Archive of Our Own

Arthur had long since shed his coat, but his shirt still clung to his back beneath his vest, unbuttoned as it was to let in the breeze rolling off the lake. It was the only cool air to speak of in three-days’ ride. The fire wasn’t helping things neither, nor the alcohol slowly but surely dulling his mind, but it was all worth it to think of the joyous look on Abigail’s face as she raced down the steps of the house to pull her boy into her arms.

In the ensuing romp and rowdiness, it was easy to explain away the tightness in his throat and the itching in his eyes as just part of the relief of having Jack back with them safe and sound. As the night and the festivities wore on, however, a brewing darkness seemed to press in on him from all sides. 

When John’s son ran out of that mansion, clean and healthily flushed, dressed in his fine clothes and belly full, it was almost too good to be true. Like a fever dream. Only the poorly-concealed guilt in John’s voice and the shaking of his own hands on his reins told him he was very much awake.

Little Jackie Marston had been kidnapped and sold for ransom and somehow came back to them in better shape than he’d left. It made Arthur sick to his stomach. Times like these he wondered whether they’d all be better off—

“Oh shit, Arthur, sorry!” 

Looking up from where his beer bottle had been thrown to the dirt, Arthur caught Karen around the waist as she overbalanced and nearly toppled toward the flames. 

“Jeezus, Miss Jones, maybe time to slow down, ain’t it?”

For the way she cackled at that, Arthur must have turned into some sort of comedian while he wasn’t looking. A spray of liquor strong enough to peel paint sloshed from her bottle and over his shirt as she threw out her hands to land on his shoulders. “Aw, come on, sour puss! We’re celebratin’ for chrissakes! It’s a par-tay!”

“And I think you’ll do just fine partying right here,” he said, carefully depositing her onto an overturned crate, “with a bit of water to go with that hooch.”

That, too, set her off to giggling. Say what they would about Karen’s drinking habits—and they would indeed—at least she was a happy drunk. Not like Bill over at the table by the chuckwagon whining and carrying on about not getting a room inside the house, how he deserved better for all he’d done for this gang.

Karen’s finger tugged at his beltloop playfully. “You used to be fun, Arthur. Gotta stop it with all that grumpiness, mister. You’ll be cold and silent as a rock ‘fore you know it.”

“Silent as Charles, more like!” Uncle added. Hopelessly drunk as they were, the two were lost to their cackling. 

Shaking his head, Arthur turned away, only to be stopped short by another voice. “You know, she’s got a point, Arthur. You did good tonight.” He glanced down at Lenny, whose eyes shone with more than fire and drink. “Got Jack back, got John’s family back together. You deserve to have some fun.”

Across the way, the Marstons sat apart from the others on the porch of the run-down plantation house. John and Abigail hunched close in the shadows near the door, and even from here Arthur could tell the tone of their conversation was far from that of the perfectly happy couple. John’s shoulders were tight, hand waving away whatever shortcomings he’d been accused of, and Abigail’s head shook fiercely in return. Not fifteen feet from their bickering, Jack sat alone playing with a stick in the mud, his new clothes now filthy. A half-eaten bowl of Pearson’s gnarly stew discarded at his side.

At Arthur’s back, Javier plucked out a riff on his guitar that had all the drunkards whooping and whistling.

“Take a load off, just for one night. You saved his life, probably,” Lenny said. The spot beside him on the log sat empty, unspokenly reserved for an absent Irishman. Arthur patted the kid on the shoulder, all the thanks and condolences he could give him.

On his way toward the crate of bottles at the chuckwagon, Arthur caught sight of Hosea sitting alone dead sober, watching over his family as always. When their eyes met, they nodded in silent understanding. There were many things he never had to say aloud to Hosea, similar as they were down inside themselves. Tonight, both their minds were stuck firmly in the past, many miles from Shady Belle.

Some loud, dirty ditty started up in slurred voices that began to grate on Arthur’s nerves. It was a wonder how obnoxious a group of drunk, joyful people could seem when one’s heart was set altogether against merriment. Nights like these gave Arthur the itch to ride out on his own and not speak a word to anyone but his horse and his journal for days. Unfortunately, he was also quite unwilling to let anyone out of his sight so soon after that mess they left behind in Rhodes, between the Grays, the Braithwaites, and the goddamn Pinkertons.

He wanted out. Just not far.

Arthur pinched a bottle from the crate and turned on his heel, waving off Swanson and Mary-Beth’s calls as he trudged up the path from the house. Ruckus and light were slowly replaced by quiet and dark, and the stillness of it was like removing a stifling blanket. He breathed deeper.

Passing by the horses, Arthur reached out a hand to glide down Icarus’ flank. “Night, boy,” he murmured to the gentle giant, who nickered softly. 

It wasn’t long before the light of the fire left him completely, so dark that his eyes strained to make out anything beyond the stone gate that marked the entrance to the property. Here, the crickets and other night critters played their own songs across the bayou. Here, Arthur was one more animal among the many, just another beating heart in the wilderness. 

He tipped his head back to peer through the canopy at the few visible stars blinking in the heavens. With any luck, a couple of them were looking favorably back on him. 

Perhaps they could still forgive him somehow, some way.

“Not feeling the par—”

“Holy mother of—!” Arthur yelped as his heart did its best impression of a spooked hare. From the shadows to his left, Charles’ outline phased into view, a silhouette that shook from silent laughter. “Yeah, real funny,” he gasped. “Wait til my poor heart gives out for good, see how much you’re laughing then.”

“Apologies,” Charles spoke between chuckles. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Arthur waved him off and rubbed a hand over his chest as his soul settled back beneath his skin. “You been out here this whole time?” he asked as Charles shifted his guard rifle onto his shoulder.

“Someone’s gotta keep watch while you idiots yell loud enough to wake the whole of Lemoyne.” Charles’ words were harsh, but he caught sight of an upturned corner of his lips in the glow of a match Arthur struck against the stone wall. They weren’t terribly practiced in casual conversation with one another, but given the time to see past the unfeeling front Charles presented to strangers, he wasn’t half bad. Not bad at all.

Arthur offered his lit cigarette to Charles, who politely turned it down with a wave of his hand. “Figure we’ve all been through enough as of late, they deserve a little time to be reckless hooligans,” he reasoned.

“But not you?”

That pulled a chuckle from Arthur. Damn, but this man could see through him like glass. “Nah, guess I’m not feelin’ much in the reckless or hooligan way tonight.”

Charles just hummed in that knowing way of his.

Not one to waste a good companionable silence, Arthur popped open his bottle and took a long swig. It burned clean down his throat and forced a rough cough from his chest. Pearson had truly outdone himself this time.

When Charles raised an eyebrow, Arthur held out the bottle. He met about the same fate Arthur had, huffing a harsh breath as he downed his mouthful. Arthur chuckled when it was shoved back into his hands. They settled in like that, backs to stone still warm from the southern sun and eyes on the treeline. 

The quiet made Arthur’s thoughts all the louder by comparison.

What a goddamn mess they had made of things in just a few short weeks. Their run from Blackwater seemed only days ago and years past all at once. What had they done in the meantime but run closer to the law while leaving piles of bodies in their wake? Something dark was festering in the gang, the likes of which Arthur hadn’t seen since they lost Bessie all those years ago. It had taken near a year to pull Hosea out of the drink and back into life, and it had taken a permanent toll on the man. When all this was over, when they finally made it out—be it out West, out of the States, or somehow out of the life altogether—how long would it take for them to feel alive again? How many more would they lose along the way?

And Dutch. He was liable to be blinded by his grand ideals at the best of times, but this was something else altogether. Whatever happened in Blackwater while he and Hosea were away, it lit a fire under Dutch’s ass, hot enough to drive him all the way to one of the largest cities this side of the Lannahechee. All this running, all this destruction, and still the man waxed poetic about the American Dream. At this rate, they were all headed for the rudest of awakenings. 

No one they lost—not Bessie and Annabelle, not Jenny, Mac, or Davey, nor Sean—had deserved to die for what they’d done. Sean, he supposed, had done his fair share of lootin’ and shootin’, but he was just a kid who’d been dealt a bad hand. Weren’t his fault his daddy was a revolution fighter, a man a lot like Dutch it seemed, who was shot down for nothing more than wanting a free and fair land for himself and his brothers to call home. Both he and his only son were buried for it, and what was their reward? The world they fought for being eaten up by civilization and modernity while they were left behind cold in the ground.

And what of those who had no part in the crime, had never held a gun in their lives, but were painted with the broad strokes of villainy that covered the rest of them? God—if there was one—surely would look kindly upon those souls who scrubbed the blood of innocents from their menfolk’s clothes and raised their young on stolen money. Arthur had to believe they would be shown mercy, if in fact there was an afterlife. He had to.

“I’m sorry about Sean.” Charles’ voice, cool and steady as a forest stream, pulled Arthur from his thoughts. Looking over, Arthur saw Charles glance away, back to the trees swaying with Spanish moss. “I know you two were close. That’s a nasty way to go.”

“Yeah,” Arthur croaked, throat once again tight with the weight of it all. He tapped off the long ash on his cigarette before taking a deep draw. “Weren’t pretty, neither. One second he’s runnin’ his smart mouth ‘bout how he knew we was in trouble, next second half his face is—” His voice failed him. He’d seen a lot in his thirty-six years, still there was violence so great and sights so brutal that they managed to shock him to his core.

He couldn’t imagine what Charles thought of him right now, a cold-blooded killer choked by emotion. His voice took on a tone that Arthur couldn’t place. “Jack seemed in high spirits when you all made it back. It’s… good he wasn’t scared, at least.”

Arthur shook his head, fighting against emotion, exhaustion, and drink to speak clearly. “Oh, he was fine. From what he said, they had him all snuggled up in a fancy room with new clothes, hot baths, and I-talian food.” Arthur wanted to be pissed off, wanted to be murderous about what had been done to their little man and poor Abigail, but there was nothing left for it. The Braithwaites were all dead or destitute and that Bronte fella had handed Jack over with a simple favor completed. “Living like some sorta prince.”

“Better than the alternative.” 

“S’pose,” he agreed. Charles’ hand brushed his as he grabbed the bottle for another sip. “Then again, I s’pose it was the safest he’s been in months. Maybe the happiest, too.”

“Arthur.” Charles’ voice was sharp. “You know that ain’t true.”

“Why not?” he asked bitterly, not really meaning it but needing to say it nonetheless. To put the words to air, find out if they rang hollow or true. “You know he’s been havin’ nightmares? Ever since I got him caught up with those Pinkertons back in the Heartlands.” Charles returned the bottle, and Arthur accepted it, letting the alcohol light a fire in his chest. “Been terrified the ‘bad men’ are gonna come back and take us all away, leave him alone in the world.”

“Then you know how terribly he would miss you if anything separated you. No warm bath or fancy clothes could make up for being taken from his mother, his father, his favorite uncle.” Charles took the bottle and set it atop the wall. “Nothing can replace a family that loves you.”

Only then did Arthur remember that Charles, too, knew how cruel this world could be to a child. He was lucky he hadn’t been taken from his mother’s tribe to be ‘reformed’ like many others, but his family was still torn apart by the encroaching civilization, his mother taken by white men and his father by drink.

“Aw hell, I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t,” Charles was quick to wave him off. “I can’t imagine you had it much easier. You don’t get into this life with a happy childhood.”

Arthur tapped the brim of his hat, shifting it off his damp forehead. “Yeah. Mine ended with a rope ‘round my daddy’s neck.”

Charles nodded. That kind of violence wasn’t something to sniff at, but it weren’t exactly noteworthy, either. It was just who they were, a part of the great cycle of right and wrong that would churn them all to ashes.

He would do most anything to keep Jack away from that cycle. He wouldn’t dare leave that boy behind with only ghosts to guide him through this world. Even if Arthur went down in a hail of gunfire, if all of them did, he would make sure Jack had someone on his side. 

“John’s too great a fool to realize what a good thing he has in that boy and in Abigail. They’re the best thing he’ll ever have and he just up and goddamn left them!” He had been working to forgive John, truly, but losing Jack for just a few nights had brought back the past to bite at his heels.

Charles hummed as he adjusted his rifle. “Commitment doesn’t sit well with him, does it? If he gets involved in Jack’s life, he won’t ever be a free man again.”

That only served to stoke Arthur’s anger. “A woman and child ain’t a damn burden.”

“I know that, but I don’t think John does. Before the gang, did he ever have any kind of stable family?”

The image of small hands tearing at a noose, face going purple as Dutch and Hosea fought off half a dozen sick bastards, came to his mind. “Nah, his childhood ended when they put a rope ‘round his neck. Only twelve years old, the goddamn animals.”

Charles cursed. “So he has no idea what it looks like to love a little kid like Jack. It’s a kind of love no one ever showed him.”

And there it was, that deep, dark pit at the center of himself that Arthur had been trying not to look at all night long. But here Charles had grabbed his shoulders and walked him right to the edge, pushed his head down so it was all he could see, and the depth of it dizzied him, a void so absolute that if he lost his balance and toppled in, he may never see daylight again.

Apparently taking his silence for disagreement, Charles sighed and continued in his steady voice. “Dutch and Hosea took you both in, but I’ll bet you were too old and too independent to take the kind of coddling you’d give to a kid Jack’s age.”

Bitter tears sprung to Arthur’s eyes that no amount of blinking would clear away.

“You can’t force someone to be a good father if they don’t want it. I learned that the hard way. And it seems the truly good ones often never get the chance.”

Arthur’s knees buckled and his back slid down the wall to the cool soil below, where his rear end hit the ground hard. It was coming up, the darkness cresting over his head. He managed a ragged breath, hitching with the agony in his chest.

“I—Arthur?”

He tried to wave off the concern in Charles’ voice, but then there was a warm body beside him and a hand on his shoulder. “What is it?”

Arthur fought to reign it in, push it all back down where it belonged, locked in his chest, held at the back of his throat. But it had suddenly grown too big, pressing too insistently against the backs of his teeth to be laid aside again.

“Would it—” he broke off roughly. “Would it have been better to have never met your father at all, than to know him and know how he hurt you?”

For a long while, Charles was still and silent as a sculpture at Arthur’s side. He couldn’t stomach the idea of looking over and seeing contempt in his friend’s face, so he studied the ground between his feet instead. “What are you saying?” Charles finally asked.

“You know mine was the same, drunk and angry. Would it have been easier on you to just… to go without?”

“No.” A knee knocked against Arthur’s as Charles settled on his rear in the dirt. “It doesn’t make much sense, but sometimes I still miss him. I don’t… think I love him the way I should, but I don’t hate him. He’s still my father, and I know he was hurting more than he ever let me see.” He blew out a weary sigh as his head knocked back against stone. “Even now, I wish we’d had more time. Maybe if I’d stuck around a little longer, we could have understood one another.”

Air huffed from Arthur like he’d been hit. His face was hot with the tears. “So the pain of having him was better than the pain of losing him?”

“The hell is this about, Arthur?”

“I—” he tried. “Once, I—” Again, his voice failed him, and Charles leaned into him. It was more comfort than he deserved by far. Christ, when had this ugly shame gotten such a hold on him? When had it grown so great that he couldn’t even speak the memory of those he’d loved and lost?

Man up, Morgan. Man up and face what you’ve done.

The words finally tore free of him. “I had a son once.”

“Oh.” Charles’ response seemed underwhelming, but the awful truth of it must have hit him a second later, as he all but collapsed against Arthur’s side. “Oh, Arthur.”

He didn’t want—didn’t deserve—pity, but this was something else. Charles knew something of a loving home and of the pain of losing it to senseless violence. The pain in his voice was not for Arthur, not really, but for the sheer injustice of such loss.

And now that he had begun, Arthur couldn’t stop. “His name was Isaac. He was just three when I lost him.” His voice stumbled over heaving breath. “His mama, Eliza, she was a good woman. All of nineteen when we met.” Saliva flavored with his guilt filled his mouth, a precursor to the rolling nausea in his stomach. 

“You don’t have to tell me—”

He shook his head. “I won’t let myself forget them. Someone has to remember that they—”

Charles’ voice, soft as a rabbit pelt but harshly critical. “Arthur.”

“Someone. Anyone.”

A hand grasped Arthur’s wrist, silencing the nonsense. “Will you tell me about them?”

And he did. For the first time in years, the memories were unlocked, and he told Charles of a beautiful, flirtatious waitress in Missouri, how he was young enough for his better sense to be overruled by his libido, how Dutch and Hosea cheered on any connections he made outside of their (at the time) small group. He recalled the regret of being unable to give an address for letters as well as his promise to return, only for that next meeting to be a shock when he found Eliza round with child. His child. Hosea was overcome with pride, while Dutch was quick to tell him the gang was no place for a woman in the family way, nor an infant. That there was no way they could be together, not really.

Arthur managed to stick around for a few months. He helped to bring his son into the world, got the two of them set up with a place to stay and a promise of regular funds in the post. Only when the wanted posters got a little too close for comfort, the sketched likenesses a little too accurate, did he part ways with them.

Every few months without fail for near the next four years, Arthur managed to get himself back to Independence, to that little house, and to his son. Isaac seemed to grow by magic, doubling in size each time Eliza opened the front door to welcome Arthur back. He’d do all he could to make an impression of a good man on his son, took pride in teaching him about the world, but he was simply too young for all the adventures he dreamed of taking together.

Goodbyes were hardest, when the encroaching law or a letter sent ahead from the gang necessitated it. Isaac would be overcome, clinging to Arthur as though he was walking to his death instead of out the door. He would hold his son close, try to give him all the loving he’d need to carry him through to the next adventure they’d share together.

Until there was no next time.

“Two crosses, just east of the house.” His voice had gone rough from speaking, but Charles listened with rapt attention and breaths heavy with shared grief. “‘S how I knew they was gone. Asked around town an’ heard a robber’d come to the house, an’ he shot ‘em to get at what was inside.”

It sickened him to think of all the money that had passed through his hands since that day, all the bonds he’d lifted and the gold he’d fenced away. Any amount of it could have saved their lives over and over.

“Bastard killed them for all of five dollars she had saved. An’ no one knew who I was to let me know. To them, I was nothing more than some nosy stranger.”

Fresh out of words, Arthur felt hollowed out and vulnerable, but his mind finally seemed to quiet. Damn Hosea and all his talk about sharing your woes. A burden shared is a burden halved. Damn that it worked.

“You… are not the man I thought you were.” Charles said softly.

Though Arthur had been waiting for this moment for some months now, it hit like an open palm to the face all the same. Charles had always been too good for the depraved lot of them, and it was only a matter of time before he figured it out and cut loose. Arthur could pretend all he wanted, but he was never going to be worthy of the good graces of someone like Charles, who—even pressed into a life of crime by his circumstances—was free of the inherent stain of darkness that marked folk like Arthur.

“Then I’m sorry to have deceived you,” was his bitter reply. He thought about reaching for that bottle again, about racing his own heart to rock bottom. He was so tired, so very tired of wondering when he crossed the point of no return, when not even an iron grip on Dutch’s philosophy could redeem him.

“Oh shut it, you fool.” Again, though his words were harsh, the undeniable warmth drew Arthur’s eyes back up. The barest of smiles pulled at Charles’ lips, as if he was fighting it. He shifted to face Arthur. “You know, I’ve heard the others tell you often enough to lighten up, but they don’t see half of what you take on so they can spend the night partying without a care in the world.”

For a moment, Arthur’s world tipped on its head as the suffocating smoke and stench of that O’Driscoll cellar came back to him, the agony of his destroyed shoulder. His memories of the weeks following were fuzzy at best and absent at worst. He remembered voices, low and fussing: Grimshaw, Tilly, Hosea. But there were also times where he could swear it was Charles at his side, tending to his wounds and soothing his fevered skin with cool water. Arthur couldn’t bring himself to ask if those memories were real.

Charles’ voice went breathless. “Do they even know what you lost?”

With the tightness in his throat, his voice came rough. “Some. Dutch and Hosea, Miss Grimshaw. John and Tilly. I imagine Abigail knows a bit by now.”

“And then John had a son of his own and he left.” A heavy sigh gusted into the night. “You must have hated him for it.”

“Only time I ever considered leaving this behind. To give them something… real.” But leaving hadn’t worked for Hosea and Bessie, and keeping the gang distant from Isaac and his mama hadn’t worked for Arthur, and Abigail wasn’t his woman nor Jack his son. So he did what he could, looking after them as much as felt proper while planning all the ways he would skin Marston alive when he finally showed his coward face around them once more.

He never did make good on that promise, but those wolves took it upon themselves to try anyway. That and Jack’s kidnapping were penance enough, he reckoned. They were so lucky that Jack had made it to four whole and healthy, and luckier still after what he’d just been through. 

Arthur’s loss was the rule rather than the exception among the gang. They had all lost someone—parents, a home, a lover, a child—and that grief had driven them together, made them hungry for the community and purpose that Dutch promised them all.

Arthur raised his eyes to the heavens once more, where dark clouds were beginning to blot out the stars. “Could it ever be worth it?”

“How do you mean?”

With the glow of the campfire just barely reaching them on this side of the wall, it was hard to pick out Charles’ expression. But he knew from all those times riding out together that if he needed to speak his mind, Charles would listen without judgment. 

“When Dutch and Hosea took me in, we didn’t keep anything more than what we needed to get by. Everything else went to those who’d already been wronged: the poor, the sick, orphans. Now years down the line, it seems we can never get enough. And what for? So we can make ourselves comfortable while everyone beneath us gets poorer, sicker, and orphaned?”

Charles nodded solemnly. “We’ve left a lot of bodies in our wake since Blackwater.”

“More and more those bodies are one of our own.” He couldn’t help but feel there was an invisible hourglass somewhere, and each time it emptied, another of them would be dead. No telling who was next to the gallows.

“You’ve lived this life far longer than I have,” Charles reminded him. “Before this, I wasn’t used to seeing the same faces for more than a few weeks at a time. It’s easier, in a way, when everyone stays a stranger.”

Sickly guilt tumbled through Arthur’s gut. He was the lucky one here, who’d had folk to look out for him since he was a teenager. Charles had been going it alone all that time.

He moved to stand, suddenly unable to stomach the thought of burdening him with the woes of a killer. “‘M sorry to talk your ear off with all my bellyaching. I’ll let you get back to patrol.” 

As the sounds beyond the wall filtered back in, Dutch made an impassioned plea for faith.

“No, Arthur, it’s—“ Charles faltered halfway through a sentence, halfway standing, halfway reaching out to him. “I know I can be… selfish with my words. I know I seem cold or, or that I do not care.”

Arthur stilled at the sudden urgency in his voice. Outside the danger of a job or the heat of something like those bison poachers back in the Heartlands, Charles kept the coolest of heads. “That’s not true.”

“It is,” he chuckled darkly. “You should hear how the others talk about me.”

Uncle, Lenny, Bill, Micah. Folk either trying to goad him into empty conversation or outright treating him like dirt beneath their shoes. It was no wonder he didn’t want to chat with any of them. “I hear enough.” Arthur stepped back into his space, reaching out a hand to pull Charles the rest of the way to his feet. Once they were eye level again, some of the wrongness settled in him. “You don’t owe us poor bastards anything, least of all your respect.”

Charles frowned deeply and swallowed. “I just meant that I’m not good at…” He waved a vague hand. “This.”

“At what? Standing? Talking? You seem to be doing pretty well to me.” Arthur chuckled despite himself.

Charles rolled his eyes before dropping his head. “At making friends. And keeping them. Just cause it’s easier to be alone don’t mean it’s better.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, and his embarrassment was suddenly obvious. Lord, but he was young. “Somehow I’m only now realizing how badly I want to be close to these people. To really know them like you know them.” He looked through the stone gate to the rest of the gang, and a sudden flash of lightning illuminated his shining eyes and the brutal scar across his jaw.

He was right, of course. It was easier to keep folk just close enough to know who would stab you in the back while you slept. But he learned quickly in those first few months riding with Dutch and Hosea that letting someone really know you could be so rewarding. When that knowing turned to care, and care to love… that’s what made every other god awful thing in this life worthwhile. 

There weren’t many things a man was guaranteed, but Arthur knew he always had an open ear to listen and a steady shoulder to lean on in Hosea. He’d thought for a time that they would lose Hosea before they broke over the Grizzlies, and it scared Arthur something awful to imagine leaving him somewhere up there in the frozen ground. It was a love he couldn’t describe, but he was a better man for knowing it. 

With that in mind, Arthur opened a hand between them as thunder rumbled across the heavens. “If you need a place to start, it’d be my pleasure, Mister Smith.”

Tension fell away from Charles’ shoulders as he raised his head, hope threaded with disbelief in soft brown eyes that suddenly seemed as easy to read as his own handwriting. He closed the hand within his own, halfway between a handshake and a clasp. “I’d like that very much.”

Out here in the thick night air of Bayou Nwa, on the far side of some of the longest days of Arthur’s life, something settled in him that he had not felt in many years. Before him was the opportunity to exist alongside someone without any expectation at hiding his true self. Not since Mary had broken things off with him for the final time had he even hoped to hope for such.

It was a naked, vulnerable thing, to be known in that way. He ached for it at his very core.

He ached to write this feeling—and the man at its source—into his journal. To keep every bit of him caught between graphite and paper to study. Wanted to make his fingers trace the lines of his broad shoulders and soft jaw, find out how many tries it would take him to capture his likeness to his satisfaction. Given the opportunity, he would know everything and let himself be known down to the very small hidden parts of his heart. Hand over his own words to be perused at Charles’ own pace, every agonizingly sincere hope and cruel sin held between those broad, sure hands.

Maybe someday in the future, when all this was long gone and whatever fate that bore down on them even this night had come to pass, a stranger might come upon his words, his drawings, and know the two of them as well as they knew each other. Proof that two men who held the world at arm’s length had taken the gamble of reaching out, believing against all odds that the other would reach back.

He hadn’t known who moved first, but they used their grip to pull close, and Arthur clapped his arm around Charles’ shoulders and welcomed the same from him. The same steady certainty that carried Charles through life now surrounded him, settling him under his own skin. 

No, this was not like anything Arthur had before.

Finally back on solid ground, Arthur cleared his throat and pulled back. “Why don’t you talk to Lenny about taking your patrol tomorrow?” Charles’ eyes narrowed. “I’ve got a couple hunting projects I’m working on. Could use the extra set of hands. Maybe teach me a bit more about how you live off the land?” And perhaps this time would end without the blood of poachers shared between their hands.

The first droplets of rain found them at once, and Charles’ eyes turned to the swamp as the storm rolled in. “How long until Dutch has you running point on another scheme of his?”

Arthur snorted. “Couple days, if I’m lucky.” If he was real fortunate, maybe Dutch would even take up Angelo Bronte’s invitation to that party at the mayor of Saint Denis’ goddamn mansion. Surely that was the next logical step in their plan of laying low and moving back west.

When the rain shower began in earnest, shouts and laughter from the gang reached them as folk rushed to get sheltered.

Charles pulled his hood up over his head and stepped back. “We should head out in the morning. We can make it to Ringneck Creek by midday, and if you’re looking for bigger game, we can follow the Kamassa north from there. Take three, maybe four days.”

“Sure,” Arthur agreed, filled to the brim with the promise of it. He pulled up his collar and tipped his hat low to keep the worst of it off himself. This closing off, the straightening up that would always inevitably come between these moments shared between them and reconnecting with the gang were sure to take their toll. But as he met Charles’ eye, watched him brace himself against the rain, he found a grin came naturally. “You find yourself a dry place to stand, and don’t stay out too long. Won’t have a repeat of Colter. I may be an expert bowman, but you’ll have to pull your weight this time, Mister Smith.”

A breathy laugh answered him as Charles turned away. “Good night, Arthur. And get inside.”

As usual, Arthur was happy to abide by his request.