence even as everything else fell apart around him. When he’d run out of bullets, backed into a corner with his lungs struggling inside him, he could use his wit and his tongue to escape. Not so today. All the words are snarled up in his brain and he can’t make them come free. Wyatt would be well within his rights to bring that up, but all he says is, “Alright,” then he shuffles along and draws Doc into an embrace. “You don’t have to know.”
Doc curls up on himself, and Wyatt moves with him, holding him close. He’s still not sure how it’s possible. He’s seen Wyatt brawling, fighting, shooting without a care, yet his friend is capable of more tenderness than most women. The fact that Doc gets access to that tenderness is almost too much to bear. As if Wyatt is worried of pressing too hard and making him break. It’s not an undue worry. Doc feels like an eggshell right now. Fragile and empty on the inside. More than anything he wishes he was small again. Clinging to his mother’s skirts, before he knew what pain and death and suffering was. Before he could see the spectre of his own demise looming in the distance. He’s kept himself under a pretty tight seal up till this point—very decorous in his weakness, as a gentleman should be—but it won’t last for much longer. At some point it’ll all burst forth and Wyatt will have a front row seat to the deluge. Doc stares up at the sky again, watching a flock of birds glide far above him. Right at that moment a cloud passes over the sun, and the entire valley is bathed in partial shadow. It breaks him, stupidly. That dulling of light. Doc grabs his handkerchief, buries his face in it and lets it all go. There’s nothing else to be done.
For some reason this outpouring has freed up the tangle of words in his mind. Any other time Doc would be horrified by how incoherent he is, but he doesn’t care anymore. The words spill out of him and he’s helpless to keep them back. Swelling to fill the empty silence of the valley around them. What is he? A tearful, hysterical mess, but he can’t help it. The words keep coming, one long lonely admission of suffering and pain. To his credit, Wyatt says nothing. He simply stays silent as Doc blubbers a mile a minute—he most likely can’t understand, but he doesn’t make Doc stop. Potentially he understands that it needs to happen. Doc needs to vent all the hurt he’s experienced over his life. Eventually Doc’s words run out, and with it goes his strength. As if he’s been drained of lymph, pale and waif-like. That’s also when his lungs decide they’ve had enough, and he drops into coughing a few seconds later. It doesn’t go on for too long, but by the end of it his handkerchief is stained with red. It’s an oddly poetic sight. As Doc was venting his mental poison, his lungs are now doing the same thing. Wyatt has not moved a centimetre since all this started. He’s in the same place, his only movement being a hand on Doc’s chest to hold him up. “Just breathe,” he says, his voice sounding oddly faint.
“Don’t you think I know how to do that?” Doc snaps, but his voice has no ire in it. “I’m sorry, Wyatt. Where have my manners gone? This is the first time I’m seeing you and I’m weeping like a damned child.”
“No,” Wyatt says, conviction running like a metal track through his voice. “No. Don’t be like that.” He comes closer, pressing his lips to Doc’s cheek—they don’t kiss in the normal way, of course. For a long, long moment he says nothing, simply breathing in tandem with Doc. They’re frozen together like that: touching, close enough to wrap each other in a hug. Through his half-lidded eyes, Doc can see the curve of Wyatt’s jawline, the curly brown hair just behind his ear. The moment seems like it’s balancing on a tightrope wire. Any minute now it will topple and smash on the floor. “I’ll be here,” Wyatt breathes, his breath warm on Doc’s cheek. “I’ll always be here.”
“I know,” Doc whispers back. “I have never doubted it.”
Wyatt doesn’t respond to that. All he does is snake his hand up Doc’s back, resting against his neck, pulling him closer. Doc knows what his friend is intending to do, and he lets it happen. He lets Wyatt push him up against the tree and kiss a line down his neck. His trousers get pulled down and his cock gets fumbled at and he lets it all happen without a single protest. When Wyatt presses inside it really hurts, but Doc welcomes the pain. It demands all his attention, bringing him out of his own mind. This way he doesn’t have to think about how much he just humiliated himself, or how despairing he still is. It ends with little fanfare. After some quick thrusting Wyatt comes, moaning into Doc’s neck. The flock of birds has returned, and Doc watches them again. Maybe in his next life he will be one of them. Swooping and gliding without any earthly cares, riding the wind. Free of all this pain and despair. He can imagine what it would be like, and for a moment everything seems to disappear—then it’s gone. He will never be anything other than who he is: Doc Holliday, sick, trapped, dying. His path has already been set. There’s nothing to do but continue walking along it, knowing that at the end, death’s gaping maw is waiting to swallow him whole.