Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The worn wood of the bar top shines by the time he’s done polishing it. 

Patrons come and go, the murmur of conversation flowing and receding past him like the sea brushing the shore. Always coming, always going. 

That’s Richard Grayson to the core. Always coming and always going. Never staying. 

The town is called Haven, because for most, that’s what it is. A small gathering of cabins nestled in the crook of the coldest mountains in the West. A single strip called Main Street, where the saloon is, and the rest is winding country roads and gravel paths to the farms and ranches in the hills. 

He’d come from the far west — from farther than that, really. He had come from the ocean.

As he scrubs away rings left by tankards of ale, he scrubs away his past. He is here now, for better or worse. When the shadow falls across the entrance and the hulking man swings open the saloon doors, spurs clinking with each step, he thinks, maybe I haven’t escaped the ocean at all. 

---

Ask anyone in Haven, and they’ll tell you Bruce Wayne would sooner sell his own son for a better batch of feed than make do with anything less than quality. Everyone said that, really, before his son died, and now they all keep quiet when he shows his face in town. 

It doesn’t bother him much. He always enjoyed the sound of silence. 

He wouldn’t have bothered to come to town, except he’s out of liquor, and Haven’s only saloon gets its order from the city every Tuesday like clockwork. Aside from the growth of his foals and the rise and fall of his feed stores, Tuesdays are how he counts the time go by. 

“What can I get you?” pulls him out of his reverie. He does not recognize the man tending bar today.

“Where’s Bill?” he grunts. They don’t get newcomers often in Haven, but the dryness tickling the back of his throat overtakes what little curiosity he might have once had. He kicks the snow off his boots and stares at him. 

The stranger smiles nervously. “He’s out today, wife is sick with —”

“Get me three bottles of whiskey from the back.” 

His blue eyes widen. Unusual for this part of the country and the color of his skin. Most people have unremarkable, tired brown eyes set in unremarkable, sun-weathered faces. “Uh, sir, we don’t have any—”

“Yes, you do,” Bruce corrects him. Is the boy serious? “Bill gets a delivery every—”

“It’s illegal,” he says flatly. 

“Look,” Bruce says, in what he thinks is a calm voice. His skin is getting tighter by the moment. “I can tell you’re not from around here.”

The man’s brows furrow angrily. They almost disappear under his thick, curly black hair. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything, sir.” 

“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious,” Bruce snaps. There isn’t a single farm in these mountains that doesn’t make its own alcohol. He would, if he could, but all his land goes to his horses. Everything he has goes to his horses. They’re all he has left. 

“Are you going to be trouble?” he asks. 

Bruce is gearing up to tell him what’s what when a heavy hand lands on his shoulder. He rolls his eyes when he turns around. “Can’t you tell we’re having a private conversation, Gene?” 

Gene Haversham is a red-haired redneck from the east, yet another transplant looking to make his way in the ranching business. He works on his uncle’s farm to the east of Haven, but he doesn’t know a thing about raising horses. Now, the liquor itch is making Bruce’s hands shake, so he jabs a finger into his chest and tells him to back off.

Gene’s chin juts out like a broken fence post. “Everyone in this town is willing to let you be an ass, but not me,” he declares. 

Bruce huffs. He turns back to the bartender. “Kid, you got a liquor delivery today. I can buy it now, or I can come back tomorrow when Bill’s back. I’ll be sure to tell him all about your stellar service.”

“Bill won’t be back till next week,” the man grits out. “I told you, his wife is sick—”

“Then I’ll come back every day until he does,” he growls. “Do you know who I am?” 

Gene bristles. “You’re a man who’s about to be seen to if you don’t get your ass —”

Later, he won’t remember what exactly upset him enough to throw the first punch — whether it was Gene’s posturing or the bartender’s embarrassed pity or the other guests carefully avoiding any sight of him — but he does, and it knocks Gene backward five paces, one hand going to his jaw. 

“Oh!” comes the bartender’s girlish cry of surprise. 

“You drunk son of a bitch!” Gene sneers, then he charges at him. 

Bruce dodges a fist and slings two of his own, the second one catching Gene across the shoulder. Gene uppercuts him hard enough to smash his teeth into his bottom lip. Table legs shatter and wood chips get in his mouth. He hefts a beer bottle to crack across Gene’s cheekbone when he sees the bartender vault over the bar out of the corner of his eye, and before he can pull back, he’s cracking it over his head instead. The man drops like a stone. 

As the dust and glass shards settle, he notices the saloon is now empty, except for a grizzled old ranger in the back smoking a pipe with a bowl the size of his fist. He tips the brim of his hat down low and ignores them. 

Gene works his jaw back and forth. Bruce is pleased to see he’s sporting a bloody nose and a chipped tooth. Bruce’s back aches, and his fingers twitch. A fight can only slake his thirst for so long. 

Between them lies the bartender. Bruce nudges him with the toe of his boot. “Is he dead?” 

The motion grants him a groan. Blood shines from a cut on his forehead, but the young man is alive. Bruce squats down next to him and dusts a bit of saw dust off his shoulder. From this angle, he looks like a younger version of Bruce, if not for the tone of his skin and the cherubic curls in his hair. “You’re all right. I’ll just check in the back for the whiskey and be on my way.” 

“You can’t rob Bill’s —”

“Gene, if you don’t shut up —” Bruce steps towards him and tracks a full body flinch. It makes something squirm inside him. Gene is only a few years older than his son would be, and here he is, beating the shit out of him for trying to do the right thing. The other thing squirming inside him is his thirst for — he finds it in the third cupboard he searches, hidden away in the back of the pantry. A shipment of four bottles of whiskey. Feeling a bit subdued, he takes two, and leaves a thick fold of bills on the shelf. 

Back in the bar, the bartender is on his hands-and-knees, retching a bit into a nearby spitoon. He must have hit him harder than he thought. Gene is long gone. Guess he’s not that good of a Samaritan. With his teeth, he pulls the cork out of one bottle and slugs down a third of it in greedy gulps, a dribble of it escaping down his unshaven chin. The smell is like fire and curing spices cooked in paint thinner, but it calms the beast inside him for now. 

He squats down in front of the man again and holds the neck of the bottle out to him. “For the pain.” 

“Fuck you,” the man spits. There’s a lump on his forehead the size of an egg, but his eyes burn brighter than the whiskey does. “Get out.” 

The saloon doors swing shut behind him as he goes. “Welcome to Haven,” he calls over his shoulder, blinking in the bright light of a cold winter day. “I’ll see you next Tuesday.” 

---

Bill takes one look at the bruise on his forehead and nods sympathetically. His wife, red-nosed, huddles over a pot of tea on the charcoal stove in their small kitchen. 

“If I had a steak, I’d give it to you.” He shakes his head. “I should have told you about Bruce Wayne and his damn liquor.” 

After the crazy man left, the guests had returned to the saloon slowly, and the rest of the day had turned out fairly normal. Gene hadn’t come back inside. Dick met a few more chatty patrons, and learned a little more about the town, but he never mustered the nerve to ask anyone about the angry cowboy. 

Bundled in a crochet blanket in Bill’s tiny cottage, he finally has the courage. “What is his problem?”

Bill winces. He glances at his wife, Mae. It’s short for something, but Dick doesn’t know what. 

“Well, Bruce Wayne is…”

“That poor man,” Mae clucks. It sounds like that poor bad through her stuffy nose. “He’s had a hard go of it from the beginning.” 

“He lost his son, what, maybe six years ago? He gets like this every year.”

Dick looks between them. “And the town just lets him? I didn’t take Haven to be a town of pushovers.”

“Oh, Dickie,” Mae shakes her head. “You really don’t know much, do you? The Waynes put Haven on the map. They’re the finest horse breeders this side of the Mississippi.”

“They were,” Bill corrects his wife.

“Yes, then he lost his son and things all went downhill from there.” Mae’s plush bottom lip wobbles. She pours Dick a small mug of tea before fixing one for herself. He breathes in the steam gratefully. The pounding in his forehead lessens. 

“Nah, things were already tough with the Havershams moving in from the east and the Stolls from the south. There’s too much competition for Wayne horses to stand out anymore. His stallions haven’t sired a single winner in ten years.”

“Now Bill, you know as much as I do that there’s more to horse rearing than winning races,” she scolds him. “He sells horses to the Pinkertons and the city watchmen! He’s a good man.”

“He smashed a beer bottle over my new bartender’s head today.” Bill shakes his head. “If I thought I could get away with banning him from the saloon, I’d do it. But you saw him. There isn’t a man in town that could beat him in a fight.”

“He’s a brute,” Dick agrees. “But not a special one. I can handle him.”

“Uh huh.” Bill squints an eye at him. “Say, how many fingers am I holding up?”

---

The following Tuesday comes and goes, and despite the nervousness stiffening his limbs that day, Bruce Wayne doesn’t show. The townsfolk don’t seem surprised. A few weeks into this job, Dick is now a lot better at surreptitiously eavesdropping on their conversations. 

“He’s hiding after his poor showing at the Equestrian Fair last May,” one patron whispers to another. “If a Wayne horse doesn’t win first place this year, his ranch is sunk for sure.”

“You’ve been saying that for the last five years, Carl,” his companion says, bottom lip full of tobacco leaf. “Wayne must have a deal with the devil to keep his ranch afloat this long.”

“Or a lot more cash than any of us have ever seen.” Carl heaves a sigh. Then he leans forward. “I heard he’s been up in the mountains running after wild horses.”

Spit hits the spittoon with a ping that startles Dick. He almost betrays that he’s listening, but he stills himself in time. 

“Shee-it. He must be desperate.”

“Maybe he’s on to something. All the horses around here are related to each other in some way, somehow, right? The only new blood can be found in the wild.”

“Oh, please. Horses don’t belong in the wild. They belong in a stable.”

“Well, I reckon he agrees,” he says, shrugging. “Or he wouldn’t be hunting around in the mountains for a new one, right?”

 ---

Winter’s cold shroud lightens, and the snow banks in town slowly become puddles of slush. The pale blue heads of snowdrops poke out of the ground. The faintest wisp of birdsong filters in through the tall trees behind Bill’s cabin. The sun rises earlier and sets the slightest bit later.

By the end of January, Dick has enough money to move on, but for once, he doesn’t feel like it. Haven has long, tapering winters. Spring comes late in the mountains, but when it does arrive, it arrives beautifully, and he figures, what could be the harm in staying to see it? He’s been running for so long. All this traveling, and he's never had the chance to do any sightseeing until now. 

Bruce Wayne hasn’t returned to the saloon once, and by now, the town is aflutter with rumor and gossip. Is he dead, is he stuck in the mountains, is he still planning on showing any horses at the Equestrian fair, the town cannot stop speculating. Dick doesn’t participate, and nobody asks him for his opinion, either. The town is nice, but he’s still an outsider. They can sense the gap between him and them, the disparate past that has made him into what he is. But they’re kind to him.

When it’s not too cold, he goes for long walks. The terrain is dangerous, between the steep slopes and the ice and the snow, but he trusts his body to catch him if he falls. In the cradle of the snow-covered forest, he finds a kind of peace he didn’t know existed. But the yawning gape in the center of his chest, the hollow at the pit of his heart, yearns for the sea. Night after night, when his head touches his single borrowed pillow, he dreams of the motion of the waves as they carry him away from the shore. 

The biggest body of water nearby is a glacial lake, a good three hour’s hike away from town. When he first discovers it, he doesn’t have his sealskin pelt with him, and so he sits on its pebbled beach and watches the ripples in the water until the sun is well past the horizon. When he returns to the house, he finds Mae frantic with worry. Bill had taken an oil lamp and gone to search for him in the woods. Dick doesn’t know what to say to either of them, except that he’s alright, and he hadn’t gotten lost. 

He doesn't go back for a week. He can’t risk the town’s scrutiny. 

---

Every chance he gets, every time the itch under his skin gets to be too much, he makes his excuses and finds his way back to the lake. Even so far away from his home, he can’t resist the pull of the water.

In February, Haven is sunny at midday, but everything freezes again at night. The lake sits at the bottom of a crescent-shaped valley, surrounded by craggy stones and boulders and ringed by gravelly, sparse soil. On the horizon, he can see the shapes of the other mountains in the range, huge and distant, like giants watching over him. At one point of the crescent, where he stands, is the entrance from the forest. At the other, maybe a hundred yards away, is a steep slope downward into a beautiful grassy plain studded with pale pink and yellow flowers. There, the lake drains into a thin, babbling brook that passes through the meadow and off into the thick, wild forest again.

The frosty wind tears at his naked skin. The water laps at his knobby toes. It feels colder than ice, colder than cold itself. He leaves his clothes on the beach and wraps his speckled grey pelt around himself, and when he opens his eyes underwater his vision is crisp and perfect, exactly as he remembers. He swims the length of the lake twice over, chittering with glee, the fat on his body keeping his body warm and his path straight and true, then he slows, nosing his bristled muzzle through the lichen and the trails of underwater plants that lie in the lake’s depths. At its bottom, somewhere in the exact middle, he finds a treasure trove of memories uncovered by the current — a locket, a wooden figurine, and what looks like a diamond ring. 

The water hides so much, he thinks, and then with that thought, he propels himself to the surface and takes in his first lungful of air.

In this body, he isn’t cold. Near the meadow at the other end of the lake, he lounges in the shallow water, eyes closed as he basks in the thin winter sunlight. He keeps his ears pricked, but even among the animals in the forest, he’s all alone. 

It starts as a slow, steady thudding that builds so gradually he doesn’t notice it. Then he hears a beastly trumpeting and a black horse the size of a moose crashes out of the forest into the meadow. 

Its coat is flecked white with foam, eyes rolling back into its head, nostrils wide and terrified. In a heartbeat, he is on his feet, pelt forgotten in the lake. 

The wind pulls at the lakewater sluicing down his body, making him shiver; his toes squelch through cold mud as he slides down the hill into the meadow. Pebbles skip and scatter, knocked loose in his haste. 

The horse wheels around and spots him. It rears back and stamps its hooves, ears pinned back against its skull. Its mane and tail are dreadfully tangled. 

Dick crouches low and waits, arms held outward in a gesture of peace. 

The horse quiets. It stares at him with one black button eye, watching him warily. It must know what he is. All animals know. It’s only people that can be deceived. 

“I’m a friend,” he says in a low voice. “Be calm.”

Its sides heave as it waits. He approaches slowly, the meadow grass whipping in the wind and slicing his calves and ankles raw. It stamps its hoof again, impatient. Chase me, or ignore me. Don’t make me wait. 

His hand reaches for its long, roman nose, and there’s a heady pause while the horse decides whether or not it will bite off his fingers. Then its muzzle pushes into his palm, and he strokes a hand down it, whispering sweet nothings in his native tongue. It shifts, muddied hooves making crescent prints in the mud. All four of them are unshod, but in sore need of a trim. 

As he soothes it, he checks for injuries. Its hide is truly black — not a single spot of white anywhere, not even a sock or a blaze. Its hindquarters are unmarked. She is unmarked, he realizes. Wild. 

“What’s upset you, honey?” he murmurs to her. She snuffles at his fingers, tail swishing anxiously. 

A stick snaps at the edge of the woods. She dances away from him, struggling up the slope away from the meadow and toward the lake. 

He turns and sees — 

A face he hasn’t seen since the dead of winter. Bruce Wayne. 

They stare at each other for what feels like an hour. Him, naked, soaking wet with mud up to his knees, and Wayne, rough from the road, stubble grown into a beard, ice in his hair and on the brim of his hat. He is wrapped in a black and yellow handwoven shawl, and a rope droops to the grass from his hands. 

A lasso. 

What’s the difference between a lasso and a noose? There isn’t one. 

“You,” Dick spits. “Go away.”

Wayne blinks in surprise. “That horse is mine. I’ve tracked her for eight weeks.” Wayne looks at him, all of him, then he looks away. There is a hint of redness to his wind-chapped cheeks that Dick sees because he has been trained to see it. 

“Of course a drunk like you would think he owns something just because he’s following it around.”

Wayne glowers at him. “I don’t know what you’re doing up here, but I do know you aren’t supposed to be. This is still my family’s land.”

The horse whinnies derisively. She canters up the mountainside even more. Wayne strides toward him, so he squares his shoulders and readies himself to fight, but Wayne only shoves past him. Dick crashes to the rocks. By the time he scrambles to his feet, the loop of Wayne’s lasso is airborne. 

“Wait!” 

“Easy, girl,” he hears Wayne call to the mare. 

He scrabbles up the hill, battling sliding rocks and scratching up his soles and palms. 

“Stop! You’ll hurt her!” His panting breath fogs the air in front of him. He makes it to the top just as the lasso settles around her withers. Lakewater laps at her hocks, she ran so far into the water to get away. Away from him. 

Bruce bends and picks up a sodden wad of fur — his pelt. It feels more intimate than a caress on his naked body. “Stop—”

“Quit whining. Horses aren’t wild. They’re feral.” He points at her hooves with the same hand that holds his entire heritage, the only good thing left from his past. “Look. She needs to be trimmed and shod. They’ll grow until she can’t walk or graze anymore, and then she’ll starve.” The water is clear enough for him to see that he’s right. 

Dick steels himself. “Put that down, and let her go.”

Finally Bruce turns to him, the brim of his hat askew from his run up the mountainside. “Or what?” 

In the bright noon sun, Bruce looks worn and exhausted. If the townsfolk are right, then he’s been hunting this horse since he shattered a beer bottle over Dick’s head. His clothes are tattered. The whites of his eyes are bloodshot. 

This horse is his ranch’s last hope. It would take a lot to convince him to let her go. 

Dick cocks his hip to the side, like his mother taught him, like her mother taught her before. He clasps his hands shyly behind his back to hide the way they shake with rage. 

“Let her go, and you can have me.”

The words hit Wayne hard. He looks, for a second, just as nervous and furious as the horse. The whites of his eyes flash. Then his cruel fingers curl into the sodden fur of the pelt, and the anger burning on his face cools into cold disgust. 

“Put your clothes on and get off my land,” he growls. The mare paws at the ground anxiously, caught between the water and her captor. She quiets when she sees the sugar cubes in Bruce’s palm. 

For the first time in a long, long time, Dick is forced to obey. He walks on shaking limbs around the pebbled edge of the lake until he reaches his bundle of clothes. As he buttons his tunic with cold, numb fingers and slips his aching feet into his shoes, he feels the tug of his pelt in the center of his chest. Over his heart. 

When he finally steps back into the forest, he hears Bruce call out, “If I catch you here again, I won’t tell you to leave. I’ll just put a bullet in your head.” 

Chapter Text

Tending bar is impossible with his pelt so far away. The third day after seeing Bruce Wayne at the glacier lake, he messes up four orders in a row. He nods and frowns while Bill lectures him, but his mind is elsewhere. 

This won’t do. The flesh beneath his skin itches. The water calls to him, but he cannot answer. He is reluctant to see that wretched man again, but the feeling is somewhat buoyed by the thought of seeing the mare again too. 

“You were doing so well a week ago, what’s gotten into you?” Bill’s brown eyes are wide and concerned. He, like Mae, has grown too accustomed to taking care of Dick. They do not have children of their own to distract them. 

“Where is the Wayne farm?” he asks, instead of explaining. It is Tuesday.

Bill is exasperated. “I told you, focus on filling orders. I’ll take him his bottles later this evening.” 

“Can I take them now?” 

“Why?” 

Dick searches for an answer that doesn’t sound like a lie. “I want to make things right with him. And I wondered… I’ve worked with horses before. A little.” He waits a beat, then widens his eyes plaintively. “I could use the money. To send to my family.”  

Bill bobs his head, thinking. “You could do more for me—” 

Dick shakes his head. “It won’t be enough. My sister’s sick.”

Bill narrows his eyes. “I didn’t realize you were getting mail.” 

“She was sick before I left.” Dick is reaching the end of his patience now. “It’s always worse in the spring. The changing temperature and the rain…”

Bill shrugs. “Alright. But listen, he probably won’t say yes. Why not ask the Havershams for a job, or the Stolls?” 

Dick shrugs too. “I don’t know, he seems like he needs it the most. Maybe he’ll pay better.” 

“Assuming he has any money left,” Bill mutters, then he waves him off. “Follow the path north around the mountain, then take a right at the fallen oak. He’s a twenty minute walk up that road. Go carefully, it’s still icy. And be back before sundown if you want to have supper with us.” 

---

The bottles clink in his bag as he makes the trek up the mountainside. It’s a couple hours past noon, but in the forest, the light is dim. In his head, he mulls over everything he knows about Bruce Wayne: he’s an alcoholic. He lost his son six years ago. His ranch used to be the best horse ranch in town, until his luck turned south. He’s crude. He’s violent. 

Dick shudders. Oh, is that all? 

When he finally comes upon it, he stops for a moment. The lawn is sparse. A wooden fence rings the property, ending in two rusted metal doors that make up the gate, except they hang, barely attached by the hinges. The ironwork over them spells Wayne in thick, spiky black letters. The house is a huge, white mansion with fluted columns supporting its second floor. It’s a quarter mile away, at the end of the dirt road that bisects the lawn. Trees with thick trunks and bare branches mark the path toward the house. 

It must have been beautiful once. Now, it just seems dry and dead. He picks at the peeling paint on the fence and frowns. This is where the man who stole his pelt lives? 

He shakes his head. He could always run, he supposed. If he makes it to the waters of his birth quickly, then he might survive being cleaved from his other self. 

But then he would never swim again.

It takes him almost ten minutes to walk from the gate to the front door. He raises a hand, lifts the black iron knocker, and lets it fall. 

---

He waits another ten minutes before the door swings open. He sees a withered old man standing tall and proud just inside. When he speaks, his voice rasps like fingernails over bark. “Can I help you?” 

“I have Mr. Wayne’s liquor delivery,” he says awkwardly. All his wondering about Wayne, and he’d never considered that he might have to speak to someone else first. 

The man frowns. Dick thinks he has kind eyes. “Bill sent you? Didn’t he say to leave the bottles by the gate?” 

“No.” Dick hefts the bag. “Can I come in for a moment?” 

“Alfred, who’s at the door?” asks a husky voice from deep inside the house. 

The old man, whose name must be Alfred, looks at him pointedly. 

“It’s Richard Grayson,” Dick says. “I go by Dick.” 

Bruce’s face looms out of the dark interior. He’s clean shaven now, but his eyes are still bloodshot. “What are you doing here?” 

“Sir, do you know him?” The old man speaks quickly, clipping his words and elongating his vowels oddly. 

“Yeah, I know him,” Bruce grunts. “He was trespassing at the lake—”

“He smashed me over the head with a beer bottle last December,” Dick says quickly. “Because I didn’t know this town doesn’t, uh, care about Prohibition.” He holds up the bag full of whiskey and watches Bruce’s eyes lock onto it like a hawk hunting a mouse. “I just wanted to bring a peace offering. Make things right.” He can’t stop the end of his sentence from tilting upwards like a question. 

“Admirable. Brave, even,” Alfred says. “Will you take his olive branch gracefully, Master Wayne?” 

Wayne steps into the light more. He’s dressed in a wrinkled flannel and a pair of worn woolen trousers. His hair needs a trim. It curls over his shirt collar and over his ears, but despite its length, it’s greasy and tangled. 

He’s clearly annoyed by the old man’s question. “Why are you really here?”

“I want to see her,” Dick admits. “Please.”

Wayne leans out of his view and grabs a thick ring of metal keys, grumbling all the while. “Fine. Give the whiskey to Alfred. I’ll take you to her, and then you’ll go. Deal?”

“Deal.” Dick is ready to shake on it, but Wayne just shoulders past him into the yard and starts walking to the back of the house. 

He’s tall. Dick has to bounce with every step to keep up. Brown leaves crunch under his feet. The wind whispers through the branches of the trees. 

When they round the house, Dick holds in a gasp. The stable behind the house is huge. 

“How’s your head?”

“Huh?” Dick touches his forehead in reflex. “It’s fine. Healed okay. No lasting damage.”

“Good.”

A dozen feet away, the sweet, earthy scent of horses greets them. Dick doesn’t really have any experience with horses — or most land animals — but a thrill runs down his spine anyway. He can feel them inside, their warm bodies, their clopping hooves as they shift and shuffle. 

“How many horses do you have?”

Bruce unlatches the barn door. “Ten. Two stallions, three geldings, and five mares.” He points them out as they go. “That’s Merrigold, Sylphrena, and Magdella,” a trio of bay horses with huge brown eyes and lovely pleated manes and tails. 

“They’re so round,” Dick says affectionately. They whicker and whinny as he passes by their stalls, peering inside and seeing fresh hay arranged neatly over solid oak floorboards. They wear matching blankets in shades of maroon. He chuckles when Magdella nips at his fingers. “You’re feeding them too much.”

Wayne huffs. “They’re pregnant, Dick.” 

He looks at them again. “Oh. Right.” 

“That’s Big Gordon in the back there.” Dick follows his gaze to a wider stall in the corner, where a chestnut head with milky white eyes pokes out. “He’s my old stallion.”

Dick approaches him cautiously. Big Gordon’s soft, almond shaped ears flick his way. “Isn’t he small for a horse?” 

“You really don’t know anything about horses, do you?” Bruce says, but he means it in good humor. “Big Gordon’s a race horse. The shorter ones are faster than the big ones.” 

Size works differently on land than in the ocean, Dick supposes. “Is it hard for him?” He strokes a hand down Big Gordon’s nose. “You know, because of his eyes.” 

“Animals aren’t as finicky as humans. He gets along alright. He usually has a guide horse — that’s the gelding in the stall next to him.” He’s a leggy horse with a black, white, and grey speckled coat that reminds Dick of granite. 

“What’s his name?” Dick reaches out a hand, but the stall door bangs as the gelding shoves his head out the window into Dick’s palm eagerly. 

“That’s Jason Peter Todd, but I mostly just call him Peets. My son named him. He said he needed three first names, he was gonna be so tall.” 

“You bred him?” 

“Ten years ago this autumn.” 

Peets is a fine horse, but his behavior reminds Dick of a friendly dog he met once on the road. “He’s sweet.” 

“That’s his mother, Duchess Catherine. She’s one hundred-per-cent genuine Appaloosa from the Northwest.” 

Duchess Catherine is a stunning black horse with a rump of white like she sat in a snow bank. Dick contemplates the white streak on her forehead and the white highlights in her mane and tail. So Bruce Wayne already has a black horse. Why on earth would he need another?

The stable is huge, with at least two score stalls, but he said he only takes care of ten. Dick counts the horse heads he can see and frowns. “There’s only six…?” 

“Well, our wild friend and the other stallion are outside, and two geldings are on loan to the post service through the winter.” 

“You don’t have many horses, for a horse breeder.” 

Bruce busies himself adjusting a wall of tack for a moment. “Well, as I’m sure you’ve heard, we aren’t doing too well.” 

“That’s why you need the wild horse.” The easy manner between them suddenly feels brittle, like one step out of place will shatter it and send them both plunging into cold water.

Instead of responding, Bruce shrugs. “Do you ride?”

“I want to see the mare.”

A bundle of leather straps and brass tack flies at him. Dick fumbles for it, catching it just in time. 

“Then saddle up. You can take Catherine, she’s short enough for you.”

Bewildered, Dick watches as Bruce fits a bridle onto Peets and leads him into the main area of the table, where he slings a saddle on his back over a red plaid blanket. He checks each strap and buckle meticulously. It takes him almost fifteen minutes of complete concentration; Peets waits patiently, clearly used to his master’s deliberation. When he’s finished, he gives Peets a clap on the withers, and the horse shakes himself merrily, buckles clinking. 

Just before he mounts him, Bruce blinks when he spots Dick like he’s forgotten he isn’t alone. “Do you not ride?”

“I can ride,” Dick protests. “I’ve just never…”

Bruce seems surprised, but he holds out a hand anyway. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

When Catherine’s ready, she eyes Dick suspiciously, back hooves clopping behind her as she shifts her weight. She’s squatter than Peets, but still thinner than the pregnant horses. 

He didn’t lie. He can ride. He had to in order to make it this far inland. But he would be lying if he said he was confident in the saddle. From the walleyed look in Catherine’s eye, she can tell. 

“Cattie has an attitude, but she won’t throw you,” Bruce says when they’re both outside the stable in the yard. His black hat sits askew, and together with a worn black riding jacket slung over his shoulders, he looks more outlaw than fancy horse breeder. 

Catherine gives him a look that says, Don’t get too comfortable, city boy. She snorts, and her breath is white fog in the chilly winter breeze. He hauls himself into her saddle, tossing his leg over her wide back and settling his feet into her stirrups. 

“We’re gonna ride to the mare?” He can’t help but be skeptical. This is the drunkard that almost  killed him a few weeks ago. This is the man who stole his pelt. This man is everything he hates. 

Bruce clicks his tongue and Peets is off like a shot, spraying his mother and Dick with ice cold mud. “Keep up!” he calls back to them. Catherine must feel the spirit of competition, because she stamps her front hoof and lurches into motion. Dick’s body is jostled back and forth painfully, panic leaping into his throat as the world around him becomes a blur of white, brown, and grey rocketing past. 

They thunder out the back gate and streak downhill across a hilly plain. The sky is grey but the clouds are high in the sky, and as the sun breaks from behind them the world suddenly becomes straw golden and clear as crystal. He finds his seat and with every pace Cattie draws close to Peets, until Dick can see the wild grin on Bruce’s leathery cowboy face. 

“Is this all your land?” The wind whips his words away.  

“From the lake down the mountain to the fence!” he shouts back.  

It must be a hundred acres or more. A laugh startles out of him, knocked loose by Cattie’s hoofbeats. Dick tastes blood in his mouth; he’s bitten his cheek. 

To their right, a grey shape emerges from the grass to gallop beside them. His tail is raised high with glee. It streams behind him like a cloud. 

“That’s Azrael!” 

“The other stallion?”

With one hand on his hat and the other tangled in his reins, Bruce glances back at him and nods. He watches Dick for a moment, grey eyes passing over every bit of him in critique. Then he nods again. “Alright, city boy. You can ride.”

“I’m not from the city,” Dick shouts back, but it’s lost over the sound of Azrael’s triumphant whinny as he overtakes them both. Dick gets lost in the pump of the stallion’s muscles as he pounds down the path ahead of them. As they reach the end of the slope, Bruce slows his horse to a trot. Catherine follows, her speckled sides heaving. Peets drops his head to nibble at the sparse grass before Bruce can even dismount. 

But Azrael doesn’t stop until he’s just outside the paddock, until he’s sure he’s beaten them both. He’s a beautiful horse, of average height, but the straight lines of his withers and his powerful hindquarters draw Dick’s eyes. This is a racehorse, he thinks. Even if he is splattered with mud. 

“He doesn’t let me put a blanket on him. And he’s got a right temper too, don’t walk behind him.” Bruce holds out a hand to help him dismount, but he swings a leg over the other side and slides off the saddle without his help. 

The stable is a brown lump in the distance, back up the gradient of the mountainside. The air is quiet and crisp when he sees her again. The mare waits patiently for him in her prison. 

The first thing he notices is her hooves. “You haven’t shod her,” he says, turning an accusing eye on Bruce, who’s busy cooing something to Azrael. 

Hands on hips, Bruce lopes down the hillside to stand next to him at the fence. They watch her as she paces anxiously, unsure if she should approach or keep her distance. “She won’t let me. It’s normal. She needs some time to settle in. Until then, I can’t bring her into the barn. The hard floor will hurt her feet.”

She has to stand with her legs bent awkwardly to accommodate her overlong hooves. “Don’t horse hooves naturally wear down in the wild?” Dick says. 

“Goodness,” Bruce sighs. “Look at the size of her, son. She’s not a mustang. She’s a thoroughbred. She must have escaped one of the ranches in the area as a foal. It’s a miracle she’s survived this long.”

Dick is still skeptical. “How old is she?”

“Can’t tell until she lets me look in her mouth.” Bruce scuffs at the scrubby grass with one leather boot. “Maybe four, five years old?”

“You can’t shoe her, you can’t examine her. You can’t even touch her. Why do you bother?”

“Breeding? Obviously?”

Dick’s knuckles turn white where they wrap around the fence. If he thought he could do it, he would rip it down himself. “You’re keeping her trapped here so you can turn her into a broodmare?”

“She’s an animal,” Bruce says, like he’s an idiot. “I’m sure a roof over her head and a steady supply of feed is better than shivering in the snow and running from mountain lions. And she was all alone. Horses ain’t meant to be alone.”

The whole while Bruce is talking, the mare is watching Dick closely. She remembers him, remembers what he tried to do. He knows it. 

“Don’t worry about her so much. Once I break her, I’ll be able to take her inside.”

“Break her?” Dick is trembling with rage again. It laps at the banks of his heart like the tide. “Wild things should be free,” he spits, then he vaults over the fence, slipping Bruce’s hand as he tries to grab him. 

“That’s not safe—!”

But the mare trots toward him, head lowered because she knows what he means to do. He hoists himself onto her bare back and together, they crash through the gate and set off at a thundering gallop down the mountain. 

---

Bruce shoves down his surprise and whistles Azrael over before he can bolt after his mare. He slings himself onto his back and pats his flank. “C’mon boy, after them!” 

Azrael is off before he finishes speaking. If this city boy wants a chase, he thinks, then we’ll give him one.

“Hey!”

The boy doesn’t look back. Distrust is a habit, as is the practiced ease with which Bruce unspools his lasso. He was right to bring it with him. 

For all the boy’s confusion with tacking up a horse, he rides like he was born for it, clinging to her shiny black back with just the strength in his thighs and his fingers tangled in her ratty mane. And the mare, she wouldn’t tolerate a single touch from him at all, and here she is carrying a rider like she was trained as a foal.

A tiny half-thimble of doubt flickers in his heart. Is she really meant to be just another one of his breeders? Would she be happy? 

Bruce could have sold his land a long time ago. He’s still here because he loves the work. He knows what everyone thinks of him in town, what they whisper when they think he can’t hear. But he’d do anything for the nine horses he has left, anything. Renting geldings to the government won’t feed them through another winter. If he has to break this mare — and this boy — to do it, then he will. Goddammit, he will.

He spurs Azrael forward. The stallion is a good deal faster than Peets, but even with her overlong hooves, the mare runs like the wind. If she didn’t have Dick on her back slowing her down, he would have to track her to catch her again. 

He counts himself lucky that the boy is clearly stupid, but it also means he has to lasso the smaller target — her head. If he plucks the boy off her back with his rope, then she’ll be gone before he can say shee-it. 

It’s hard to think through the pounding of his heart and Azrael’s hooves, but he keeps his gaze focused and his mind clear. One spin, then two, then three, then the loop is airborne, just over her neck —

The mare and the boy veer to the right, toward a rocky section of the slope. 

“Not that way! You’ll break her legs—!” but in one bound she sails over the worst of the boulders and picks her way down the rest faster than Azrael can. He swings his horse to the left and cuts across a shallower slope, building speed and closing the gap that opened between them. 

“You’re going to get yourself killed!” Spittle flecks his chin as he shouts. 

“Fuck you!” the boy yells back. 

In the distance is the rapidly approaching southern border of his property. At the rate the mare is going, she could be halfway across the county by the time he catches them both — or worse, she could get caught on Stoll land, and Bruce would lose her forever. 

He readies his lasso again, grim and determined. When the sun is out of his eyes, he throws his rope and hits his mark. Not her neck, but her back left hoof. Her next stride is interrupted abruptly. She bellows in terror as she tumbles to the ground. The boy goes flying forward and hits the dirt with a terrible thump.

While the mare struggles to right herself, Azrael slides to a stop and Bruce jumps off and refastens the rope around her neck. Her sides shiver with exertion and terror, but she lets him. Seeing freedom so close and having it taken away at the last second has subdued her for now.

He throws the other end of the rope over a nearby post with a hitch knot, then he turns to the boy, who lies gasping in the dust, cradling his arm gingerly. 

“Do you know what the punishment for horse thievery is, boy?” 

A glob of spit lands on the toe of his boot. “Fuck you.”

Everything breaks loose. He rears back and kicks the boy in the stomach, but quick as a rattlesnake, he wraps his skinny limbs around Bruce’s leg and pulls him to the ground. They go at it in the mud like Dick has been aching for a rematch since that day with the bottle. Bruce blocks a punch from one fist and then feels a tooth knock loose as Dick whallops him with the other. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” the boy is chanting as he wails on him. Bruce heaves them both over and slams his wrists to the ground, grinding flesh beneath his fingers in blind pain. He tastes blood and mud. 

He slams Dick’s head into the ground. “Stop it!” he barks at him. “Enough already. You lost. Give up.”

He goes from wriggling like an eel to limp in seconds, then his thin body is suddenly racked by a sob. “I hate you,” he cries. 

Bruce stares down at him, confused. His black hair, as dusty as it is, fans about his fine boned face like a dark halo. Even through tears and mud, his skin is perfect. Flawless. 

He’s flawless. 

“You don’t even know me,” he hears himself say. 

“I know you,” the boy says through hiccups. “I know men like you.” Then he opens his eyes, and the crystalline blue of them spears Bruce through his ribs and into his heart.  “You’re all the same.”

Bruce digs his nails into the boy’s skin, feeling the pull for one hot, prickly second before he slams Dick into the dirt one last time and stands. He dusts himself off looking everywhere but at him.“You don’t know me at all.”

Eventually, the boy staggers to his feet. He starts walking back up the hill, stepping gingerly, back straight as a rake. Bruce leads the mare a dozen paces behind him. Azrael walks in between them, ears pricked toward the boy curiously, almost like he’s listening to the boy speak, but they walk in silence. The time for conversation is long past. 

By the time she’s back in her paddock, the sun is two and a half hands above the horizon. The evening wind brings with it a chill that slides cold fingers under their clothes. He’s tempted to make the boy walk, but Cattie would sooner trample her rider than let him run off with her. And so, they leave the mare in her paddock — roped to a fence post, since the gate is broken — and canter back to the barn, with Azrael to guard her. 

“Can’t you at least race her?” Dick asks, when they trot in through the back gate. 

“I’ve had just about enough out of you,” Bruce snaps. “I could take you to the sheriff and have you hanged on Sunday for what you did.” 

Dick dismounts at the same time he does and walks right over to him, calm as anything. He shrugs. “Then do it. But you’d be making a mistake to foal her so soon. She’s a good racer, and you need to win first place this fall, not have a fourth foal.”

Bruce feels his face contort. “Who the hell told you I need to win first place?”

“Everyone in town knows,” Dick says flatly. “Who’s gonna care about another pregnant filly at the Equestrian Fair? You need a winner, so people will want to buy her foals. Or your ranch will be sunk.”

It’s too close to the truth not to rankle him. “We make enough to get by—”

“On mail horses? Please.” Dick shakes his head. “If you’re betting everything on her, then at least do it right.”

“I can’t race her,” he grits out. “Nobody can ride her.”

Dick raises his eyebrows. “Didn’t seem that hard.”

And he rode her bareback. Bruce scratches his chin. He would be an idiot to trust this kid after today. 

…or desperate. 

“You don’t have to trust me,” Dick insists. “You have my pelt. You could order me to do it.” He glares at Bruce in the fading light. “Or you could give it back.”

“What? Your pelt?” A pin-bright red light pulses behind his eyes. It’s been too long since his last drink. He needs a double after today. 

“You don’t know what I am?” Dick tilts his head. Like on the mountain, he suddenly looks odd, feline, even a little inhuman. His frame is so slight — not slight, delicate. Round curves of muscle over perfect, graceful bones. 

Bruce shakes his head to clear it. “What are you talking about?”

“Why did you take it, then?” The boy is approaching him, fists tight at his sides. “Give it back!”

“What, the scrap of fur blanket you left at the lake?”

Fists slam into his chest. “You asshole! Give it back!”

Bruce shoves him bodily away. “Stop it,” he snaps. 

Dick stops. He crosses his arms over his chest, chin taut with anger.

Something about how quick the motion was makes Bruce pause. “Stick your fingers in your ears.”

Dick does. He rolls his eyes. 

“I could order you to…” Bruce repeats, thinking. “Sit down in the mud.”

“You ass,” Dick says, but he does it. It squelches beneath his weight. ”I’m cold.”

“I could tell you to stay out here all night?”

Then Dick looks frightened. “Please don’t.”

Bruce leaves him sitting there and leads their horses into the stable. After a minute of wrestling with himself under Peets’ disapproving scrutiny, he tells him to come inside. 

“How is it you have to obey me but you almost stole a horse from me?” 

“There are rules.” Dick accepts a brush from him and cleans Catherine as instructed. She does her best to ignore him, because the Duchess is nothing if not loyal. “You didn’t tell me not to, so I could do it.”

“I told you not to take her down that rocky slope.”

“That’s another rule. You can’t order me to do anything I physically can’t do, like stop a wild horse when she’s running.”

Bruce peers at him over Peets’ back. “You were riding her.”

Dick shrugs. “I was more… along for the ride. Moral support.”

Bruce rests his head against Peets’ speckled flank. He feels him nuzzle at his trousers, looking for the couple sugar cubes he always has on him. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Then give me the pelt back, and I’ll go.”

“If I did that, you’d just steal her again. And then I couldn’t stop you.” 

Dick’s eyes flick to the side. He comes around the horses and lets Catherine rest her muzzle on his shoulder. Traitor. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Now tell me the truth.”

Dick groans. “Yes, fine, I would. I don’t think you’re a very nice man, and I think she’d be better off with a herd of wild horses in the valley. I could find her one. It’s what she wants, and I'm heading east anyway.”

“You can talk to her?”

Dick grimaces, then shakes his head. “No. It’s more like I can sometimes tell what she’s feeling. Stop asking me questions.”

Ordering someone around and having them actually obey leaves Bruce with a funny feeling in his stomach. Or maybe he just needs a drink. 

“Well, I’ll hold onto your pelt for now, I think. And don’t you dare try and take her from me again, you hear?”

He can see Dick struggling to find a loophole, but eventually he relents. “Fine. I won’t.”

“And stay away from my land.”

“No! Please don’t tell me to do that,” he begs. His eyes are wide with fright again. “It hurts. You have my pelt. I can’t go far.”

Bruce sighs. “Well. This is a right mess you’ve got me in.” The boy is starting to shiver, soaked through to the bone with mud and snowmelt as he is. 

Bruce feels something stony and hard give way beneath his ribs. He lifts Catherine’s reins from the hook and jerks his chin at the boy. “Go inside and ask Alfred to give you something to eat.” 

---

He kept the pelt without knowing why, letting it dry in the sun before folding it carefully and storing it in the trunk under his bed, beside his stash of whiskey. Now, he strokes its downy grey fur with gentle fingers, contemplative. 

Should he give it back to the boy? 

He thinks of how hard it was to catch that mare. He can’t afford to lose her. And despite the boy’s inexperience with horses, something about his nature makes him an excellent rider. 

He would give the boy the pelt back after they won first place at the Fair. No need to prolong their acquaintance. But he can’t trust him until he knows more about him, and whatever he is. Most likely, he can’t trust him at all. 

With that decided, he moves to shut the chest, but after a second of consideration, he grabs the whiskey before heading back downstairs and into his drawing room. 

He finds Dick nibbling at a biscuit, dainty fingers wrapped around a mug of tea. Alfred gave him a new set of clothes. They’re too big for him, and his collarbones peek out of the shirt collar. 

“Why does Alfred talk funny?” he asks through a mouthful of crumbs. 

“He’s British.”

“Oh.” Dick swallows and takes a sip of his tea. "What’s British?”

Bruce gapes at him. “Britain? The country we won our independence from a hundred years ago?”

Dick stares at him blankly. 

“How do you know about the Prohibition and not about Britain? Do you even know what territory we’re in?”

Dick ignores him “Could we go back to the lake?” He hides his eagerness poorly. 

“No.” Bruce yanks the cork out of the bottle and collapses onto his father’s finest embroidered couch. He kicks his muddy boots onto the cushion next to him and takes a bracing gulp. “Where do you spend the night? Go home. You can come back tomorrow.”

“You’re not even listening to me,” Dick mutters. “I can’t leave. Your property is too big. It hurts.”

Bruce polishes off another few sips. His throat and stomach burn, but the sharp edges in his head soften. Everything softens. The aching silence of his house. The ever-present need for money. The hole in his heart that life keeps tearing open. 

“Fine. Sleep here.” Bruce adjusts the brim of his hat to shade his eyes and settles into the cushions. Exhaustion tugs at him. He thinks he tells the boy goodnight, but he can’t be sure.

Chapter Text

A bundle of cloth hits him in the face, and that’s how he wakes up. 

“I didn’t literally mean you should sleep in here,” Bruce grunts. Unfolded, Dick sees that the cloth is actually a denim shirt and a pair of work-worn trousers. His back is stiff from sleeping hunched in a wingback armchair.

“You slept here,” Dick says. The light filtering in through the dusty windows is weak and tinted rose. He wrinkles his nose. “Is it dawn?”

“I figure if you have to be here, I might as well get some use out of you,” Bruce replies. He’s changed into a clean pair of clothes too, a black cotton button-down and a clean pair of pants. “C’mon, up, up!” 

Harangued, Dick hurries to his feet and changes into his borrowed clothes while Bruce bustles about in the kitchen. “Where’s Alfred?” he asks, when he’s done. Bruce gulps at a washed can of hot, bitter-smelling liquid with a sigh. 

“Old man is asleep. You want coffee?” 

Dick peers into the can. “That’s not coffee. That smells vile.” 

Bruce snorts. “Okay, princess. Have it your way.” Another jacket sits draped across the painted wooden chair back between them. This one is lined with shearling wool, with blue beadwork on the buttons. Beneath it is an oddly-shaped belt with too many straps. “Here’s the plan for today—”

First, Dick has to muck out the stables while Bruce checks the horses over and gives them a little exercise. Then he fills up the troughs with hay, puts out some barley mix for the pregnant mares, and cleans off all the tack they used yesterday with a horrible, acrid smelling oil from a metal can. They leave the horses in the meadow and saddle up Cattie and Peets again to ride over to the west barn, where Bruce keeps a trio of dairy cows and a herd of sheep. Then he does the same thing all over again while Bruce milks the cows. At least this time they’re both inside, so Dick can beat away his boredom with conversation. 

“Tell me all their names,” he grumbles. The sheep follow him around the barn curiously, mouthing at the folds of his pant legs and bleating. 

“Daisy, Cocoa, and Cassie,” Bruce says, counting off a black and white cow, a shaggy brown cow, and a shaggy black cow. They all have long lashes and sweet, pink noses. “The sheep don’t have names. There’s fifty of them.” 

Dick’s lower back hurts. The sun isn’t even fully in the sky and he’s already exhausted. “Why do you have so many animals,” he pants, leaning on the handle of an old iron rake. 

“Eat and sell the dairy, sell the wool, occasionally eat a lamb or a calf. Why else would anyone keep animals?” 

Dick scrapes the rake across the wooden floor as he spreads fresh hay everywhere. Eating lambs and calves. What kind of a monster has he tied himself to? 

“Tomorrow I’ll show you how to milk the ladies, and the day after, you can handle this barn by yourself.” 

Every inch of skin that isn’t covered feels like it’s smeared with manure. “Great,” he mutters. Just great. 

He helps Bruce lug buckets of milk into a cart, and then they hitch it up to Cattie and he leads her back to the house, where they set aside what’s needed for the house and what Alfred will bottle up to sell. 

“The rest, you’ll churn into butter tonight,” Bruce tells him. Then he smirks at the dismay on Dick’s face. He doesn’t ask if they make butter every day. The thought of it is nauseating. 

With Alfred awake, Dick earns a quick respite while Bruce consumes a truly inhuman amount of food for breakfast. He eats what looks like five eggs, a half pork hind, and eight slices of sourdough bread. Dick picks at his own toast slowly. It feels counterproductive to eat any butter. 

“You need to eat more.” 

“You need to chew with your mouth closed,” he snaps back. Bruce claps a napkin to his mouth. His shoulders shake and his eyes crinkle up and Dick is almost concerned he’s choking before he realizes the awful man is laughing at him. 

“You’re gonna be hungry later,” he warns him, but he doesn’t nag him again. 

When they saddle up again, Bruce’s jacket slips open and Dick sees the strange belt again, except, he realizes, it’s not a belt. It’s a gun holster. 

“Why do you need that?” 

Bruce adjusts himself in the saddle so he can peer back at Dick. “Wolves. Bears. Runaway horse thieves.” 

“You’re a violent man,” he tells him, but Bruce kicks Peet’s flank and trots away, so Dick just pats Cattie on the butt and rides on down the mountain after him. 

Dick recognizes the path they take. The late morning brings with it a fresh breeze from the valley, sweet with the smell of spring flowers. Sweat cools under his arms and between his shoulder blades. “Are we going back to see her?” 

“Not just see her,” Bruce shouts back. “You’re gonna help me shoe her!” 

A shiver of excitement ripples through him at the thought. The mare has a different presence than Cattie or Peets or the other horses. Her pitch-black coat is otherworldly. Her shining eyes hold secrets Dick aches to understand. She is the thing that makes everything worth it, the something different he was looking for when he first stepped onto the beach in California. 

Azrael is nowhere to be found when they reach her. “Must be off chasing his tail,” Bruce grunts. 

“Don’t we need a farrier?”

For a moment, Bruce is impressed with him, before his trademark scowl returns. “I have the equipment at the stable. Farriers don’t come to the Wayne ranch anymore.” 

Dick nods. “Not enough work?” 

“More like I hit too many of them over the head,” he replies gruffly. “I trust my own work. C’mon, I want to see you ride her again.” 

“What about Cattie?” 

“She’ll follow us back. Go on.” Bruce squints at him under the brim of his hat. “Unless you’re scared?” 

Dick clenches his jaw, determined. He doesn’t bother responding. 

Inside the paddock, the mare is wary of him. She whinnies nervously, stomping her hooves and churning up the well-trampled dirt of her enclosure. Dried mud flakes off her coat as she moves. She looks more runaway than racehorse. 

He holds out his hands, palms forward, like he did that day at the lake, but she doesn’t approach. 

She doesn’t trust him anymore. “I’m sorry,” he breathes quietly. “I’m trapped just the same as you.”

Maybe he isn’t being convincing enough. She stumbles away from his reach on overlong hooves. Then he has to leap backward to avoid a kick. 

“Uh oh,” Bruce mutters behind him. 

“Don’t your feet hurt?” he calls to her, cajoling. His heart pounds. “We can help you.”

The wind whips through the dry grass, lifting the matted tendrils of her mane and tail. Her ears prick forward. 

“Gimme her halter,” he says out of the corner of his mouth to Bruce. 

“Don’t get yourself killed. We can wait—” He catches it out of the air without breaking the mare’s gaze, ignoring Bruce. 

“You’re in pain.” Dick takes a hesitant step forward, then another. “Right?” 

A quiver travels down her withers to her tail, which flicks like she’s agreeing. 

“It’ll be easier to run with some new shoes on. Trust me, I won’t let him hurt you.”

He can practically hear Bruce roll his eyes over the wind. He might look crazy, convincing a horse to let him bridle her, but he’s getting through to her, he’s sure of it. She doesn’t let him come any closer. For each step he takes forward, she takes one back. Then he remembers what Bruce said, that she may have escaped as a filly from a ranch in the area. 

“Didn’t you wear shoes before?” He keeps his voice low, soothing. Her ears prick again. “Weren’t they comfortable? Didn’t it feel good to be taken care of? I’ll brush you down, get you nice and clean.”

“This is ridiculous,” Bruce sighs. But the mare doesn’t trot backwards when he moves again. She bends her long head toward him instead. He resists a triumphant hah! 

Bridled, she lets Dick lead her out of the paddock, only agitating when Bruce reaches for the rope. He doesn’t try it again. 

Back in Peet’s saddle, Bruce extends an arm in the direction of the stable and says, “After you.”

Dick uses a hand to shade the sun from his eyes so he can glare at him properly. “Fine.” Why does he feel like he’s the one being put through his paces? But the mare lets him swing onto her back with no trouble. She stares down the slope toward the horizon, pawing the ground, long enough to set off a spark of panic in his gut, but then she turns back to the stable and plods up the hill. 

---

Bruce told the truth when he said they don’t need a farrier. 

“Do you forge all these shoes?” Dick asks. 

Inside a small shed near the stable, they peruse racks and racks of tools and strange iron implements and horse shoes all piled on top of each other. 

“I have a lot of time to myself,” Bruce says, almost defensive. 

“Could have fooled me,” Dick mutters, picking his way gingerly back to the door, still sore from this morning’s chores. “How can you find anything in this mess?” 

On his travels inland, Dick worked many odd jobs. All of them were easier once he mastered the human skill of organization. Bruce, though he is human, clearly hasn’t learned this lesson yet. Dick can’t really tell how old humans are by their faces, but he must have had the time, so this failing is another one to add to his growing list. 

The mare waits for them outside, one lead attached to the side of the stable and the wall of the shed. The two buildings come together to form a shaded alcove that blocks her view of the other horses or the house on the other side of the yard. Still, she shifts nervously, ears pinned back against her skull. When Dick rounds the corner to see her, she rears back in surprise and he has to hop back to avoid another panicked kick. 

“I’m not sure she’ll let you do this.” Dick bites his lip. It would be funny to watch as Bruce got kicked upside the head, but Dick doesn’t know what would happen if Bruce died without telling him where he hid his pelt. He knows it wouldn’t be good. 

“Oh, she will,” Bruce says as he sets everything out. Iron nails, a pair of pliers, four shoes, and what seems like a hundred other odds and ends. “You’re gonna help me.” He hands Dick a small satchel. 

“How—” The satchel is full of sugar cubes. “Oh. Isn’t this expensive?”

“I had a great aunt with a stake in a sugar plantation in Jamaica.” He lets the mare sniff his hands, then the pliers, then the shoes. For all his blustering and irritating personality, the man is good with horses. Still, the first hoof is a struggle. Dick uses half the bag of sugar cubes to keep her from kicking Bruce as he files down her overlong hoof and then hammers a shoe on. 

The front is easier than the back. With each leg, Bruce curls her leg toward her body and holds it between his thighs to bare its underside to him. He works quickly, his thick-knuckled hands thorough but gentle.  First he clips down the hoof with the plier-looking tool, then he uses something that looks like a curved knife to cut deep slivers off the white inner section. It mustn’t hurt the mare — Dick has no doubt she wouldn’t tolerate it for a moment if it did. He shaves the rest of the hoof down with a big metal file. 

Bruce works in silence. His broad shoulders swing the hammer to pound six nails into each shoe with careful, deliberate strokes. When he finishes, it’s just in time, because Dick is out of sugar cubes. He straightens with a groan and dusts off his pants. Curls of old hoof fly everywhere. 

He claps his hands together. “Now that that’s done, I wanna see if you can put a saddle on her.”

The sun is closer to the horizon than before. Dick’s legs tremble with exhaustion. It took them almost four hours to shoe her. Now he wants him to ride her? And there's still the butter to churn —

Bruce has to catch him before his knees wobble out from under him. “Okay, maybe that’s enough for today. You’re a delicate thing, aren’t you?”

The warmth of the man who stole his pelt surrounds him. Dick tucks his head into the space underneath Bruce’s stubbly jaw and gives him his full weight with a sigh. It feels right, despite his dislike for the man. Dick is called to serve him, and this is just another thing his body can provide. The cowboy’s hands freeze where they grip his middle. Warmth glows between them pleasantly before Dick is shoved away. He catches himself with a hand against the shed.

“I’m not some kind of —“ Bruce bites his words off and glances away, in the direction of the house. The mare nudges Dick’s shoulder insistently, but he ignores her.

“Do not. Do that again,”  Bruce says, voice clipped as he backs away. “Put her in an empty stall and set her up like I taught you. Clean the tack. Then you can come inside and eat.”

He does so without complaint. Bruce isn’t what he truly wants. He mustn’t confuse the call of the pelt with lust. What he wants most of all is freedom, for himself and for the mare. 

The manual labor is taxing, but his mind drifts to brighter subjects. Perhaps he should ask what, exactly, is involved in winning first place at the Equestrian fair. Is it just a race? Will there be a jumping contest? He hopes he doesn’t need to learn to throw a rope. He brushes the mare’s coat until she gleams like the surface of the ocean on a full moon night. She doesn’t pay a single bit of attention to the other horses, except to swish her tail disdainfully at them. All the better for it, Dick tells her once she’s settled in her stall, because after they win the fair, he’ll get his pelt back and they’ll both make a run for it. Together, they can make it. There will be nothing Bruce can do to stop them. She rests her velvety nose on his forehead, almost as if she agrees. 

When he comes inside for supper, Alfred informs him he’ll be eating alone.