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With Doc Holliday, Wyatt became accustomed to the feeling of impending doom.
It was hard to take in his pale complexion and shaking limbs, and even harder to miss the bone shattering coughs that clawed out of his chest like a man expelling demons. And maybe Doc was expelling demons—from his past, which Wyatt knew very little about, and anything he did know was from analysis of vague stories or drunken ramblings. Maybe Doc was expelling everything he one day could have been, if consumption weren’t like a pack of hellhounds nipping at his heels with every step. Maybe he was expelling everything he wished he could have had, but knew he never would.
Wyatt had many loves in the past. Brief encounters at saloons with beautiful women and gentlemen who caught his eye across bars late at night alike. He was never one to discriminate between the people who made his heart stutter and skin flush; happiness, after all, was a difficult thing to come by in the world, and Wyatt was a rag ready to be submerged in its fleeting moments.
But not one soul on earth had made Wyatt feel the way he had with Doc.
He was almost dreamlike, yet frustratingly real. For a few minutes he would seem like a character in a novel, all cocky and in control and ready to make the reader’s heart throb. And the next moment Wyatt’s heart would drop as he watched Doc collapse onto the hard wooden floor after gambling for 32 hours in a row.
He was too rooted in reality, and that was the core of the issue. In Wyatt’s mind, he could be a strong gunslinger that rode across the country with him and exchanged brief kisses under the grand night sky full of far off stars. But outside of this imagination, he was Doc Holliday—a dying man.
“Why, Wyatt,” Doc’s soft voice floated from where he lay in bed, clad in trousers and a white undershirt. Wyatt almost wishes he was a painter instead of a lawman; maybe in another world, his fingers could sketch Doc’s form instead of simply bringing more destruction upon it. “You look so deep in thought, I simply must know what is in your head.”
Wyatt hums, sitting down on the chair next to the bed before quickly changing his mind. He looks at the secure lock on the door and back to Doc in bed, with his eyebrow lifted as though he could read Wyatt’s mind like pages of the Bible itself. Maybe he could.
Doc was a mystery that Wyatt wished he could unravel before the inevitable end.
“I was thinking of how you ought to take better care of yourself, Doc. You’re sending yourself to an early grave, and I need more time to decide where to dig it.”
He hears Doc chuckle as he lowers himself onto the bed beside him; his ear rests over Doc’s chest, listening to the way his heart slowly beats for reassurance. Docs fingers draw feather-light circles on his shoulder, and he shivers.
“You could throw my bones to the dogs to feed them, I would not care.” His voice is sure, as if this was the sort of conversation one would share in the darkness with a secret lover. As if anyone in the world had ever said the words before. “As long as it was you doin’ the throwin’, I would not care one bit.”
Wyatt scoffs in spite of himself. Fucking Doc Holliday and his way with words that make you want to both cry and strangle him.
“That doesn’t mean I’d like to, you jackass.” His statement sounds too affectionate, but he punctuates it by shifting his lips to the hollow of Doc’s throat, where he lays an open mouthed kiss. It tastes like sweat and whiskey that had most certainly dripped down his throat earlier, if the half empty bottle of whiskey was anything to go by. It was so him that Wyatt continued; a bee that found a flower with infinite nectar wouldn’t simply stop feasting upon it, after all.
“Oh, my Wyatt,” and they both groan at this, Doc from the feeling of Wyatt’s tongue on his skin and Wyatt from the feeling of truly belonging to someone who wanted him back. “If I am to die, I only wish your face to be the last I see.”
“Why?”
“Because it is yours, of course.”
Wyatt shuffles up to lay his head next to Doc’s on the pillow, and watches as Doc lifts himself on shaky elbows to lean over him. They stare into each other’s eyes for a long while, the only light coming from a candle lit on the bedside table. Beside it is the half drunk bottle of whiskey that Wyatt would reach for if he wasn’t already becoming dizzyingly drunk from Doc’s eyes and presence itself.
Doc winks at him before leaning down and planting his lips on Wyatt’s and kissing him slowly, deliberately until Wyatt feels like he may have consumption himself from the lack of air left in his lungs. Doc is no stranger to kissing, and it is obvious in the perfected rhythm and motions of his entire being, from the tip of his tongue touching Wyatt’s to the way his fingers run through his hair and pull. Wyatt is one minute on this mortal plane, and the next meeting god himself and pleading for more time with this man above him; he knows god won’t listen, but he’s not above asking the devil instead. Doc seems to be a fan of the devil anyways.
Doc breaks the kiss and Wyatt keeps his eyes shut. He gulps down breaths like it’s water after three long days of riding in the scorching heat. He gulps down air like god has told him it’s the only way to keep his lover alive. His chest burns pleasantly.
Wyatt can feel Doc lean over him further, reaching towards the drawer and opening it a crack. He keeps his eyes shut because he doesn’t want to see the man choosing once again to indulge in substances he knows will facilitate death’s grip on him. He hears the match before he smells the smoke.
“My darlin’ Wyatt, I do believe you are killing me.”
Wyatt opens one eye in offense, watching Doc take a drag of the cigar past his lips. The end burns a bright red, like a single evil eye staring from the abyss.
“If anything, it’s the smoke that’s killing you, Doc.”
“No, It simply must be you,” Doc says and the smoke curls around every letter of each word. “The hope you give me is only prolonging my end. I could have done myself in by now, if not for you. Then I’d be dead, and not dying, as I am now.”
Wyatt heaves a deep sigh from the depths of his chest. “Oh Doc, stop with this nonsense.” He wanted to have said something more profound—as Doc always happens upon the most elegant words, like dipping his hands into a stream of consciousness and lifting only the perfect selections—but he couldn’t. Wyatt ran to Tombstone to get away from his problems, to settle down without complications, and here was the most excruciating path the devil could have laid out for him: falling in love with a dying friend.
His thoughts were cut off by a bony hand closing softly around his throat. It was something that Wyatt allowed Doc to do in their most intimate moments, when he needed reassurance that he was there and he was here and they weren’t drifting off into an infinite void. It was the ultimate level of trust bestowed on his lover; Doc could easily strangle him, and Wyatt would let him. It was simply their game.
Doc’s eyes came into view, hooded and connected with his own. His other hand brought the cigar to his lips and he watched his throat move as smoke filled it and descended into his lungs, making a home in the damaged organs.
And then he leaned down further, hovering his lips over Wyatt’s and driving the smoke out of his chest, past his lips, and into the man underneath him. Wyatt could feel the smoke sting the back of his throat in that way he always hated, why he rarely smoked cigars to begin with.
But here was Doc, transferring smoke from his own lips to Wyatt’s, and it ignited something within him. He never wanted to smoke again in his life, if it wasn’t being done in this manner. He never wanted to taste tobacco that had not once been on Doc's tongue, lips, lungs. Smoke that did not first swirl in the man above him as smoke useless to him.
”Christ,” he said, and he could hear how desperate and broken and wrecked he sounded in his own ears. “You are the handiwork of the devil himself, Doc Holliday.” He watched Doc chuckle as he once again brought the cigar to his lips. Wyatt’s fingers curled in the collar of his thin shirt to bring him down again, moving his lips together and letting smoke fill the spaces their tongues didn’t dance in.
“Perhaps that is why he is calling me back so soon, to sit next to him in hell.”
“Oh please,” Wyatt almost felt guilty when Doc wheezed out a cough as he put a leg around the gambler’s waist and flipped them over, his back replacing where Wyatt’s had been laying. “You are so dramatic, Doc. You’re with me now, and the Devil will have to get past my pistol if he wants you.”
Doc had no chance to reply before Wyatt was on him, the thrill of whatever the hell that cigar move was coursing through his veins like a drug. The man underneath him was eager to reciprocate, his worryingly cold hands gripping Wyatt’s waist.
Doc had a unique way of making every situation feel simultaneously like heaven and hell, dream and soul crushing reality.
The heaven was Doc’s lips on his. His hands on his waist. The sharp feeling of smoke filling the room. The moans shared between tongues.
The hell was Doc’s hand suddenly and insistently pushing him off, before moving his face over the side of the bed to cough violently. Blood drips down his chin and a small tear escapes his left eye before he collapses back on the bed with a long and bitter sigh.
They stayed silent for a while, Doc’s eyes closed in pain while he wiped the blood from his skin with a handkerchief he had reached for and Wyatt’s hands running soothingly down the side of Doc’s stomach and waist. He was still straddling the man; it was almost as euphoric and standing at the top of a grand mountain, overlooking the best views one could conjure up—and Doc was a wonderful view, bloody and all.
“Do you recall when we first met, my Wyatt?”
Wyatt smiled in a brief moment of blinding nostalgia. Yes, he remembered.
The saloon had sat at a small town in the middle of nowhere, Wyatt couldn’t even remember the name of now. He had been hearing from people around about a gambler that was as skilled at guns as he was at cards. The town had been dusty, and he was just passing by; essentially, he has no idea what made him want to meet this man so badly. It was like gravity tied itself to his wrists and dragged him to the bar where Doc was.
“You must be Doc Holliday.”
Wyatt almost never felt nervous. He could have a gun to his head and find a way to talk his way out of the situation with stern eyes and a hard voice. But even he could admit, he was downright nervous meeting Doc.
Mostly, it was his presence. Nobody he had ever met commanded a room in the way Doc could. If every building was a solar system, Doc became its sun the moment he walked through the door. He was what all eyes drifted to, and certainly what most of the scowls were directed towards.
“That, good sir depends on who is asking.” His voice had been slurred but under control, and the table he was sat at was riddled with empty glasses and burnt cigars.
“Wyatt Earp. I’ve heard a lot about you, Doc Holliday.”
And at this moment Doc had begun his fierce dedication to the art of doing the most unpredictable things. His pale hand reached out and curled around Wyatt’s palm, bringing his knuckles to his warm lips and pressing them against bones.
“Wyatt,” he had said in a soft voice that downright almost made his knees buckle. “What an exceptional name.”
They had chatted all night until Wyatt couldn’t keep his eyes open (he had wondered how on earth Doc could stay so awake and bright eyed that late, and it would only take a few weeks of being acquainted to catch onto Doc’s self destructive habits).
No matter how many years went by, that kiss on the knuckles always lingered in his mind. It was the first meeting of the man that would arguably change his life for better or for worse. And it made Wyatt agonize about what the last moment between them would be; would it be sealed with a kiss as their fist meeting had been?
Now, Doc is tangling their fingers together and bringing them to his lips, kissing each one delicately. Wyatt was not a man that would ever describe himself as deserving of delicate things, but in the brief moments of intimacy him and Doc shared, he could almost convince himself that he did.
It was more difficult to convince Doc of accepting kind things.
“I remember that night through a drunken haze.” Doc chuckled, shuffling back into the sheets and shutting his eyes. He looked exhausted. One hand ran up Wyatt’s thigh soothingly, and Wyatt took the hint. He laid down at Doc’s side, head resting on his chest once again. Flecks of blood stained the otherwise clean blouse.
“I would hazard a guess that you remember most of your life through a drunken haze.”
“You have caught me. What is my punishment, lawman?” His words slurred with exhaustion rather than alcohol, for once.
“You’ve suffered enough.”
“In the eyes of the law?”
“In the eyes of god.”
“I have not a care what god thinks of me.”
“Fine, then you have suffered enough in my eyes.” Wyatt huffs out the words. He feels the cloud of sleep descend over his eyes as he leans over to blow out the candle. He lays one last kiss on Doc’s lips before going back to his resting position.
“Well in that case,” he hears as he drifts off to sleep, “you have ended my suffering, my Wyatt.”
fin.