rodeo.

Calden White

They've seen each other quite a bit the last two weeks. The National Western Stock Show has brought Calden down from the far northern reaches of the state. He has a hotel room near the show grounds, but he's spent more than one night at Avery's penthouse. Arriving sometime after dark, more often than not unshaven and smelling of stock; taking his boots off at the door and knocking the heels together to shake dirt off the toes.

Wrapping his arm around her waist. Kissing her, smiling, sometimes shuffling with her step by step until her back was to a wall, or he was near a surface. At least once stripping down right there in the entryway, laughing, lifting her up, that laughter shedding into gasps and moans.

More often though: those kisses tapering off, her hands pushing him playfully away. Go shower. And so he did, running up the stairs two or three at a time, washing dust and dirt and animal-stink out of his hair, off his skin. Shaving with that kit she stashes away for him, changing into clean clothes. Coming back downstairs,

sharing dinner and wine,

talking animatedly about steers and lineages and hybrids until he notices her attention wandering; until he laughs, apologizing, and rises from the table to take her upstairs,

and to bed.

--

The last two days of the Stock Show, now. Saturday. The business of the show all concluded, sales finalized, cattle shown and ranked and prized. Rodeos, now. Magic shows. Families, tourists, curious neighbors. Calden mentioned it to Avery the night before: we should go to the rodeo.

And so:

and so, 7:35pm, he's waiting in the parking lot with her. Stetson and boots and vest and sherpa-lined coat; collar up against the wind, standing under a streetlight where she can see him. He breaks into a smile when he spots her. She's hard to miss.

Avery Chase

And before these past two weeks, they have not seen enough of each other. They already had a semi-long-distance relationship, and sometimes between their respective responsibilities, they might go two weeks at a time or more with anything more than phone calls and Skype. So when Calden told Avery that he would be in town, essentially nonstop, for a whole fortnight, she was so excited that she trembled slightly, sounding rather overcome with pleasure that all but brought tears to her eyes.

She does adore him. And he is so very, very dear to her.

--

A part of Avery wants to tell Calden not to reserve the hotel room near the grounds. Tell him no, he'll stay with her, don't be silly. Another part of her, just as loving, is grateful to him for keeping it. Most of the hotels anywhere near the grounds are sold out, and have been for some time for this event. And she knows there may be nights when she can't bear it: the closeness, the company. There may be nights when he has beers with colleagues and new friends and needs to stay somewhere within a safe distance, too.

But all the same, most nights he makes his way back to her. He smells like the grounds, the stockyards, the events, the beasts he is selling, showing, buying. She has come to the stock show a couple of times, once to wander around with her father and brother, taking in the sights as though it were a fair, which in some ways it is, watching shows and buying souvenirs. She went to dinner one of those evenings with Calden and some of those colleagues, people in the industry, before retiring to his hotel with him to,

well,

strip each other of denim and flannel and make love in the shower, kissing under the streaming water. Her arms looped around his neck, resting on those broad shoulders. Her legs wrapped around his waist, thighs against his lean hips. Her breasts against his chest. His hands beneath her ass. Their mouths tasting each other, slowly.

--

But he is busy at the stock show; he's not there as a tourist. And she is busy, too, with patrols and the killing of creatures large and small. They see each other more in the evenings, Calden coming over to her penthouse and wrapping her up his arms. He smells ridiculous, she tells him once, when he has her almost bent over backwards against the table in the breakfast nook, shedding his shirt while she unbuckles his belt and lifts her hips so he can work her panties off her legs. They laugh. He gasps when she touches him; she moans softly when he presses into her, slowly, needfully.

Yes, sometimes he has to shower first. But not really because Avery bats at him, shoves him away. She seems to miss him so badly, even though they're seeing each other so much right now. She didn't mind the way he smelled the night they met, when he'd just finished butchering an elk. She didn't mind him at all. Sometimes he can't stand his own stink, or it's freezing outside and he wants to warm up, and sometimes she teases him and sometimes she's not there yet but she's on her way,

and oh yes. We forgot to mention:

the first night he was down in Denver for the show, Avery gave him a key to her penthouse. Quietly, with somewhat aching tenderness and perhaps even a touch of insecurity, fear of rejection, fear of it being Too Big Of A Deal somehow, she said she thought it might make things easier while he's in town. Hoping that without coming right out and saying it, he would understand if one or two of these nights, she needs him to not use that key.

They haven't had a night like that.

She has discovered that she feels thrilled, excited to the point of her heart pounding in her chest, to come back to the penthouse and see his boots by the door, hear him showering upstairs. She has greeted him by laying herself out on her bed in her undergarments, waiting for him to come out with a towel around his waist.

--

They go out to a late movie one night rather than staying in. They read in her library, Avery curled up with her feet on the cushions and her shoulderblades against his side and his arm around her, until they're too sleepy to do anything but go upstairs and crawl into bed together. They make dinner together. A couple of nights, she cannot meet him. She has to stay at Cold Crescent, or has an event to go to with her father or on her father's behalf.

All the same, though, it is a wonderful, wonderful two weeks. She can't quite think of a time she has felt more blissful than when she does things like doze off against his shoulder while sitting on the couch, listening to him blather about steers. Or when she has felt more ecstasy, than when he is making himself late for a morning auction because it was dawn, and she was beautiful and golden and tangled up with him in the sheets and they just... couldn't resist.

Let's be honest: that happened more than once.

--

Tonight they are going on A Date, though. He's coming to her penthouse not to end his day there with her, but to pick her up and take her back to the stock show grounds. She is dressed for a date, in fact. But a rodeo date.

Her skirt is just above ankle-length and drapes straight, but clearly would spin out into wide twirl. It is cream-colored and delicately detailed, finer than you would guess if you didn't know her. Her top has a deep v-neck and capped sleeves, though he can't see them right now; the chocolate-colored fabric wraps around her torso; where it meets her skirt is hidden by a wide belt of leather and turquoise. Her necklace is turquoise as well, a strand of them that begin to layer down her breastbone, plunging toward her décolletage. Her earrings are droplets of smooth red jasper; the thick cuff bracelet she wears holds both turquoise and jasper. Her boots are deep brown, the detailing a pale, ghostly blue, seen just enough beneath her skirt's hem. She wears a denim shirt over her top, loose and open, tied at her waist. Her hat and her bag are both distressed brown leather, her lipstick is an unapologetic red, and her hair is in two braids, tied with lace ribbons that look like they might have very well been cut from her dress.

For the effect, she has left her own sherpa coat over her arm. Coming out to him, she pauses to give a twirl, her skirt spinning out, showing her boots in full, the bare skin of her legs. She's beaming at him, letting the skirt waft and fall back into place as she closes the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his neck, tipping her head back so the brim of her hat doesn't poke him in the face. She is grinning. Oh, that smile.

"Do I look all right, darling? Tell me I look wonderful."

Calden White

It meant something when she gave him that key. Just as it meant something when he gave her a key, even though he gave it to her almost casually, as though it was no big deal. That's just how he is, though. That's how he's offered her everything -- meat off the bone, a fire in the hearth, the hospitality of his home, the warmth of his body and his heart -- without fanfare or reservation or, really, fear of abuse or rejection.

It is a little different, the way she gives him her key. There is a touch of insecurity there. There is fear of rejection, and there is fear that it is too big a deal. Too big a step. That it might mean too much, or more: that he might not be ready for what it means. There is fear, but oh, she is Avery, and she is brave, and so:

the key is given, and the key is accepted gladly and wholeheartedly, and neither of them speak of it overmuch but that night, that very first night of that fortnight, he shared her bed and held her so close; held her as though her heart were a fragile thing, once-broken and only recently mended, precious and worthy of protection.

--

And it's true. Her heart is precious to him, and worthy of protection. The two weeks he spends with her are blissful, and ecstatic, and wonderful. He loves coming out of her shower to find her waiting for him. He loves unlocking her door as though he has some right to her home to find her already there. He loves, almost as much, getting there first -- having the freedom and the quiet to explore her library or toss a simple dinner together while his phone chimes with her texts,

be there in 30almost there!i'm downstairs and coming up

and then the sound of her key in that lock.

Two weeks. Longer than they've ever spent together, insofar as they've spent the two weeks together. The truth is she probably couldn't have borne it if he truly was with her day and night, hour after hour, minute after minute. The truth is she needs those excursions on Sept business, and she needs him to work. But god, it's been a sweet thing, to go to bed every night knowing he'll see her again the next day. It's been a sweet thing, her golden head on his shoulder as he blathers about cattle; her golden body tangled in the sheets with him as he wakes.

--

It's the second-to-last day now. He'll stay the night tonight, and perhaps tomorrow -- but then it's back to the north, back to the ranch. He realizes, waiting at the sidewalk for his lady to reveal herself, that he's going to miss her. He's going to miss this. He realizes -- blind thing that he is, only in retrospect -- how precious these two weeks have been.

So: she appears. He sees her through the glass doors, and they are already smiling at each other. They are already beaming, and her smile is so infectious; it shines, it lights up the night. He almost expects showers of sunbeams to cascade around her as she bursts through those doors, twirls on the snow-wet sidewalk. It's been an unseasonably warm weekend, though rainy: it gives her excuse to bare her legs, to wear a skirt light enough to spin out like that.

Then she's there, and he's there, and she's looping her arms around his neck. He's wrapping his much larger arms around her waist, and they are both wearing cowboy hats and leather belts and denim and boots, and since she's been so kind to tilt her head back, he is so chivalrous as to remove his hat

so as to lean down and kiss her softly, tenderly, slowly on the mouth.

That serves as her answer for some time. Only when he draws away does he smile at her. "You look like sunshine and summertime," he says, and oh, he is a son of Stag, isn't he? "You look absolutely radiant, and I am cataclysmically in love with you."

Avery Chase

Avery pointedly, deeply does not want to think about Calden going back up north, not seeing him for another two weeks or longer if she can't spare the time to go up to visit him, if he can't spare the time, if the weather isn't amenable to the long travel. She is, in fact, refusing to think about it at all, cowardly though that may be.

She kisses him, rather gleefully, her lipstick fine enough that it doesn't dare leave so much as a smudge on Calden's mouth. Even though they kiss long and sweet, standing there on her sidewalk in their Western wear. She melts into that kiss. Oh, he's lovely, she thinks, sighing softly as their mouths part, the way one might after a long cool drink on a long hot day.

Her eyes open, revealing their bright, summer-sky clarity that is all the more rich up close.

His answer makes her smile again, a slow spreading grin that pinks her cheeks. She gives her nose the tiniest wrinkle of delight to hear him call her radiant, to hear him describe his love as cataclysmic.

"Cataclysmically," she repeats to him, laughingly, kissing him once more, quickly, before she begins to slide away, to put her coat on over her pretty rodeo outfit, because even though she knows the luxury of his truck, she loves this coat. It's the same one she keeps up at his ranch, the one he bought for her or the one she bought for herself, she doesn't really recall, the one she wears out when she 'goes to work' with him. It is warm and smells of familiar things, beloved things, and she wants to walk into the stock show coliseum beside him wearing it.

She comes back to him, curling up against his chest briefly, her hat tipping askew a bit because of the way she snuggles up to him. "Oh my darling, my love," she murmurs, with utter sincerity of affection, smiling to herself. "Let's go eat every deep-fried thing we can find."

Calden White

It doesn't seem to matter that they've seen each other almost every day for a fortnight. Calden's heart is still beating fast to kiss Avery like this. To hold her like this, her hat askew, her arms wrapped tight around his chest. My darling, my love, she calls him, and he wonders if she can feel his pulse skipping its proverbial beat. His arms wrap just as tight around her shoulders. He kisses her golden hair,

or tries, but mostly kisses the top of her hat instead,

and then he's laughing anyway, open and unrestrained, throwing back his head. "Careful, Miss Chase," he admonishes, gently untangling and leading her to his truck where, of course, he hands her up into the passenger's seat, "they've deep-fried everything there. Pickles, Snickers bars, pizza, Oreos -- and some of them are not for the uninitiated."

He shuts the door for her, then. Times himself to duck into his side of the cab during a lull in the traffic, swinging himself up with a tug on what is most colloquially termed the oh-shit bar. As he thumps his door shut, he reaches across the center divide again, as though even those few seconds apart have made him miss her. He smiles at her a moment, mute, saying nothing and needing to say nothing.

Then he turns the key in the ignition. And they are off to the fairgrounds.

Avery Chase

Avery's eyes actually widen a bit. "Why would you --"

deep-frying a pickle she can actually understand. Candy bars, pizza, and Oreos she cannot. But she will discover that they can deep fry cakes, even cheesecakes. You can deep-fry Kool-Aid. And once she gets over that shock, she may indeed try all of it. Buy every paper cone and basket and plate she can, putting away more food than anyone in the vicinity will believe she can manage.

These people have no idea how much simple caloric energy it takes to shift from one form to another. How the only reason her body and spirit can manage it at all is her furious, ever-burning rage. So yes: she will try deep-fried everything, because the stock show comes but once a year, and though it is coming to a close, she is riding the high of having her darling, her love, her lover in her company, in her arms, in her bed for a whole two weeks. She will say that deep-frying any food that has already been deep-fried in its original cooking is the pinnacle achievement of the culinary genre, and she will do so with a beaming smile, holding some sort of food on some sort of stick and posing for a photograph that Calden wants to take of her, braids and hat and all.

That will be then. Right now, she is settling herself in the passenger seat of his truck, slipping into her seatbelt because it's the law more than because it is a necessity, and grinning at him when he reaches over to her. Her hand, paler and softer and more manicured than his, slides over the backs of his knuckles. It squeezes. She draws his hand up to her mouth, kissing his fingertips, and releases him so he can drive.

Calden White

It's a short drive to the stock show -- ten minutes on local streets, the last half of that drive along the Platte River, on whose banks the showgrounds are located. Traffic does get thicker as they go along, though, until the sidewalks are crowded with families in western gear, some more Halloweenish than others.

They don't park in the huge free lots, most of them crammed with cars except at the farthest fringes. They park in the members' lot, a stone's throw from the coliseum, Calden holding a badge up to his window as they pass the tollbooth. Because of course he's a member. Then he's pulling into a space and shutting the engine off, and she's opening her door, and he's getting out. He takes her hand as her feet touch the ground, fitting his hat to his head with the free hand. He smiles at her. Because of course he does.

They stroll riverward along 47th Avenue. Any other time of year and this complex would be drab and unexciting: a collection of industrial warehouse-like buildings by a freeway. Right now, though, banners line the streets; a steady flow of foot traffic streams toward the Stock Show. When the wind blows out of the northwest, the rich, earthy stink of several hundred head of cattle is unmistakable on the air.

His hand still holding hers, Calden points some of the buildings out. There on their left, housed in a long green-and-white corrugated-steel and concrete building is the main events center. The glass doors toward the west end of the building are plastered with a series of lifesized photos of some rodeo star or other. A paddock and a horse barn are attached. There was a draft horse expo earlier, he tells her, and if she's interested maybe they can go by the stables later to see if any of the show horses are still around. Behind the horse barn are the stockyards where Calden spent much of the past two weeks showing, trading, selling, buying.

"I picked up a new bull," he mentions, adding, "No one killed the last one, but he died of old age before the winter and my herd was down one for a while."

They come to a gate. CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC, blares a sign. Another: EXHIBITORS ONLY. It's with no small amount of pride, and perhaps just a touch of shyness, that Calden again badges them in.

Past that gate, they take a left on Humboldt. Another enormous, drab building there, this one in an unexciting shade of tan -- but rather interestingly and hilariously decorated with various, somewhat mismatched bronze reliefs of sheepherds and shepherds, as well as black silhouettes of the same. That's the expo hall, Calden explains.

And beyond it: a large white tent, from which all manner of foodlike scents drift. They make a stop there; they load up on deep-fried everythings and corndogs and cotton candy; end up having to ask for a large plastic bag to contain the thoroughly unhealthy cornucopia they've accrued.

It's just a short trip through an underpass, then, before they reach the grandly named Denver Coliseum. It, like all the rest of the National Western Complex, is an unassuming building. Perhaps once upon a time it was some sort of hangar. It has the characteristic inverted half-pipe shape. Tonight, though, the crowds, the posters, the megawatt-amplified southern rock very nearly thumping the roof off the structure have transformed it into something altogether different: a coliseum, an events arena, a rodeo show.

Calden hands their admission to a boy in a fancily embroidered shirt and fringed chaps. Their ticket stubs are handed back and they're waved in, Molly Hatchet and Lynyrd Skynyrd becoming downright deafening as they emerge into the enclosed spaces and the hot floodlights. Hawkers up and down the aisles selling overpriced sodas and junk food; people shouting conversation at each other. A trio of grinning blond kids dashes by, prompting a last-minute sidestep by Calden, only to be caught by an irate mother. Do that again and we're turning around and going home! she threatens, and clearly she's a woman of her word because the tykes chorus their sorries and settle down.

His hand firm on hers -- as though he really thought she might get lost in the crowd otherwise, or as though he just loves holding her hand -- Calden grins over his shoulder at Avery. "We're this way," he calls, and they have to weave single-file through the thick of it, past families and young couples and solitary, grizzled old cowboys standing together muttering about when rodeos weren't such a damn rodeo,

all the way to their ringside seats, front and center.

"It's too bad Ian got eliminated yesterday," Calden leans over to all but yell in Avery's ear, "or he would've been wrestling steers tonight."

Avery Chase

Avery has been here a few times since the stock show began, but Calden so enjoys pointing things out to her that she smiles, holding his hand as they walk from the member lot to the complex of buildings.

There is noise enough to disguise a slight growl from her at the smell of all that meat, all that prey, all gathered together. It's a heady scent for her, inspirational and alluring and repulsive and frightening in many ways. There is a thrilling, thrilled part of her that wants to let loose. Rip through the clothing, the lace, the denim, the leather, dive into the herds, slaughter with fang and claw, feast, sup herself drunk on hot, fresh blood.

Avery licks her lips. And her mouth waters. She sighs, and smiles, and calls on a gift that will tell all these pretty domesticated creatures that she is not to be feared. Horse, goat, bovine, dog -- they can believe she is safe. She is not going to eat them.

--

"Your poor herd," Avery says mildly, "all those poor girls not getting their needs met in a timely fashion."

She grins at him to the side, her fingers interlaced with his as they walk through all these checkpoints JUST FOR EXHIBITORS. MEMBERS ONLY. Her fingers stroke his fingers. She never tries to unlodge their hands, but not because she thinks she'll get lost. Simply because, well: she adores him. She adores his rough, warm hands and walking at his side.

--

Later still, they walk into a noisy, crowded, boisterous 'coliseum'. Avery is gleeful, trotting after him. This is what western women were doing when they shortened the hemlines of their skirts: nothing to hoist up as she walks, nothing to lift out of the muck. She is eating a fried cheesecake on a stick that is also a bit messy with fudge topping. The onslaught of sugar and fat that Avery is feeding herself tonight has certainly taken the edge off of the lust for meat, though there is plenty of meat-on-a-stick that she's been chewing on, as well.

They find their seats, and she plops into one, kicking up her booted feet a bit. "Ian's your... cousin, yes?" she confirms. "Oh, I'm sure he did his best. Next year he'll surely get to the finals."

Calden White

Calden smiles, wry and a little lopsided, at her booted feet propping up on the railing in front of them. They are quite literally right by the action: outside that railing and a mere yard or so down was the soft, impact-cushioning dirt that lines the floor of the coliseum. He reaches over, quite unable to keep his hands off her, rubs his hand down her shin and gives her leather-clad ankle a playful squeeze.

"He is," he confirms. "The one that favors white hats. And he did do his best. He did really well, actually. Whether or not he makes it to the finals next year, I think he's done his part-time dream justice. And," Calden adds with a sidelong smirk, "he's also got accrued enough snapshots of himself as a rodeo cowboy to brag about for years. So I think he's pretty happy with the way it turned out."

He leans down, then. The plastic bag rustles: he digs out a can of coke and a deep-fried something-insane, crunching into it as the lights overhead flare and dim -- flare and dim -- flare a third time, and go dark.

The anticipation in the stadium reaches fever pitch. Air horns blast. Kids are screaming in delight. The music overhead cuts out and the announcer booms: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! Next to Avery, Calden leans back in his seat, kicking his heels up himself, reaching over to take her hand in his. Again.

Also: he offers her a deep-fried apple.

Avery Chase

"Eeee!"

She actually says it. When the lights are signalling the imminent insanity. She pops her feet down from the railing and stamps them on the floor along with everyone else. She claps. She hollers. She has a grand time, all told, excitedly watching each new rider, each new wrestler, laughing and shrieking and applauding and yelling, stomping sometimes. She does not want a deep-fried apple, though, that was one of the things she tried that did not do it for her.

More cakes, cookies, and so forth dipped in batter and deep-fried do make it into her mouth. She licks strawberry pop-tart filling off her lip. At one point she vanishes, comes back with a funnel cake dusted in powdered sugar, drizzled with butterscotch, sprinkled with bits of bacon and adorned by a ring of chocolate-covered strawberries.

Avery basically eats the entire night, one thing or another, until it's near the end and she is full and she is drowsing against Calden's side, saying a moderate

"Whooo," her voice like an evening wind, her smile lazy. She smells like pastries.

Calden White

The rodeo is a peculiar sport: relatively long lulls during which each new contestant is introduced in great detail followed by bursts of intermittent, barely-controlled chaos. There's a good amount of violence in it -- or perhaps the better term is simply kinetic energy. Hooves flying, clods of dirt churned up, dust billowing, horses whinnying, cattle lowing, riders shouting. Thunderous applause and roaring cheers, stomping feet, an ovation that nearly shakes the roof apart when a favorite turns in a good performance; a groan that echoes around the entire stadium when a beloved star falls early.

If this is Avery's first rodeo, the events must seem downright ridiculous at times. There are the staples that everyone expects to see, of course: the bucking broncos, the bullriders, the steer wrestling, the roping. Then there are the more bewildering, and ofttimes hilarious events: barrel racing, which appears to the bastard offspring of dirt biking and the Kentucky Derby. Mutton bustin', which seems to be the junior version of bullriding, only with sheep. And something billed as freestyle bullfighting,

which turns out not to involve blood or death or even much fighting at all, but plenty of acrobatics and leaps and dodges and --

barrels. Big, brightly painted, absurd barrels.

Calden explains, of course, as they go through the events. He lays out the rules -- the hand that must be in the air, the number of seconds a rider has to stay atop, the number of barrels that must be rounded, points on or points off for subtleties of form. He explains the 'bullfighting', too, and its origins in rodeo clowning rather than Roman gladiatorial events. He points out how in some way, shape or form, every one of the rodeo events -- no matter how flashy, absurd or dangerous -- derives from some practical aspect of ranch work, past or present.

--

An hour and a half into the show, the competition's over for the night. The finals are tomorrow, but most the crowd gathered are actually here for entertainment. And so the glaring white lights of the arena dim. Colorful spotlights come on. Music -- an original soundtrack of fiddles and steel guitars and harmonicas and banjos and drums -- blares through the arena as the announcer introduces THE WESTERNAIRES!

Kids bored by the stop-and-go action of competitive rodeoing wake up. The lines at the bathrooms drop off. Applause follows the performers through precision mounted drills and equestrian acrobatics; Old West reenactments and dressage exhibitions; horseback derring-do and general flashiness.

There's a quiet moment near the end. A breathtakingly graceful routine with a single acrobat on two white horses, chased by a spotlight across an otherwise darkened arena.

This is when Avery leans against Calden's side. This is when his arm weighs heaviest and warmest around her, his lips brushing the top of her head as their eyes follow the show.

--

The show culminates, naturally, in an ultra-patriotic ride around the roaring stadium -- the riders outfitted in starred shirts and striped pants, flags all-flutter, a rock arrangement of America the Beautiful blasting from the loudspeakers. By the time the showriders thunder out of the coliseum, the stands are all-aflutter too with tiny flags and pennants.

Calden applauds. He stomps his feet, he cheers, he whistles with his sugardusted fingers in his mouth.

Avery Chase

Sometimes, she shushes him. When his explanations interfere with the spectacle, perhaps, but for the most part, she listens while she watches, her ears attuned to him while her eyes stay fixed on the arena. It makes her blood rush at points; sometimes she laughs to dispel that tension. She picks up on the energy, the violence and near-violence and pageantry of it, and it is to her,

vulgarly,

a bit like a peep show is. It arouses that side of her that thirsts for blood and carnage, that is made to destroy, the part of her that would most easily drag her to the Wyrm if not for the blessings of Gaia, Luna, and Falcon. I teases her. So she laughs, the way people might laugh when they are trying not to acknowledge sexual tension. Sometimes her laughter is inappropriate. Sometimes her shushing of Calden is a bit sharp as her eyes narrow on a longhorn, watch a sharpened hoof dive hard into the dirt. She is relieved when there are no broken necks, no gored riders, nothing so extreme. She is relieved and she is also, in a thin sliver of her self, disappointed and frustrated.

Later on she leans back against him, holds his hand, and tucks herself under his arm. The cadence of his voice settles her somewhat. Brings her to the here and now, to this body, to this name, these relationships that are not masquerades but are only facets. She smiles when the Westernaires come out. They are just lovely, really. Acrobats who are not pretending at hard ranch work or hinting at bloody combat. The woman flipping between the backs of two horses who run apace of each other, as though as one, and she is one with them. They do not falter. There is something there, which she recalls from the history-lost version of this city, of the symbosis of horses and humankind.

Still she gasps, just like the children do.

--

Avery cheers right along with him, beaming, until some of the dust has settled and the lights have come on and an announcer is telling them when the finals will be and who is in them and don't-forget-tos and so forth.

She loops her arms around his waist and hugs him, tucking her head to his chest.

"What," she says firmly, "a spectacle."

Calden White

They sat so close to the action that sometimes a rider thundering by was level with them, eye-to-eye with them: close enough that they could see the sweat, the dirt, the fierce concentration and the grimaces of effort otherwise all-but-lost beneath the glitter and the showbiz smiles. Now, as the lights come on, as the crowd begins to make their slow way toward the exits, they at least have the decency to rest their feet on the ground so that their neighbors can shuffle out. Neither of them budge yet, though.

She hugs him around the waist. He puts his arm around her shoulders and hugs her back, reminded loosely of the night he took her to a blues club, ordered her the wrong drink. Put your arm around my shoulders, she'd said, so direct and bold and affectionate. He always did love that about her.

"I haven't been to a rodeo in a long time," he confesses. "Most years I just come to the stock show for business."

Avery Chase

"Yes," she says, affecting a childish version of an old man's voice, her brow deeply furrowed and her hands thumping gently on her chest. "All business. Buy that bull, sell a cow or twenty." She pretends gruffness, roughness, very poorly.

Then grins, her own voice returning. "Not even a funnel cake for the big rancher."

Calden White

Calden snorts; it sounds suspiciously like laughter. "Well. Maybe one funnel cake. I can't say I love those things as much as you do."

The seats around them are empty now. The exits are still clogged, though starting to move along. Calden stretches his arms out to either side, and then overhead. "Want to go?"

Avery Chase

Her eyes brighten. "Everything is so terrible for you!" she says. "It's astounding -- there's not one thing to be found here that could be called healthy fare. In Colorado, no less. But every last morsel is the most crude approximation of what one imagines decadence to be if one has never tasted decadence. Simply remarkable," she glees, this woman who said she was going to eat deep-fried everything and, as usual, was true to her word.

"Yes," Avery tells him, certain, but smiling. "Let's go."

Calden White

If one has never tasted decadence, she says, and he

leans over and kisses her.

By now she must be growing at least somewhat accustomed to his habit of doing this. Of interrupting sentences, conversations, strolls, shopping trips, restaurant meals, movies, theater performances, phone conversations with her friends back east, even -- simply to touch her elbow with his hand, or her face. Simply to kiss that laughing wide mouth of hers for second after second; for minutes on end sometimes.

When he draws away, he's smiling. "I have most certainly tasted decadence," he says, and it's such a line. One he delivers with a second, softer kiss.

Then they agree to go. And he stands, and he holds his hand out to her.

Avery Chase

It's such a line that she laughs to the point of snorting, a tiny sound in the back of her nose. "I am not decadent," she chastises him, swishing her skirt as she rises, tossing her braids back behind her shoulders. "I'm luxurious."

Avery has ignored his offered hand, playfully, sashaying toward the end of the aisle. "There is a difference, Mr. White."

Calden White

Well then: he simply catches up before the end of the aisle and wraps his arms around her waist instead, kissing her gruffly and mmph-grr-growlingly on the neck.

"And what, pray tell, O Lady Chase," he has yet to let her go, mind, "is the difference?"

Avery Chase

She bats at him, swatting his hands around her, swaying away from his rough smooching. She sways right back into him, into those encircling arms, hands covering his to keep them where they are. "If you don't know," she tells him archly, "then I don't suppose you would understand the distinction. I forgive you," she adds, the very soul of compassion, stroking his knuckles, "for you are a rough thing who cannot help his ignorance."

Avery takes his hand from her waist, does a very small turn that twirls her skirt only a little, and smiles at him when she faces him again. "Come on," she tells him. "Come home with me. I want to show you how much I've learned about ranching."

Calden White

"What an icon of generosity you are," he murmurs,

and she turns, and his hands glide over her turning waist, and then he reels her in closer again. Steps into her until his hands hold her against his body; until he's smiling down his nose at her because at this range, bending his head will knock their hats together.

"What a paragon of charity."

He can be -- he must be forgiven for bending to her again, then. Thumbing the brim of his hat up a little to allow the kiss, which by necessity is a slanting, warm thing. His mouth is aslant afterward too, smiling warm and just a touch sly.

"Oh dear," he says, mock-concerned. "I can't imagine what skills you might be driven to demonstrate."

Avery Chase

The way Calden says it, icon of generosity and paragon of charity may as well be eroticisms, vulgar words whispered in her ear to make her wet between the legs. And Avery looks up at him from under the brim of her hat, taking a breath as he holds her close to him again, smiling that smile, calling her pretty names, kissing her,

teasing her a bit, when he's done.

Avery just smirks at him. "Then you should try harder."

Calden White

This time it's just an mmph. There isn't even a growl underneath it, and he's not nomfing-biting-kissing her. He's not thumbing his hat back. He's not doing anything at all but taking his hat off, and pushing hers off, and kissing her

quite passionately

there by the ringside, surrounded by empty seats, with the brilliant stadium lighting cascading down on them.

--

Truth be told he sort of forgets himself for a moment. It takes a vaguely embarrassed 'scuse us from another rodeo-goer trapped behind them to get Calden to stop kissing Avery, and look up, and look around, and step aside. There's a faint flush to his cheeks; equal parts embarrassment and heat. Pardon me, he says, his hand taking Avery's. They stand aside as a father, a mother, a preteen boy and his just-past-toddlerhood sister go shuffling past. The little girl stares up at them openly, chocolate smudged on her cheeks, a piece of Hershey's clutched in a grubby little hand.

And Calden slips his arm around Avery's waist. He puts his hat back on. He waits for the family to pass, and then he kisses her behind the ear.

"Take me home, Miss Chase." And he laughs, low and warm, "Before I make a spectacle of us here."