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The campsite is dark but not yet quiet, when Wolfwood rises from a half-doze by the campfire and goes looking for Fanny.
It takes him a long moment to actually find her — he can see in the dark well enough, but the subdued bustle of everyone settling in for the night is faintly disorienting.
Eventually, he spots her sitting in the mouth of her tent, a little apart from the cluster of them set up around Charlie’s truck — hair up and dressed for bed, unassuming as anything, cleaning her gun.
Wolfwood strides toward her across the sand, more aware with every step of the stiff exhaustion in his limbs, the consequences of overexertion from the day’s… excitement.
Stupid damn fight with a bandit gang that stormed right into the town they’d stopped in to have a decent breakfast for once, and of course, naturally, just their luck, getting a decent breakfast had turned into stopping a goddamn massacre.
Just like old times, really.
That hurts more than his legs do.
He means to just sit down beside Fanny, casually, but it winds up as more of a controlled collapse as one of his knees decides it’s had enough of his shit and buckles.
Fanny startles at the sound of him hitting the sand ass-first. “You okay, Wolfwood?”
“I’m out of practice,” Wolfwood admits, stretching his legs out and folding forward, wincing. How his muscles manage to feel like under-set Jello and tense as all hell at the same time is beyond him, honestly. “I’ve been a desk jockey for eighteen months, I’m not used to running like that.”
She makes a noise at him, something low and sympathetic, somewhere between poor thing and don’t I know it, which for some reason makes his ears burn. At least it’s too dark for her to really see him blushing.
Hopefully, at least.
“What about you? Not like you to skip out on ghost stories around the campfire.”
Fanny makes a face that Wolfwood can’t really parse, tense and unhappy, her face still turned down toward the parts of her gun laid out on her lap. He watches her fight it into a stiff smile before she looks up and directs it at him. “My nerves are frayed enough for the day, I think. I was going to turn in early, but—”
She gestures at her gun. It looks clean enough, scrubbed and oiled.
Wolfwood’s seen her clean it. She can get through it in a few minutes. Not as quick as a kid from the Eye, but efficient and steady-handed as any good gunman.
He doesn’t mention that. Just nods in understanding — he knows as well as anyone that sometimes gun oil and cold metal and the steady repetition of disassembly-reassembly are the only things that feel comforting.
“I wanted to thank you,” Wolfwood says, when Fanny doesn’t make a move to say anything more. “That ugly son-of-a would’ve stuck that machine gun up my ass if you hadn’t nailed him. Damn good shot for how far away you were standing.”
Fanny tries to smile at him again, even less successful this time. “Letting your allies get shot is a pretty bad idea, I’ve heard.”
She goes back to her gun, reassembling it with easy precision despite the way her fingers are trembling.
Wolfwood considers letting her get away with it — considers for the whole time it takes Fanny to put her gun together.
“You okay?” he asks, when her fancy little revolver is back together in her hands.
Fanny twitches, like she forgot he was there. “I don’t like shooting people,” she half-mumbles, still not looking at him.
Wolfwood pulls his legs up to his chest, massaging at his aching calves. “Good.”
“Good?” Fanny repeats, incredulously.
He nods. “If you’re not getting a kick out of it, it takes that much longer for it to start feeling easy.”
Fanny wraps her hand around her gun. It isn’t loaded, but she still keeps her finger off the trigger.
She’s a good one.
Too damn good.
“I’m worried that I’m past that point already,” Fanny confesses, hushed. “I — I was going to shoot you.”
Wolfwood bumps her shoulder with his. “I told you to stop worrying about that. If it looks like a thomas and honks like a thomas, you can’t be blamed for expecting it to peck like a thomas too.”
Fanny taps her trigger guard fretfully. “I could have killed you.”
Despite himself, Wolfwood laughs.
She glares at him, her eyes just slightly overbright. That won’t do. He wants her feeling better about killing a man to save his stupid ass, not worse.
“Fanny Paine,” he chides. “What makes you think you could kill me with that little thing?”
Her eyes narrow further. “I know you know what a .45 does to a man’s head, Nico. You had to scrub it out of your shirt today.”
Wolfwood reaches out and covers her hand with his, pulling her gun up out of her lap to examine it.
She lets him.
“The Eye of Michael did a lot more than give me an early growth spurt,” he reminds her. “We’re pretty hard to kill.”
Livio with his gun to his temple—
Wolfwood shoves the memory back down.
Fanny lets out a breath that wavers at the end, then clears her throat sharply. “It don’t matter if the rules are different for you and yours. That doesn’t change that I know damn well how firing a gun at someone usually goes, and I still pointed mine at you.”
“So what?” Wolfwood asks, squeezing her hand. “You didn’t shoot, I wouldn’t have died if you did. Shooting people is brutal and stupid, but some problems take brutal, stupid solutions, and some don’t. I know you know the difference.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. “What if I don’t?”
Wolfwood traces her trigger finger from knuckle to nail. “Look at yourself. Not loaded, couldn’t possibly kill anyone, and you have your finger off the trigger. Put a little trust in your own hands.”
He lifts her hand, bends his head, and presses a kiss to her trigger finger.
Fanny crumples.
She turns the rest of the way towards Wolfwood, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her forehead against his shoulder. Their hands and her gun pinned between them.
Wolfwood wraps his free arm around her back, squeezing her tight, but Fanny doesn’t cry. Her breathing steadies just as quick as it shook apart, her shoulders relaxing.
“Thanks,” she mumbles into his shirt.
“What for?”
Fanny presses a kiss to the underside of Wolfwood’s jaw, and doesn’t even laugh when he shivers, the brief touch of her lips sending sensation like an electric shock through every nerve. “I needed to hear that, I think.”
Wolfwood squeezes her a little tighter. He can feel the hard edges of her revolver pressing against his chest.
He’ll bruise, but it won’t even stay the night.