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1898
Montana
John sits at the base of a tree just outside camp.
Javier's on guard duty, standing beside him, elbow leaned casually on the butt of his rifle.
John likes spending time with him like this. Casual, quiet, ain't nothing anyone could accuse of being anything but.
The new camp is cold, but the land is beautiful- early spring, things poking up green and new from frozen ground. John ain't one for optimism, but he hopes it's a symbol of some new beginnings for all of them.
He picks at the cold ground with a blunt fingernail, inspecting the little grasses and plants that are emerging from it, and when he turns his head, there's a little collection of not much more than small green twigs. Sticking up from the center of them, though, is a miniscule flower- powder blue and infinitely more small and delicate than anything he reckons he should be allowed to touch.
“Huh.” He plucks the little thing from its stem, real careful, turning it between thumb and forefinger to inspect its petals. “It's a forget-me-not.”
He turns to look up at Javier, who's raising an eyebrow back at him.
John stands from the ground, tiny flower in hand, and presses it to the lapel of Javier's jacket with a chuckle. The other man cranes and folds his neck to look down at it.
“‘Cause they stick to you.” John clarifies.
“Oh. Yeah, I know these. ‘No me olvides’.”
“What's that mean?”
“‘Don't forget me’.”
“I wasn't planning on it.”
Javier rolls his eyes.
“No, that's the translation.”
“I know.” John laughs. “‘M just saying.”
_______________
1899
Lemoyne
The two of ‘em don't speak much on their way to Braithwaite manor, the sun far too oppressive and the air far too dusty to warrant feeling sociable. Even the horses are quiet beneath them, stepping slowly and carefully over dry red clay.
Arthur's slow to catch up. Always is, always off on some errand or getting sidetracked. Javier and John are more than aware that it might be awhile before he gets around to meeting them here.
So they meander, skirt around the property just to get a feel for it. Javier can see on John's face that he's mapping escape routes in his head. A deep-seated habit.
They stop to break the horses somewhere east of the enormous property, standing in the shade together beneath the trees.
“What on earth is that?” John asks, seemingly more to himself than Javier, who nearly startles at the first words spoken in quite some time.
“What's what?”
“That.” John replies, not clarifying even a little bit, and pushes off the tree his back was against in order to walk away.
Javier's powerless to do much more than follow behind.
John don't go far, maybe fifteen feet, before he stops, right in front of a flower- a funny looking white flower, with spindly petals, growing straight out of a tree.
He reaches up, awfully gently, and touches its stem with his fingers.
“Strange lookin’. Never seen a flower like that.” He says quietly, and Javier hums in concurrence.
“Might be poisonous.” Javier supplies. “Maybe don't touch it.”
Though it might in fact be poisonous, God's honest truth is that Javier would hate to see it plucked. A beautiful flower, all alone, living what's probably an already short life out here in the inhospitable Lemoyne heat. Why kill it needlessly?
Javier's always liked flowers, liked them as decoration on the butt of his pistol and the hilts of his knives, engraved in leather and metal and wood in beautiful, organic patterns, turning deadly weapons into something less gruesome. Real flowers, though, real, living flowers, he tends to leave alone. Something about how quickly they fade leaves a sour feeling in his stomach. Everything is so fleeting.
John just huffs a laugh, but his hand does drop back down to his side.
“It ain't poisonous.” He turns to walk back to the horses, but he catches Javier's eye as he does. “It's… an orchid, maybe. But I'll leave it alone. Just for you.” A sarcastic tone, a teasing smirk, and too annoying for Javier to entertain responding to when he's this sweaty.
_______________
1903
Yukon Territory
It's decided. Ain't any gold left here for them, so it's time to go home. Not a single one of ‘em's designed for the winters up here, colder and rougher than any John's ever experienced- he'd take a Chicago winter, huddled under a threadbare blanket and praying he don't wake up dead, any day. Though maybe the memory of that has softened with time. Least in Illinois, the sun sets and rises at a normal time. They are far too Northerly for his liking.
Spring, however, is beautiful here. Bright with wildflowers and sunshine that cuts through the chill. It's wonderful to look at, but it ain't for them. Probably never was.
They've got the wagon stopped off the empty road, getting ready to settle for the night, and John's pulled from his focused attempts at getting a fire going by Jack's voice behind him.
“What're these?”
John rises to his feet and walks over to investigate, closer in distance to the kid than his mama is, and trying his best to act like some kind of a father.
Jack's nearly ten and full of questions even still, his curiosity not beaten and squeezed out of him the way it had been for John himself by that age.
“Those are lupines.” John supplies, gesturing to the tall clumps of purple-blue flowers sticking up from the grass. “Pretty, huh? Wildflowers. You've seen these before.”
“I have?” Jack asks, eyes trained on his father's hands as he reaches down to pick three cones of flowers from their stems.
“Sure. Here, take it. Get a close look. And don't eat it.” He hands Jack a thin green stem, and after looking at John like he's some kind of idiot for his last remark, the kid stares at the tiny petals that make up the whole of the plant. He wanders around the side of the wagon to inspect it, stopping to lean against the weathered wood beside his mother.
John extends another flower to Abigail, whose rosy cheeks raise in a beautiful smile.
“Nearly as fine as you.” John says, and Abigail just laughs at him as she leans up on her tip-toes to kiss his cheek. Jack grimaces and turns his back, the little bastard.
“My, what a gentleman you are, givin’ me flowers.”
“You know me.” John gives her a peck on the lips. “Love you, darlin’.”
“I love you too, but why do I feel like you've done somethin’ wrong?” Abigail laughs, her teasing tone following a smiling John as he steps away from her and around the opposite side of the wagon.
“I probably did.”
Javier's there, bent over at the waist, pounding a stake into the ground that will secure their small tent to its temporary home.
John sidles up to him and bumps their hips together.
The other man straightens up to face him, wooden mallet in hand.
His eyes go from John's face, to the lupine, and back again.
He's used to the entirely blank expression on Javier's face, and it don't phase him none. He just smiles back, extending the clutch of purple petals toward Javier.
Another glance down and back up.
“You act like you never been handed anything in your life.” John says, punctuating his sentence with a slight waggle of the flower in front of Javier's chest. “Take it.”
“I don't want it.”
John rolls his eyes.
“Take the damn thing. It's for you.”
Before Javier can argue further, John reaches forward and tucks it into the breast pocket of the other man's jacket. It sticks up, proud and purple against grey fabric. Much prettier than a pocket square, he thinks.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“I don't know. I ain't exactly the leading authority on giving people flowers. Haven't gifted many a bouquet in my time.” John snarks back.
“This isn't a bouquet.”
“I know. Shut the hell up.”
He says it sharply, but to soften the barbs of his words, he leans in for a kiss on the cheek. One hand on the other side of Javier's neck to keep him from pulling away.
As John presses his lips to the stubbled skin, he can feel how quick his heart is beating beneath the palm of his hand.
_______________
1916
West Elizabeth
John's been acting strange lately.
Not that he isn't always strange, but this week he's been particularly odd.
He's taken up woodworking. Not the sort that's necessary for maintenance around the ranch, but rather hobby woodworking. And he's being bizarrely cagey about it.
Hiding away in the shed behind the ranch house, he's building something that he's forbidden Javier from seeing. Says it's a secret. Says he wouldn't be interested in it anyhow. Tells him he ain't allowed in the shed ‘til he's done, as if this isn't just as much his home as it is John's. Sometimes he needs things from the shed. Often, in fact.
But he listens, begrudgingly, avoids the shed and lets John toil away at his little project for a few days. Whatever, ain't for him anyway. Whatever wooden monstrosities John wants to create are none of his business.
He does wonder about it though. Even now, coming back toward the ranch from a supply run, the horses thankfully pulling the wagon in a straight line toward home because Javier's busy trying to come up with what John could possibly be crafting in there.
Lawn ornaments?
A decorative plaque for the front door?
Who knows.
He's got plenty of time to ponder over it, seeing as he had to trek all the way up to Strawberry this time to pick up some things apparently unavailable anywhere closer. Nope, Abigail wants this particular brand of canned peaches. Says they taste better than the ones they sell in Blackwater. Sorry, John's busy, can't get ‘em. It's his turn, she says.
Fine.
At least the weather's nice, temperate, and it's even still light out as he rolls up to the front of the house to unload.
Both John and Abigail help bring things in. She thanks Javier for the peaches with a smile. And just as the sun starts setting, he walks back toward his cabin.
He almost doesn't notice anything different at first, approaching it as he always does, only half paying attention. In fact, he's nearly through the front door before he stops at the smell of fresh dirt, takes a step back, and actually looks.
Beneath the two little square windows on the front of his cabin are planter boxes. Small, unassuming, wooden rectangles full of dirt and nothing else. Almost look like they've always been there, if not for the planks that make them up looking newer than the rest of the cabin.
Javier looks at them intently, brow furrowed. They're mostly plain, but for a slightly shaky-looking decorative line carved a few inches below the top lip, encircling the box.
Planter boxes. Planter boxes?
Footsteps from behind interrupt his pondering, and when he turns, he's faced with an oddly sheepish smile on John's face as he approaches.
“You like ‘em?” He asks.
“...Sure? Why are they there?”
John shrugs.
“Thought you might like to plant some flowers in ‘em. I didn't want to choose any for you since you're picky. And I don't know nothing about flowers. Well, about decorative ones at least. I know some flowers. But you like flowers a lot, so I figured I'd give you these so you can always have some. Sorta like a permanent gift, since your birthday's coming up and all, and I've never been any use at gift giving. They're what I've been building. I know they're a little ugly, but I tried. I'm a little ugly and you seem to like me alright.”
Javier stares at the planter boxes as John rambles, trying his best to explain himself and getting caught up using too many words to do it like he sometimes does. He's listening.
Javier's picky, that's true. And John apparently thinks he doesn't know nothing about flowers, but Javier's listened with awe, for years, as he names all different sorts of them in all different sorts of areas they've traveled through. Things he picked up from Hosea all them years ago, maybe. Plant knowledge. He's good at identifying them.
What really sticks in his mind from John's too-long explanation, though, is that he says Javier likes flowers. It's true, he does. But it's not something he really ever talks about. He doesn't think he's ever said those words to John at all, in fact.
John, who's staring at the side of Javier's face, waiting with an impatient anxiety for him to say anything at all.
“I like flowers?” Is the first, and stupidest possible, thing that comes out of Javier's mouth. He's not so much questioning his own likes and dislikes, but rather the fact that John notices the little ones in any significant way at all.
“Sure. You've always liked flowers.” He answers, real easy. Real obvious.
“I didn't think you noticed.”
John just shrugs.
“I notice lots of things.”
Why does Javier feel like crying? A birthday gift of flowers. He's never gotten anything like that. Sure, the flowers aren't there yet, but they will be. And John thought it out and planned it, just for him. Built him planter boxes for his windows, so he could always have flowers.
He finally looks back at John. Reaches out and grasps his hand gently, his roughened right to John's calloused left, and gives it a soft squeeze. John just smiles at him.
Even after all these years, real affection don't always come easy, especially in the form of words. He tries, though.
“Thank you.” Is the best he can offer without choking up. Sincere and simple, just like the two of them.