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~~Park Bokyung~~ Billy Rocks
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#49 Bramford Building

It was late, which was not uncommon for Billy Rocks, when he came home from his shift. He was dog tired and drifting, which was also not uncommon after such long shifts, and so when he rolled into the Bramford and found the elevator was, once again, out of order, he swore in a way that would have impressed some sailors.

He was getting spoiled in Darrow. But ten floors up with no elevator when he was exhausted seemed some sort of punishment for a crime he hadn't committed. Still, there was nothing for it. Who knew when they'd have the elevator back in commission?

He grumbled as he started into the stairwell, but the rhythm of climbing the stairs became a good cadence, the pulse of a living beat, the quiet methodical repetition as he wound up through the body of the building.

It was in this way that he saw him. Billy was blinking distraction and exhaustion out of his eye, and when he looked up from rubbing at them, clearing a flash of light out of the whole line of his vision, he saw him. A boy, about seventeen, dressed in all the neat trappings a boy would wear in the 1860s. Billy's breath caught in his chest. He had seen the boy in his dreams, his neatly combed brown hair and kind blue eyes, for years.

"Elias--"

The boy turned, and Billy flinched on the stairs. There was the sign where the bullet had left his body, on that crisp winters morning, before snow had really come to the Pacific Northwest. Billy remembered holding Elias after he'd shot him, startled by this violence for a boy he cared about, for a boy he hadn't wanted to hurt. He remembered that the life had already been out of his eyes--not like Elias's parents, who had bled and suffered because Billy needed that vindication in his rage.

He hurried up the stairs, chased after the apparition, calling his name again. Then he turned a corner on the stairwell, and Elias was gone as if he had never been there in the first place. Billy was left with a sick tangy smell of copper and sulfur in the air, the smell that had been on his clothes even after he'd washed them that night, before he ran.

He held it together the rest of the way up the stairs, all the way to the apartment. But it rushed at him as he stepped inside and locked the door. Sick hurried up his throat, and he ran for the kitchen sick, spitting and retching, running the tap to drown out the noise and wash it away.

Billy knew before he really woke that something wasn't quite right. His pajamas didn't quite fit against his hips or his shoulders the way that they ought to, and these were things that Billy Rocks, a perceptive man--made perceptive by a life that had not been easy--was very instantly keen to.

He woke quickly from there, though he didn't really stir. It was early yet. Early enough that Goodnight was still asleep, wrapped around him, and Mercy Beau hadn't even really begun to rustle at the end of the bed. So Billy laid there and categorized what was strange and different.

His beard was gone. Not just shaved neatly, as he liked to keep it, but absent from his chin almost entirely, except for a few fine wisps. His shoulders and wrists and hips were all finer, narrower. Bearing less weight overall.

It was with a dawning realization, laying there in the pre-dawn morning, that Billy Rocks surmised he currently inhabited the petite, underfed body of the young man he'd been when Goodnight had found him in a saloon in Texas, on the lam from killing the family he'd been indentured to in Washington. Approximately nineteen years old, he was at least happy to find he remembered the rest of his life--the man behind him, the lives they'd led, Rose Creek and all of Darrow. He merely looked this way.

Slowly, he turned over in the circle of Goodnight's arms. He watched him sleep a moment more before reaching out and brushing his fingers along the line of his jaw.

The whole month has been something of a crap shot, and Billy was just trying to keep the apartment a place apart, a little haven for them, because the last thing they needed was the outside world creeping in here. He knew, Halloween night was going to be a menace. He had plans on that. He'd stocked up on good gin and good scotch, had gotten some opium from a man that assured it was clean and had blended that in with some of his tobacco, and was ready with plenty of music to drown out any noise outside their apartment. For twelve hours, it would be just them: him and Goodnight and the dog, and that was that. In the morning, he would go out and deal with that needed dealing with. He would not be pulled away before then.

But they had a week. And for now, Billy wasn't going to think about it.

For now, Billy had situated himself at the kitchen table. He was reading a magazine. It was a conspicuous one. He'd been doing this periodically recently, waiting to see if Goodnight would notice--he doubtlessly had--or comment--he had not, yet. Mercy was laid out at his feet, because they'd already been out on their run for the morning, and there was already breakfast, because Billy had picked it up on the way home.

Billy was reading a wedding magazine, and silently griping to himself that it was all brides and grooms. Nobody cared about wedding dresses when both people involved were going to be wearing a suit and tie.

In Darrow, a steady, regular rhythm was necessary for Billy Rocks's sanity. When they'd been on the frontier, things like that just naturally happened, but there was a stark difference between the frontier and Darrow: there were places to go, outside of Darrow. Here, he had two options: let himself be sucked into listlessness, drifting day to day; or set himself to a routine, and keep to task.

The dog helped.

Today was a brisk, sunless morning that Billy was sure would turn into a muggy, clouded day. Spring was doing curious things, and thought he'd gotten a couple tinctures from Dorian to help with the spring illnesses he tended to get from the grass and weeds, the variation in the weather wasn't helping.

He pressed on. It was the only option he had.

He'd paused in the park, the second time they'd gone through it and about halfway through his morning run. They'd loop a few more times, him and Mercy Beau, and then he'd pick up coffee and head back to Goodnight, just in time for his love to be rousing himself lazily from bed.

For now, he stretched.

Often, holidays and birthdays passed them by. Time was a strange thing on the frontier, more focused on the weather than any real passing of days. Billy had missed more than enough of his own birthdays, and when he remembered Goodnight's, it tended to be quiet occasions that he didn't particularly point out. He knew that Goodnight was selfconscious of his age, for whatever reason; Billy thought he was just more handsome with every moment.

The time had come around again. Billy was better at time, now that he had a regular schedule going on, his days filled with the constant repetition of small things that helped him keep the pace of the days.

Goodnight hadn't said anything, of course. So, while he was out at church, Billy went to the grocery, and collected what he could for a taste of home. He wasn't quite as familiar with cajun spices as he was with some others, but he was going to try his best.

Billy Rocks never went to school. He had some schooling, one could say; his mother had taught him how to read and write in Korean, and when he went away to Washington, he'd learned arithmetic and composition and a hundred other, smaller things, that the master's son would teach him when they were allowed alone together. His reading was not the best, but especially with Goodnight, it had improved in his adulthood.

To take classes at the college, he had to have a diploma or equivalent. To get those, you had to go to school or take a test. Classes had already started--he knew that--but the tests we a couple of weeks into the term, for some reason, and the people he had spoken to at the college had assured that the program he was looking at had a later start date than the standard classes.

So here he sat, a study book open, pamphlets and papers and his sketchy hangul in the margins of everything, feeling a bit out of place. He was going to be thirty in the summer. Wasn't it a bit odd to be thinking about schooling so late in his life?

"You know," Goodnight said, "this reminds me of something my daddy used to say."
( cut for ending spoilers, mention of character death )

--

The paramedics arrived shortly. It was not unusual for people to show up strangely to Darrow. Normally, when they arrived with such injuries, they were gone by then; all that was left was the reminder of the injuries themselves--tearing or slashing or holes in the clothing, maybe some stains. But this man, he was still alive.

They did what they could to stabilize him at the scene. He clutched a flask, dark with a metal fleur di lis on it. His breath stuttered intently, wheezed.

"Collapsed lung?"

"No shit, you think? The man's been shot through it!"

Once they could move him, they took him to Darrow General Hospital. The driver grumped, first about immigrants, then about how these Asians kept getting themselves landed in the hospital. The paramedics rolled their eyes at each other and kept working on the man, so that he was at least breathing--if unconscious--by the time they got him to the hospital.

It might be a long rode from there. But with luck, he'd make it.

The longer they stayed, the more surreal this became, but Billy couldn't seem to think of a reasonable excuse to back out of their commitments now. The days leading to Christmas Eve had been filled with an air that he was looking in on his life backwards, watching all these preparations for revelry that his fingers itched to assist with because it had been his job to assist in these things the last time he had put foot in a house like this.

The afternoon of Christmas Eve, Billy lingered in the garden, smoking. People would be arriving for Matilda Robicheaux's party, very soon, and Billy wasn't entirely certain how he was going to survive. He wasn't sure how Goodnight was going to survive. But, as with all things, they would manage. They had each other in this.

Still, there was a quiet, worried part of him. A part that wanted to weigh his hips down with a pistol and a knife, a part that wanted to look everyone in the eyes and dare them to whisper about Goodnight or himself or both of them. There was a quiet part of him that feared he could not navigate this miasma, that he would get swept away at some point and treated as he had been as a boy.

Billy finished his cigarette, and continued to linger. He ought to go put his suit on and get ready, before guests arrived. It was a new one--which he didn't need--more expensive than Billy felt any right to be wearing. But it was Christmas, he supposed, and so he'd been gracious about it. He breathed in the New Orleans air, and then headed up to put the suit on. Goodnight had disappeared somewhere into the house, likely helping his mother with last minute things; Billy hadn't seen him since the end of breakfast.

He took his time, and by the time he was ready--dressed, shaved, hair pinned back--he could hear people arriving. He let himself out of the room he, and more often than not Goodnight, was keeping for the time they were here, and set out to find Goodnight.

It had been a hard past few days, far from anywhere. They were in Colorado now, some mining town that made it a little easier for Billy to blend in because of the number of Chinese workers for the mine and the railroad. They'd decided to stay for a few days, long enough for the horses to get a good rest, and to have a bed under them for longer than a moment.

Their room at the hotel was relatively large. There was a tub--they'd both used it--and a balcony. They'd smoked. Billy had gotten them marijuana and opium this time, to roll with his tobacco, carefully marking the cigarettes with which was which. Tonight, it had been opium, and Billy felt a lovely, warm haze in him; half the smoke, half the gin they'd been drinking since dinner.

He was laying on the bed, watching Goodnight, when it struck him. For all the world, he didn't know why it had taken him quite so long. But looking at Goodnight, out of his jacket and waistcoat and with his sleeves turned up to show strong forearms, Billy was suddenly keenly aware that he could spend the rest of his life with this man.

He smiled softly at the thought.

They arrived in Reno in the early evening, the sun glinting gold and red on the Sierra Nevadas to the west. The last time Billy had seen those mountains, he had been young, and it had been from the western side looking east. Not long after, his family and he had headed north to Oregon, then Washington, until he was sold into his indenture.

To consider the mountains from this angle was to consider his traveling companion. Goodnight had already gone in to get them a room at one of the various hotels while Billy saw the horses tended to in a stable near the common. It was better to house them there, Billy knew. Reno had a reputation for thieves, and he'd prefer they not encounter that with their horses.

He made his way back to the hotel, contemplating the makeup of the city. There were more blacks and asians here than in most places they'd stopped over the past months. Billy felt considerably less out of place.

When he reached the hotel, he found Goodnight sitting out on the front porch, contemplating the street. Billy did not walk up the steps yet. He considered Goodnight from that angle, the line of his jaw and the sweep of his hair around his ear. Billy had known he was in trouble about this for weeks, at least. He just didn't know what else to do. But these past few days, working their way toward Reno, he'd been feeling it more and more.

Texas was blistering hot, in a way that Park Bokyung had never known in Korea or in western Washington. He'd been traveling for four days, exhaustion starting to set in. The horse he had was a skinny thing--bought from an Arapaho tradesmen when he'd crossed through Colorado for more than Bokyung had really been able to spare, but it was a resilient thing. He could commiserate with that.

He came into a small town, unsure what it was called or where he was on the map. It didn't really matter. He wasn't near enough the Rio Grande to really orient himself. Just passing through scrub and sand and a hundred miles of blue skies in every direction.

People were staring. Bokyung was used to that, and so he paid it no real mind. He approached the boarding house and left his little Arapaho mustang at the post as he went in and inquired for room. The matron at the front said there was none but to try and saloon, as it might be more to his style. He highly doubted that, but unhitched his horse and went over to the saloon instead.

It was an effort to ignore the stares. Hadn't any of these men ever seen an Oriental before? There were rail tracks laid not too far from here--he knew from crossing them--which meant they must have seen some variety at some point. Unless it was a rare track laid by Irish and Germans. But Bokyung doubted that.

The music in the saloon did not stop when he stepped in. Nothing did. That was certainly preferable.

It had been a long day. They had all been long days, since they'd arrived in Rose Creek, but this was possibly the longest. Billy didn't know how he felt about that. He didn't know what he'd do. Ever since, the night before, Goodnight telling him about his anxious, superstitious dream, the day had felt every bit of their heat, every bit of the effort they were putting into last minute preparations, every moment of worried waiting.

Now, the trenches were finished. Though the town folk had collected in front of the church to hear a sermon from the preacher, Billy and Jack had set about finishing those and making sure they were set for the inevitable siege in the morning. Billy was aching tired, his shoulders and lower back screaming for some form of relaxation--laying in bed or on the floor, having a bath to soak in, anything. They were running short of cigarettes; he had tobacco, but no more rolling papers, and nothing else he put in them. He'd just have to live with himself.

He trudged his way up to the room he and Goodnight shared in the boarding house, stretching his shoulders still as he let himself into the room.

Even at night, Rose Creek was a city of desert heats this time of year. Billy had shucked his jacket in the room of the boarding house and excused himself from Faraday and Vasquez's increasing revelries in favor of a cigarette. Though the heat still lingered in the clapboards and railings, the night had a breeze that carried mining smells in from the east.

Billy leaned his elbows on the railing of the balcony, cigarette pinched between his fingers, and considered. This was not his sort of a play, if he were perfectly honest. He was here because he was Robichaeux's man, because he needed him; and Robichaeux was here because of--a debt? A promise? An inescapable and inexplicable need to right his past? And what about the others? Money, connection, promises. He and Red Harvest seemed the odd outliers which Billy could not explain.

A door opened to his left, but he didn't react to it. He knew who it was. He brought the cigarette to his lips and looked up at the moon, wan on the horizon, providing no real light to the evening.