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The words stumble from Arthur’s grimace like he’s not sure he’s asking or telling.
But— “Sure,” Charles says, squinting up at where Arthur sits in his saddle already. He sets aside the whetstone he’s been sliding down the length of his hunting knife, pushing down to make an imprint in the rusty Lemoyne clay. “How long?”
One shoulder raises, drops. “Couple days.”
Charles considers him. Never is one for words, Arthur Morgan, but even for his quiet nature the gaps between what he’s saying and what he’s not saying are deeper than Charles is used to. He nods. “I’ll get my things.”
Taima whickers sweetly as he saddles her. He mounts, leaning forward to pat the side of her neck. He looks to Arthur, who dips his chin in the direction they need. His eyes are hidden as they slip past Lenny and Micah keeping guard. Charles mutters a see you in a couple days, nudges Taima to keep up with Arthur’s mare, Sugar, and then Clemens Point disappears behind them.
Moist. Lemoyne is moist. Hot, and damp, and miserable. Doesn’t matter if he wipes his face dry, just breathing is enough effort to get him sweating again. Even the dirt is wet, useful for tracking until it isn’t. The most relief Charles has felt from the damp is the breeze just now as Arthur leads him north, though ahead of him Arthur’s shirt is dark and clingy between his shoulder blades. Charles never expected to miss the plains so much; the dampness there only comes before the storm. What does it say for Lemoyne, for Clemens Point, that the air always feels like a warning?
After Dewberry Creek, Arthur leads him northeast. The air feels like air again. Charles politely waits once they’ve passed Emerald Ranch to ask, “Gonna tell me where we’re headed?”
Sugar falters in her easy trot, and Charles suspects her rider. Arthur is silent a few more moments. “Moonstone Pond, I figured. You know it?”
“No,” Charles admits.
“S’nice.”
That’s the last Charles gets out of him until they arrive, he assumes, at Moonstone Pond. It is nice. North half of the pond is wrapped in a rocky shawl, the shadows from the cliffs keeping the clearing a little cooler. The pond itself is clear down to the bottom. It’s that glass green you expect from mountain lakes. Deep enough for some brave swimming, though he can spot the flash of fish scales. There’s a scattering of evergreen trees, a decent covering of grass. Many rocks. So many rocks. Charles’s back hurts already.
The road follows the curve of that north ridge, so Arthur leads him to a broken-down shack just off the pond’s shore to the south. Plenty of room to sleep. Far from the road. There’s a fire pit, even, and firewood stacked behind the cabin. Communal use? Simply forgotten? Either way Charles will have to keep count of how many logs they use to replace them before they leave.
“Hey,” Arthur grunts. “Leave the horses to me, you get us a fire going.”
As Charles gathers kindling, he watches Arthur handle Sugar and Taima. He brushes them slowly, and carefully, going back over any spot that earns him a pleased nicker. Charles often prides himself on being a better rider and caretaker than most, but watching Arthur now, Charles feels put to shame. Arthur speaks to them in a low, steady rumble; Charles heard it once, that craggy that’s my girl, stuck from then on as burrs between the notches of his spine. Arthur’s hands pet along their noses, and he almost grins when Sugar bunts his torso with her head in search of the treat Arthur tries to pretend he never has for her. No surprise he’s got one for Taima, too — as grateful as he was to Charles for lending her to him up in the mountains, he’s made it clear his real respect is for the beast what actually carried him. Only reason Charles even considered loaning her to him to begin with.
These are the moments that convince him the most of the one thing Charles would never dream of voicing: That Arthur Morgan, outlaw prince, is too sensitive for this life.
“Okay then?” Arthur asks from across the clearing.
“Just about,” Charles says back, striking his flint to shoot a spark into the tinder.
Arthur just nods. He shrugs on the long shotgun coat he quietly bought before he just as quietly answered Mary’s summons. Neither action would have been known to Charles, had Miss Grimshaw not announced her displeasure every ten minutes. He likes that coat, though. Makes Arthur look like he belongs on the cover of one of those books he brings back for little Jack, the penny dreadfuls about Heroes of the West, how the tails catch in the breeze and unfurl behind him. His hair has grown, too, draping over his coat collar. Softens him. Suits him.
The fire goes easily. Goes easier than Arthur, at any rate, who trudges over to the pond with his fishing pole and hunches on the shore to fish for their dinner. Ears up around his shoulders with his hat low over his eyes, he snaps his line twice fighting his catches before he snags anything good. Perch, maybe. Securing his first catch, Arthur casts his line again.
Needing to keep busy, Charles sets out their bedrolls. But that only takes a minute, and Arthur is still grumbling to himself over rock bass, so Charles grabs his whetstone. “Give me your knife,” he says.
Arthur does. Parking himself on a nearby rock, Charles tests the blade on his thumb. Decent, but could be better. He purposely takes his time with sharpening it, scraping diligently down the edge.
“What’s on your mind?” he tries. If it were anyone else he’d leave them to stew, but he likes Arthur. Trusts him. Thinks Arthur trusts him back, maybe.
“See, Charles,” Arthur replies, a certain bite to him, “that’s what I like about you. Your humor.”
“I’m serious.”
“So—” Arthur grits his teeth and steadies himself as he fights a new catch “—am I. Dutch don’t keep me around for my smarts.”
Holding the knife blade up against the setting sun, Charles checks his work. “What does he keep you around for, then?”
Arthur says nothing. Charles hears plenty.
Fish caught, knife returned with thanks mumbled over it, Arthur retreats to a fallen log near the cabin and curls around his whiskey bottle; Charles takes precise care of the field dressing and grilling of their meal. They eat in silence. They drink in silence. They sleep in silence.
The whole of the next day is the same.
Charles can only stand it until they’re sitting at the fire that second night, when everything is so still that a newly added log popping genuinely startles him and makes him jump. He’s used to Arthur being quiet, but this still isn’t the right kind. So, he puts a bullet in the chamber and pulls the trigger: “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?”
And Arthur— he rattles out a brittle sigh, and all his fight leaves him. He scrubs a hand down his face. The hand with his whiskey bottle drops to his knee. He doesn’t look at Charles. “I’m just… angry.”
Charles frowns. “About what?”
“Everything,” Arthur says, shuddering, and Charles has never heard him mean something so strongly. “Blackwater, Dutch— Micah,” he spits, “none of it makes any damn sense. Dutch won’t listen to me, or Hosea. So I’m just— angry. I’m so angry I don’t even feel it anymore. I tried talking with some of the others, and they’ve started sounding more like Dutch. ‘What’s it matter that Dutch shot that girl, we all make mistakes. We all have things to improve for ourselves. Water under the bridge.’” He takes a bitter swig. Charles hears him swallow over the flames. “I’m so angry, it doesn’t all fit inside me anymore. Scares the shit out of me, Charles.”
Doesn’t sound angry, not to Charles. Sounds more like… grieving.
Still— “All right, then,” Charles says, slapping the dirt from his pants as he rises to his feet, “let’s do something about it.”
From across the campfire, Arthur blinks up at him, bleary-eyed.
“Not good for you, that much anger,” Charles tells him, already sinking back into a brawler’s stance. “C’mon.”
“C’mon… what.”
“Hit me.”
“Are you out of your damn mind?” Arthur hisses. “I ain’t hitting you.”
“Why not?”
“Chrissakes, Charles!” The campfire flares up, illuminating perfectly Arthur’s look of profound distress. “You ain’t done nothing wrong.”
Shrugging, Charles crosses the clearing to where their horses are hitched, saddles and bags stacked neatly beside. He paws through Sugar’s saddlebags, apologizing under his breath to her, and to Arthur, as he does. He doesn’t find what he wants. He curses. His target is likely tucked into Arthur’s coat, near his heart.
Lucky, then, that Arthur should follow him this way. “The hell you doing?”
“Something wrong,” Charles replies, stomach turning already to meet Arthur halfway and wrench that handsome long coat open. Sputtering protests, Arthur tries to smack his hands away but Charles is just that much faster and rips free what he’d been looking for, slipping out of Arthur’s grasp. He jogs the few steps to the fire, and when he stops, he makes sure Arthur is looking him in the eye when he dangles his prize over the flames — Arthur’s journal.
“You wouldn’t,” Arthur says, his voice the threat of a rockslide.
Wordlessly, Charles inches closer to the campfire and lowers the journal until his fingers sting with heat.
Arthur charges. Charles hastily flings the journal to safety towards the cabin as Arthur barrels into him, bullying him to the ground and clambering on top. “God damn it,” Arthur growls, taking Charles by the shoulders and slamming him back into the ground. He wheezes; Arthur’s lost his hat. A rock stabs into his back but he dares not move, not as Arthur glares down at him, knees splayed across Charles’s hips and a furious hand clenched into a fist near his thigh.
Arthur does not hit him.
Arthur will not hit him.
“C’mon,” he goads, still gulping down air— but nothing happens. A strangled fuck! cuts the air. First he’s heard that from Arthur.
Above him, Arthur stills, breathing hard.
Surging up, Charles rights himself and shoves Arthur down onto his back. He leans over Arthur, whose legs seemingly fall open in welcome, and Charles knows better than to refuse an invitation from him so he plants his hands on either side of Arthur’s face to peer down at him. Charles has never seen him so apprehensive; his teeth gleam in the firelight as he pants, yet lack any danger. A quick glance tells Charles that Arthur’s hands are still down at his sides, flat to the earth, fingers digging in.
Charles shifts, and finds suddenly that Arthur is painfully hard against his hip. Even as he shivers at the contact, Arthur arches into it in a way that rapidly brings Charles up to speed. Slowly, gently, he roams a hand down the flat of Arthur’s chest, down the line of shirt buttons along his stomach until Charles feels a belt buckle.
“Damn it, Charles,” Arthur pleads, more prickly burrs down his spine. Makes him weak. Makes him hungry. Later he won’t remember who started it, but suddenly two pairs of hands are scrabbling and ripping at buckles and buttons like a starving wolf to a fresh meal until Charles is balanced on the precipice of the cold night air and Arthur’s burning skin along his cock.
He spits into his palm, then holds it out for Arthur to do the same. With Arthur’s greedy hands clutching at his sides, Charles strokes them together in one hand, the slide of them against each other maddening in only the best way. He works their cock heads together, slippery and springy; Arthur’s head thumps back against the ground as he swallows down a cry, knees knocking against Charles until he shows mercy and massages along their shafts instead.
“Easy, whoa.” He gentles Arthur with his words and his tone as he does for Taima, as Arthur himself would for Sugar. “Shh, easy, shh.” Seems to make it better, and worse; Arthur bucks up into his hand and chokes his sobs. “You’re okay, boy, c’mon now. There you go. Shh.”
Soon after Arthur spills into Charles’s hand with a strained, guttural noise. His spend drips onto his own stomach as Charles touches him through it. What’s left in his hand, Charles uses to ease his own way. Hands trembling, Arthur reaches for Charles’s face, pulling him down until their noses are mashed alongside and Charles is panting into his mouth. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, Arthur breathes. Helpless, Charles follows him.
Arthur tenders his fingers down Charles’s hair at his temples until he regains himself. Using a bandanna — his black one, for robbing, Charles notes with a gross chuckle — he wipes them dry. They separate, and redress. Charles watches him tuck the bandanna back into his pocket. Will he wash it? Will he fold the stains to the inside with their mingled scent, and only the two of them know? Charles knows which he’d choose.
Dusting himself off, he rises to fetch Arthur’s journal. As luck would have it, it had landed on the cabin’s porch, looking only a little dirtier. Charles brushes it clean with his sleeve, and steers well clear of the campfire as he goes to return it to Arthur, who nods his thanks.
They settle onto their bedrolls, on opposite sides of the fire. They’ve gone quiet again, but it’s a nicer kind than the rest of the day. Gentler. Lighter. The good kind. The kind he feels bad about breaking, but for once he has something that needs saying. What he really wants to say, what he’s known to be true since the first day they met — you’re a good man — doesn’t seem like something that’ll be taken well, if at all.
So what he settles on is this: “You have good instincts, Arthur. Should listen to them.”
He thinks he hears a soft, thoughtful hum. He doesn’t pay it any mind; it’s not something he needs a response to. Instead he curls up on his side, his hand up by his face. Still smells like the tang of sweat, musky spend, the sharp point of whiskey-spit. Sleep comes easy, though after a short while Charles is roused by movement to his back, and his instinct is to fight his way to his feet until he recognizes the long, solid line of Arthur’s back against his, and he’s soothed back under immediately.
The next morning, Charles wakes to find Arthur already up, sitting on the ruined cabin porch and his journal open against a thigh. “Morning,” he greets. “There’s coffee.”
“Yeah,” Charles croaks, throat still full of sleep, “morning.” He rises to sitting to pour himself a cup — only to spill it across the back of his hand, jerking when he sees Arthur take his knife and put it to his journal. “What the hell!”
Arthur stops, looking up at him all sheepish. “What.”
Too groggy for any of this, Charles sucks the coffee from his skin and gestures between the journal and the fire. That is not what he sharpened that knife for. “What,” he repeats slowly, “the hell.”
Grumbling, Arthur sheathes his knife to shuffle over and plop down next to Charles. As it turns out, the page he’d been ready to cut is, in fact, a portrait of Charles. It’s a pencil sketch, drawn in secret of a past self bent over a task, his intense focus expertly portrayed with only a few strokes. He looks strong. Under the drawing, written in a loosely curled scrawl is the caption, Mixing poison. It’s… lovely, actually.
“Oh,” Charles says.
“Yeah. Oh.” Arthur takes back his journal. “From when I brought you that oleander.”
“I remember.” Coffee’s worse than Pearson’s, somehow, but it does its job. “Those arrows work out?”
“Oh, sure. Made some honest money for once, selling pelts off some critters I made my dinner.” Charles snickers at honest, and it catches. “Shut up. Anyway,” Arthur says through his own amusement, “it’s stupid, but I was thinking you might, y’know.”
Charles thinks over his next sip. “How else will you remember what I look like when you’re gone, though?” Sighing, Arthur rolls his eyes. Knocking into him good-naturedly, Charles leans up against him, pleased when Arthur knocks back and stays there. “Keep it safe for me. Thank you, Arthur.”
“Don’t mention it,” Arthur mutters, and stays with him until his coffee is finished.
The rest of the morning Arthur spends with the horses, while Charles works to replace the firewood they’ve used. Every so often Charles will look up from his hatchet; Arthur will be smiling the widest he’s seen in weeks. He feeds them, waters them, brushes them down. The most at peace Charles remembers him in these last seven months, and isn’t that a nice word for him? Splitting firewood is the rhythmic kind of work that soothes some place in Charles that’s hidden away, lets him think in ways he doesn’t usually get to— the kind of thinking that Dutch seems to do, of the future, of nice things, and just for a moment Charles sees a cabin that isn’t flattened with a bed big enough for two and a clearing out back with plenty of room for their horses.
Pretty thoughts for ugly bastards.
He continues on even after Arthur is finished with the horses, having moved on to a quiet moment with his journal. Just with a pencil, thankfully. This, too, is sweetly pastoral. He’s watched Arthur from the corner of his eye enough to tell now the differences between the loping curl of his writing strokes and the sweeping jogs of more artistic pursuits.
Arthur draws him now. He is not so sneaky with it. Though, perhaps, that is the point. By now Charles has replaced the firewood they’ve used and then some, and it’s warmer out anyway even besides the good sweat he’s worked up, so — might as well give Arthur something real nice to study.
Hatchet is secured away. Clothes are chucked off with as much single-mindedness as any other work Charles takes on. The pond is— well, it’s cold as shit, but as with everything else here it’s the good kind. Scratches an itch he didn’t know he had to feel the crackling rush of it flow over the tip-top of his scalp. Just for a second, he holds himself under, enveloped and alone. Nice, indeed. Nicer still to surface and see that Arthur has followed him in. Looks even better than he’d felt under Charles’s hands the night before, stocky and hardy and meaty where it counts.
Arthur grimaces and cusses at the cold. He only goes in to his waist before splashing water onto his face and hair. Gives Charles plenty of room to swim up, swipe his thumb along the crease of where Arthur’s ass meets the back of his thigh. He grins at Arthur’s glare.
“Fish,” Charles says.
“My ass,” Arthur gripes, mouth twitching even as he grabs for Charles. He’s too slow to escape, but he’s not really trying anyway, and they tumble together into the water. Slick and dripping they wrestle, Charles half-heartedly attempting to push Arthur away as he’s pulled closer, hands digging into his sides. Arthur wins, an arm around Charles’s chest and a hand between his legs. Water sluices down his back from where his long hair is pinned between them.
“Nice prick,” Arthur grizzles into a neck tendon, scrubbing his beard there.
Charles laughs. “Yeah? Gonna draw that, too?”
“Need the measure of it first, I think.” Wrapping cool fingers around Charles’s length, Arthur pets him, encouraging him to fill out and harden.
Charles lets his head fall back onto Arthur’s shoulder. Just as his pulse picks up, heart racing for all the right reasons, he hears hooves. Too many. His hand snaps to Arthur’s wrist. “Company.”
He assumes Arthur will just stop, leave him wanting for later, but he’s ushered behind the large boulder on the west bank. Has to bite his lips shut to follow orders when Arthur rumbles into his ear, “Quiet, now.”
Leaned up against the rock by his forearm, tight fist shoved up against his closed mouth so hard it hurts, Charles hopes to the white God he does not believe in that he is hidden from sight as the riders he heard come down the road. He thinks he hears one of them ask a question — if there’s a campsite, where is everyone — but he can’t hear clearly over the rushing in his own ears. Arthur has hooked his chin over his shoulder, and his hand is so, so tight. Charles knows he’s a goner when his nails dig into rock, when he thrusts shallowly to meet that fist around him. Before the riders are out of earshot his seed paints the boulder’s face, teeth clenched, knees locked.
Arthur stays wrapped around him in the comedown, just holding. Not until he’s certain they’re alone does Charles let his mouth fall open, desperate for air like he’d been tackled again. Never been so pliant in his life as Arthur guides him by the chin for a lazy kiss over his shoulder. His mouth is soft. He pets Charles again, down his throat this time, his touch so light it leaves Charles shivering and pitching forward for more. No small wonder Mary had come back for more. She should again.
Later that night, Arthur proves to have boundless thoughts on how to keep two grown men on one bedroll. Must come with age, Charles says, earning him a nip to the jaw that he grins into. But the next morning he wakes just as he’d fallen asleep: With Arthur’s chest to his back, held in place, and Arthur’s face buried in his hair.
They’ve had their couple days to themselves by now. Charles is not surprised when Arthur suggests maybe heading back to camp, and so readily agrees to it. Only, on their way back, Arthur says, they should try for some hunting. “Always figure if I come back with a carcass, nobody can be too mad at me for being gone.”
Wise, Charles thinks, though he doesn’t say it.
Their small camp is quickly torn down, the horses saddled and packed. Taima seems eager for the exercise. They wait until they’re back down out of the mountains to start hunting in earnest, and Charles can’t help the swell of pride when Arthur is first to point out a disturbance in some wooded underbrush.
Following the trail, they come across a pair of deer— a young doe, and her strapping buck. Just as Charles showed him, Arthur nocks his bow; Charles does the same. He whistles, a sharp note to get them to raise their heads, and the arrows are loosed. Perfect shots, both of them.
They know they’ve hit Lemoyne when the dirt turns red and the air turns to water. True enough to Arthur’s prediction, just as Miss Grimshaw purses her lips disapprovingly (likely from their abrupt leave), Pearson strides over and excitedly congratulates them on their kills.
Dutch approaches them after they’ve dropped their contributions by the chuckwagon. His hand twitches, clenching and unclenching like he wants to touch something. “A bit of hunting seems to have done you some good, son,” he says. “Your spirit seems a little brighter.”
“Sure,” Arthur mumbles, hiding his eyes under the brim of his hat, even as he tips his face towards Charles.
Next time they get up to some mischief, the kind that needs a face to be covered, Charles watches as Arthur gingerly pulls his bandanna out and folds it carefully — purposefully — before tying it securely above his nose. Catching his eye, Arthur tips his hat at him like he does the ladies. With a smile that no one else can see, Charles urges Taima into a gallop to follow Arthur’s lead.
EPILOGUE
It’s only fair, given their brotherhood, that Arthur’s journal should go to John Marston. Charles gladly hands it over. Sitting out on the porch of his newly-constructed home the first thing Marston does, as Charles had, is to thumb through by lamp-light. “He gave me his satchel, but this wasn’t in it. Where’d you find it?”
“It was on him when I buried him.”
“You don’t want it?”
Charles sniffs, shakes his head. “Not for me.”
“Guess I never really appreciated how good his drawings were.” John speaks softly, reverently. Charles hums his assent. As Marston gently flips the pages, he comes across the stubby remnants of a cut-out page. From under Arthur’s brim, he flicks his eyes up to Charles. He looks for a second, Charles looking right back, then closes the journal and slides it into a vest pocket.
“Might take up the habit,” John says. “Shit drawer, though.”
Grinning a little, Charles huffs. “Don’t think that’s what matters.” After a moment, he adds, “He’d be glad for it. I think.”
“I can hear him bitching already,” John laughs. “Thank you, Charles.”
“You’re welcome.”
Marston nods. He leaves Charles with a clap on the shoulder, boards creaking pleasantly under his feet as he heads inside.
Charles stays outside, just for a moment or two, alone with the night. He slips his hand into his own pocket to rub at the edge of the cut-out page. He doesn’t need to see it. He’s looked at it so many times already. Maybe, if he ever does what he promised Arthur he’d do — head up to Canada, find a girl, settle down — he’ll frame it. She could ask him who made it, and he’ll tell her it was his dear friend.
But he presses his fingers to the folded-up paper, and says aloud what he always knew was true.