#mark callan

blushing, giggling, kicking my feet.

salivating, biting my fist, clenching.

NOTES : one by one, men with the same face start appearing in your apartment.

an fbi agent, a vigilante, a district attorney, a dentist, corporal, a bartender, an army ranger, and the developer of an online dating app. they all come from different worlds, with different stories, and different rules.

you are the only consistent one; same job, same apartment, same general dispositions towards chaos and unruly grown men. you also learn to be the one to deal with it.

WARNINGS : alternate universe, no power, reverse isekai, reader-insert (no y/n,) character study, found family-ish, angst, stress, anxiety, multifandom, wilson bethel characters, 'soulmates,' psychopaths, murder, violence, stalking, age gaps, guns, knives, DDBA and FBI dex are separate characters, reverse-harem, eventual smut, eventual romance, fighting, blood, bruises, competition, morally grey characters, angst with humour, domestic bliss, identity crisis, emotional damage, forced proximity (technically,) slow burn, jealousy issues, everyone is bad at feelings.

CONFIDENTIAL MATERIAL ── 18+ ONLY.

FILES :

000 . wrong world, right address

001 . a light under the door

002 . is that wade or paddington bear?

pairing: outlaw!henryholliday x marriedfem!reader

summary: forced to seek medical aid after he nearly kills you, your abusive husband calls for the local physician - only to discover he’s out of town on urgent business. thankfully, a passerby informs him of a retired doctor passing through and hurries to take you there, but what meets him is no elderly welp as he expected, but rather a handsome young man by the name of henry. left with little alternative, he tasks the doctor with saving your life, unaware he’s just entrusted you to doc holliday: the most notorious outlaw in the west - and his worst enemy.

warnings: abuse, noncon (non-descriptive), domestic violence, gunplay, toxic marriage, smut (next part), severe depression, angst, blood, profanity, mentions of the bible and the old testament, fake/made up scriptures (they are fictitious, religious readers do not come for me)

a/n: there will be three parts to “the old west” just so y’all know. the links below will take you to the other two parts when they’ve been released. enjoy hoes!

part one | part two | part three

It’s an odd feeling, really. Loving a man who hurts you…a man whom with little remorse, repeatedly puts you in harms way. You remember watching your father hit your mother growing up, the echo of a slap bouncing off the walls at one slip of tongue. Your mother was never a woman of many words, and when she did speak on rare occasion, your father liked to remind her why. You’d watch her curl up into a ball on the kitchen floor every night, wiping at silent tears. You would pity her of course, but internally you’d scrutinise her with a judgemental eye.

Why would she marry a man who hated her? Why didn’t she run? Surely she could’ve seen the signs years ago, before they wed. How could she have let it get this far?

You never understood it.

Not until you met him. Wyatt Earp. The most revered officer in Dodge City. Hell, even the Texan gangs had heard of him. He was a hero. A righteous man who stood for justice in a lawless society of criminals.

You first met him when you were 18. He’d locked eyes on you during a ride into town and couldn’t seem to look away. The most beautiful girl in the West, or so your parents would have you think. Even the townspeople would share whispers, wondering how it was you weren’t yet married, and while the attention flattered you deeply, you quickly grew to worry at their gossip.

Most girls in town had been wed by seventeen, and here you were, nearing nineteen with no courtship commenced. You felt like a clown, parading before the masses as your father turned every call for you away.

But there was little you could do, after all….he was the Sheriff of Dodge City, and what he said - went. To him, no one was good enough for his darling jewel.

Not until he met Wyatt. He delighted in the companionship of a respectable young deputy who’d moved from Philadelphia to join his station.

An honour indeed, and it wasn’t long before he became your father’s second in command. At the time, you barely knew him. He was handsome, sure. And every girl in Kansas wanted to be his wife, that much was for certain. But you wanted to marry for love. Not obligation.

Still, your father was a proud man. He had always said Wyatt was like a son to him, and when the young officer confessed his undying love for you he was overjoyed, an excitement that overshadowed any rejection you wished to convey.

It wasn’t until after the wedding that your husband showed his true colours. The first night, your honeymoon, was the worst. Wyatt showed no gentleness when he took you. No love.

He used you for his own pleasure, then left you bleeding on his bed. It quickly became clear that you were to be the obedient wife, nothing more.

You cried for hours that night.

Now you understood your mother. Men truly were evil creatures.

His beatings became the only constant in your life, something you could not run from, something you quickly grew to accept. It often took very little to set him off, and most of the time you’d welcome a new bruise from the hardships he faced as Sheriff, though there had been….times, in which he claimed you had caused the beatings, like four months into your marriage - when you forgot to smile during a public briefing.

He didn’t like that.

But your new reality, while harsh, had its benefits. To your delight, your father passed shortly after your wedding, leaving your mother with a large fortune and newfound peace. She could spend the rest of her days free, the town widow who lived alone in an empty house on the hill. You almost envied her in a way, but you suppose she’d earnt it after years of putting up with your father.

Her nightmare had finally ended; yours had only just begun.

Your father’s death instantly promoted Wyatt to Sheriff, and with his new ascension to power came a distraction. A schedule to keep him constantly busy—thank the gods.

You tried going back to normal. Going back to your every day routine, hoping to make some semblance of familiarity in this new lonely life.

Growing up bountiful with friends, you were shocked to discover early after your marriage that the towns women couldn’t stand the sight of you. But you couldn’t blame them, after all, you had just taken the most powerful man in town, and now their daughters would be left with little choice of suitors. Still, the isolation hurt you greatly, and you found yourself wishing for a friend to confide in, not just the officer’s wives with whom you’d have brunch every Sunday, but a real friend.

Someone who wanted you for you. Someone who could tell when you were begging for comfort but too afraid to ask for it.

But no such comfort came. Days passed into weeks, and weeks into months.

And now here you are, nearly a year into your marriage, the Sheriffs dutiful wife, taking a moment for herself in the sunshine. The grass feels warm today, and you feel your fingertips trace their soft blades with intimacy.

How long had it been since you had seen the sky? Not just to see, but to appreciate?

You couldn’t remember the last time.

In the distance, you hear your husband shouting to his men. Something about calling for the town doctor and quickly, though the words are too difficult to decipher.

Their voices seem to be getting quieter as they close in. Or perhaps that’s just the ringing in your ears…you can’t be sure.

Suddenly even the sunshine fears your husband as she takes shelter behind the clouds, watching as darkness closes in all above you. A pain, burning and unmistakably real makes its acquaintance as it tears through your abdomen.

Wyatt crouches over you, his mouth moving desperately as he shouts for your attention, though the incoherent words dissipate long before they reach your ears.

Darkness claims you and you go limp in his arms.

—————————

When you finally come to, you’re laying atop a medic’s table.

The first thing you notice is the ceiling. Pale blue - old and cracked with a thin layer of white paint already peeking through. Beside you sits a corner table topped with all sorts of medical supplies - wrench, a bottle of solution and a long strip of cotton gauze. You glance across to the sink on your left to find it filled with the same cotton strips covered in blood.

Your blood, you assume from the shooting pain in your stomach.

“Little bitch, ain’t it?” A voice, deep and slow, snaps your attention to a tall figure leaning against the doorway.

A young man - looking to be no older than yourself, takes you in with a gentle grin, his gaze stopping abruptly at your waist.

You glance down to follow his eyes, gasping when you finally behold the sight. Thick, red blood coats the gauze wrapped tightly around your waist, beneath its centre a medicinal paste of herbs seem to conceal whatever wound you’ve encountered.

“44 Winchester. Hell, haven’t seen a bullet that strong since 79’. Never got one out of someone before - though to be fair - I’m usually the one shootin.” The handsome stranger pushes off the wall, giving you a clear view of his arms - a white dress shirt rolled up tightly to his elbows, his hands covered in dried blood as he rubs the stains onto his apron. “Still…I’m yet to see its equal. Woulda had to have been a strong six shooter to lodge a bullet that deep.” He glances over his shoulder at you, smirk softening. “The kind of rifle a dignified officer ought to own, I’m sure.”

You catch his not so subtle insinuation and look away.

That’s right.

It was all coming back to you now. Wyatt - he’d shot you. You remember accompanying him and his men to the shooting range across the lake. He’d been so angry with you the night before, though you’d forgotten why. There was always a problem, even when you’d done nothing wrong. You remember the slap he’d given you that night, and more importantly, the lack of reaction you gave back.

You’d grown tired of his antics, and thus thought it’d be a smart idea to stop giving him the satisfaction of seeing your pain.

You were wrong.

Wyatt had decided the next day that it was the perfect weather for his station to take a day off, caring little for the purple black blotches that had blossomed beneath your eyes. It was almost like he wanted to make an example of you.

The range was eerily quiet, and you’d remembered watching Wyatt load his revolver from some paces away while a few of his deputies shot you inconspicuous glances from the side.

One tried to focus on his rifle while firing shots, but often found his gaze wandering to the red hand print staining your neck. Matthews, Wyatt’s right hand, spent the day eyeing your black eye while his wife, Rosalee, offered you a sympathetic hug when no one was looking.

You wanted them all dead.

They couldn’t give a rat’s ass about you. If they had, they’d be doing something…anything. Sure, your husband was a man of great power, but he was still just that - a man.

A very mortal, very weak man who preyed upon those smaller than him to construct the illusion of power.

You remember going to church every Sunday as a child, the feeling of sitting front row from the pews, watching in awe as the pastor recited god’s grand design, the gospel’s sacred severance from violence, from sin. You remember clinging to the scripture’s teachings of forgiveness.

But where had forgiveness ever gotten you?

Your husband claimed to be a man of god - yet he had never cared for forgiveness, nor abstinence from sin. If anything, he relied on it. Tyranny was a good game of chess to him, and moving pieces across the board was his favourite part.

How could you defeat your enemies abstaining from the very sins they leveraged?

Wyatt clicks his bullets in, and you realise for the first time that you’ve never seen him bleed. The revelation startles you, catching you off guard as Wyatt bangs his fist against the opening, pointing his weapon not at the target, but straight at you.

And so your husband shoots you, but you hear no gunshot.

You hear nothing at all, your ears instead pulling buried strings of memory from your mind. One pulls at you, urging you closer as you hit the ground.

It’s your old pastor, the one you knew as a girl. He stands proudly atop the Lecter, reciting Isaiah 14:12-14, the prophet that detailed God’s favourite angel - Lucifer - and his fall from the heavens. You remember finding the story terrifying as a girl - a disgraced angel cast out all because he couldn’t accept God as his superior. Growing up in such a strict, Christian household, the idea of insubordination frightened you deeply. Losing favour with your parents the way Lucifer did with God - you couldn’t even imagine such a wicked thing.

But it wasn’t the demon’s fall from the faith that had stayed with you all these years, but rather, his words.

The last ones he spoke atop a pyre of flame and ash, his Heavenly Father offering him one final chance at redemption.

At forgiveness.

“The time for forgiveness has passed, old friend. The time of reckoning, however - is now upon us.”

——————

Fuck me gently with a chainsaw! I actually finished this chapter about a week ago, went to read it, hated it - and then rewrote the whole goddamn thing all over again….. and no, I’m not talking “yeah I made some touch ups” - I literally changed the whole freaking plot. Originally, Wyatt takes the reader to Henry knowing full well who he is. But then I realised one of the edits I made for this fic (which I finished two weeks ago) starts with Wyatt asking Henry “Sir, are you a doctor?” as if he’s never met him, and then I was like to myself DAMN now it makes no sense - and thus rewrote the entire fucking thing. Obviously I’ve only just finished it - in which time I could’ve been done with part two by now (which I ALSO had to scrap FUCK ME IN THE ASS) but hey, we are what we are. And I’m an idiot. So hope you enjoyed - and let’s all pray a house doesn’t fall on me before part two is released.