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Charles contemplated the whiskey coating the walls of his glass, sighing.
Arthur looked up from where he had his rifle disassembled on the small side-table. They’d stopped in Strawberry on the way back from a successful hunt, taking refuge from the bad weather gathering on the horizon. “What’s wrong, sugar?”
“You ever think about what we’re here for?”
“Waiting out the storm, mostly.” The bed dipped as Arthur abandoned his cleaning, standing with a groan. It’d been a rough few days, camping up in the high mountains as they hunted cougars and mountain goats. Wonderful days, sure. But even for Charles’ relatively young back, sleeping on the hard rocky shelves and ledges found up there had been tiresome. He could only imagine how sore Arthur was.
Arthur ducked low, kissing Charles’ temple, just along the edge of his hairline. It was a favorite spot for small affections, with which Arthur was generous. “Though if you want to get up to some recreational activities, I’d be happy to assist,” he drawled, giving Charles a filthy grin.
The knot in Charles’ gut tightened, his brow furrowing. What had he done, he wondered, the thought like the dark, threatening clouds gathering outside their window, to deserve such sweetness?
Arthur frowned, sitting back up to look down at Charles in contemplation. “What’s wrong, sunshine?”
“I feel lost,” Charles admitted, words a little slurred. The mostly empty bottle of whiskey sitting on the nightstand had loosened his tongue, allowing the dark and lonely things that lived in his chest to spill out into the dimly lit-room, wriggling in the flickering light of the oil lamp between them. Usually, Charles tried to keep them to himself. Most people had no patience for others’ problems, their struggles. He’d learned the hard way that the best course was to bite down and drive on, to keep his silence rather than showing the soft belly of his insecurities to others.
He’d gotten a knife for his trouble every other time he’d tried at honesty.
But a strong glass of whiskey, coupled with the intimacy of having spent the last five days only in Arthur’s company, had those feelings reaching for the open air. They scratched his throat, eager for a listening ear. In the months they’d been together, Charles had finally come to trust that Arthur cared enough to listen.
Arthur’s brow drew down, a deep furrow of concern. Gently, he pried the mostly empty glass from Charles’ hand, setting it aside. He took Charles’ now freed hand in his own, callused fingers twining. The older man had drunk a lot more than Charles had, swaying tipsily even as he struggled to balance on the edge of the bed. But his palm pressed warm against Charles’ own, a simple comfort.
His distaste for drunkenness aside, Charles had known for months that he preferred Arthur drunk to most any other fool sober.
“What you mean, Charles?” Arthur said, thumb sweeping over the scarred skin of Charles’ knuckles. “My head’s spinnin’ a little—what you mean ‘lost’?”
Charles swallowed, knees bending towards his chest as he curled inwards. “I don’t know why I exist.”
Arthur snorted, lifting Charles’ hand to his mouth to brush a clumsy kiss against the knuckles. Another favorite affection. Did the other man know? That Charles coveted every little gesture, hoarded them in his heart like gold? “Does anyone?”
“I know your life hasn’t been any easier than mine,” Charles admitted. He had to be careful. Some of what he felt towards Arthur had always been jealousy. It was an ugly feeling, and he wasn’t proud of it. But he’d opened his big damn mouth, and had no choice now but to be honest. “But you’ve made a place for yourself, a family. People rely on you, and you deliver. I’ve never managed to save anyone but myself.”
Arthur looked troubled, a little heartbroken. “They’re your family, too,” he said softly.
“Not so sure about that.” Charles tugged on Arthur’s hold, bringing their twined hands to his chest. He played with Arthur’s fingers, pressing their fingertips together. “I’m not easy to love, Arthur,” he admitted, barely louder than a whisper. It felt like a secret, for all that it was readily apparent to anyone who knew how to look. He loved the gang, sure. But he knew he was hard to talk to, harder to understand. Impatient, judgemental, untrusting— “There’s something…distant in me. I feel like there’s a plate of glass between me and the rest of the world. I can see the light of the fire, but I can’t get close. Can’t get warm.”
Arthur stiffened behind him, like a hunting hound catching a scent. His voice was uncertain when he spoke, tentative in a way Arthur Morgan should never be. “I make you feel that way?”
Charles shook his head, curling around their intertwined hands, pressing them to where his heart ached under his ribs. “You’re the first person in twenty years who hasn’t,” he admitted. “It scares me.”
“What do you mean it scares you?”
He’d made this bed Charles recognized distantly. No choice but to lie in it. “What if I wake up one day and you realize that you can do better?”
“This about Mary again?” Arthur snorted, arm going around Charles in a fierce hug. “I told you, sweetheart,” he said fiercely, drunkenly eager to reassure. “That’s done. And I ain’t no angel myself. Most things I touch I just ruin. It kills me to hear you talk about yourself like this. Breaks my heart.”
Charles’ eyes stung. He bit down on a sob, the ache in his chest reaching a sudden, terrible climax. “I’m sorry, “ he managed, throat straining around the words. God, drinking had been a terrible idea. They were having such a nice night, and here he was. Ruining it. Like he ruined everything.
“I don’t…I just feel like maybe I’m cursed, you know? Brought into the world to cause pain and to suffer myself.”
Arthur’s strong arms tightened around him, the other man pressing a fierce kiss to the shell of Charles’ ear. “You’re the best man I know—”
Charles sighed. Talking about this drunk was just going to go in circles. “I’m grateful you think that.”
Arthur pressed another kiss to Charles’ temple, the bristling hairs of his short beard tickling the skin there. “I love you. Wish you could see it.”
“I’m trying,” Charles admitted, helpless. He felt sick. The words should bring him joy, yes. He loved Arthur, too. But he just felt so unworthy. And it was hard to believe that a man as warm and alive as Arthur could find love in his heart for someone as cold and broken as Charles.
“And I love you, too,” he said, trying to force some brightness into his voice. He sat up, pulling Arthur closer so he could steal a kiss from that frowning mouth.
He hated that he made Arthur sad. That his love only ever made everything worse.
Arthur closed his eyes, taking a few breaths. Something hardened in his expression, a solid determination that Charles was more familiar with in a firefight than in the warm space between them.
“If you can’t hear me, I’ll just have to figure out how to show ya,” he said, pecking another kiss against Charles’ miserable mouth. “Be right back, darlin’.”
Charles blinked. “What?”
Arthur pulled away, apologetic. “I’ll just be a minute—You sit right there.”
It was a full half hour before Arthur returned. Mysteriously, his front was entirely soaked in water, white smears of soap dotting his shirt and the legs of his trousers.
Charles sat up, baffled. “What the hell happened to you?”
“I know actions speak louder to ya than words,” Arthur said, ignoring Charles’ question entirely. His drink clumsy hands fumbled at his shirt buttons as he kicked the door carefully shut. “So, here.”
Before Charles could figure out what to make of things, Arthur had his shirt fully open, chest bared to the lamplight.
Charles snorted, utterly baffled by what he was seeing.
The thick carpet of Arthur’s chest hair had been partially shaved, nicks and cuts littering Arthur’s stomach giving lie to the drunken state of the hands that had wielded the razor. The shape was lumpy, wobbling on one side and bulging on the other.
Still, even blind-drunk, Arthur was the best artist Charles knew. It was unmistakable—his lover hard shaved his chest hair into a heart.
“Arthur,” Charles guffawed, shocked to laughter, “What the fuck?”
“I love ya, Charles Smith!” Arthur declared, striding forward to pull Charles from where he sat on the bed and into his embrace. He only stumbled once, hip-checking the wooden side table and sending the pieces of his rifle rattling to the floor. “And now the whole world can see it, darlin’!”
Too amused to wallow in his own brooding, Charles allowed himself to be manhandled, yanked gracelessly from his seat and enveloped in strong arms. He went easily, delighted as he buried his face in the remains of Arthur’s chest hair.
“You’re a fool, Arthur Morgan,” Charles said, muffling a helpless giggle in Arthur’s neck as his cowboy waltzed him clumsily around the room. “A silly, wonderful fool.”
Two days later, Charles and Arthur made their way back into camp at Clemens Point well after the sun had sunk down below the horizon. It’d been a long and uncomfortable ride, their lingering hangovers only making the transition from the cool foothills in Strawberry to the damp, hot climate of Lemoyne that much worse.
“Shit,” Arthur said, pulling at the sweat-drenched fabric of his shirt as they hitched the horses. “Maybe we should just head back into them mountains.”
“And leave paradise?” Charles joked, bumping his hip as he shuffled past, the heavy corpse of goat slung over his shoulder. He made for the chuck-wagon, searching for a rope so he could string the animal up where small pests couldn’t get to it until the morning when Pearson could slaughter it into parts.
Arthur followed, untanned pelts wrapped in protective canvas slung over his shoulder like a rug. Those, Pearson would sell in town on his next supply run. He’d also promised to make them some leather wrappings for the camp’s rifles. The damp air in Lemoyne was inescapable, rusting tools and weapons alike like no one’s business.
“Paradise,” Arthur scoffed, voice soft. The rest of camp was asleep, only Micah and Bill awake at their guard stations to grunt at the two men as they made their way inside. Arthur huffed, slapping away mosquitoes that buzzed in an irritating cloud around his head. They were irritated, filthy, and both more than ready to flop down together on Arthur’s cot and get some well-earned rest. “Some damn paradise.”
The men slept until noon, shucked down to the woolen separates that, foolishly, had been the only set of underwear they’d brought with them on their journey. The intent had been to pack light, suffering through the couple days of sweating they’d done on the journey to and from the frigid mountains. It hadn’t helped the rest of their drawers were dirty, lasting half as long in the sweat and dirt of Lemoyne as they had in the foothills.
The mistake wouldn’t have been too terrible—uncomfortable, at most—if not for the outright disaster that unfolded when the couple awoke.
Charles woke first, rousing at the feeling of Arthur squirming irritably atop him. They’d tried to sleep side by side that night, giving the cooler night air space between their bodies. As always, however, they ended up clinging together, Arthur laying atop Charles with his head buried in his favorite spot—between Charles’ pecs.
“Get up, lazy bones!” Susan snapped, pulling at Arthur’s ankle. Looking up, she saw that Charles was blinking blearily at her from over Arthur’s shoulder. Her face softened. “Good morning, Charles. Need your clothes, honey.”
“Hands off,” Arthur snorted, the warm puff of air rolling damp against Charles’ half-bared chest. Mysteriously, Charles’ undershirt had unbuttoned itself half-way to his navel in the night. Certainly not the work of the clever, thieving fingers currently gripping at Charles’ hips. “Ain’t he a little young for you, Susan?”
“Less sass, more dragging your behind out of bed and making yourself useful, Mr. Morgan,” Susan shot back, slapping Arthur roughly on the calf. “Lucky I don’t just drag you to the washtub and dunk you in. You’re filthy.”
“She did that to John one time,” Arthur explained to Charles, rolling his eyes as he swung down off the cot. He reached down, helping pull Charles to his feet. “C’mon, sunshine. Best we do what the lady says.”
The camp was fully awake outside, everyone milling about with some task or another under Miss Grimshaw’s strict supervision. Arthur and Charles dug in their saddle bags and Arthur’s trunk. To Charles’ dismay, he realized the both of them were entirely out of clean clothes.
“When’s the next day for laundry?” he asked Karen, approaching the woman where she was stirring the large washtup they used for soaking the clothes with a wooden paddle.
She wiped the sweat from her brow, squinting at him through the steam rising from the hot washwater. Lenny was busy next to her, tending to the cookfire where he was heating another cauldron of water.
“General store told Mr. Pearson they won’t have more soap in until two weeks from now,” she said. “This is the last batch for a while, less you wanna try and pay someone in town.”
Charles looked around, noticing for the first time that the rest of the camp was down to the bare essentials required for decency. Most of the men were even missing their shirts, propriety thrown to the wind in the face of the persistent sweat and red, cloth-staining dust of their temporary home.
“Oh,” Charles said, placing his and Arthur’s collected clothing in the pile.
Karen eyed him, a wicked grin ticking up in the corner of her full mouth. “Think you’re forgettin’ something, Eagle Eye,” she teased, using the nickname Sean had picked for him.
“C’mon, Charles!” Tilly called from where she was wringing wet laundry, passing it to Mary-Beth and Kieran to hang on the line. “Ain’t like you’ve never given us a show before!”
Charles flushed, ears hot as he recalled the way he’d paraded himself around the camp at Horseshoe Overlook in a bid to draw Arthur’s attention. “Hush,” he said, even as he pulled his undershirt over his head and deposited it in the pile. “Happy?”
Karen’s eyes trailed appreciatively down Charles’ chest, grin sharpening at the hickies littering the skin. She withheld comment—Arthur’s enthusiasm for Charles’ pecs was hardly a secret. “Very,” Karen chirped, cheerful.
She turned towards Arthur’s lean-to, eyeing the cowboy where he was fussing with his shaving mirror. “Arthur!” Karen called, waving one hand in the air to catch his attention. “Get over here, slow-poke!”
Arthur sighed, abandoning the soap he’d been whipping into a lather. He noted Charles’ state of undress, biting his lip and reaching for Charles’ bared waist as he approached. “It is my birthday?” he asked, pecking a quick kiss to Charles’ jaw.
Karen laughed, ignoring the calls of ‘gross, Arthur!’ erupting from both sides of the camp where John and Tilly were working at their separate tasks. “Just laundry day,” she said, making a ‘gimme’ gesture in Arthur’s direction. “Pay up, Mr. Morgan.”
Arthur shrugged, casually reaching for the hem of his shirt. As much as he was an ornery cuss with many of the men in camp, he’d always had a soft spot for the ladies in the gang.
A foreboding chill swept over Charles’ shoulder as he recalled one very good reason for Arthur to keep his shirt on. “Think he’ll be okay,” he blurted, hand snapping out to grab Arthur’s wrist, keeping the man from disrobing. “Shirt’s not that dirty.”
Karen and Lenny both looked at Charles, incredulous.
“Charles,” Lenny said, one brow cocked so high on his brow it threatened to disappear into his close cropped hair. “He’s covered in blood.”
It was true—Arthur’d never been the most careful about his clothing, and their hunting and hauling had left even his undershirt impressively filthy with blood, dirt, and sweat.
Charles swallowed, sweat breaking out on his brow. “Looks fine to me,” he lied, poorly.
Arthur was looking at him oddly too, now. “It’s alright, Charles,” he assured, gently prying his wrist free of his lover’s grip. He clearly thought Charles was just trying to be considerate, well aware of Arthur’s occasional bouts of shame regarding his body. “I ain’t that shy.”
The others were too close for Charles to say anything without them overhearing. Madly, Charles briefly considered tossing Arthur over his shoulder and running off with him to save him from his impending fate. Contrary to his intentions, his fussing had drawn the rest of the camp’s attention. He could feel over a dozen pairs of eyes on him and Arthur, amused and curious. “I just think—”
Too late. With one movement, Arthur whipped his undershirt off, depositing it neatly in the pile at Karen’s feat.
Silence dragged out for a few long seconds, an eternity.
“Holy shit,” Lenny said softly, dumbstruck.
It was Sean—and who else, honestly, Charles despaired— who spoke first.
“What in god’s name happened to you, Arthur?” the Irishman cackled, dropping an armful of soaked laundry to the ground as he doubled over laughing, pointing at Arthur’s bared chest. “Lose a fight with a crazed barber?”
Arthur flushed beet red, finally realizing what he’d done.
The whole camp burst into laughter, hardened outlaws all brought to their knees by the sight of the most feared member of the infamous Van der Linde gang standing there with a lopsided heart shaved into the fur of his chest-hair. The heart stood out proudly against his pale skin in the sunlight, gleaming in its lopsided glory.
“I think it's sweet,” Mary-Beth declared once she recovered. Next to her, Kieran flushed, looking down at his own chest hair with a concerned expression.
“Tacky!” Javier called. “Just like those stupid skunk boots of yours!” He and John had been set to darning socks. John cursed as he noticed he’d jabbed a needle straight through his thumb. He nodded in agreement, sucking the blood away from the wound and grimacing.
Abigail rolled her eyes, snatching John’s hand towards her. She was mending shirt buttons, bemoaning the rate at which some of the more endowed members of the camp—Karen and Charles himself being the biggest culprits, with Bill following at a close third—went through them.
“You’re just sore because he’s raising the standards,” she snapped at John, brow furrowed as she dug into the kit at her side for a clean rag. “Arthur’s making the rest of you fellas look bad.”
“I’m not shaving no shapes into my chest hair!” Sean exclaimed, hands covering his skinny chest protectively.
Karen snorted. “That’d require you to have more than three little ginger hairs there,” she teased. “How ‘bout you just work on lasting longer than five minutes?”
The camp dissolved back into conversation, amusement and fascination at Arthur’s grooming choices set aside in favor of their usual bickering.
Arthur was still flushed beet-red when Charles reached for his hand, gently towing his lover to the lean-to to snatch up a cake of soap and a rag. Now was as good a time as any to take a bath, seeing as the rest of camp had the laundry well in hand.
“Tried to warn you,” Charles muttered, amused despite himself.
“Head like a rock,” Arthur admitted, glaring down at his own torso in contemplation. Hesitating, the other man snatched up the shaving kit, stuffing it into his satchel before following Charles down towards the tucked-away corner of the lake that the men of camp used for bathing.
“What you bringing that for?” Charles asked, curious.
“Most embarrassing part of everyone seeing this mess is how crooked it looks,” Arthur complained, seizing Charles’ hand. He glanced over at Charles, eyes dancing in the afternoon light despite the embarrassed flush still decorating his cheeks. “You mind seeing to my heart, Mr. Smith?”
Charles laughed, ducking to smother a smile in Arthur’s shoulder as they walked side by side. “Always,” he agreed.
