ds_flashfiction | Genre Redux Challenge, by joandarck (Reply)

Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Rating: PG? People appear in a state of undress.
Length: 2100 words.

Surely this title must have been used before, but...

Due West

All heads turned as the saloon doors swung in. A stranger stood there: dark-haired, broad-shouldered and handsome, looking like he'd just stepped off the stagecoach in his fancy coat, but with a pair of well-worn guns at his hips and one mean-looking dog walking next to him.

"Hey!" the little woman in the feathers barked, sliding off the piano. "No coyotes in here."

"He's only half coyote, ma'am."

The dog howled. The stranger looked down at him. "Well, it's true."

"I don't care! It's bad for business! Get him out of here!" She came flouncing over in her high heels, her stiff skirt showing an inappropriate amount of fishnet stocking.

He shrugged. "You heard the lady. Wait outside, Dief."

With a sulky whine, the dog trotted out, and the stranger removed his hat. "I'm sorry to have troubled you, ma'am."

"That's okay." She gave him a slow look from head to foot and smiled her way back up again, twirling a curl around one finger. "That's - really okay. I'm Miss Frannie. Can I get you a drink? Or... anything?"

"That would be very obliging. My name is Sheriff Benton Fraser, by the way. I've come to this town on the trail of the killers of my father. I believe."

She wrinkled her rather prominent nose. "Oh, bad luck."

Fraser settled himself on a bar stool and folded his hands, looking up at the framed portrait that presided over the saloon. It was a black and white photograph of a man, long-necked and balding, the sort of photo that made everyone look like a potential murderer. But he had kind eyes. "Your husband?"

"My brother." She beamed up at the picture, then down at Fraser, pushing her hands out at him, fingers spread. "Because I am, whoa, so not married."

"Ah." Fraser studied the scrolled writing on the picture frame. Marshall Vecchio.

"He's out of town right now, on a job for old man Welsh." She leaned across the bar, her corset straining at the top. "He left a week ago. That's when all this riff-raff showed up."

"I see. Well, just let me know if there's anything I can do to help, Miss Vecchio."

"Please. Call me Frannie." She sat on the bar and spun around to his side. "And you just lemme know if there's anything we here at Madame Francesca's can do for you!"

As the piano player started a sprightly dance tune, Miss Frannie extended one leg up in the air with a flourish and brought the tip of her feathered shoe down on the bar behind Fraser's back. "Anything. At all. If you know what I mean."

Her garter was at his eye level. He turned his head quickly away and said, "I don't think so, Miss Frannie, but if you-"

She closed in and fingered his lapel. "I'd be happy to explain it to ya."

"-would be so kind as to fetch me a glass of water, or perhaps some milk?"

"Milk?" Heads turned. The alleged riff-raff were taking an interest. A hairy behemoth at a nearby table got up and swaggered over, pausing to spit on the ground. Fraser winced. "Milk ain't a man's drink, boy."

Fraser stood up. "On the contrary. Although it's true that most of the formation of bone structure occurs during youth, it's never too late to keep taking in calcium."

The big man scratched his beard, then his armpit, cogitating fiercely. "I said," he produced at last, "milk ain't a man's drink. Boy."

Fraser looked at him, and his face seemed to harden up, although still pretty as a painted lady. "Actually, sir, I heard you the first time," he said, civil enough, and started to turn away.

The big man grabbed his shoulder and pulled back for a punch that could have broken his nose. Lightning-fast, Fraser whipped around and caught the man's jaw with an uppercut, slammed an elbow in his gut and pulled his gun on the way down. The flailing body fell to the floor and measured six-foot-plus across the sawdust, the empty holster bouncing by his side.

Fraser walked back over and placed the gun on the bar, and his forearm next to it. "I'll take that milk now," he said. "Thank you kindly."

Miss Frannie, who'd been peeping her big eyes over the top of the bar, straightened up, patted her hair into place and pulled the gun across. "I'll just add this to my little collection." She raised her other hand, holding the barrel of a rifle. "I was going to help, Fraser, see?"

"Very thoughtful."

He smiled at her, and she bounced as she put the firearms away, singing a happy tune. "Whatever Lola wants... Lola gets. And, little man, little Lola wants you..."

Fraser turned away, shaking his head. A handsome woman in a dark suit came in from a back room, a tall youth trailing her stammering apologies. "Shut up, Turnbull, it's not your fault. If I could get some service here? SERVICE!"

Fraser's backbone snapped straight, and half the drunks in the room tried to stand up and salute.

With a regretful look at the gun locker, Miss Frannie went to see what was the matter. "Yes, Judge Thatcher?"

"There were RATS in my room," the woman snapped. "Oh, and, something about a highway robber in his."

"Yes, yes," the young man said, rubbing his hands nervously. "Or, it might just have been another guest who'd, who'd lost his way. In a mask. That can make it very difficult to see, you know. Oh. Not that I would know. Oh. Not that I'm implying that you would."

"Shut up, Turnbull."

Fraser pressed his hand to the side of his head and turned to look at the other side of the saloon. Two men were standing, drinking, against the wall, one tall, one short, both in cowboy hats and chaps.

"Pony Express is the way to go, I'm telling you."

The taller man shook his head. "We're too old, moron."

"STELLA!"

Fraser's attention was distracted - nay, riveted - as an extremely attractive, if somewhat thin and consumptive-looking, blond man staggered down the stairs, his ruffled shirt askew and his glasses hanging off his ears. "Anyone seen my wife?"

"She's gone, Doc. You have to accept that." Frannie led the stumbling drunk to a bar stool, petting his arm. He collapsed on the bar and ran his hands through his hair in despair, making it stand on end.

Then he sat up and said, quite cheerfully, "Oh, yeah? Then I guess I'll have another drink."

Fraser coughed. "Surely heavy drinking is a handicap, in your profession?"

The man scowled, then shrugged and gave him a shy little-boy smile. "Yeah, you're right. What is my profession, anyway? Oh, right, I'm a doctor. Doc Kowalski, at your service. Or you can call me Ray."

They shook hands. "My name is Sheriff Benton Fraser. I came to this town on the trail of the killers of my father..."

"Yeah, I saw the wanted poster. Hope you nail those scumballs. So you're a gunslinger, huh? Hey, how come I have to be the doctor? How come I'm not a cowboy? I'da made a great cowboy!" He cocked his fingers at his hips and drew, pointing with both hands. "Bang! Bang!"

Turnbull squealed and dropped behind a table.

Fraser, on the other hand, stiffened up as if someone had applied a hot poker to his nether regions. "Doc Kowalski - Ray... what precisely did you mean by that?"

Frannie slid the (presumably no longer practicing) doctor another drink, and he downed it in a gulp and wiped his mouth with his frilly sleeve. "What did you think?"

Judge Thatcher was shouting, "Get up, you idiot!"

Fraser looked around, then lowered his voice, put a hand on Kowalski's shoulder, and said, "May I ask you something?"

"Sure thing, Sheriff."

Fraser's mouth moved as he tried to think how to best phrase his question.

As he hesitated, the men who'd been leaning against the wall came over to get another round. Frannie slid them drinks too, other hand on her hip. "Huey, Dewey. But no more credit, boys."

They paid up, grumbling, and then the short one slapped the tall one's arm and said, "Hey, what are you doing here, anyway?"

Huey's mouth worked disgustedly. "There were black men in the Wild West," he said.

"Huh? Name one."

He poked him in the chest. "Will Smith."

"Come on, that was the movie." Dewey shook his head and did a shot. "TV show was much better."

"Hey! Take that back. 'Less you want a chair broken over your head."

Dewey lit up. "Breakaway chair! Go ahead, it won't hurt!"

"Don't count on it."

Fraser gripped Doc Kowalski's arm and shook it. "Doctor, if I may be so bold. Are you telling me you're aware that something about this situation seems... improbable?"

Kowalski grinned back at him, swaying in close in a haze of rugged good looks and spiritous liquors. "Oh yeah. No question. One of us is definitely off his nut, having some kind of a hallucination or something, and I think it's me."

"Why's that?"

"Because I'm the one who's not wearing pants."

Fraser looked down, and sure enough: the doc's slovenly shirt tails were now only coming down to bare legs, pale, with a dusting of gold hairs, down the thigh muscles and the outside of the calf.

"And it's not like you'd wanna see me without pants."

He jerked his chin up and reached rather blindly for his milk glass. "You look quite fetching either way, Ray, pants or no pants."

"I do?" Kowalski started to do an excited little dance on the bar stool, then frowned. "Hey. Thanks. Wait, fetching, like, attractive? You think I look attractive with no pants?"

"Certainly." But he pushed off his own stool and moved away, drawn to a shape under the stairs.

Bob Fraser stood there, naked except for a long loincloth and moccasins, red stripes on his cheeks and three feathers in his hair. "Son, what am I doing in this ridiculous costume?"

Fraser closed his eyes and swallowed convulsively.

Ray followed after him. "Wait, are you saying, like, you think I'm attractive in a no-pants way, or is it just a pants-or-no-pants either way kind of thing? Is it better without the pants?"

"Oh, no, much better with pants, that's what I'm trying to tell you. A shirt would be nice, too."

Avoiding his father's eyes, Fraser ducked around the doctor, whose weaving step made that somewhat difficult, and said, "Excuse me a minute, I think I hear the sounds of an altercation."

"Oo, well, wouldn't want to miss that."

They stepped back out into the main room in time to see Dewey being slid down the length of the bar, fully from one end to the other, yelling, as beer mugs and shot glasses scattered left and right.

"See, now I know this is my fantasy," Kowalski said.

The music had picked up in tempo. Frannie was crouched on top of the piano, breaking bottles over people's heads. Turnbull and Thatcher were squaring off in the middle of the room, looking narrow-eyed at each other as their hands hovered above the handles of their guns. The sound of a half-dog, half-coyote howling wafted in from the street.

"This outfit is an offense to native peoples everywhere," Fraser's father protested, folding his arms in front of his chest. "And I don't want to give you too much information here, son, but it's pretty drafty. My bits are getting cold."

"Doc Kowalski," Fraser said, urgently, "do you think that if you hit me, very soundly, on the back of the head with the butt of this .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, I might lose consciousness and reawaken in my normal life?"

Ray took his glasses off and shrugged. "I can't promise nothin' about where you'll wake up, but knocking you out I can do."

"Thank you, Ray. Oh, one last thing. Since it appears none of this is real..." Pressing his weapon into the other man's hand, Fraser took a deep breath, looked both ways, then grabbed the front of his frilly shirt and pulled him in close, kissing him forcefully.

Kowalski let out a muffled whoop of surprise and started to kiss him back, groping around on the bar to put the gun down and then getting two fists locked in the back of his jacket.

The piano player worked himself into a ragtime frenzy on the keys, the joyous brawl went on in slow motion, and the corners of the room grew dim and cloudy as everything faded to black.

~END~