Hit Me

Slice-of-life/romance short. A blackjack dealer notices a lonely young man.

1.7k, rated T. Just some quiet companionship and bonding over loneliness in the early 1800s.

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They’re a band of itinerant workers, or so they claim.

Royal doesn’t think that that’s actually true, from what he’s seen of them thus far — he doesn’t know how many their band numbers, only that they’re renting two houses on the edge of town with a shared yard, their wagons drawn up and a few additional tents set around, besides. It may well be that as they move along, they’ll take up land and build on it, but they don’t seem to have too much money between them.

They were all working out of one factory that had closed down, and in the absence of factory work further out west just yet — there’s a plant being built five miles out of town, still a month or two to go until it’s finished — some of them are working in construction, and two of the girls are working out of the other saloon in town.

One of the men isn’t a labourer, is dressed in slightly finer clothes than his gang — he’s a tall man with fat in his cheeks and a neatly groomed beard, and Royal has seen him several times in the saloon. Something about him makes Royal’s stomach do tentative flips: they both see each other for what they are on the occasions their gazes meet, and he speaks well, eloquent and measured, always tips Royal when he’s the one dealing.

He is inclined to other men, that’s for certain. He’s not blatant or obvious about it, doesn’t advertise it (or fall over himself with his lack of ability to hide it) as some men do, but there is an unspoken understanding between him and Royal and Benicio, who works as a stablehand and is inclined as they are.

His name is Pope, and Royal listens very carefully at first for the way his compatriots speak to him, interested to catch hold of what his first name might be, but he doesn’t end up catching it, because none of them call him anything else. They call him Pope or Mr Pope.

Until —

The young man is named Alexandre, and he’s very quiet, barely speaks at all. He’s beautiful to look at, Royal thinks, tall and willowy with a dancer’s physique, overly large blue eyes, freckles scattered across his nose and the upper part of his cheeks, his hair a delicate cloud of mousy curls, lacking in rich colour what they make up in texture. Royal had laid eyes on him and immediately felt the natural craving to slide his fingers through his hair, and he’s seen some of the serving girls watch him as he moves past them, seen their fingers twitch at their sides.

Mr Pope comes into the saloon once or twice a week, not every day as some of the other workers do, and over the past two months as they’ve regularly filtered in and out, he’s only seen Alexandre once.

He’d come in glued to Mr Pope’s side, and Mr Pope, being of average height, was actually nearly a head shorter than him. He’d rather resembled a man leading a nervous horse, keeping his arm around the younger man’s shoulder and keeping him close. Alexandre’s eyes were downcast as the two of them spoke to others around the saloon, but when the two of them had finally come over to the blackjack table, his eyes had gone from dull and distant to focused, attentive.

He’d studied the cards on the table with interest and curiosity, his blank expression turning to a small smile as Royal had said, “Are you buying in?” to Pope.

“Here,” Pope had said, putting the money into Alexandre’s hand, and Alexandre’s smile had widened slightly, the small smile of a young man unaccustomed to paying his own way, pleased to engage in the fantasy when someone was giving him the opportunity.

He had barely spoken at all in the course of the game, only tapping on the table or waving his hand on each deal of the cards, or nodding or shaking his head when he was offered an insurance bet.

He wasn’t so expert as to garner Royal’s suspicion, but he was a good gambler, and when he cashed himself out, he put more money back in his master’s hands than he’d been given, a return of some 150%.

“Well done, Alexandre,” said Pope when the younger man returned to his side.

“Merci, Ethan,” said the young man, his lips still quirked into a smile that seemed more private now. He appeared younger at first glance, Royal thought, than he actually was: his voice was rich and unexpectedly resonant, coming from within such a narrow chest, and he had a thick French Louisiana accent, a Cajun if ever there was one. “I like to play, as you know.”

He glanced back to the table then, making eye contact with Royal, and Royal looked back at him, offered him the polite smile he gave everyone in the saloon. Alexandre returned it, but when he went back to Pope’s side, led around the place, the smile slowly faded from his face, the faraway look coming back into his eyes.

That had been some weeks ago, now, the evening when Alexandre had come in, and Royal hadn’t seen him since, although naturally, he’d seen Pope. It was telling enough that he had been on the older man’s arm the whole evening, that he’d been held so close, even were it not for the fact that he’s so obviously inclined to men, but —

He had overheard two of the women from their crew talking about it and giggling together; they’d been sat on the bench outside of the cobbler’s as he’d walked by, and he’d only heard a snatch of their conversation: “… up in the attic bedroom at night, and I could hear his voice muffled into the pillow, saying please.”

“He never says please and thank you any other time,” the other woman had said. “At least he says it between the sheets, even if it is with Pope!”

Their voices were quiet, but the laughter was loud, and Royal took it to mean that it was an open secret between the whole of their little band, that they knew what their leader was, and what his Frenchman was to him.

Royal is walking out of town early in the morning when he sees Alexandre on the path, a bait box dangling from his fingers at his side, a rod slung against his shoulder.

“Good morning,” says Royal, because the other man doesn’t see him at first, his eyes focused on the dirt path, but when his eyes do flit up to land on Royal’s face, a little of the gloom goes away from his expression.

“Good morning,” he says quietly. “Your name is Samuel, yes?”

“No one calls me that,” says Royal, waving his hand. “It’s Royal.”

“Royal,” repeats Alexandre, his lips twitching. “What sort of name is that?”

“I dealt poker before I dealt blackjack,” said Royal, and Alexandre nods his head. “I never see you in town. Do you go fishing often?”

“Regularly,” says Alexandre. “It’s cheap, and there is little work around here.”

“Oh,” says Royal. “What work are you looking for?”

Alexandre smiles at him. It’s quite a beautiful smile, his lips smooth and softly pink, and when he smiles his eyes crinkle, making the freckles on his cheeks shift just slightly, the way that the stars change from one night to the next.

“My line of work is best suited to the large city, Royal,” he says. “In dark alleyways, shadowed corners, backrooms.”

Royal looks over his shoulder automatically, but they’re quite alone outside of town, no one to be seen on the paths around them. Alexandre laughs at him.

“I, uh — ” Royal clears his throat. “I had some suspicion. The way he holds you, Mr Pope.”

“Mr Pope paid my debts some time ago,” says Alexandre. “I was financially obliged to a brothel owner, and having found some affection for me, he paid my way, freed me from those bonds.”

“Put you in some new ones?” asks Royal, and Alexandre smiles at him, thin and delicate, a gossamer strand of a smile rather than a full one.

“Mm,” he agrees. “Something like it. Where are you going so early in the morning?”

“Gathering mushrooms,” says Royal. “There’s a crop of chanterelles toward the top of the hill.”

“Fish with me a while first?”

There’s something vulnerable, sweet, in the way he poses the question, a gentle invitation — there’s a desperate loneliness in Alexandre’s big, blue eyes, in the delicate part of his lips. Royal feels a flip in his belly, feels his heart give a sort of skip.

“I’m something of a joke among my chosen family,” says Alexandre. “And Mr Pope would never permit me to socialise in town without his supervision — he is not a jealous man by nature, but I garner much attention, when left to my own devices. It’s part of what led me to the work I used to do. To lay my cards on the table, Royal, I really am rather lonely.”

The vulnerability of the moment takes him by surprise, but then, Royal doesn’t know that he should be — it’s not as if he regularly associates with whores, but the ones with which he has, they’ve always known when and where to be vulnerable, and how to be.

It’s strategic, and it’s a strategy that works.

“I get lonely around here too, sometimes,” says Royal, and gestures with one hand, his palm open, for Alexandre to lead the way. “You don’t talk much, do you?” he asks after they walk twenty or thirty paces.

“I don’t,” Alexandre admits, and smiles at him sideways. “You’ll just have to fill the silence.” They walk a dozen paces more, and then Alexandre reaches across, taps Royal twice on the shoulder with his fishing rod. “Come,” he says. “Hit me.”

Royal laughs, and then starts talking.