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It’s one of those rare nights when camp is relatively devoid of life. What with Dutch and some of the boys out of some big job, the rest pulling their own weight, and the ladies having gone out for a night of fun, the quiet is a strange sort of reprieve. Without a clock or a watch, you fail to tell the time, but you think it may be close to midnight. If anything else, sitting all by your lonesome around the dying fire should be a good sign that it’s fairly late.
Beer bottle in hand, you sip the alcohol slowly as you stare into the embers. Cain lounges beside you, head in your lap in search of more pets now that Jack’s gone to bed. You relent, scratching absently, feeling his begrimed fur between your fingers. It’s nice, you think, sitting here with just your mind to worry about the nonsense.
Your head turns at the sound of hooves trotting steadily into camp, eyes finding Arthur’s magnificent silhouette sat atop Cynane, his beautiful, silver Arabian. You watch as he slides off her saddle, pulling a carrot from his satchel and feeding her with gentle pats to her crest. He leans in close as if whispering a secret meant only for them. Your eyes fall away from the interaction when he leans back.
Cain raises his head at Arthur’s heavy footfalls before he’s up and bounding away towards the man. He’s closer now, the firelight illuminating his skin in the darkness of the cloudy night as he bends down on one knee to give Cain his full attention.
“Hey, boy,” he whispers, chuckling slightly as the rowdy mutt rolls over in the mud for a belly rub.
The sight makes you smile warmer than the wood burning in the pit. “I dare say, Arthur, nobody loves that dog more than you.”
When he looks up and his eyes, hazel catching flame, meet yours, your heart jumps.
“I think Jack might have me beat,” he relents, humbleness creeping along the edges of his words.
“Oh, even his four-year-old mind gets bored sometimes.” A beat. “Why don’t you sit with me awhile?”
Without a verbal reply, he gives Cain one last pet before stepping towards you, boots crunching in the grass. He swings a leg over the fallen log, and the other, settling himself down beside your form leaning back against it.
You offer him your half-empty bottle, “Want the rest?”
A moment of indecision before, “Sure.” He downs half of the half in one gulp.
The silence stretches tautly between you, broken only by a piece of wood falling into ashes, cinders flying in an array like fireworks. Sitting profile, Arthur looks, frankly, like he’d been dragged through hell and back. And you suppose he had in between playing Dutch’s enforcer and everyone else’s errand boy.
The weariness is subtle, hidden dually by his protective nature and his own insecurities, but it’s there etched in the creases of his forehead, in the way he rolls his shoulders, in the few restless hours of sleep his gets before he’s off once more.
“Go sleep, you don’t gotta stay here,” you say, sighing at how badly you long to take care of the man.
His response is exactly what you’d expected, and it hurts your heart. “Naw, I’m alright.” He notices your concerned look and becomes shy. “Really.”
“You can lie to me all you want, Arthur, but don’t you dare lie to yourself.”
You don’t mean for it to come out as harsh as it does, but the damage is done when he stands up, ready to rid himself of the coming conversation. “I don’t know what you’re going on about, but even if I did it ain’t none of your goddamn business.”
Regret pierces through you like a barrage of bullets, so, naturally, you follow after him as he stomps towards his tent.
“Arthur!” you shout, still whispering amongst the few asleep in their own tents, “Arthur, I’m sorry. Please!” You reach a hand out to grasp his shoulder, effectively stopping him in his tracks, though he doesn’t turn around. “I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to learn to stop avoiding help from others. They’re just trying to be nice… like me. Let me help you, Arthur. At least, for right now.”
Slowly, he turns around back to your concern, back to your desperation, back to one of the only people in his life to ever give a single damn about him. “What are you implying?” he asks, brows furrowing and demeanor still tense.
“You know what I’m implying.” Perhaps you’re coming off a bit strong, a bit too intensely for the man you’ve found him to be underneath. Too late to erase your words now.
“I ain’t been with another woman in quite some time.” He’s bashful, embarrassed, shy as he always is when the talk turns to his personal life.
“And that’s okay,” you state resolutely.
You kiss him in the middle of the camp where anyone could see. Hands covering his warm cheeks, his facial hair scratching so perfectly against your lips, but he stands stock still before his arms, hesitating in mid-air, wrap around your waist. It’s beautiful, you think, how he crawls out of his shell in the way his lips begin to mold themselves to yours.
You wish to God and every other high power out there that you could keep kissing him forever, but you pull away even as he chases after. No words are spoken, no breath escapes, no thoughts are voiced as you lead him, hand in rough, weathered hand, to his prior destination.
His tent sits next to Dutch’s empty one on the outskirts, slightly away from the other’s in a physical representation of his introversion. He’s a wallflower through and through, and you wish people would understand that instead of mocking of his journaling. It’s spacious on the inside, yet sparse of personal belongings aside from a few pictures, knickknacks, and his chest of clothes. It bothers you more than it should that he still keeps a picture of Mary.
When you turn around, Arthur stands just past the entrance, hand still holding back the flap as he gazes at you patiently. “Got a match?” you ask, nodding towards the lantern hanging from one of the branches holding his makeshift home together.
He pulls a box from the pocket of his blue shirt, handing you a single match tipped with red. “Here.”
The space is awash with a golden glow as you put the glass back in place. Arthur has taken his hat off, having set it atop the table, and his gun belt, which lays draped over his trunk. He sits at the edge of his cot, hands clasped and head bowed over in contemplation, but it raises at the soft call of his name flowing from your lips. It sounds like a song to him.
With a delicate finger beneath his chin, you raise his head higher so he sits up straighter like those posh citizens of Saint Denis. A leg over his lap has him stiffening again, but you bring his arms around you, trailing your fingers up all the way to his stubbled face. Pupils catch the lantern light and eyelids flutter almost imperceptively at the feeling of your thumb stroking cheekbone.
“I don’t deserve this,” he says.
Wrong.
“You deserve the world, Arthur Morgan,” you breathe into him, and his eyes shut at that, muscles releasing every single learned tension.
He kisses back much more fervently this time. Fumbling with buttons and rogue limbs leaves you both with discarded shirts somewhere on the ground. Your fingers brush over the large, buckshot scar in his left shoulder, a permanent reminder of Colm’s sadistic tendencies. He must feel insecure because he gently grabs your wrist, and your heart breaks at the self-disdain in his face. So you lean down to press a feather-light peck right in the center of the marred flesh before hugging him tightly to your bare chest.
He seems so starved of touch, clutching you back just as tightly, face pressed deeply into the juncture of your collar. A hand caressing the back of his head, petting down his hair—you drink in the moment as if you were dying of dehydration. But you're entirely surprised when he switches your positions, laying you on the cot and hovering over you. He’s shaking, you realize, so you squeeze his forearm beside you in loving reassurance.
When he’s pulled off your trousers and done away with his own, he blushes under the intensity of your gaze. So many emotions pour into him, filling every devoid crevice and empty cavern inside him. It frightens him entirely.
But the sensation enveloping him as he pushes into you overpowers anything that might be and might’ve been. It’s an explosion of color bursting behind his eyelids, a breath of a different life another him lives, an impulsive chase down a rabbit hole he’ll never crawl back out of. He thanks you over and over again inside his mind with each dizzying thrust of his hips. His skin shutters and shivers with each sound stumbling and tumbling from you; you who is beneath him, trusting him, and he has to trust you too. Trust himself.
The world continues on even as his orgasm blossoms deep within him. The clouds still drift along in the river of the sky as your orgasm races to the surface to be heard, felt, loud and clear. The breeze still brushes along your sweat-soaked skin as the both you lay panting together in the aftermath of physical, tangible introspection. The camp stays asleep, stays peacefully still even as you wrap an arm around Arthur, nosing into his spine and hearing him sigh contentedly, and you can think of none more deserving than he.