#cest la vie ill do better next time

[everyones-least-favorite-bard]

more western au!! this piece takes place before kdj fakes his death the first time but after he and hsy have met. enjoy!!

They’ve been talking for somewhere upwards of an hour (about inanities, nothing of substance, really) when the wind howls for the first time.

The rickety wicker chairs he and Han Sooyoung are sitting in creak with every move—a trait she says they had from the moment she bought them, but as Kim Dokja watches her tip the chair so far back she’s nearly parallel to the ground, he’s not inclined to believe her. Sheriff Han Sooyoung, he’s finding, seems to be intimately familiar with the concept of hyperbole.

“Wind’s roarin’. Probably should get yourself indoors,” she says, lips still curled around the blunt end of a cigar. 

He’s not stupid. He’s lived in this town longer than she has; he knows the signs of a dust storm brewing just as well as any other desert-dweller. There’s been an impenetrable wall of ruddy brown slowly encroaching on the horizon for a while now, accompanied by great hanging fist-like clouds. The air smells faintly of ozone, the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing up as the wind sweeps up plumes of dust. The issue is not that he doesn’t know better: the problem is that he doesn’t have an indoors to get himself inside.

But that’s none of her concern.

“I’m aware.” He’s quite proud of how neutral he sounds. He still hasn't quite figured out where exactly he'll hide out at, but he'll think of something. It's sort of his thing.

She must read some of his thoughts off his face as her fine brow develops a narrow crease, the corner of her mouth pulling into the beginnings of a scowl. "You haven't got anywhere to go, huh?"

He waves her off, pushing out of his seat. "I'll find a barn to lay low in. Shouldn't be too hard t'find a soft-hearted farmer." 

It clearly isn't the assuaging remark he intends it to be because the crease furrows further and her discontent is written outright in the sharp line of her narrowed eyes. 

But she doesn't say anything further, so he takes it as permission to leave. He's about to step off the porch when he hears the rasp of Sooyoung putting out her cigar.

"Get your ass back here. I'm not done with you."

There's always been a sharpness to her, even from the moment they first met. He'd caught her counting cards at the poker tables back at the saloon, and almost called her out on it but she'd removed her pearl-handled pistol from its holster and set it very calmly on the table, watching him with dark, narrowed eyes. He can’t shake the feeling that she hasn't stopped watching him since, the vague feeling of those near-black eyes tracking him as he slunk out into the alleyway behind the saloon, the sensation prickling his nerves, raising the hair on the back of his neck—the rumble before a storm.

He turns back around, cracking a crooked grin. "Miss me already? You should've said so."

Now normally, she'd scowl further at him or something, canines flashing like a disgruntled cat. He'd ruffle her hair and she'd kick him in the shins probably harder than necessary and they'd bicker in good faith for maybe another half hour or so before she'd let him go. 

She's frowning though. She's standing now, one hand resting on the table by the little clay ashtray he’d given her that Biyoo had given him before he stppped smoking. 

"You don’t have to leave, you know," she says. There's something weird in her voice, neither the blunt cruelty inherent to her resting speech nor the cold sharpness of her rage. It's foreign, it's not cold at all but Dokja's still hesitant to call it warm, and whether that's a result of his opinion on her capability for it or on his viability as a receptacle for it is between him and the nearest bottle of gin he can supplicate himself to.

"What, gonna put me up in a cell, sheriff? How generous." He feels vaguely itchy. It's a little windier now, the wind rustling his hair some, whipping in front of his eyes. He's probably overdue for a trim.

Now she scowls. "Just get inside." She turns away from him and picks up the stub of her cigar and the little ashtray with surprising gentleness, then kicks open the door to the station with barely contained violence. It's a rather fitting tableau of her general demeanor.

She doesn't hold it open for him though, and he's halfway tempted to leave anyway, but she throws a, "and I best not turn around and see you gone," over her shoulder so he follows behind her.

Her boots click on the wooden floors, the keys at her hip rattling against her gun and holster, echoing strangely in the empty station. There's a reasonably nice sitting area, a vase of flowers on the cusp of wilting in the middle of a low table atop a cream and black woven runner done in some geometric pattern he doesn't particularly care enough to remember the name of. Her desk is littered with papers, mugs and cups and what may have once been a brandy snifter before its inevitable surrender to a thick layer of dust speckled in between the deluge. It's not the first time he's been in the station—as a tenant or a visitor—but there’s an eerie emptiness to it, an undefineable aura of solitude, of liminality, compounded by the still howling wind just outside, the faint rattle of the window hatch.

She throws open a door in the back, leading to a narrow stairwell only faintly lit by the watery brownish light coming from the windows and receding fully into black nothingness by the fifth or sixth step. 

"You gonna keep gawkin'?"

"Not much to gawk at," he fires back on instinct, and he's rewarded with a familiar scowl and some irritated-sounding muttering.

"Just get up here."

He grins and follows behind her, up two flights of stairs (one step creaked particularly violently and Sooyoung cackled ahead of him), coming up to a cozy apartment space. Cozy being a generous descriptor, as it seems half of it has been overtaken by more filing cabinets and a truely hideous rug hanging on the wall to his left. But otherwise its almost pleasant; there's a kitchenette with a stout little wood fire stove towards the back, a lounge chair with only maybe two or three cigarette burns with another nice textile blanket in the same geometric pattern as the runner downstairs across the back of it, a little bookshelf with six or seven dog-eared books beside it. He’s almost put off by how nice it is, how lived in it feels. The itchy feeling persists, and he has to actively push down the urge to spin on his heel and run.

She stoops down in front of a cabinet in the kitchen space and retrieves a bottle of amber liquid and two glasses.

"Sit," she says, pointing sharply at the couch, "and don't think I didn't notice you ditherin' by the door."

He sits. She walks over and drops beside him, setting the bottle and the glasses on the table in front of them with a noticeable plonk. She flicks the top of the bottle open and deposits a heavy pour into both glasses before handing one to him.

He takes a tentative sip and nearly gags. "Lord, that's awful. You could strip the color off a horse with that, good God, woman."

She laughs, sharp and feral. "Good. Now drink."

He wrinkles his nose and takes a delicate sip, watching out of the corner of his eye as she drains the glass in one go, slamming the glass back down with a sigh.

"So," she says.

"So."

She wipes the corner of her mouth with her sleeve. "You don’t have a place to crash."

A part of him has a very specific direction he'd like this to go, possibly including some of the highlights from a few late night reveries he’s awoken from red-faced and trembling, but he shoves that part very far down and schools his face into something approaching neutrality. "I don't," he says tentatively.

"I happen to have a perfectly serviceable couch and a slight excess of funding that I'm inclined to spend."

He picks up his glass again, takes another sip of the sharply acrid liquid. "I'm strugglin' to see where this involves me."

Again, normally she'd snap at him, maybe throw some insults, make a few disparaging comments on the integrity of his mother, and he'd laugh them off. Call her short or something. She doesn't do any of that.

Sooyoung shifts so she's facing him directly, the weight of her stare pinning him in place. The wind whispers, wraith-like, rattling the windows, a sign of impending destruction. There's a cruel irony in it, and if he were a braver man he might even comment on it. But he isn't so he looks away and swirls the gold-ish liquid in his glass.

"You're staying here." She's blunt again, and he can feel her eyes on him. The weight of her undivided attention is near unbearable and he has to fight not to squirm. "No," she says, and she puts her hand on his thigh, "I want you to stay here, but I won't hear any arguments."

He swallows. Her nails are long, pressing slightly into his leg. He can’t seem to get his thoughts in order enough to protest.

It's never escaped his notice that Han Sooyoung is, objectively speaking, a very attractive woman. Her eyes are dark and framed by softly curling lashes, a mole on one side atop sharp cheekbones. Her mouth, while thin, is a reddish-pinkish color, like blood in water, and her teeth are white and straight. She's pretty short even with the not-insubstantial heel on her boots—a source of ire for her, but he’s always thought it was kind of nice how he could easily put his arm around her shoulder if he wanted. He never has, of course. The point is that she's beautiful enough to have no reason to be putting her hand on the leg of someone like him, and especially none inviting him to stay in her home.

But he’s selfish. It's perhaps his only consistency, the only real thing about him. Much of Kim Dokja is a construct developed in the moment, for the moment, but self-absorption is something thats stuck on all fronts. He wants her to keep her hand there, he wants her to put her head on his shoulder, thread her hand through his hair, rake her nails down his spine—he wants her beside him, he wants her around him, he wants to hear her say his name, low in her throat, shaped by red lips—

He wants her badly enough to know he shouldn't, so in what is perhaps among the only good things he's ever done he drains the rest of his drink and gets up, letting her hand slip off his leg.

"Nice to see you've developed a charitable streak, sheriff. But I really ought t'be getting back." He dusts imaginary dirt off his pants, ignoring the spot of warmth where her hand was. "Han Myungoh'll have my hide if I skip out again."

She should be furious with him. He wants her to be furious, he wants her to yank him back onto her couch and pin him down, she wants her to hold him back so he can never leave again. But she doesn't, so he opens the door and goes back down the rickety stairs and ignores the wind, the itching desire crawling up his spine, and steps back out into the storm.